Chapter 2

Chapter 2

And it is morning. The grey is creeping through the blinds, sidling across the floor. Early, but Sascha has already been awake for at least half an hour, or so, she thinks, watching through lidded eyes as objects emerge from the dark into the grey half light. Her head is slowly starting to grind, is stuffed painfully with her tacky brain. Her fingers, very specifically, ache; her eyes matted with clogs of mascara. The early light is grey and it smells of plastic, cloying, the smell of sperm.

Sascha is trapped under a felled arm, heavy and meaty, pinning her down. She had been slowly slowly creeping her body away, limb by crawling limb, the arm now presiding over a gap where her body had been. She tenses her teeth against her jaw then jolts forward, the arm falls behind her, and his breathing stops for a second. She freezes, stills her raw breath, and then he sighs and rolls and his sleep breathing starts again. She is free, and edges away. The floor is tumbled with last nights clothes, blinds crunched and the grey light slides quietly in.

Her phone flashes on the floor. She wriggles to the edge of the bed, head hammering, thick, and flicks through her screen, checking her emails, messages, statuses, her updates on other the glorious lives of others. There is a picture of her, winking, pouting, hair spliced over her eye, lips smudged heavy pink, eyes half closed. She is dancing, smiling. She examines the angles, are they good, there is a line of cheekbone, her eyes green in the camera. It was a tangled, heavy, sweaty, night, brilliant and stumbling. Her head throbs again, and she swings quietly out of bed and around the unfamiliar room, collecting socks, softly thumping against misted furniture, sliding her watch down which had become jammed on her arm, leaving thick whorls indented.

He is extra still, feigning sleep, definitely awake. Last night lurches into cold consciousness. This bar, this guy. Slanted, calculating eyes, firm arms, a wicked smile. This is what she is a sucker for. There were the shots and the wine and the beer and the lurching tipping dancefloor, and his tongue in her mouth, thinking nothing but why not. The heat of the club and her sweat and the sudden nausea in swelling sliding toilets, all mood lighting and pink feathers, grasping the sink and willing herself to be sober, eyes pink, rimmed with black, him following her in, eyes sliding over her.

Who was he? A friend of a friend of a friend. And then they were stumbling back to his, laughing and tipping about, some joke about doing the twist, some ridiculous joke, a pale hooded girl staring at them on the night bus, then they are in his room, his boy room with all the mess and then they are f*****g up against the wall, he is pushing her up and she does the groaning and she thinks she likes it and pulls at his hair, tears his lip and he pushes her around tentatively when she demands it, bites his neck, and then she is bouncing on his bed as she does him. Right in front there are pictures of a sunglassed guy with a neat blonde girl, bouncing, jolting on the mantlepiece. She looks polite, wholesome, American. Sascha feels sick all of a sudden, sick of the slanting cat eyes, the jerking, the hotness of him inside her. Suck my c**k, he says. She growls, slaps him away, slaps it away, the foul spitting thing, pushes herself off him and away. The room whirls and she stumbles off to hunt for some water.

“Are we finished?” he squints from the bed, torso lined with straggly hairs.

“Yeah.” She throws a t-shirt at him, and it hits him square in the face. He is muffled in the t-shirt and struggles to take it off what with the beer and that it has looped over his head. She scrambles half into her pants and spangly top, starts hunting for her jeans, wobbles.

“No, don’t go. It's late. Stay over.” He pats the bed, has managed to slide the t-shirt on. He smiles wobbily, politely. He is not a bad boy. Sascha’s gaze flicks to the photos on the side. The girl there smiles back, imperturbable, glossy, shiny, smiling in the sun. Her top is stripy like rock. Sascha pauses, unsteady, then sits promptly back onto the bed.

“Ok. Thanks.” She jerks around. “Try not fidget too much.”

He laughs nervily, and turns out the light. She turns her back to him.

And now it is morning. She is nearly dressed, tangles a scarf around her neck, grabs her bag. She is an unscrubbed urchin in the mirror, eyeliner in her brows, hair at unusual angles. Eyes pink and tiny, pain of an upcoming spot. She shouldn't have drunk so much, but there is no other way. He isn’t moving but she knows he is awake, hiding, listening. Let’s play that game. That is fine by her, she doesn't want to have the awkward conversation. She is just about to leave when he suddenly expands, stretches, is there twisting and rubbing his eyes, theatrically.

“Hello.”

“Hi.” Her hand bumps awkwardly on a chest of drawers, knocks her swollen knuckles.

“D'you want breakfast. Or something?”

He is eyeing, eyes slit. Perhaps he is wondering whether he can have another go. In the sober light of day she flinches. His face is wider, squarer than she remembered. Eyes slit like a cat's, twisted. A scrub of hair. He smiles awkwardly and rolls.

“I'm fine. I'm going to head off.” She fingers the door handle. “Lots to do.” She shrugs the scarf down, attempts a small smile that fails to reach her eyes, pale, cold. “See you,” she says, even though she won't.

“You have my number?” He makes an effort. “Mm. Yes.” She leaves, and she doesn't.

Out of the fug of the room, the stink of sex and plastic and oil, down creaky stairs using the wall as her guide, and out into the cold. The air tears into her lungs and takes her breath away. The sky is pearly, the sun a rising, flat pale disc. Even this early, it burns her eyes. There is a fresh breeze toying with the late leaves, too old and tired. She lights a cigarette, takes a long draw, glances right and left. None of it looks familiar, the rows of dilapidated Victorian houses tailing off in each direction. She wonders if he is looking from a window but doesn’t turn round. Left or right, left or right... and left it is. Pick a direction, any direction. Her legs ache and the cold hits the back of her throat. Her brain, swollen with wine and no good shots, puffs against her eyes. Tired, she can barely fight a swinging wave of nausea. A cat grins at her from a nearby window as she walks. Hopefully she isn’t too far away, not so far that the creeping sickness disables her. She walks, smokes, and ignores her flashing phone, all the messages, exclamation marks, winks and photos that await her.

-

North London, cool and grey, midwinter. Rattling trees and closed shops. The SALE signs have long since been torn away and the pigeons have returned. At a crossroads, signposts unhelpful, again Sascha picks a direction, any direction - if in doubt, go straight. I will ask the next person, she thinks.

A harassed mother, gaunt, gold chains swinging and a tearful child in a slender buggy. Sascha almost doesn't ask, the woman's gaze is directed, grim; her child in its light coat seems oblivious to the cold. Its hands are small and bare. There is no telling if it is a he or a she. The wind nips.

“Excuse me. The station?”

The woman barely looks or pauses, but swings the buggy onwards, the blank eyed child, points back down the road, angled right, there. The end. She swings off with a grim nod. Sascha follows her directions, suspicious, but with no better guidance on the bleak streets. Onwards onwards, the charge of a light brigade. The glow of the station looms cautiously after a twist of shops. At last. At least the cold is scooping clean her head, chasing out unpleasant catches from last night. His hands twisting at her n*****s. She blinks, automatically gives her head a quick shake.

A last hungry draw at the cigarette, she throws it down (Illegal! Shouts her mind), walks on towards the comforting glow of the Underground sign. Her cigarette falls and rolls, and out of the tail of her eye a sudden scrambling makes her jump �" a twitch and a rag tag of clothes and curling nails comes to life from a doorway, snatches at the cigarette, and starts to smoke up the last dregs, hungrily. She cringes, promises herself uneasily that she will stop, and descends the escalator. It whirls her down into the underground, past more hunched, early morning figures, bags under their eyes, grotesque. The stairs creep and grind into the depths. On the walls, the tempting pictures flicker at her, tasteful, gaudy, provocative, following her down the escalators. Diverted, a colour, a font catches her eye, a sudden splash of perfection, beauty, amidst the tat, but there is something wrong, she wants to look closer but the perfection snarls and leaps and is gone, twirling up the escalator shaft. She shudders and the sickness is back.

The platform is deep underground, dim and stickily warm after the biting cold; the wailing of faraway trains haunting the tunnels. A roar and gust of air, drawn from deep in the tunnel mouth, and passengers turn expectantly �" but it is a false alarm and a train thunders into a station somewhere below, sighs onto an unseen platform. Sascha flicks through her music, sets it onto a chill out album, tingling chimes and melodic Welsh chanting, the sounds of the mountains in the rain, skittering pins and needles across her back, chasing down her slim arm and fizzing off her hands.

Reflexively, her hands have started their reassuring stroking; fingers curling, hands clenching and unclenching. It's alright. I am ok. Its fine. Its early. No one can tell. Unless she smells too strongly. Unless the stench has penetrated her skin. Her stomach twists. She feels sicker and sicker, wonders if she can lie down on the delicious cool floor, roll her forehead gently on the smooth cold tiles. Last night flicks through her head, unstoppable, set to lilting melodies caught on the wind. The girl, blonde, from the picture, was it a stripy or was it spotty top? She looks vaguely familiar, the way most pretty bland blonde girls look.

Sascha shakes her head sharply, pushing the blonde away. The Welsh music fades, and in the interlude the train somewhere far below sighs into action and heads off, rails rising into a clanging crescendo as it moves away. A gust of air starts up from the tunnels, and as she turns to face it, it begins to frisk her hair. Its coming, and the orange destination on the glowing sign, creaking in the onslaught, seconds this. A scuttling shape catches her eye �" a mouse skitters through the tracks, tiny and perfect, pauses a second in the rising breeze, then scurries onwards. Move, move, shouts Sascha in her head. Stay away from the train! And the breeze is now a wind, all the dark tunnel air raced along with the arriving train as it charges into the station. Stay away, stay away! She wonders if she has called out to the creature, drawn attention to herself. She looks, but everyone looks politely the other way. She looks back, among the tracks. The mouse is gone. Sascha and the people of the platform bow their heads into the wind, and wait patiently for the train to churn its way to a halt, and get on into the orange glow.