*****
Just ten minutes later I was submerged to my neck in water that had turned sea-green from the contents of a small bottle that Lilith had swirled under the running taps.
‘How are you doing?’ She sat cross-legged on the floor next to the bath, in case I showed any signs of slipping under and never coming back up.
‘Bit better.’ It was the truth. The warmth of the sweet-smelling, dark water had begun to seep into me and wash away some of the taint. ‘Fighting the urge to reach for the scouring pad, but better.’
‘Do you want me to do that? Not with the scouring pad, obviously.’
‘Please,’ I began, then had to shut my eyes tight against acting like a dickhead again. ‘You’re the first person in this whole fucking place who’s ever asked permission to touch me, you know that?’
Lilith
In the tranquillity of our temporary haven I began to wash him. Finn acquiesced to my touch with such trust that I ached for him, and I had never undertaken a task with such self-conscious care. This was the body that I had spent months coming to know in a detail I could never have imagined; the days when I could gain distance by thinking of him as an anatomist’s model were long dead.
‘Oh. I remembered,’ Finn suddenly frowned.
‘Remembered what?’
‘Why I’m scared of fuckin’ needles. All those years and it finally came back.’
His left hand rested on the rim of the bath. I curled the tips of my fingers around his and waited.
‘It was this fella. My ma’s shag. The one... that Christmas. I told you?’
I nodded. The one who had raped a boy whilst his mother slept drunk and oblivious in the next room.
‘Jimmy-Boy Dean. “Jus’ like the feckin’ actor,” he would say. Reckon I’d have been thirteen or so. Ma actually had some shitty weekend job for once, an office cleaner, so Jimmy said he’d look after me one Sunday afternoon. Took me down the arcades, gave me a handful of shrapnel for the machines and slipped me a couple of halves of lager on the sly. Said it was ‘cos it was his birthday. I won a couple of punt – thought I was the dog’s bollocks.’
Finn paused to cough; a wet, rattling hack that didn’t quite manage to leave his chest. ‘End of the afternoon, we didn’t go home. Bastard walked me for miles to some old wreck of a house, all boarded up, black walls from the damp. Filthy mattress, a bust-up sofa, and half a dozen of his mates waitin’ there like all their birthdays had come at once. I guessed fuckin’ sharpish why they were there so I tried to leg it. Never even got to the door. One of ‘em had this syringe ready and Jimmy held me down whilst the bastard whacked it into my arm, and that was it. Next thing I knew I was wandering back home, away with the fairies – newspaper hoardings giving Tuesday’s news and the blood still drippin’ down the leg of my jeans.’ He turned his head so he could look at me. ‘Mad, huh? All those years stuck at the back of my mind, then just when I think I’m about to snuff it, I get the whole thing back like a fuckin’ movie.’ He blinked. ‘Jesus, you look knackered.’
‘A little tired, maybe.’
‘You sleep at all?’
‘Didn’t dare.’
‘What did you do? Last of the phet?’
‘I found blind rage to be more effective.’ I trailed my fingertips across the surface of the water and watched the ripples circling out. Thought about nothing in his life ever changing except the decor.
Thought about Jimmy-Boy Dean’s birthday present to himself and the kind of party Blaine Albermarle would arrange for her own special day and finally managed to grab the gossamer threads of my idea. Now I had something to bring to our meeting.
Finn
‘Tell me about her party,’ Lilith said. ‘Please?’
‘Variation on a theme,’ I said, every word hurting. ‘She dresses it up as one of her fundraising events – getting her gang of inbred hangers-on to empty their pockets for the good of the starving peasants at her gate. But basically they take an E and a V, get hammered, and then I get fucked by the highest bidder, however they want me. She brings up one of her best girls from the London place as well, just in case I’m not to everyone’s taste.’
‘She auctions you off. I almost wish I were shocked.’
‘I fetched about six grand last year. Maxwell, the doctor. Doing his bit for charity and all that.’ I tried to laugh. ‘I’d be fuckin’ lucky to make thirty pence this year, huh? Shit.’ The laugh died in my throat and I had to clutch for her hand as the panic surged back.