Scott&Bailey: The Animal I've Become Title inspired by a song by Three Days Grace, which I thought rather suited Helen
Helen sat on the doorstep of her home with her rucksack held between her knees, waiting for Louise to come home from work. They needed to have the conversation that Helen had so desperately, meticulously avoided them having for so long. Having this conversation, Helen had thought, would be more difficult than anything that had ever happened to her (and a catalogue of terrible things had happened in Helen's life), but now she realised that the alternative, losing Louise, would be worse.
She could feel the hairs bristling on her neck and arms as specks of rain freckled her arms; every so often she raised her fingers and tucked her fringe behind her ear so that she was able to see the street. She watched a little boy ride a tricycle down the road.
She wasn't used to confrontation. Of course, there were the usual complaints in the shop, someone's lipstick was too bright and she bore the brunt of their bad mood, but then she could plaster on a smile and assure them that she was incredibly sorry. Whereas this wasn't about lipstick, this was about the greatest betrayal.
Helen had argued with Julie three times in her life. The first had been when Helen was about five; their father had bought Julie a new teddy bear, and Helen had been overcome with jealousy and had pushed her sister down the stairs, because she'd seen her father do the same to her mother when he was angry. She still felt horrendous guilt when she thought about it now, her sister's crumpled body.
The second time had been when she was fifteen, the day they'd left home forever. Helen wanting to take her diary with her and her sister telling her there was no room, food and toiletries were more important, she could buy a new diary. She knew it was stupid, but Helen had known since she was very little that it was the small things that hurt the most.
The final argument had been the evening before Julie's death.
The little boy fell off his tricycle. Helen jumped up from the doorstep instinctively, but a woman came out of a house a few doors down and snatched her child up, pulling her grey cardigan around them both as she carried him in and slammed the door. Helen hadn't had time to comprehend that Louise wasn't the only person who read the newspaper. She sat back down and hugged her rucksack.
She'd come to think of Louise's house as her home. She couldn't remember a lot of what had happened last night, but she knew that Louise had taken her keys and thrown her out into the street and shouted some things about the home no longer being Helen's. She knew she'd made a fool of herself at Janet's; she knew she'd been very close to opening the bottle of pills in her handbag, to forcing them down her throat one after the other, knowing for the first time in decades where she was going. The only thing, the only person, that had prevented her from ending her life was Louise.
"Oh," Louise said.
The sound made Helen jump up again. Louise's expression wouldn't have looked out of place on a world-class poker player's face. She was absolutely white, like the bones of skeletons. The thought made Helen gag; she leant back against the door, spreading her fingers over her lips like she could stop the badness from spilling out. She didn't want to infect Louise any more than she already had.
"I need to talk to you." She could hear the weakness of her own voice, muffled by her fingers, and yet she didn't move them. "Please."
Louise shook her head and brushed past Helen to push her key into the lock. Helen watched her fingers shake, counted the seconds as her girlfriend fumbled with the handle.
"I always wanted a tricycle, when I was little."
Louise opened the door and stepped over the threshold, moving to close it behind her.
"We read a book about a boy who had one, at school, he was called James. I don't know why I remember that. Every day he got up early to pedal down the road, before the world woke up."
Louise turned round a little bit.
Helen ran the strap of her bag between finger and thumb. "And he saw stuff nobody else saw, the blackbirds building nests, and the milkman collecting bottles from doorsteps. The milkman had a limp, but he was always whistling, and sometimes he let James have a carton of milk. Before we read that book, I had no idea what a tricycle was, nobody ever had them on our street. I never saw any other children at all, really. I didn't understand why for a long time."
"You should come in."
Louise pointed Helen towards the sofa with the uneasiness of their first dates, the times when they'd barely known one another. They'd been cautious and polite as they'd explored one another, learnt of the other's hardships. Louise bustled around, putting the kettle on to boil and pulling the curtains over the window, things that Helen had been doing in the days before her father had murdered her mother.
Louise handed her a mug of coffee. The china was too warm where Helen balanced it on her knee; she wondered if this was what it felt like to be branded. She was branded now, by what she'd done. She wanted a shower desperately, to have the breathlessness of cool water streaming down her face.
"Lou," she whispered.
"I read your diary."
She couldn't remember the things she'd written. She knew they were things she didn't want Louise to know about. "Shit."
"I just– I don't understand you, Helen. I thought you could tell me everything, I thought I knew everything. I mean, you– Jesus. The way you write about her, you don't– you have no idea what it's like for me to read that. Am I not enough for you?"
"It's not that."
"Do you– do you see the same person every time?"
Helen nodded.
"Why? Why would you get to know her if it means nothing to you?"
"She has a son, she needs the money for him." These were the excuses she had smoothed out in her mind like newspaper over a spillage, when she'd laid in bed beside Louise. She'd convinced herself that she was doing the right thing, protecting Louise from the monster she was. She covered her mouth again.
"You said you wished you were dead. You said you'd tried so many times to– to end it, and then you'd be with Julie, but you were too weak. You think living is weak, you– oh, God," her voice shook, "You were going to let me find you dead, like you found Julie. You knew what it did to you, and you didn't care if it did the same to me, did you? Did you?"
"It's not–"
Helen was prepared for the tears that were running down Louise's face, and for the way her heart seemed to forget to beat at the sight of Louise's swollen eyes, her trembling cheekbones. She wasn't prepared for the violence, for the scalding pain as Louise lashed out and delivered a blow across her face, and then another. She lifted the other hand and pushed Helen up against the back of the sofa, thrashing around like a puppy drowning, not caring that the coffee had gone all over both of them. Louise had always been so gentle, combatting Helen's anger.
"I need to," Helen said, when she thought Louise had finished. She could taste the blood on her lips. "I do it for you."
"Oh, well that's funny. Sleeping with a prostitute, for me."
"I think about you." She sounded like a child consoling her mother that her step-mother would never be number one, even when her step-mother made better cakes. "Not during– I mean before, after. All the time, it doesn't matter that I feel dirty, because it means I'm not taking it out on you."
"What, so you have chains and whips with her, do you? Keep me clean for special occasions, is that it?"
Helen gave a deep sob that made her think of an animal. The animal I've become. The animal she'd always been, because of the DNA she shared.
"Shit, I'm sorry," Louise said. Her voice was suddenly soft. It was easier to hear the sadness when she spoke quietly, it laced her words. "I'm sorry."
"I tried to stop, I did, I really did–" A child, an animal. One of those children abandoned by their parents in the forest and brought up by wild dogs. Maybe that would have been a better fate, because then she wouldn't have known. "But I hurt you, I could see the bruises on your back when you– and I couldn't do that, I needed to–"
"Oh."
Helen let Louise's arms close in around her. She remembered finding Julie, seeing the white marks around her mouth where she'd choked on her own saliva. She remembered pounding her sister's chest although her body was cold, although she knew it was over. Squealing apologies into the silence.
"Oh, Helen."
"I want a shower. Can I– my clothes are wet, I–"
Louise seemed to see the coffee stains for the first time. "Shit. I'll get you a towel. The fluffy one you like, the cream one. Has it burned you? Oh God, your lip. I've got some cream somewhere, it'll probably sting when I put it on but–"
"Lou."
Louise helped Helen to her feet, like she didn't want to let go of her, suddenly. Her nails were sharp against Helen's palm; Helen always cut Louise's nails, it was just one of those things. She hadn't done them in a while. "Do you want a bath? We could have a bath."
"If you–"
"You've never had a bath with her, have you?"
Helen laid her chin against in the bony frame of Louise's shoulder. "No."
Louise's laugh was small and strained, but it was laughter all the same, "Then let's have a bath."
Louise had left the curtains open a little, in her haste to busy herself, and Helen could see the little boy riding steadily up and down the street on his tricycle, all memory of his accident forgotten. She wondered if he was called James. She breathed in the smell of her girlfriend's neck, perfume and moisturiser and comfort, and smiled too.
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