Carl pulled himself away, wiped his groin with the sheet and reached for a cigarette. Jake saw that his hand was shaking. His own cock wilted slowly as he watched his brother’s eyes narrow against the smoke. Carl sat back against the headboard. There was a long moment of silence, filled only with the sounds of four sets of labouring lungs.
“I need a drink,” said Veronica. She pushed herself off the bed and walked to the door, ghost-pale in the candlelight, long legs moving smoothly. Jake watched her, loving the sight of her, so thin, boyishly thin, only the tiniest curve of her waist, the subtle rise of her breast indications of her sex. He watched her tiny, tight bum disappear out the door.
“Yeah, I could do with a drink too.”
Candice’s voice jarred the silence. She flopped back against the foot of the bed, giggling. Jake saw Carl turn his head to look at her. He looked at her himself. He looked at the bulk of her, her pendulous, dark-nippled breasts, her young, unformed face greasy with sweat. The dank roots of her brittle blonde hair. As if a switch had been flicked in his head, he was suddenly filled with disgust. He’d been inside her. At the thought of it, his stomach clenched. All at once, she repulsed him. He heard Carl’s sudden intake of breath and knew, somehow, his brother was feeling the same thing.
Jake bent to find his boxer shorts. The disgust he felt for Candice was palpable; it made his hands shake and his breath come short. He could barely look at her. Childishly, he wanted to hide his eyes, block his ears, do anything to negate her existence. Carl shifted beside him.
She noticed nothing. She was still babbling on, coke-filled slag that she was. Saliva filled his mouth. He thought of how she’d felt inside, the damp, hot clammy feel of her around his cock, and felt nausea rise suddenly. He bolted for the door, still naked.
“What’s up with him?” was what he heard before he reached the bathroom and was head down in the toilet, all the booze and coke and exertion coming up, pulling his stomach muscles tight, emptying out in a series of hot, acidic blurts.
Gasping, he stayed bent double and reached blindly up for the flush. Tears were running down his face. He thought of Veronica, of being with Veronica, being inside her, trying to make something good and clean out of the whole mess, but it was hopeless, it was all wrong, all dirty. Jake stood up shakily. He rinsed his sore mouth at the sink and wiped it on the week-old towel that hung in sour folds next to the taps.
“Alright?”
Jake looked round. Carl stood in the doorway, swathed in his towelling dressing gown. The white cotton blazed under the harsh strip light of the bathroom. Jake squinted against the glare.
“I’m okay.”
Carl didn’t say anything else. He just nodded. Jake saw, behind him, Veronica’s pale golden head moving into vision as she came up the stairs. She was carrying another bottle of champagne cool from the fridge, beaded with condensation. Jake’s stomach lurched at the sight of it.
“I think I’ve had enough, V,” he said.
She looked at him anxiously, then at Carl and nodded. She was wrapped in her dressing gown too. Jake was suddenly very aware of his nakedness. As if reading his mind, Carl said ‘want me to get your dressing gown?’
Jake nodded gratefully and Carl disappeared in the direction of his bedroom. Veronica remained in the doorway, looking at him. He tried to smile at her and she smiled back, tremulously.
Carl walked back with Jake’s gown in his hand and Jake took it, wrapping it around himself. With his body hidden, he felt a little better. They stood in a little circle of three at the top of the stairs, by the bathroom door. Carl looked at Veronica, Veronica looked at Carl and they both looked at Jake. Jake could see Carl opening his mouth to say something – he never found out what it was.
“Hey you guys – what the fuck are you doing? Where are you? Come on, let’s get going again – “
Candice’s voice shrilled from the direction of Jake’s bedroom. Jake winced. He could see Carl’s mouth turn down at the sound of that young, rough, strident voice. I’m going to have to get my room fumigated, he thought to himself. To get rid of the smell of that stupid cow.
Candice appeared in the doorway. She was still naked and her jiggling, goose-pimpled flesh looked obscene under the hall lights.
“Come on, guys,” she said. “What are you doing?”
Nobody spoke for a moment. Then Veronica shook back her hair.
“Don’t you think it’s time you were going?” she said remotely.
Candice sniggered again. The sound grated on Jake’s nerves.
“What? Come on, don’t be square. We’re just getting going.”
“Put some fucking clothes on.”
Carl’s voice was stony. Jake watched the smile dissolve from Candice’s face and felt a horrible mixture of pity, revulsion and anger. He clenched his fists.
“What?”
“I said, put some clothes on. Don’t you get it, darling? We’ve had our fun. We don’t want anymore. We don’t want you.”
Candice had gone white. Jake had a sudden feeling that this was the outcome she’d been expecting, right from the moment her cheap white vest hit the floor. The blemishes on her skin flared red against the sudden pallor of her face.
“You what?”
Jake found his voice. He meant to say something a bit kinder, a bit more human. Instead, what emerged from his mouth was ‘can’t you tell when someone’s had enough? What are you, a nymphomaniac, or what?’
He heard his tone, his words, almost aghast at himself. It was Candice herself standing there, suddenly vulnerable, naked and young, looking at them with dumb, uncomprehending hurt. Why couldn’t she see what they wanted was for her to just disappear? Her mouth dropped open and for a moment, Jake thought she would start to cry.
She didn’t. Instead she began to scream, at first incoherently, then in a stream of profanity, stamping her foot, fists clenched. Veronica flinched. Candice came forward, heavy breasts swinging, face white no longer but furiously red.
“You fucking bunch of cunts! You stuck-up cunts! You think you can just do what you like – to me – you cunts – don’t think you can get away with – with treating me like this – cunts –“
She ran out of breath and stood before them, chest heaving. Her eyes looked bruised by all the eye makeup that had sweated down her face. She took another step towards them.
“You fucking cunts. I’m going to the police, I’m going to say you raped me, you brought me back here and gave me drugs and raped me, and they’ll get you, you know they’ll get you, you fucking bunch of freaks –“
Carl was standing between Jake and Veronica, directly in the path of Candice’s stream of invective. He said nothing. Silently, he stepped forward and gave her one hard shove, his large hand on her small shoulder, one quick decisive push. Candice staggered backwards. For a second, her arms clawed at the empty air and then she went straight over backwards, down the stairs, too surprised even to scream. Her head hit the hallway floor first, with a dull cracking thud. The rest of her body followed a second later. For a moment afterwards, there was no sound in the house, just the motes of dust swirling in the displaced air that Candice had fallen through. Jake watched the shimmering column of light in the hallway as downstairs on the hard tiles of the kitchen floor, Candice lay in a tangle of limbs, her shattered head in the centre of a starburst of blood. The dust motes writhed and coiled in the air, as if a giant breath from unseen lungs had blown them gently, to whip them into a whirling, silent, glittering dance.
Chapter Twenty-Two