Conflagration

Incendiary, that’s what today’s been. I must have fallen asleep in the end because I didn’t hear Marz come in. I got up and went to make a cup of tea, checked her room on the way. She wasn’t there. Imagined her in some bloke’s bed somewhere in this crazy town – she could be dead for all I knew. How to get yourself murdered – go with anyone who wants it. I shut her door – she doesn’t like me looking in her room. Then I saw the clothes through the sitting room door. Just dropped on the floor as bloody usual. I sort of knew what I’d find then, but somewhere a little bit of hope stayed breathing. Not for long tho. There they were tangled up on the settee, her and Danny and the smell of cheap brandy and weed. God, she looks rough when she’s asleep. I just stood there for a moment, then shot across the floor and grabbed her by the hair, called her a slut and a slapper and a frigging whore, and other things I can’t put here and pulled her off him onto the carpet hanging onto the duvet off her bed. She just lay there laughing, one tit out. She must really hate me. Danny was awake by then. I turned on him, asked him how he could stomach doing it with someone old enough to be his mother, then remembered the crazy woman and thought well, he must just fancy old women or else he hates me too and knows what’d hurt more than almost anything.

‘I told you you and me were never going to get together,’ he said, all quiet and compelling like he was trying to hypnotise me.

‘Yeah, but you didn’t have to screw my mother,’ I told him. ‘Maybe she jumped you, I don’t know, it’s the sort of trick she’d pull on someone, but you couldn’t have done it if you hadn’t wanted to.’

He just looked at me, sad-like. ‘Sometimes a warm body is what you need,’ he said, ‘someone to hold you.’

‘I’d have held you, Danny,’ I said. Then the bitch chips in.

‘Jazz, dear,’ she says, all poisoned honey, ‘it’s time you cottoned on that a man likes something to grab hold of, a nice cushiony pair to rest his head on. Look at you – you’re all knees and elbows and sticking out hips – not a booby in sight, soft or otherwise – isn’t that right Danny?’

I didn’t wait to hear what he said. I ran off to my room, got dressed and left them to it, got to Secrets early and couldn’t get in, stood in the doorway looking at all that Christmas stuff and wanting to cry again. I can’t go on like this.