The Family Way

The girl wakes in a strange bed, beside a strange man. She doesn’t know his name, where she met him or how. The fact that she is naked, bruised, and with dried spunk on her tits, belly and cunt would suggest that they had sex a number of times last night. She gets out of the bed carefully, quietly, not wanting to wake the man who had abused her last night. She aches all over; her head is pounding and she feels sick. She gathers up her clothes, and only now realises how filthy the room is. What there is of the stained wallpaper is hanging off the walls. There’s graffiti on the plaster underneath, and what looks like a smear of shit two feet long beside the bed. It does nothing to dispel her nausea. She takes her clothes into the hallway and starts to dress. Her clothes stink of the cheap beer she drank far too much of last night. ‘Aren’t you going to say goodbye?’ She jumps, startled, and looks around, expecting to find the stranger standing behind her. He’s not. The only other living creature is a black cat with a white streak of fur between its eyes; it’s watching her. She fears there is another man in here. Did he abuse her last night too? She hurriedly finishes dressing and heads for the door. She does not look back. ‘Do you always ignore anyone who speaks to you?’ She stops, looks round. The cat is coming down the hall towards her. It walks at that languorous pace almost unique to the feline family. ‘Yes, it’s me,’ it says. ‘I’m talking to you.’ The girl stares at the animal as it approaches. It meets her disbelieving gaze and she could swear it’s smiling at her. ‘Impossible,’ she whispers. ‘You’d think, wouldn’t you,’ it replies, and sits down a couple of feet away from her. ‘Cats don’t talk,’ the girl says. ‘Well, you’re half right,’ it says. ‘True, we don’t talk – to humans. But we talk to each other; how else would we communicate?’ ‘But you just meow and screech and hiss. You don’t talk like we do.’ ‘Yet here I am, talking to you,’ it says. ‘Consider me the world’s first bi-lingual cat.’ ‘What do you want?’ she asks, her hand unconsciously moving to the door handle. ‘I want to help you,’ it tells her. ‘But you’re a cat.’ ‘Yes, I think we’ve established that.’ ‘How can you help me?’ she asks. ‘I can’t,’ it replies. ‘Not yet.’ ‘But you just said…’ ‘I said I want to help you, not that I can help you,’ it says. ‘Not yet, at least.’ ‘I don’t understand.’ ‘There’s trouble coming for you,’ it says. ‘I can’t stop it coming, but when it does I can help you.’ ‘What kind of trouble?’ ‘Alas, I cannot tell you that. But, rest assured, when it does come, you and I will meet again.’ She stares at the cat, and wonders if she is dreaming. If so, she hopes it’s in her own bed, and not that filthy pit she just got out of. She opens the door and leaves the flat. The lift is out of order so she goes to the stairwell. She looks down and sees that she is many stories up. Suddenly she is dizzy. She grabs the handrail to steady herself and vomits down the stairs. Early morning can be a lonely place. The girl walks empty streets, grateful for the cold and the light rain that falls. It refreshes her; helps to clear her head. She does not have far to walk. She takes her leisure; she is in no hurry. For her, home is a cold place, full of anger and violence. Who in their right mind would hurry to get there? A flash of lightning pierces the sky. A bell rings in the distance. A solitary car passes. Thunder booms. The girl shudders. Echoes of a life of misery reverberate in her head. The mournful cries of a child abandoned yet still in the family bosom. Invisible. Ignored. A living shadow cast by a sun that never shines upon her. No warmth penetrates the walls that contain her like a prisoner with an open door. When she reaches the place others call home, she showers. She scrubs every inch, then she does it again, and again. Her skin is sore. Her tears run down the drain with the tainted water that never quite washes away the shame she feels. She swears she will never do it again. She did that the last time, and the time before that, and countless times before. She will no doubt do it again the next time, and every time after that. Dinner is cheap food served on cheap plates and eaten with cheap cutlery. The girl sits on a chair in the corner, eating the poorly-cooked food that drowns in lumpy gravy. It tastes foul, but it’s all there is. The sound of her family eating is almost deafening. Chomping, smacking, belching, loud breathing. She covers her ears as she stares at them: Seven pigs eating from seven individual troughs. They bury their snouts in the slop and gobble it as if they haven’t been fed in a week. Occasionally, they come up for air and let out a loud grunt. The sow who gave birth to her looks at her and squeals. Seven pigs stare at her. ‘I said what the fuck are you doing?’ the sow demands. ‘Why do you have your hands over your ears like that?’ The girl does not reply. She lowers her hands and returns to eating her slop. The pigs stare at her for a moment and then return to their own gobbling. She dreams of lacing their food with poison. She watches, smiling to herself as they clutch at their throats and fight for breath. The man who fertilised the sow that bore her claws at his swelling throat. He tears into the flesh, and blood pours from the wound, covering the front of his gravy-stained tee-shirt. The sow lets out an agonised wail; her face has turned purple. Suddenly she vomits blood which splats onto the worn carpet. She falls forward onto the floor, face down in her own gory vomit. She jerks and writhes as she fights for air. Her body convulses, and then falls still. She dies in agony, as do the other six pigs. It is a wondrous sight which fills her heart with joy. She wants to dance, to sing; celebrate her emancipation from this group of animals. She blinks, and they are all there again, shovelling food into their porcine faces, oblivious to all around them and any idea of manners. Her “brother” licks his plate clean and then wipes his mouth on his sleeve. He lets out a huge belch and then smiles proudly, as if he has just performed some momentous act instead of proving that he belongs in a pen somewhere. This is what passes for a family in the underclass. No one works, everyone smokes, the men drink every waking hour and the women allow men to fuck them without any thought of birth control. Pregnancy is good business for these families. More babies mean more benefits, more money for nothing. Babies mean council homes. More babies mean bigger council homes. It’s a great career choice – plenty of free time, and if you have enough kids you can have more money coming in than those idiots who work upwards of forty hours a week. Why do that when you can sit on your arse all day, getting drunk, watching television and getting paid for it? Most of these people can barely read or write, yet who are the idiots in this picture? The girl finishes her meal and takes her plate into the kitchen. She puts it on the draining board and then goes upstairs to the bedroom she shares with her younger sister. She lies on her bed, folds her arms behind her head and stares at the ceiling. Before long, she sinks into a deep sleep. * She knows before she even looks at the test. She can already feel it growing inside her. Last night she thought she heard its tiny voice calling to her. The test is positive. She is pregnant. She lets out a long sigh, and then she clears away all the packaging and takes it, along with the test, to her room. She puts them under her mattress before sitting on it. She rests her elbows on her knees and stares at the floor between her legs. It’s too early. She has no boyfriend to help her, to set up home with, and to help financially. She will have to rely entirely on her mother, and she’s useless. If she was anything like a good mother, then her own kids would have turned out better rather than the boys being convicts in waiting and the girls being sluts. She looks across at her sister’s empty bed. It is unmade; the duvet lies in a heap at the bottom. There are shoes strewn across the floor; clothes too. A pair of her sister’s knickers lies atop a high-heeled shoe beside the bed. The gusset is visible, displaying a large blob of yellow discharge. The girl feels her stomach turn. How can she bring a baby into this? This is not a home; it’s a doss-house for eight vagrants joined by matching DNA. This is not a family; it’s eight people existing in a state of mutual convenience. There is no warmth in this family. There is no love, no welcoming hearth; no family bosom to run to in times of trouble. Here there are only harsh words, threats, and violence. It is a dysfunctional commune in which differences of opinion are solved with fists, and beatings are always just a single word away. At least when men are fucking her they hold her. They say nice things to her, even buy her things. They make promises of long relationships, romantic holidays, days out in the countryside. She knows it’s all bullshit, and that as soon as they shoot their spunk into her and then roll off and go to sleep, all bets are off. But it’s nice while it lasts. Just for that brief time she feels loved, and wanted. She feels like more than she could ever hope to be. ‘Are you going to tell anybody?’ She jumps, and looks up. The cat with the white streak is sitting on her sister’s bed. It’s watching her expectantly. ‘How the hell did you get in here?’ She asks. ‘That really doesn’t matter,’ the cat replies. ‘What matters is the new life growing inside you. I told you I would help you when the right time comes. This is the right time.’ ‘You said there was going to be trouble.’ ‘I think that little secret you’re hiding under your mattress qualifies as trouble, don’t you?’ She lowers her eyes, shrugs her shoulders. She sighs, and covers her face with her hands. * ‘Fucking slag,’ says her father. ‘Why couldn’t you keep your fucking legs closed?’ The girl says nothing. She looks to her mother for support. Her mother lowers her eyes. ‘And whose is it?’ her father demands. She shrugs her shoulders. ‘I’m not sure.’ ‘What do you mean, you’re not sure?’ ‘Come on, Dad,’ says her elder brother. ‘When you have a tin of beans and you fart, you don’t know which bean it was.’ ‘Fuck off,’ she says as her brothers burst into laughter. ‘This is nothing to laugh about,’ her father says. She gets up to leave the room. ‘Where the fuck do you think you’re going?’ he demands. ‘I’m going for a walk,’ she replies, and heads for the door. ‘Well, try not to fuck anybody while you’re out,’ he calls after her. She walks through the park, the cat walking by her side. It’s cold, and the grey sky is threatening rain. She really doesn’t give a shit. It could piss it down for all she cares – as long as she’s out of that fucking house. ‘How many potential fathers are there?’ The cat asks. She shrugs her shoulders. ‘I don’t know.’ ‘Do you care?’ ‘Not really. What does it matter if I know who the father is? He wouldn’t do anything about it; he’d probably just deny it and tell me to fuck off and never bother him again.’ ‘You don’t know that for certain,’ the cat tells her. She says nothing. She looks around her. In the distance is a bench on which sit two men who might be middle-aged, though they look older. They’re sharing a large bottle of cider. It’s ten-thirty in the morning. ‘Do you think there’s any hope for humanity?’ she asks. ‘There’s always hope,’ says the cat. ‘Hope is what remains when belief has gone,’ the girl replies. ‘It’s like faith; when there’s nothing solid to believe in, you hope; you say you have faith. It’s an abstract concept with no other purpose than to help us deal with reality.’ ‘When did you become so cynical?’ he asks. ‘I was born cynical,’ she replies. ‘I simply choose to embrace it rather than try to fool myself that the world is a good place.’ ‘It’s better than nothing,’ the cat says. ‘Is it?’ They walk past a small tree with almost half its bark peeled off. People used to carve their names into trees; things like “A B Lvs B C”, surrounded by a love heart. Now they try to destroy them. Humanity has become the world’s bully: Its natural resources are its lunch money, which mankind simply takes at will, before administering an almighty wedgie in the form of bombs dropped on each other that destroy the ground and pollute the air. ‘Have you ever loved anyone?’ the cat asks. ‘I don’t even know what love is.’ ‘It’s that thing that hurts, even when it feels good.’ ‘That doesn’t even make sense,’ the girl replies. ‘I never said it makes sense,’ the cat replies. ‘I just asked if you had ever experienced it.’ ‘You ask an impossible question,’ says the girl. ‘You ask me to look back on a lifetime of pain and ask if any of it felt good. You may as well ask the river which of all the stones it has washed over does it remember most fondly.’ She is becoming irritable. ‘There must have been times of pleasure in your life,’ the cat persists. ‘Pleasure is not love,’ the girl responds. ‘It’s just a blip on the long dark road of misery that is life.’ ‘Come now,’ the cat chides. ‘Life is a gift; something to be treasured.’ ‘My life is not a gift!’ the girl shouts angrily. ‘It’s a curse; a millstone around my neck, slowing my meandering progress to that beautiful moment when the darkness comes and I’m done with it. A gift, you say? So someone gave this existence to me? Then may I meet them while I still have strength in my hands that I may throttle their own gift out of them.’ ‘What about the baby that grows inside your womb?’ says the cat. ‘Do you not see the life you give it as a gift?’ They reach the top of a high grassy bank. The girl sits down and looks across at a new housing estate built on the site of an old scrap-yard. It looks nice; pleasant. It looks like the kind of place she could never be found – at least not since they took the scrap away. It looks too good for her. The people who live in those nice new-build houses probably work for a living. They’ve probably never been to jail. Their sons and daughters go to college and university instead of the dole queue and the young offender’s institute. The cat sits beside her and says, ‘You can make your life better, you know. Not just for you, but for your baby.’ ‘Why would I want to do that?’ she asks quietly, blinking away tears. The cat thinks for a moment, and then it sighs. ‘I actually don’t know what to tell you,’ it says. ‘There’s no answer I can give that you can’t tear a million holes through. So, why not just do it because you can?’ The girl nods. ‘The old “you only get out of life what you put in” thing.’ The cat snorts laughter. ‘No,’ it says. ‘That’s a load of bollocks. The vast majority of people in this world get nowhere near out of life what they put into it. Then there are a select few who put in hardly anything and get everything. You only get out of life what the celestial lottery gives you. But that doesn’t mean you can’t try to make your own lot just a little bit better. ‘Think of life as a piece of land,’ it goes on. ‘You can just leave it to grow as it will. Chances are it will produce enough food to sustain you. But you can also tend that land, and make it grow better – more nourishing food; maybe even some sweet treats. But the point is – while you may never have the abundance that others do, and you’ll never get out of your piece of land what you put in; at least what you do have will be that little bit sweeter; not so bitter.’ ‘I think I’d rather just pave the whole thing over and starve to death,’ says the girl. She sleeps; she dreams. Standing on a doorstep above street level, looking down at a little girl walking between her parents into a thick fog. Just before they disappear into it the little girl looks up and she realises she’s watching herself. Her parents, standing over her. They look impossibly tall as they stare blankly down at her. They glide together and become one; some grotesque melding of the male and female. With horror she realises she is seeing both faces in one. But the faces are no different; they’re both the same. Her parents are one and the same person. She runs down a long grey corridor lined with doors. None of the doors have handles. None are open. Behind, she hears her parents coming after her. She runs, desperately trying to escape them. Won’t somebody help her? Where’s that fucking cat when she needs it? A room with no doors, just four grey brick walls. No ceiling; there’s just unbroken darkness. It’s sinking down towards her. She lies naked, spread-eagled on the floor, waiting for it to envelop her. Then her father is lying on top of her. He too is naked, and he rams himself into her. As he fucks her with almost animal aggression she screams and cries out for him to stop. ‘It’s wrong!’ she screams. ‘You mustn’t!’ She looks again into the face and now it is her mother, then her sister, then one brother after another. It hurts; there’s so much pain. Oh God it hurts! You’re going to kill the baby. ‘Isn’t that what you want?’ She wakes, screaming ‘Nooooo!’ She sits bolt upright in bed, clutching her duvet to her chin. She is dripping with sweat. Her sister, in the bed opposite, startled and frightened by her sister’s scream in the night, screams too, and shoots up in bed as the thunder of footsteps coming down the landing is followed by the door flying open and her dad shouting, ‘What the fuck’s going on in here?’ The girl gasps for breath. Her stomach hurts. She’s sweating. She’s dripping with it; so wet. Her father switches the light on, and then his eyes widen in horror as he says, ‘What the fuck…?’ She looks down and sees the duvet is soaked with blood. ‘Call an ambulance,’ her father yells. ‘What’s happened?’ her mother asks. ‘Just call the fucking ambulance, woman!’ The girl gazes down at the blood-stained duvet, and then she calmly lies down. She waits – more for death than an ambulance; certainly more than sympathy. She closes her eyes. She wonders where the cat is. He’s notable by his absence. You just can’t trust cats. Especially if you’re a mouse or a bird. She wishes she was a bird, and she could just get out of this bed and fly away, right up into the sky, and look down at a world that never really wanted her in it. She would soar, and swoop, she would be free. She would shit on the heads of those she despised. That bastard who fucked her and then pretended he didn’t even know her. He loves his car. He’s just washed it. He spent almost an hour waxing it and buffing it to a beautiful shine. Well, how about a nice big dollop of shit on the roof for you, bastard! You fucking said I was the one. You fucked me and then told everybody you didn’t even know me. Well fuck you! I’m a bird. I can shit where I want, and I’m going to do it on your car every day. You hurt me, you bastard! Fucking bastard! She squeezes her eyes together, clenches her fists and lets out an almighty scream – as much of despair as of pain. She wakes in a hospital bed. It’s early morning. Auxiliaries are handing out tea and toast. The old woman in the next bed has shit herself. It stinks. She’s calling out for a nurse, but they’re too busy to help her. They’re understaffed. They’re doing their best but they’re knackered. The old woman will just have to lie in her own shit for a little bit longer. The nurses are trying to save a man’s life at the moment. He’s gone into cardiac arrest. He’s going to die in the next few days anyway; all they’re doing is delaying the inevitable. But that’s what getting up every morning is – delaying the inevitable; delaying that moment when the blessed relief of death’s hand comes. The baby’s gone. Miscarriage – nature’s own abortion. So much for the pro-life lobby. She doesn’t know how to feel. Where’s the instruction manual for stuff like this? Where’s the fucking troubleshooting guide for when it all goes to shit? Where’s the fucking helpline – press 1 for miscarriage, press 2 for domestic violence, press 3 for a totally fucked-up life? She’s alone. Her so-called family are at home getting some rest. It’s been a rough night for them. The old woman is crying now. She calls out for a nurse; she says she’s had an accident. Will someone help her? Will someone help her? Will someone help? The girl yells, ‘Nurse, will you help this fucking woman? She’s shit herself! Fucking help her!’ She snatches the drip from the back of her hand. Blood gushes from the vein as she tosses the catheter aside. She gets out of bed. She’s only wearing a hospital gown. It’s open at the back, but she doesn’t give a shit. She staggers to the old woman’s bed and whips the sheets back. The stench of shit hits her like a solid object. ‘Why won’t somebody help her?’ Darkness returns, and that’s all she knows. Her mother brings clothes. She dresses and they take a taxi home. ‘Want a cup of tea?’ her mother asks. ‘No,’ the girl replies. ‘I’m going for a walk.’ She walks along a street full of eyes all looking at her. She knows they’re all watching from their windows. Their curtains twitch; their sibilant whispers fill her ears and torture her mind. She wants to cover her ears and scream for them to stop. She knows what they’re saying: “She lost her baby”; “slag – doesn’t even know who the father was”. They can see into her; they can see her soul, and they’re watching and judging. This walk was a bad idea. They’re all watching her, and she doesn’t want that. The cat appears on a garden wall beside her. It watches her. ‘What the fuck do you want?’ she says. ‘You were supposed to help me when I needed you. But when I needed you, you weren’t there.’ ‘Yes I was,’ it replies. ‘I was with you the whole time. I made sure no harm came to you.’ ‘I lost my baby!’ she growls. ‘How the fuck is that no harm coming to me?’ ‘But you’re alive and well,’ the cat tells her. ‘It wasn’t your time to have a baby. You need to trust me when I’m telling you I’m here for you.’ ‘Fuck off,’ she says, and turns away. ‘You don’t even exist.’ She runs away, back to her house. She goes straight to her bedroom and sits on the bed. Nobody has changed it. She sits on the pillow, hugging her knees to her chin as she stares at the huge blood-stain on the duvet. It has dried around the edge, congealing into a crust. Her blood; her baby. Nobody gives a shit. Had she died, how long would it be before one of those lazy cunts downstairs decides to strip her bed and burn the sheets? And all those bastards outside want to do is judge her and gossip about her. They laugh at her, call her a slag. She is a figure of ridicule to all who see her. The only time she’s not treated like shit is when some cunt wants to fuck her. Oh, then they’re all sweetness. Blokes love you when they want to grope your tits and put their filthy cock into your fanny. But as soon as they’ve spunked in you they want nothing to do with you. Anger boils inside her, quickly turning to rage, and she punches herself repeatedly in the crotch, ignoring the pain it causes. Then she claws at her tits until she draws blood. She presses her fists to her temples. She wants to scream, but that would just draw attention to her. She wants to hurt herself, but she also wants to hurt others. None of them give a shit about her, so why shouldn’t she just take a hammer and cave every one of their fucking skulls in? That patch of blood on the bed. You’d have thought they would have at least stripped it. The patch is getting bigger; growing, expanding across the duvet cover. It reaches the edges and drips blood onto the carpet. She watches as it comes closer, inching its way towards her bare feet. It reaches them, envelops them. It’s warm; not entirely unpleasant. It climbs her legs, coating them with a gelatinous warmth. Moving quicker now, it rises up her body. She closes her eyes, lays her head back and allows it to wash over her completely. It’s warm; it actually feels good. She opens her eyes and finds herself floating in an underwater world of pure red. She kicks her legs and propels herself upwards. She turns and somersaults. It’s like being underwater, but she can breathe. She feels free! God, it’s like being a bird! She flies here and there, spinning in this ocean of her own making. There is nothing and no one else here. She’s entirely alone, and that’s how she likes it. She swoops downwards, arms by her sides; just using her legs to move her through the red. There’s a loud bang and she is back in her bedroom, staring at the door that has just been thrown open. Her younger sister stands there, looking angry and impatient. ‘Didn’t you fucking hear me shouting you?’ she says. ‘Your tea’s done.’ She walks back out, grumbling, ‘Fucking deaf. Twat.’ She looks at the blood patch. It’s as it was before; as it should be. A large, round-ish, drying puddle of life. She closes her eyes, wishing herself back to that warm place. Like everything else good in her life, it has come and gone. She goes downstairs where her only meal of the day waits on the coffee table. It’s sausage, egg and chips cooked in dirty fat, with little black bits all over them. There’s salt and vinegar on the table; both are covered in grease. She grabs her plate and knife and fork and sits down. The food looks and smells repugnant. She looks around at the family of pigs shovelling it into their mouths. Her sister looks at her and says, ‘What’s the matter with you, dopey? Forgot how to use a knife and fork?’ She stares at her, and it’s as if she can feel the blood in her veins running black with pure hatred. She can feel it, making its cold way to her hands, her head and her feet. She jumps up, shoots across the room and slams her plate into her sisters face, pressing it hard and twisting as she growls with animal savagery and her sister screams. ‘What the fuck…?’ she just about hears her father roar in the background. She senses him come towards her, and then he grabs her arm. She still has the knife and fork in her hand. With a shrieking, furious scream, she slams them into his side. He screams. His hand moves from her arm. She runs out of the house, into a street now dark, but no less exposed. She can feel their eyes on her – all of them. Those windows with the lights in – they’re all standing there, watching her. They can see what she is deep down. They can see her soul. ‘Stop looking at me!’ she screams, and she runs, keeping her head down, hoping that if they can’t see her eyes then maybe they won’t be able to see all the way inside her. She doesn’t feel the hard floor beneath her bare feet. She doesn’t feel the tiny bricks or pieces of glass that cut her or embed themselves in her flesh. She runs along the street to the grassy bank on the left. She runs up this. Close to the top is a large bush. She hides in there and looks out for any prying eyes that still might be looking for her. ‘It’s actually quite cosy in here, isn’t it?’ The cat is sitting beside her. Its eyes seem to glow in the dark as it looks up at her. ‘What do you want?’ she shouts. ‘Why are you here? You said you were here to help me, but you haven’t helped me. You haven’t done anything. Why won’t you fuck off?’ ‘I can’t,’ it says. ‘Not until my work is done.’ ‘What work?’ she demands. ‘You’re a fucking cat.’ ‘I’m also your guide,’ it says. ‘My guide?’ she replies. ‘Guide for what?’ ‘You have a journey ahead of you,’ the cat tells her. ‘You’re taking your first steps along a dark, winding road. I’m here to guide you; to try to make your passage as free of pain as possible.’ ‘Well, you’re not doing a very fucking good job so far, are you,’ she says. ‘If your boss comes along I’ll be telling him you’re shit. Anyway, where am I supposed to be going?’ ‘You’ll know when you get there.’ ‘If you don’t stop talking in riddles I’m going to throttle you!’ she snarls, exasperated. ‘Feel free,’ the cat replies, and actually lifts its chin a little. ‘I’m already dead – don’t you remember?’ ‘How am I supposed to remember,’ she says. ‘I only met you the other day, and you don’t look dead to me.’ ‘I didn’t look dead before, either,’ says the cat. ‘My eyes were open – remember. I was still warm; it was just that my head kept flopping about and hanging down. Your brother was laughing. You were crying and shaking me, and my head just flopped back and forth. You held me against your chest; your tears fell onto my fur; you rocked back and forth with me, crying and singing softly. You pressed your face against my head, kissed me over and over. But the damage your brother did could not be undone. That taught you not to mess with his stuff, didn’t it?’ The girl cries as the memories of that day came flooding back to her. She begged him not to do it. She promised she would never touch his stuff again. It was an accident when she broke his action figure; she would tell mom and dad not to buy her anything for Christmas and to buy him a new one – anything, just don’t hurt my cat! Blue lights from the street below. Police and ambulance services arriving at her house. The police will be coming for her soon. You don’t stab your father and get away with it. Anyway, better the police get to her before he does, because he’ll beat the shit out of her, maybe even do some stabbing of his own. It wouldn’t be the first time. He once pinned her brother’s hand to the kitchen table with a fork. The cat has gone. She’s alone; always has been, always will be. She rises from the bush and walks slowly down the grassy bank to the pavement below. The street is filled with the flashing blue lights from the emergency vehicles outside her house. People stand on their doorsteps as they try to see what’s going on. Her sister is sitting on the front wall, sobbing as she talks to the police. Then she notices her and points, shouting, ‘There she is! She’s a fucking loony!’ Now all eyes are turned to her. Two police officers come running towards her. She waits. She is not afraid. If anything, she is a little relieved. This way, she won’t have to face her so-called family; their fury, ridicule and their violence. She is arrested and placed in handcuffs. She stands passively. The police speak kindly to her. One is male, the other female. They gently usher her to one of the three waiting police cars and put her in the back, all the time speaking in soft tones to her. The WPC has noticed her bare feet and says, ‘Let’s go and get you some shoes.’ As she goes into the house, the male officer gets into the front seat. He regards her with genuine sympathy. He knows her family well; knows the kind of life she has lived. ‘Are you okay, love?’ he asks. ‘Can we go?’ she asks. ‘Yeah; we’ll go in a minute,’ he says. ‘Let’s just get you some shoes first, eh?’ ‘I’m okay,’ she tells him. ‘I don’t need shoes. You’ll just take them off me at the police station anyway.’ The officer nods. He has been in this job a number of years. He knows that hers will not be the first pair of her family’s shoes outside a cell at the station and they would doubtless not be the last. ‘Do you want to know how your dad is?’ he asks. ‘Does he want to know how I am?’ she replies. ‘Does anyone want to know how I am?’ ‘Your mom asked about you,’ he lies. ‘She’s worried about you.’ ‘Thank you,’ she says. ‘For what?’ ‘Trying to make me feel better.’ The cell at the police station is bigger than she expected. It has a thick, solid steel door, which the officers have left open a few inches. Opposite the door is a slab on which is a thin, plastic-covered mattress. She lies on this, staring at the door; a cheap blanket covers her. She can hear a young man at the custody desk, swearing and hurling abuse at the police. Even in here, she can tell by how slurred his speech is that he’s drunk. She has experienced enough drunkenness to know what it sounds like. They should beat him, she thinks. They should break his kneecaps with their sticks. Cripple him, make it so he can’t go out and get drunk anymore, so he can’t smash anyone’s window or beat the shit out of someone for no other reason than that they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. They bring the little cunt onto the cell block. He peeks in as he passes her cell. ‘Oi oi!’ he shouts. ‘Put me in with her. Do you wanna fuck, love?’ ‘Come on,’ says the officer and shoves him towards the next cell. ‘Hey, who you fucking pushing, you cunt?’ The yob shouts. ‘I’ll give you a fucking slap in a minute.’ ‘Yeah, yeah,’ says the officer, and the yob is thrown into the cell. There’s a loud bang as the door is slammed shut. In the coming hours, the yob will throw up on the floor; later he will try to wash it away with his own piss. After that, he will shit in his hand and smear it on the walls before falling asleep on the hard cot. On Monday, he will appear in the magistrates’ court where he will stare contemptuously at the school head-teacher on the bench. There’s no point fining the little twat because he’s never done a day’s work in his life. So they’ll give him 40 hours of community service, none of which he will do, and he’ll just get lost in a system unfit for purpose, only to come back on the radar the next time he breaks the law. The girl sits up as a plump-ish woman just on the wrong side of thirty walks in. She smiles at the girl and introduces herself. ‘Do you mind if I sit down?’ she asks. The girl says nothing but shuffles along to give her room to sit. She smiles and thanks her as she does so. ‘They’ve asked me to come and have a chat with you if that’s okay?’ the woman says. The girl says nothing. She eyes the woman warily. People have come with offers of help before, but they all talk the talk and then when it comes to actually standing up and facing down the bastards who have made her life a misery they turn tail and run for the hills. ‘You’ve had quite a couple of days,’ says the woman. ‘I’ve been talking to your mom and your sister. Is there anything you want to talk about?’ ‘Like what…?’ the girl says. ‘Well, from what I’ve heard, you’ve been through a lot over the last couple of days. You’ve had a lot of stress.’ ‘My entire life has been a lot of stress,’ says the girl. ‘Now because I stab my father I’m asked if I want to talk about it…?’ ‘Why did you stab your father?’ the woman asks. ‘I had the knife and fork in my hand,’ the girl replies. ‘He grabbed my arm; he was going to hurt me; I decided to hurt him first.’ ‘Does your dad hurt you a lot?’ She nods. She says nothing. ‘Does your father ever touch you?’ ‘You mean has he sexually abused me?’ the girl says. ‘Does he come into my bedroom at night and fuck me, shoving my face into the pillow so my crying won’t wake up my sister in the next bed?’ ‘Is that what he does?’ ‘God, what’s with all these questions?’ the girl says, getting angry. ‘Why do you keep asking me questions? Is this an interview? I thought the police were going to interview me.’ ‘Okay, I’ll stop asking questions. I’ll just sit here and keep you company – that is unless you want to be alone.’ The girl smiles sardonically. ‘I’ve always been alone,’ she says. ‘From the day I was born, I was alone. Probably the last time I had any tender physical contact was the moment the midwife smacked my arse and put me in that plastic NHS cot with a lamp to keep me warm. ‘When I was scared, there was no one I could talk to; no one who would reassure me and tell me everything was going to be okay. When the kids at school used to tease me because my clothes were shabby I had no one to hold me and tell me they loved me. When the other kids were all going to each other’s birthday parties I used to have to sit there and listen to them talking about what a great time they had. Nobody ever invited me to their party. I wished they would. ‘Do you know how it feels to not fit in, but to want nothing more than that? Do you know what it feels like to be an outsider in every single area of your life? To not fit in with the kids at school; with your family; anywhere?’ ‘Is that how you feel?’ the woman asks. ‘It’s how I am,’ the girl replies. The woman nods thoughtfully. Then she says, ‘I think I can help you, you know – if you’ll let me.’ The room is small, but it’s all hers. She doesn’t have to share it with anyone. She has a nice little bed, a desk, shelves, a television with satellite channels, and a DVD player. The walls are plain, painted a soothing pastel yellow. The girl lies on her bed, with her arms folded behind her head. She stares at the ceiling, luxuriating in the warm comfort of her blue towelling onesie. She actually can’t remember the last time she felt this relaxed and happy. She never wants to leave here. She’s been here for nearly a month now. She doesn’t really mix with the other patients and they don’t give her any trouble. They’re okay, but everyone here is a little damaged. The nightmares are starting to become a little less intense. They’re getting fewer and further between as well. There’s a light tapping on the door and she calls, ‘Come in.’ The door opens and in walks a middle-aged, prematurely-balding man in jeans and a tee-shirt. He has a kind face and laid-back demeanour. He is one of the doctors. ‘How are you this morning?’ he asks, and he sits in the leather chair near the door. ‘I’m okay,’ she replies. ‘Good,’ the doctor says. ‘And I hear the dreams are getting better…?’ ‘A bit.’ He lightly taps his fingers on the arms of the chair as he watches her. He crosses his legs. ‘Do you feel like joining any of our groups here yet?’ ‘I don’t know.’ ‘You should give it some thought,’ he says. ‘This is a big place; we have a number of groups. If you like movies, or books, we’ve got groups for those. We have chess tournaments, and every month we have a competition on the Wii machine in the main hall. I was cheated out of the Wii bowling championship last month; the batteries in my controller must have been low.’ The girl smiles. ‘So, what do you think?’ he says. ‘We’re having a Monopoly tournament this weekend; can I put your name down? The winner gets a prize, a nice little trophy and bragging rights.’ ‘Okay,’ says the girl. ‘Great,’ he replies. ‘We can introduce you around at the little mixer we always have beforehand. You might make a few friends. We have a good crowd here, with some real characters. I just know you’ll enjoy yourself.’ ‘I like it here,’ she tells him. ‘Well, I’m pleased about that. We like having you here.’ ‘When do I have to leave?’ He looks, surprised, at her. ‘What? You’ve only been here a few weeks.’ ‘I know, but…’ ‘Well,’ says the doctor. ‘We’d like you to stay here for a good while yet – if that’s okay with you.’ She smiles again. She feels happy. ‘I’d like that,’ she says.