The cell of foul memories...

The wolf was busy over the next few days.

First Liam, then Merlin, two more houses of wood that fell at my feet and confirmed the new truth in my life, that sex was the way to go.

And go, and go, and go.

Something changed about my perception of myself as victim in these liaisons. I became predatory and aggressive in my demands.

Dean, Shane, Dillon, each of these making me stronger and more certain of my direction. I had clearly been born to live this life and I mused on the fact that I had finally found my talent. If only Gypsy had approached me sooner. Pulled me from the drab and fucked up mediocrity of suburbia and shown me the power of a new belief.

Sunday saw me sat around the fire at the bender site again, somehow able to look all of them in the eye and feel the pride of achievement. I sipped the hot cup of soup and chatted to Polly about the festival in Northampton. They were leaving in two days.

Suddenly I felt an explosion of pain on my back and a shower of hot sparks spun around my face and body. I turned stunned to see a long haired woman brandishing a burning log from the fire. 'Fuck you.' She screamed, swinging the wood again and this time hitting my hands which I raised defensively. Gypsy seemed to appear from nowhere and held the arms of this stranger in restraint. I watched as the woman went from frantic struggling to limp submissiveness. I searched startled around the faces of the fire and found my answer in Blackum's pained expression. So this was Nicky. Gypsy dropped her sobbing to the ground and gestured to me to follow her.
'She's just jealous.' Remarked Gypsy. But this seemed a horrible underestimation of what Nicky must have been feeling.
'Tell me,' I was shouting now 'Tell me that this is real. Tell me that what I am doing is all for you. Tell me that you speak the truth to me and that I'm not bad, not evil, like they think. Fucking tell me Gypsy!'
She screamed back. 'You take my drugs, you take my friendship, I can't make you take my word as good. You need to come to us completely. We're all you fucking have. Remember that.'

Was she right?

I dialed the numbers on the phone with trepidation. I had not spoken to Sarah in months, but I needed to talk with someone that was removed from this insanity. She agreed to meet me in The Boater and seemed concerned at the state I was in. It seemed ridiculous to mention my story of wolves and torrid liaisons to my gentle friend. I spoke instead of my isolation, of my deep desire for a home, for a bed, for a family.
'I can't leave you here like this. You know, each time I see you, I feel relief that you're not dead yet. You're killing yourself before me. I hate you for that.' It had never occurred to me that my demise was hard on others, I wiped a tear from Sarah's face. 'What happened to make you like this? What happened to the girl that laughed with me at the stables and walked with me to school? Where has she gone?'
'She's sleeping.' I smiled, gingerly.
'Then wake her up because soon enough you'll be in this too deep. You know, your new friends scare me. They're all fucked up on drugs and shit. Why are you with these people? You seem to have forgotten all about your real friends. We're still here you know. We haven't changed.'
'I am sorry. I just feel so lost.'
'You've got to fight. Stand up and be 'you' again.'
'Be me?'
'You are so caught up in this fucked up world of yours that you can't even see what's going on around you anymore. See him?' She pointed at the dredlocked man stood near the door with a bottle in his hand. 'You remember John? You thought that he was the prettiest man that you'd ever seen. The fucking Adonis, you used to call him. He's a friend of mine now. You wouldn't know that because when we meet all we do is talk about you. Fucked up, pretty little you. Truth is that John, the fucking Adonis, has been infatuated with you for months. He offers up about a mile of raw desperation every time you cross his path. But you, you're too fucked up to notice or care. Now, here's my little gift to you. My attempt to save your crying soul. John's a good man from a middle class family. He has a reasonable job, he studies hard, he lives in a beautiful house with his parents who love him and for some incomprehensible reason, unblighted by the fact that you are desperately in need of a sensible hairstyle and a good bath, he would like nothing more than to sweep you off your feet and take care of you.' All of this was said with a hint of a smile.
'Really?'
'My suggestion is, that I take you home and try my best to persuade my mother that you can stay for one night. We clean you up, change your clothes and get you a good night's sleep in a warm bed. Tomorrow will be the first day of the rest of your life. And him,' She nodded at John who was now smiling at the two of us 'He's the key to the fucking door.'

We were halfway to Bath Easton when Sarah phoned her Mum. I sat on the wall behind the phone box, smoking and listening to Sarah's raised voice and desperate pleading. 'Where will she go if we don't let her stay?' 'It's only for one night.' 'I hate you for this.'

We sat together on the wall for a little while in silence. Sarah holding me and crying. I felt silly that I had hoped for this night of normality. I had to remember who I was and forget the sanctitude of old dreams.
'It doesn't matter.' I offered reassuringly.
'I can't bear to leave you out here. It's so cold. I could never get used to this cold.'
The cold was in my bones now.

Sarah looked at her watch 'It's almost one thirty. I have to go. Come with me. I've got an idea. You can sleep in the toilet block over the road. I'll sneak out in the night and bring you a sleeping bag and some food. When Mum leaves for work in the morning you can come in and have a bath.'

I didn't like to tell her that public toilet's were disgusting to sleep in. That the chilly, damp, urine soaked floors, offered little in the way of comfort from the cold of the night. I sensed that she needed me to stay nearby. I would do this for her.

The toilet was a small tiled building with three separate cubicles, two sinks and a hand dryer. I pressed the button on the hand dryer and joked about 'central heating', but the hot air on my skin made my fingers burn painfully.

'Take my coat as a blanket.' I did. 'I'll see you in about an hour.' She hugged me. 'Take care of yourself.'

I hit the button on the hand dryer once more and surveyed my new home. Out of the three cubicles the middle looked the cleanest but the end one offered more protection from the cold. I chose the end one and lay Sarah's coat down on the floor. If my head lay behind the u-bend and my body length ways down the cubicle, I could just tuck my legs in and keep my feet this side of the door. The smell of piss and pine disinfectant was choking. I wrapped my own coat around my legs and lay there until the cold dictated that I should use the hand dryer again. I returned to my bed and slept fitfully for maybe an hour.

More time under the hand dryer. More time in the cubicle, before footsteps.

Sarah?

There were two steps of footsteps. One pair of high heels clicking towards my door and the softer tread of trainers behind them

'Claire?' I recognised the voice as Sarah's Mum's. 'Come out Love. You can't sleep here.'

I was so grateful that they'd come. I opened the door to see Sarah in her dressing gown and her Mother wrapped warmly in a winter coat.

'I phoned your Mum.' She said softly. 'Your Dad's coming to get you.'

I lied

Not so much a lie, more a 'forgotten'. But when I said in the first chapter of this blog that it would be four long years before my father and I would speak again, I had not remembered this. This night was hidden in my yesteryear, where I place all the bits of me that I need to hide.

This night was red.

We stood outside the building at the side of the road,waiting for the Volkswagon Jetta to pull up and collect my sins. I felt completely out of control. If I had been willing to sleep in the toilet to please my friend, was it also possible that I could get in this car for her?

My father was a good looking man in his late forties, most would have placed his distant origins as non-white, but to speak of that was to arouse his aptitude for denial. He pulled the car to a sudden halt, wound down the window on the passenger side and leaned across to me.
'Get in the fucking car.' He said this with a forced smile as he looked at Sarah's Mum, who was huddled from the cold, just out of ear shot of us, with her daughter. He unclicked the lock on the car door with a slim brown finger and motioned me inside. 'Thanks Brenda,' He shouted 'Sorry if she caused you any trouble'.
I climbed in beside him and with a roll of his eyes we were off towards the place that I had once cared for as home.
'Do you know what time it is? Three o'clock in the bloody morning. I was supposed to start work at two. I get this bloody phone call by some condescending woman that wrongly assumes that she is doing me a favour by pointing out that my child is sleeping in a piss hole down the road. If you wanted to come back you could have come during the day and had the balls to phone yourself.'
'I'm not coming back.'
The car burnt rubber and mounted the pavement as Dad's anger fired.
'Then get the fuck out. Stop wasting my time, the time of this family. Do you know what you've done to your mother, your sister, to my reputation!'
'I'm just cold. Let me come back for one night. Please. I'm just really cold.'
He rolled his eyes again, returned to the road and off we went to the silently waiting village of Longwell Green.

There was the same curtain. Twitching again in an upstairs window as the car pulled into the driveway. My desperate mother stood once again at the top of the stairs wringing her hands in pain. I heard the car behind me leave as I stood in the doorway looking nervously up at this lady, this woman, that had once carried me warm and safe inside her womb.
'I've made your bed.' She squeaked. Then finding strength in her hatred she barked, 'Have a bath before you go in the room. You look disgusting. Absolutely disgusting.'

The lavender scent hung heavy in the steamy air as I lay in the bath soaking myself presentable and clean for these people. I wrapped myself in a snow white towel and pondered the pile of filthy clothing that I had discarded on the floor. It seemed incomprehensible to put these soiled clothes upon my skin. I threw them in the bath and poured in a whole bottle bleach from the shelf besides the sink. My fingers burnt again as I stirred and kneaded until my knuckles shone red at the effort. The smell of bleach and this room evoked a powerful emotion. I padded downstairs to the kitchen where I met my Mother once again, standing at the sink.
'Why are you here Claire?' She slapped the soapy water with angry hands of frustration 'Why do you do this to us? I can't cope with any more from you. I just can't cope.'
I took a glass from the cupboard on the wall and smiled at the confrontation of absurd neatness. Was my Mother the only person that cared if all her cup handles pointed in the same direction? I poured orange juice from the fridge and turned back to face her.
'One night. That's all I ask. Just one night.'
'You ask so much and yet you don't even see it. This isn't one night. It's bloody revenge.' I threw the glass of orange juice at her feet, spraying her drssing gown and legs with shards of glass and sunset drips. Both of us were crying now. I hung my wet clothes on the line in the garden and stormed upstairs, stopping only to collect one of Mum's night dresses from the airing cupboard at the top of the stairs.

My room had changed a little.

Four small walls, one door, one window. No bigger than a cell I'd guess. It's walls papered in a garish mauve clover print. Shiny wardrobe and matching drawers, not too dissimilar from Barbie's, all the same as before. I opened a drawer carefully and quietly. Nothing. The same with the next and the next. All trace of me, of what I was, had been vanquished. My pictures were gone, as were my drawings. It seemed almost unbearable that only a cell full of foul memories remained.

I looked around sadly. It was important that I didn't forget this, this was my life, my destiny, my shame.

That night I slept without dreams. I had never slept so well in my life it seemed and I would wake with a rested soul.

Continued...