When I Was Invisible (37 page)

‘That's very sensible,' I say.

‘Me, sensible. Wow, that's something I never thought I'd hear. Your turn: when was your last significant relationship?'

‘Erm … the last person I called a boyfriend and lived with was about five years ago? I think? Yeah, five years ago. Wow, I keep forgetting how old I am now. Five years. OK, now you: what's your favourite flavour jelly bean?'

‘Whoa, what is this, an interrogation? That's a very personal question. I'll have to get back to you on that one. Your turn: why did you freak out in the restaurant the first night we went out?'

I sigh. It is easy to be honest with Marshall, but how much honesty can he take before he starts to wonder if being connected to me is actually a good idea? ‘Because I often feel I don't fit in and I don't belong in nice places. I panicked that night that everyone would see that I was a fraud and they'd laugh at me, or worse, I'd be asked to leave. I know, I know it's irrational, but I can't help it sometimes.'

‘You're no fraud, Nika.'

‘Why, thank you. Your turn: what is the one song that you're most embarrassed about listening to over and over and over?'

‘I don't get embarrassed about my musical tastes. I'm a rap man at heart, but I like a bit soul, a bit of Motown, tiny bit of rare groove. Nothing to be embarrassed about there.'

‘Don't believe you. Everyone has that one song they're embarrassed about – what's yours? Be honest.'

‘Right, well, you must tell no one this: Paul McCartney's “No More Lonely Nights”.'

I was not expecting that. I smirk at him, almost spitting noodles as I do so.

‘Hey, come on, not fair. You mustn't do that. I was being honest, you told me to be honest.'

I smirk again. ‘There is such a thing as too much honesty. And don't worry, I will
never
,
ever
tell anyone about that.'

‘Right, what's yours?'

‘I have loads. A few years back, I didn't have a computer but I had a music player and this woman I knew would put her music on it for me. Loads of stuff from the 1980s. And, intellectually, I know most of it is pretty terrible, but you know, I loved all that music. Apart from that “No More Lonely Nights” mess you were talking about right there … So there's loads of stuff that should be embarrassing that I've listened to over and over, but I'm kinda not. However, if I was to choose one, it'd be Toto's “Africa”. I love the music, the relentlessness of the beat, but some of the lyrics … No matter how hard I try, I can't square the way they've managed to crowbar the word “Serengeti” into a song. I just can't. So it's that one.'

‘Serengeti? As in the wide open space?'

‘Yes, Serengeti. I mean, I can almost overlook how the song suggests that Africa is a country and not a continent, just, but the whole Serengeti—'

Knock-knock, ring-ring
.

Marshall's fork stops on its journey to his mouth and the happy fug we've been chatting in starts to leak out of the room, chased away by the return of the person we haven't really talked about at all in the last three weeks. When she extended her trip by a week, then another, I guessed that she had probably lost her job and was at her parents' trying to hit them up for money, while she told Marshall she was trying to get help. (No one can extend their annual leave for that long so last-minute, but I kept my counsel in case I was wrong.)

‘I'd forgotten she'd be back,' he murmurs. ‘I mean, she rings me several times a day, but I'd kind of put her to the back of my mind. I thought we had a few more days at least.'

Knock-knock, ring-ring.

‘I'm guessing she's not going to take finding out about us very well,' I say to him.

‘No, she will not take this very well,' he says. ‘She's sounded so together on the phone – what if it derails her recovery? I kept wondering if I should tell her on the phone before she came back. Now I'm convinced I should have.'

Knock-knock, ring-ring.

‘Do you want me to go hide in the bedroom?'

Marshall inhales, steels his nerve. ‘No. She's going to find out at some point, this is as good a time as any.'

He puts down his plate on the low coffee table in front of us, then gets up slowly, like a man approaching his execution. After leaving the room, he comes back, snatches up his T-shirt and puts it on, does up his trousers. I put down my plate, too. Pick up my shorts and struggle into them. Quickly, I roll on my socks, wrap my scarf around my neck, pull on my cardigan. I'm about to settle back when I notice my bra is on the floor, and I snatch it up. In the background I can hear the door opening, I can hear Eliza's hellos, the warmth of Marshall's reply. I don't have time to put it back on; if I hide it behind a cushion, she's bound to find it. I stare at the black lace bra like the time bomb it is, then shove it down the sleeve of my cardigan, fold my arms across my chest to hide the bulge it makes and to obscure the fact I'm not wearing the thing up my sleeve.

‘Come in, stay for a drink,' he says loudly to warn me. ‘Nika's here, we're having noodle stir-fry for dinner. I didn't know you'd be back today, otherwise I'd have made some for you, too.'

‘Hi,' I say to her brightly when they appear in the doorway. ‘Marshall mentioned you'd been away. Did you have a nice time?'

Eliza stares at me. She does not speak for thirty very long seconds, she simply stares, probably running through how she'd had ‘the talk' with me, wondering why it didn't work as well as it had on the others. ‘Nika,' she states. ‘Fancy seeing you here.'

Marshall moves across to the kitchen area of his living room, glugs white wine into a large glass for Eliza and brings it to her. She sits on the armchair opposite where I am sitting on the sofa, holding the wine glass in one hand, the other hand gripped tightly on to the arm of the chair. When she is settled into place, she stares at me.

‘You all right?' Marshall asks, tapping her on the shoulder, before he moves across the room. ‘You're giving Nika some pretty heavy-duty death stares there.'

‘Was I?' she says, and glances affectionately at him as he comes to sit on the sofa. ‘Sorry, didn't mean to. My mind was elsewhere.' A few seconds later the green glare is back on me.

Marshall glances at me, before saying, ‘Actually, Nika—'

‘Was just leaving.' I edge forwards on my seat, and stand up without uncrossing my arms. ‘I'm just leaving. It looks like you've got a lot to talk about, and I've got some stuff to do, so I'll see you both. I'll see you both soon.'

‘Stay,' Marshall implores. ‘Finish your noodles at least. You were just saying how good they were.'

‘They are good, but I really should be going.'

‘
Bye
.
Then
,' Eliza says.

I can't help but smile at her: she thinks a glare has intimidated me, that in my life I have been so sheltered something as simple as a glare from her will send me out of Marshall's life. It doesn't occur to her that I might be doing it for Marshall. He can't see it, but there is a new level of instability to her that makes her unpredictable and dangerous. How dangerous is something I can't yet gauge so better to withdraw until I can be prepared for her.

‘Good to see you, Eliza, hope to see you again soon.'

‘I'll see you out, Nika,' Marshall says.

When I am in the corridor, hidden from the main flat by the door, I run my fingers across my throat and shake my head at him.
Don't tell her
, I mouth at him.

He opens his hands.
Why?

I shake my head.
Just don't.

Open hands again.
Why?

I wave my hands and shake my head.
Trust me, just don't do it.

He shrugs.
OK
.

I press my fingers to my lips, loading them up with a kiss, then move my hands to him. He does the same to me.

I like him
so
much. It's not simply the sex, and the intensity, it's being connected to him. Being connected to him makes me feel like I'm connected to the world, that I can speak to people and I can try to sleep the whole night through. Being connected helps me believe there is more good than bad in the world, and that I will find my way through somehow. For the first time in so long, I have more than momentary, fleeting wisps of hope floating around me. I have a way to be connected to the world; I have the hope that, through this, I can
stay
connected.

‘Do you hate me?' I asked Reese four days after Judge had him hurt. He'd been out cold for two of those days, drifting in out of consciousness for the other two. He'd had surgery on his left knee, had needed almost every finger to be set in splints ready for a cast in a few days, and his torso was wrapped up in bandages to help support his cracked ribs and bruised internal organs. The bruising on his face was minimal – they had wanted to hurt him, to make him scream, and he did that more when they hurt his body, not so much on his face. He was a mess, would probably be in hospital for a while because his injuries were severe and he had nowhere suitable to stay outside of hospital. I asked him if he hated me because since I had arrived today he had said nothing, absolutely nothing, to me. I had talked a little, but he had just stared at me as though he didn't know who I was, and I wasn't sure if he was pretending for the audience of the other patients in here, or if he genuinely didn't know who I was. Or, as was most likely, if he hated me.

In reply to my question, he glared at me for a moment, allowed his anger and disgust to find their target at the centre of my chest, then slowly moved his head away, looking out of the window on the small ward he was on. There were seven other beds in there, each spaced equidistant to each other, each with a side table, a chair for visitors and a long green curtain. I got up, pulled the curtain around the bed, sealing us in a little so we could talk a bit more freely. The other patients were focused on themselves, not us, but you couldn't be sure who was listening and what they would learn.

‘I'm so sorry,' I said to him as I sat down, tucking my chair closer to the bed. I'd been saying that since he'd arrived here, before and after his surgery. Even though he'd been asleep, I'd been whispering it to him, hoping it would filter into his consciousness and he would know that I was here, and that he had someone to come back to. Someone who was so sorry for what had happened to him. ‘I'm so, so sorry. I didn't know he'd do that.'

‘You didn't have to go with her,' he said quietly. ‘You could have let her go and give him the money on her own, so he'd never have known we were involved.'

‘I couldn't have done that. You know that. He would never have just accepted that. He would have told her all sorts, hooked her back in. He couldn't do that with a witness who would tell everyone how he went back on his word. And he doesn't think you or anyone else was involved. Just me.'

‘Just you?' he said, still looking away. They'd shaved his hair to put stitches in at the back of his head where it'd been kicked a couple of times. ‘Look at me, Ace. Look what he's done to me because you wanted to help out some silly bint who wouldn't listen. Everyone had told her not to take stuff from him, not just you. Everyone told her and she wouldn't listen. You help her and look what happens to me.'

He'd wanted to help her out, too, he'd seen that thing in her that he'd seen in me and he'd wanted to help. The others had too. We'd all got involved because we were trying to turn back time, stop another person becoming us and erasing themselves from ‘normal' life. He'd forgotten that desperate need to help he'd felt because he was in pain. He'd been hurt. His world had been turned upside down. He was right, too, he had been hurt because of me, he'd been a casualty because I'd got on the wrong side of a hideous person. He was like Frank the driver who lost his job all those years ago. Collateral damage. Frank and Reese were both collateral damage, victims of the choices I had made.

‘You've got a death wish, ain't ya?' Reese said quietly but viciously, his words full of venom and anger. ‘All that stuff he was saying, he was right – you don't care about yourself enough not to be reckless. That's why he hurt someone else, cos that
does
make you care, doesn't it? In all the time I've known you, Ace, you only ever get upset or show fear when someone else is in trouble. You're a fucking liability and downright dangerous to anyone who knows you when someone like Judge is involved because he can read people and a situation like that.'

‘That's not true,' I protested even though it probably was true. Was something to do with the numbness that surrounded my emotions. It sounded like how my ability to blot out feeling much of anything would probably come across to other people.

Moving swiftly but carefully, trying not to dislodge or further damage anything, Reese turned back to me, his disgust becoming a quiet, low-burning anger as he stared at me. ‘The fuck it isn't. The way you were begging him, promising him anything, would you have done that if he'd been about to do that to you?'

No
. The answer was no.

‘I would. The whole drive out there I was begging him for my life, promising all sorts, but I bet you didn't say a word until you saw me.
Then
no one could shut you up. It ain't on to have friends when you're so reckless about your own safety, Ace. It just ain't.'

‘I'm sorry,' I said to him. ‘I'll go. Leave you alone. I'm sorry. That's all I should have said, really – I'm sorry that I got you into this.' I rose from my seat.

‘Nah, nah, don't go,' he said, softly. ‘Sit down. Stay.'

‘No, you're right, I shouldn't have friends when I am the way I am.'