“Cheryl?”
She hesitates. Wobbles on tip-toe. My breath catches in the back of my throat. The concrete far below us seems to wobble, like a half-formed solid. Dangerous.
“I’m sorry-” she breathes, turning back to face me, all the lights of the city directly behind her so her face is cast into deep shadows that carve their way under her cheekbones and under her chin. Her breath grates through her lungs. Painful.
“You weren’t going to-” I can’t even say it, but I’m already reaching out instinctively to grasp her bloodied hands. She takes my hands and holds desperately onto me, and slowly sits on the ledge, swinging her legs over the edge and peering into the endless blackness below. I watch her thin knuckles turn white as she grasps the rusting ladder.
“No” she whispers, her head bowed as though in prayer. I watch the way her hair falls down over her face, so I can’t see her eyes. I wonder if they’re open or closed. And then she begins to climb down. I resist the urge to lie on my stomach and watch her disappear into the darkness, so instead I stand and listen for her bare feet to touch the concrete below.
“Are you okay?” I whisper, and from somewhere below me, a voice trails out of the darkness.
“Yeah”
I take the rusty, bloodstained ladder in my hands, attempting to ignore the peeling rust and blood sticking to my sweaty palms. I shudder, but don’t loosen my grip on the iron rungs. I climb down slowly, methodically, feeling Cheryl’s blood re-warm from my body-heat, congealing sickeningly into the creases of my palms. As I approach the bottom, I can feel Cheryl’s dark eyes burning into my skin, but I don’t glance behind me. Hot, judgemental, or maybe soft, thankful. Or maybe something else. Whatever I would read in her dark eyes, I’m not sure whether I want to know what she thinks about me. I jump off the last rung and land beside her, and she just blinks at me, as though she’s not entirely sure if I’m real or not.
“Where are we going?” she asks quietly as I stride away, and she almost has to jog to keep up with me as I race along the concrete walkway.
“My flat-” I tell her, not even looking at her as I take her by the hand and half drag her towards my door. I can’t risk her knocking on her own front door, slipping in, in the hope that he was asleep.
“Kimberley, wait-” she whispers through her teeth, her breath hissing slightly. I can watch as her breath turns to smoke and curls like the remnants of a last shared cigarette from between her bloodies lips. I can listen as her chest heaves painfully, but I can’t stand to see the way her impossibly dark eyes widen with fear as she passes her own front door. I can hear her gasp slightly as her eyes skin over the blood droplets on her doorstep.
“Promise me you won’t go back in there-” I hiss, pointing a trembling and bloodstained finger at her front door. Cheryl’s eyes widen, her pupils seeping like ink into her pupils. Huge. As black as the night sky.
“Shh, don’t let him hear you-” she raises a shaking finger and covers my lips.
“Stay here, yeah?” I hold her as she leans back against the wall, her eyes drooping, although I’m not sure whether it’s through fatigue, pain or blood-loss. I blink at the concrete. And I knock on my own front door. The peeling paint sticks to my hands, tacky with Cheryl’s blood. I silently whisper a prayer that my little sister opens the door. What would my mum say? I hesitate before knocking again, my fist half an inch away from the cheap wooden door. I glance quickly at the girl slumped back against the wall, her legs visibly shaking now. I watch as she shrinks back against the concrete, shadows covering her body. I knock.
And a light clicks on in the hallway, and I can hear the light padding footsteps of a small figure approaching the door, shivering towards us.
“I think it’s my sister” I smile at Cheryl, attempting to reassure her. She doesn’t react, she doesn’t even look at me. She seems to be concentrating on forcing her chest to keep rising and falling.
“Kimmi?” Amy opens the door on its safety-latch, showing only a thin slice of her face and a single greenish brown eye peering through the gap. A long slice of electric light cuts across the walkway and Amy blinks at me, once, and then twice.
“Well, are you going to let me in or what?” I sigh in exasperation, and Amy stands on her tip-toes to take the latch off the door, letting it swing wide. Amy stands in the doorway, her hands on her hips, her tiny legs firmly apart and a fierce pout set on her lips.
“What’re you doing Kim? Why-?”
“I went out, okay? I was just umm...” I push past Amy and step into the kitchen, and my little sister follows me.
“Well?” she says expectantly. I blink.
“I had a headache, I just wanted to clear my head, okay?” I snap in reply, my trainers squeaking on the cheap linoleum as I turn sharply and close the door, careful to not let Amy see my bloodied hands. My heart skips a beat as I hear the lock click. I hate the idea of leaving Cheryl outside on her own, just her and the endlessly dark sky. And the demons crawling inside her head. And there’s only a sheet of thin, cracking wood separating her from the monster who almost beat her senseless. A shiver crawls down my back, and my stomach churns. She could just knock on his door. She might even have a key. She could just go in.
And then the image of her, raised above the city, a million burning lights at her back flashes into my mind. Her arms raised like a figure on a crucifix. The arches of her feet bent like a diver’s as she stands on tip-toe...Would she jump? I close my eyes for a moment as I realise that I’m not sure. She might, she definitely could....
“Whatever.” Amy is too tired to argue, but her face suddenly lights up. “Can I have a biscuit?”
“Uh, yeah, do you know which box they’re in?” I ask her, too scared to argue. I just want her to go back to bed. I want to go see if Cheryl’s okay. I shrug, trying to act normally as I turn my back on her, careful to hide my hands as I help her to rummage through one of the huge cardboard boxes perched precariously on the kitchen counters.
“I’ve got them!” Amy exclaims as she clutches a packet of chocolate digestives to her chest.
“Great, now go to bed. I’m just gonna get some water-” I smile at her, my hands clasped together behind my back.
“Thanks Kim, and you won’t tell mum...you know, about the biscuits?”
“Not a word-” I grin, leaning against the scruffy leather sofa which used to sit in the centre of our living room at our old house. Now it’s squished into the corner of the scrubby, tiny kitchen. I watch Amy close our bedroom door softly behind her. And I wait until the bedroom light flickers off before I dare to dash across the room, throwing open the front door.
The cold night air hits me like a brick wall, and for a heart-stopping moment I think Cheryl has gone, leaving only a smudge of blood on the concrete. A jack-knife in my chest. I gasp.
“Cheryl?” my voice is high, too loud. Sharp with alarm.
“Yeah?” her eyes flicker open. She’s sitting, screwed up and alone on the freezing cold concrete, blood still pouring down her arm. She’s holding it out like an addict, her thumb pressed to her own vein, attempting to staunch the flow. I watch a thick red drop fall from her finger, delicately twisting towards the floor.
“Come here-” I hold my hand out to her, and she takes it, allowing me to pull her unsteadily to her feet.
“I’m okay, I’m okay” she murmurs, as though she’s trying to convince herself. I just run my eyes over her tiny body and lead her inside, closing the door as softly as I can. The lock clicks gently. She sighs, moving her arms as though she’s going to fold them across her chest, and then wincing in pain.
“Cheryl-” I breathe, taking a step towards her. I want to hug her and hold her tight. I want to be able to feel her ragged breathing on my skin and the smell of her tears filling my mind. But I resist the urge to wrap my arms around her, and I turn away, unable to meet her gaze.
“Hold on-” I say, trying to keep my voice businesslike. There’s an underlying tremor, I can hear it. Under the unforgiving electric lights her bruises blush an even darker purple. I don’t want to look at her. “Sit there-” I tell her, patting the half-collapsed leather sofa with the palm of my hand and leaving a tiny print of blood behind. I ignore it and start to rummage through one of the boxes, minutely aware that behind me Cheryl is moving slowly across the room, sitting delicately behind me. She makes no noise, and leaves no trace save a few drops of blood, splattering onto the white linoleum like blobs of ink onto a clean white page.
I finally find what I need. I pull my wash bag from the box and kneel in front of Cheryl, her knees resting either side of my body. She’s slumped back in her seat. The girl who I watched all day, the girl who sat, with her back straight and her shoulders perfectly aligned like a ballet dancer is now hunched with pain and barely breathing. The linoleum is suddenly cold on my knees. Sticky. Foul. I ignore it.
“Give me your arm babe...” I ask her quietly, and she leans forwards slowly, holding out her shredded arm to me. I suck in my cheeks and glance up at her. “Do you want me to try and get the glass out?” I ask. She doesn’t look at me, she just nods. Her eyes are glazed. Expressionless. Numb.
I hold her arm still carefully, and hold my tweezers. Cheryl leans back, resting her head against the sofa and closing her eyes. Tension twitches around her jawline as I pull a minute piece of glass from the wound. Her muscles tense, writhing under my grasp. I drop it into an empty cup, trying not to look at the way the glass is stained with her blood, miniscule strands of her tendons hanging from the razor sharp edges.
“One done...” I whisper
“A thousand more to go...” she breathes in reply, the shadow of a smile hanging around the corners of her mouth. And then I watch it slip from her face as I pull out another piece of glass.
***
“Is that okay?” I murmur as Cheryl inspects my pathetic attempt of bandaging up her bleeding arm. Blood is already slowly but surely seeping through the thin white cotton, but I don’t think Cheryl cares. She runs a thin, almost steady finger along the bandages as I sit beside her, handing her a cup of tea. She takes it gingerly in her hands, smiling up at me as I move slightly closer to her. Not so close that we’re touching, but close enough that I could easily wrap my arms around her. Not that I’m going to. But I could. I watch her as her dimples crease her face into two and she takes a long gulp of her tea, obviously not caring that it burns at her throat, scalding her. She closes her eyes and swallows before she replies.
“Better, much better” she smiles, nodding before taking another long gulp. Either she’s thirsty or she likes the way the hot liquid burns through her body. “You make good tea” she smiles. God. Her dimples.
“Nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me” and I smile too, looking down at my hands. The silence stretches out between us, turning the air in our mouths solid so it’s impossible to form words. I want to talk, to put all of the half-formed ideas in my head into words, but I know that I can’t. Cheryl moves her head slightly, shaking her hair out of her eyes, and curls her legs up under her body like a cat as she snuggles into the leather. I just watch her move. I can’t tear my eyes away from her.
“Thank you Kimberley” she whispers. I love the way her accent contorts my name. I love the way she looks at me with those big, impossibly dark eyes. So dark that it’s impossible to tell where her pupils stopped and her irises begin.
“No problem” I reply. “You’re not going back to him?” I don’t know whether it’s a question or a statement.
She hesitates. My heart stops. Her breathing quickens. I can hear it, rasping. I wonder if she’s scared. Cold sweat filled with fear and tears she’s too scared to let fall covering her almost skeletal body. I want to hold her hand, and maybe she does too, because her fingers uncurl slowly, flexing. Like a baby bird just learning to fly, stretching its wings for the very first time. She shakes her head slowly. “Not tonight.”
“You’ll stay here?” Maybe I’m too quick to reply. Maybe I sound too eager. But I don’t care. I just know that I can’t let her go back to him.
“You’ll stay with me?” She sounds like a little child who’s scared of the dark. Who doesn’t want to sleep alone. Someone whose demons threaten to swallow them whole if they’re alone at night. The darkest parts of your mind try to engulf you, spreading ebony tendrils around your heart. Icy. Cold. I don’t need to reply. I just nod slightly, and Cheryl rests her head on the leather armrest, spreading her tiny body across the sofa. I click off the light and plunge us both into darkness before I lay beside her, letting my hair merge with hers, like weak, milky coffee mixing with a velvety espresso shot. She doesn’t touch me, she holds both her arms tightly to her chest. She’s so close though. I can hear her breathing. I can smell her blood and her cigarettes and her skin. I could almost feel her racing heartbeat. Running on and on, into the misty, cold hours that lay ahead. The grotty kitchen with squeaky linoleum and sticky leather and humming appliances surround us. Thin plaster-board walls. Drum and bass pounding away downstairs. And Cheryl’s heartbeat, ripping through her chest, ripping through the silence. I close my eyes
