You Against Me

Twenty-four

Tom was leaning over the sink in the downstairs bathroom watching blood drip from his nose.

‘Look at me!’ He waved his hands at Ellie as if to prove something. They were bright and slippery with blood. ‘Are you going to help me, or what?’

She closed the front door and went into the bathroom, passed him some tissue, then draped a towel round herself like a cape and sat on the closed toilet seat. She leaned back and closed her eyes.

‘Well, you’re a good nurse,’ he said. ‘Thanks very much.’

She tried to remember what had happened out there – Mikey’s scared face as he staggered to the gate, Tom sauntering after him, blood everywhere, water slamming at them and the grass all slippery.

But before any of that, there’d been a moment, and this was what was hard to remember exactly – a moment when Tom smashed the bottle against the wall of the house and glass flew everywhere. She’d told him to stop, she’d kept saying it and he’d kept ignoring her. And he had that look on his face – the one she’d seen before, where nothing she said or did was going to make anything different.

She opened her eyes. Tom was still dabbing at himself with tissues over the sink. Their gaze met in the mirror.

He said, ‘Why did you let him into the house?’

She’d thought about this outside, had planned to give some mad excuse – her upstairs revising, the back door open, Mikey forcing his way in, her half dressed and hysterical. But now Tom was asking, the words wouldn’t come out of her mouth.

He got there before she could answer anyway. ‘You fancy him!’

She didn’t deny it. She couldn’t be bothered.

It didn’t take him long to piece a story together – Mikey crashed the party and chatted her up, he knocked on the door today to try his luck.

‘He’s taking the piss out of us,’ he said. ‘They planned it between them. She sent her brother round to spy on us! Can you believe it?’

Ellie didn’t mention that she’d invited Mikey, that it was her who wanted the information, that her plan had horribly back-fired.

Through the window, the smell of cooking wafted at them. Somewhere, a perfectly normal family was having a perfectly normal lunch. Ellie wished she was with them.

‘I don’t think anything’s broken,’ Tom said. He studied the cuts on the back of his hand. ‘You think we should take photos of this for evidence?’

‘Evidence? You can’t report him. He didn’t attack you with a bottle.’

He turned to her, his eyes flashing. ‘You think I should have let him hit me? You think maybe I deserved it?’

‘I didn’t say that.’

Tom licked blood from the edge of his mouth with his tongue. ‘I wasn’t going to bottle him. It’s what guys do to protect themselves, to make themselves look hard. I wouldn’t’ve done it. You should know that about me.’

She shook her head. ‘I don’t know anything about you.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

He came up close, leaned down so his face was right over hers. He was so close it was difficult to see him properly. She concentrated on the blond bristle of hair on his chin and the blood beginning to leak from his nose again.

He said, ‘What was he doing in your bedroom?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Why did you have your top off?’

‘What’s it got to do with you?’

He clutched her chin with his hand and swung her face up to look at him. ‘Did you know he was her brother? Did you invite him round knowing who he was and tell him stuff about me?’

‘Like what, Tom? What kind of stuff?’ The cistern was cold and solid at the back of her head. She tried to push him away, but he held her there. ‘Get off me, will you?’

‘Make me.’

She shoved him, but he pushed her back harder and glared at her.

‘So, let me get this right,’ she hissed. ‘He came round here to defend his sister, and here you are threatening yours! And you think he’s the one with the problem?’

He crumpled then. It happened in slow motion. His shoulders sagged first, and then the light went out of his eyes. He looked like he suddenly couldn’t remember where he was and couldn’t even be bothered to try. He moved away from her, leaned against the towel rail and closed his eyes.

He said, ‘You don’t blag your way into someone’s house and punch their lights out.’ He rubbed at his nose, spreading new blood across his cheek.

Ellie felt heavy as she stood up. Her teeth ached and her knee was sore from where she’d slipped on the wet grass. ‘Tom?’

‘That whole family’s crazy. Didn’t you see him? I need you to believe it’s them and not me.’

‘Tom, your nose is bleeding loads.’

It was bright, startling. He tried to catch it, but it dripped through his fingers and splashed onto the tiled floor.

‘Let me help.’

‘I don’t want your help.’

She gave him her place on the toilet seat and got him more tissues. ‘Pinch it here, like this. And put your head down.’

He slumped there, holding his nose. The top of his head was shiny with water. ‘It hurts,’ he said. His voice was nasal and muffled.

‘It’ll stop soon. Here’s some more tissue.’

He gave her the old ones. They were warm and heavy. She put them in the pedal bin, then washed her hands in the sink. There were dots of blood splashed over the mirror. She wiped them with her palm and they smeared pink across the glass. She’d have to clean it properly later.

She dried her hands, went to the cabinet on the wall and scooped out handfuls of cotton-wool balls – pink, white, eggshell blue – like little clouds. She rinsed out the sink and filled it with fresh water. It was good having something to do, it slowed her pulse down. This is how the nurses must have felt in the First World War, she thought. Facts seeped into her head as she dunked and squeezed the cotton balls.

The war started on 28 June 1914 and lasted over four years. Total dead: over eleven million. Factors that led to strong feelings of nationalism throughout Europe were… Were what? Ellie leaned on the sink for a moment, a wave of panic in her gut. She’d learned the factors only last week. What was happening to the inside of her head?

She knelt on the floor at Tom’s feet in an effort to calm herself. She made him take the tissues from his nose. ‘It’s stopped,’ she said. ‘Now don’t speak. I’m going to clean you up.’

‘OK.’

‘Shush, no talking.’

She wiped his mouth and around his nose with cotton wool. She dabbed at his eyebrow. He moaned gently as she touched a raw place on his cheek.

There was silence then, a tiny window of time when they looked at each other. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

Ellie felt her insides shift; a warmth for her brother stirred there.

He kept his eyes on her as she blotted at him. ‘You think he does boxing?’

‘Probably.’

Tom’s face softened. ‘He landed the first punch, Ellie. I couldn’t let him get away with that. I couldn’t just stand there and take it.’

She didn’t understand the world of fighting, that’s what the problem was. She’d been looking for subtlety, and there wasn’t any – it came down to daring and bravado. Tom had the better weapon. Tom won. Maybe Mikey didn’t mind about the bottle as much as she did. Maybe he didn’t see it as cheating.

‘He shouldn’t’ve come here. He shouldn’t’ve dared. You know what I mean?’

She nodded.

‘I wouldn’t’ve bottled him. I only wanted to scare him. Did you think I was going to bottle him for real?’

‘I don’t know.’

He smiled. ‘You soaked me with that hosepipe.’

‘Yeah.’

‘You’re a nutter.’

She sat down at his feet and watched him searching for pain with the tips of his fingers.

‘Is there anything here?’ He pushed out his lip with his tongue – it was swollen, as if he’d been stung.

‘Just a graze.’

Tom said, ‘You all right?’

‘Sure.’

‘You don’t look it.’

Her throat contracted and her eyes filled with tears. ‘What’s going to happen next?’

‘I’ll go to court. I’ll get off. We’ll go back to normal.’ Tom looked down at her fondly, the way he used to before any of this. ‘It’ll be all right.’