Page 3 of Glitterland
“Fuck you.”
“Right.” There didn’t seem much else I could say to that.
“If you love someone, then you fight for them.” Niall’s eyes were locked on the road.
“Or you let them go before you fuck up their life.”
Niall laughed, sharp as knives. “That’sfuckinghilarious coming from you.”
I closed my eyes for a moment, searching for the peace of a private darkness.
“You can’t get through a night out without phoning me,” he said.
I couldn’t do this now, but a sour sense of injustice filled the back of my throat like vomit. “I didn’t want to come.”
“Can’t you think about somebody else for half a fucking second? Max wanted you here.”
“Ah, yes, Max. Always back to Max.” Oh why had I said that? Was it always in me, this instinct towards cruelty? Or was just another thorn of madness. Either way, it was a weapon of the weak. And Niall knew it.
“So when you went completely batshit,” he said, conversationally. “And I visited you in the loony bin nearly every day. That was about Max, was it? And when I found you in the hallway unconscious and covered in blood. That was about Max? And all the times you’ve been too depressed to eat or leave the house and I’ve come to take care of you. That was about Max?” The needle on the speedometer was trembling. Eighty. Ninety. I didn’t think Niall had even noticed. The engine thrummed heavy through the fresh silence.
“Every time I’ve stopped you hurting yourself. Max. Making sure you didn’t get institutionalised again. Max. Picking up your medication for you when you can’t. Max. Getting you to counselling. Max.”
“God.” I sounded as petulant as a child. “If I’m such a horrendous waste of your time, why do you bother?”
Once upon a time he might have said: Because I love you.
Once upon a time he might have said: Because I care about you.
“Because I feel guilty all the fucking time,” he snapped. “And because on the last occasion I didn’tbother, you tried to kill yourself.”
The words echoed through my head. I tugged at my cuffs, pulling them down until they hung over the heels of my hand. One of the unadvertised advantages of bespoke tailoring. All my shirts were cut this way.
“That had nothing to do with you,” I said quietly.
He didn’t answer.
And now there really was nothing left to say.
The night ebbed slowly away, fading into a silver-grey London dawn. The rising sun gleamed dully from behind a sheet of heavy cloud, casting vague-shaped shadows across the sky as aimless as images from a magic lantern.
Niall dropped me off outside my flat and drove away like a man determined not to look back. I let myself inside and climbed the stairs. I’d always found something comforting in repetitive physical action. It provided an anchor point when all other certainties were uncertain. Except now I was sodden with exhaustion, weighed down by my own flesh and at the same time insubstantial, as though I would unravel into mist if I stopped concentrating on being alive.
I carefully fit my key to the lock, turned it, heard it click. Pushed open the door.
Stepped inside. Let the door swing closed behind me. The familiarity of walls.
Normal people didn’t sit in their hallways. But I couldn’t find the energy to go further. I lay down on the floor, stretched my fingers over the stripped wooden floorboards, rough and smooth, knots and whorls, the occasional deep gash like a scar. I was terrified of thinking. Terrified of memory. I wanted to cry, but I had long ago run out of tears.
In the past, we are drinking tea in my oak-panelled rooms, where the wisteria creeps beneath the arched windows, filling the air with scent.
In the past, Max and Niall are dancing at the centre of a sea of flesh beneath multicoloured lights.
In the past, I walk between green lawns, surrounded by golden stone.
In the past, I am brilliant and I am happy and my every tomorrow is madness.
In the past, words shimmer around me on silver threads and I pluck them like summer peaches.
