Mice

14

He walked past us, carrying the red sports bag, its sides straining to contain all the objects he’d stuffed inside. It seemed he’d grabbed anything that had come to hand — I could even see the family-sized bottle of shampoo from the bathroom protruding from one of the zippered side pockets.

He went into the dining room and began sweeping the knick-knacks from the top of the sideboard into what little space was left in the bag. All the while he stared glassily at the wall in front of him like a blind man, almost oblivious to what he was doing. He didn’t seem to notice when any of the miniature glass animals or china figurines missed the bag and fell to the floor, but just carried on sweeping, sweeping, like a robot.

But what I couldn’t take my eyes off, what I stared at in disbelief, was the knife. He’d left the fanged hunting knife on the dining-room table. He was unarmed.

My hands were free now. I left them lying loosely in my lap, the rope still ineffectively coiled around them, and began to work on my legs. The rope must have been years old, and as I forced my ankles apart I could feel the dry prickly strands snapping one by one.

‘Mum!’ I hissed, turning right around in my chair to bring my lips close to her cheek. ‘This rope’s so old that—’

‘Hey!’

I jumped as if a firecracker had gone off under my chair. He was staring straight at me, an ugly dog snarl curling around his lips and nose.

‘No talking!’ he screamed, the veins standing out in his forehead and a shower of spittle spraying from his mouth. It was so loud that I still felt the words echoing round and round the room long after he’d said them.

When he couldn’t fit anything more into the bag, he walked towards us, the knife still lying forgotten on the table behind him. He stood in front of us, rocking queasily backwards and forwards. Under the bright ceiling light, his skin was greasy with sweat and deathly pale; he wore a pained expression like a child who’d eaten too much at a party and now had raking stomach ache and knew he was going to be sick. I could see the hairs on his top lip and chin — not a man’s bristles, but the ugly, sparse whiskers of an adolescent.

‘I’m goin’ now,’ he said.

But he didn’t move. He stayed swaying unsteadily in front of us while his eyelids began their now-familiar flickering and his eyes rolled up like those of an epileptic about to fall into a seizure. His head lolled onto his chest and slowly, slowly he began to topple forwards. The sound of the bag thudding to the floor brought him around too late to stop his forward momentum. He fell heavily against me. His greasy face rubbed against mine and I inhaled the nauseating stench of his foul breath. He kept his face close to mine, laughing quietly to himself, enjoying the fear and disgust he aroused in me. I kept my hands tight together, praying he wouldn’t see that I’d managed to untie them.

‘Fancy a snog?’ he said.

I closed my eyes tightly and clenched my teeth, ready for his disgusting assault. But it didn’t come. He pushed himself upright.

‘I don’t want to snog you,’ he said. ‘You’re an ugly, stuck-up bitch.’

I opened my eyes a fraction and saw his olive-green shape hovering at my side.

‘What’s all that — ’ he grimaced — ‘what’s all that crap all over your face?’

I couldn’t speak. I’d been so frightened for so long now I felt I couldn’t take much more. I felt as though my pounding heart was going to give out at any second and I was going to die of fright, like I’d heard hunted animals did even before the hunters’ dogs seized them in their jaws.

‘What is it, eh?’

Silence. A long uncomfortable silence.

‘What is it?’

‘She was in an accident at school,’ Mum answered hurriedly.

With a speed I wouldn’t have thought him capable of, he wheeled around and punched her hard in the face. I felt her whole body rock violently sideways in the chair behind me.

‘I didn’t ask you!’ he shouted.

‘I’m sorry,’ Mum said, still thinking clearly even in the full shock of the blow, trying to placate him, trying to stop him from losing his temper and spiralling out of control.

‘I had an accident at school!’ I cried, trying to get his attention back to me and away from Mum as his arm drew back, readying to strike her again. ‘I got burned in a fire! They’re scars! I’m scarred now!’

He unclenched his fist, and his arm dropped back down to his side.

‘Yeah — well, you’re a mess.’

‘Yes, I know,’ I said, trying to keep him talking, trying to keep his attention on me.

‘Your old mum’s prettier than you are.’ He hiccuped, triggering another sour belch.

He picked up the red bag and tottered drunkenly away. He walked right past the hunting knife without so much as a glance in its direction, and disappeared into the kitchen.

We heard nothing for a long time.

‘I think he’s gone,’ Mum whispered.

As if that were his cue, he walked back into the lounge carrying a large gift-wrapped box in his arms. It was decorated with a bright red bow, and balanced on top of it was a pink envelope with my name written on it in Mum’s neatest calligraphy.

‘What’s this?’ he demanded.

‘It’s my daughter’s birthday present,’ Mum answered coldly.

‘What is it?’

‘It’s a computer, a portable computer.’

‘Nice one!’ he exclaimed delightedly, as though the gift had been bought especially for him. ‘I’m goin’ now. You’d better not call the police or I’ll come back.’

His eyes closed and a vague smile passed over his face as if he were enjoying a private joke. They opened again but only just, struggling to push up lids that had become unbearably heavy. He looked around him as though trying to remember where he was, what he’d been saying. ‘Yeah, that’s right,’ he drawled, ‘I’ll come back and do you. Understand?’

‘Yes, we understand,’ Mum said. ‘We won’t call the police. We promise.’

He stood rooted to the spot for a long time, lost in the convoluted labyrinths of his trip. He mumbled something and tried to belch but nothing came up. His eyes closed and I’d just decided that he’d slipped into another one of his strange trances when they suddenly flicked open again like a doll’s. He stared fixedly at me with such cold, piercing, homicidal intensity that I had to look away. The bloodletting’s going to start now, the bloodletting’s going to start right now, just when we thought he’d gone away and left us in peace! The frenzy’s going to start now. .

He teetered forward and the pink envelope slipped off the laptop and clacked onto the floor. At this sound he drew himself up straight again, smacked his chops loudly and licked his lips.

‘I’ll come back and do you,’ he said again, so quietly it was almost inaudible.

He fumblingly reorganized the laptop, turning it onto its side and gripping it under his left arm. As he did so, the beautiful red bow fell off and spiralled to the floor like an autumn leaf. Then he tacked his way slowly back to the dining room. He paused at the table and I was sure he was going to pick up the knife this time. But he just seemed to look right through it, as if it were invisible or some hallucinatory dagger of the mind, before he reeled into the kitchen and disappeared from sight.

I listened to him in the kitchen struggling to let himself out with my computer under one arm and the red sports bag in the other, too far gone to put one down and open the back door with a free hand.

‘It’s over,’ Mum said. ‘He’s really going now. I told you he wouldn’t hurt us.’

Yes, it was true this time. He really was going, taking away with him my sixteenth birthday present clasped tightly against his stinking jacket. The gift Mum had carefully wrapped up and decorated with a pretty red bow and put out on the kitchen table last thing before she went up to bed so that it would be there for me when I came down to breakfast in the morning, a wonderful birthday surprise. The laptop that with her mother’s intuition she’d known I wanted, that she couldn’t afford but that she’d been determined I should have, no matter what she had to go without herself.

He was going — leaving behind him a jagged gouge on Mum’s cheek from his bulky signet ring and a storm-coloured bruise engulfing her right eye. He was going — leaving behind him two defenceless women he’d systematically humiliated, tormented and abused as if it were the natural order of things, as if it was his right.

To this day I still don’t know exactly what made me do what I did next. Perhaps it was seeing that pallid, vicious thug carrying away my birthday present, the symbol of all my future ambitions; perhaps it was outrage at what he’d done to Mum; perhaps it was because he’d called me ugly; perhaps the truth is that we all have a limit to what we can endure — even mice — and that when that limit’s passed something just snaps. Perhaps it was merely the way Mum’s beautiful red bow had floated so slowly, so pathetically to the ground. .

I tore away the few remaining strands of rope that tied my legs, grabbed the knife from the dining-room table, and ran out into the garden after him.