It is also enough to send his other sister flying around the table towards him. Jade charges at him like she’s about to deal death to her brother, but he stands there calmly, and only when she gets within striking distance does he raise his arm and smack her straight in the face. Blood gushes out of her nose as she falls backwards. She stumbles towards her dad but he simply moves away; it’s been years since he’s cradled this bitch in his arms.
Upon seeing blood flowing out of her sister’s nose, Cortnee quite rightly decides that this isn’t going to end well for Ashley. Since he has crossed a line that the family will never tolerate, he is now what she would describe as openly fair game. And by this she means it is now entirely acceptable to bury a fork into his leg, which she attempts to do by picking up the one lying next to her. She doesn’t hesitate, taking a firm hold of his leg in one hand, and lifting the other, the fork clutched tight.
It’s almost as if everything the members of this family have ever done to each other has led to this moment; her mind providing her the graphic instructions as to how to best hurt her younger brother. On one level she thinks this might be a bad idea, especially as if he ends up in A&E, as then she won’t get the evening of punishment that is clearly due. But, on balance, she is fairly confident she can convince her mum that he can be patched up at home, and his back will still be ripe for a good belting.
Of course, that isn’t what Ashley has in mind: his years of being tormented by his two sister’s means that he knows if one of them is hurt, the other is always waiting to strike. They are, by their very nature, a two-headed monster. They have different bodies, but barely manage one brain between them. Ashley laughs at his sister as she lifts the fork up. He leaves her holding his left leg as the other one kicks her between the eyes. The force of the heel of his boot sends her head colliding with the floor, the shock taking a moment before the screams of enduring pain follow, like no words could ever replace what has just happened.
As both of his sisters lie down, nursing their broken noses, he feels strangely satisfied. He looks at his mum and he knows he’ll never be going home because he’ll never be allowed to live if he does. He keeps an eye on her, wondering what she is truly capable of, as she looks around for the best tool available to hurt her unwanted and ever-neglected son. He needs only to pat his pocket, to feel his dad’s car keys still in there, which he had swiped half an hour ago while his mum was yelling at him because the cheapest and thinnest mattress was out of stock.
He gets ready to run, knowing that all he needs to do is beat them to the car. He just about knows how to drive, and is fairly sure the roads will be clear. As long as he can win the race back to the house then everything he needs is in the one bag in his wardrobe – always packed, always ready. If he thinks he has time he will give the house a trash too, mainly his sister’s bedrooms. He’ll at least have time to show them what a pissy mattress really smells like. And so he steps away from his family, from his mum, and from his bitch sisters. He looks at his dad, who has finally stopped eating to look up at what is happening.
Dad has nothing to say as he watches the boy step away, moving backwards through the maze of tables and chairs. He briefly wonders why the other two kids are on the floor, but he knows it will be because of some drama that will eventually turn out to be his fault.
‘Goodbye, Dad,’ Ashley says, as he turns and runs.
His dad smiles at him, and from the depths of somewhere in his vacant mind he wishes the boy luck. He thinks that in that previous life he should probably have been nicer to the lad, but those finer points all left him the day he fell down the hole on that building site. A sharp smack across his head brings him back to the moment, as he looks up to see his missus shouting at him. He can’t really hear what she’s saying but he has a feeling that in his old life he put up with too many of these slaps, and the odd punch, and he wishes he had given a few back when he was well enough to do it.
She smacks him across the face, as hard as she can, her rage towards the boy now funnelled entirely at his dad. ‘Where are your bloody car keys, has he got ’em?’ she yells, knowing that little shit is more clever than he looks.
Dad just looks back at her, as she keeps shouting at him. ‘Meatballs,’ is all he says, knowing how much this winds her up. Somewhere deep inside himself he’s laughing.
Her face scrunches up, the rage swelling through her. She believes it’s a feeling of anger at him and what he has become. But if she was ever brave enough to look into her own mind, she would know it is anger at what she has allowed herself to become; deep down knowing she could have been a good parent if she had just kept that demon at bay.
But that monster is loose now and it’s growing within her. She smacks him again, sure that her hand is hurting far more than his face ever will. She looks at the table, still hunting for what she can use. The only things she can see are those few remaining meatballs, and so she scoops them up and then smears them all over her face. They sting a little but since they’re nearly cold she thinks it’s probably her pride rather than her skin that is hurting. ‘There… are you fucking happy now?’ She grabs his face with one hand, digging her nails into his skin as she continues to rub the meat and juice all over her face. ‘Will this make you give me any more attention now?’
He looks up at her, seeing the thing he used to call his wife. He never wanted to marry her; he just wanted a few shags. Back then he liked her best mate way more, but she never put out and never showed any interest. A few shags can become quite expensive when you’re on the dole, and the fact is that condoms become a luxury you can’t afford. He stares at the beast in front of him and remembers that night when they had finished off the vodka and she had promised she would step off just as she finished him. But she never did, and as he lay there knowing the climax was coming, begging her to jump off now, she just ground him down a little bit more, keeping all her weight on him. It was quite a lot of weight, as he recalls, and she’s been doing that ever since.
‘Well, do you want to fuck me now, do you?’ she shouts at him, that same face from 20 years ago now coming back to haunt him.
He looks at her one more time and then looks down at the table. ‘Full up,’ he says.
She screams and then hits him several more times, lashing at his head and shoulders, all her anger stemming from their poor choices and her eternal desperation to be loved.
The girls come together to watch, never having quite seen their mum lose it as much as she is now. She eventually wears out and looks over at them, her mind ticking away. After a moment she scrunches her face up again. ‘Ashley,’ she grunts. ‘Where is that little fucker?’
No one answers as she continues her demanding glares, and then she starts to run, tearing up a path through the tables towards the escalator, throwing aside anything that gets in her way and screaming out her son’s name like she will hunt him to hell and back.
The sisters and Dad watch her disappear out of the restaurant, and so do the poor staff who have had to witness all of this. ‘She’s crazed, something has taken over her,’ one of them says into the phone. ‘The whole family just lost it.’
On any other day the operator would have just ignored this description as a little over-the-top, caused entirely by the adrenaline of the moment. The first time she took a call about a shoplifter becoming violent she felt some degree of shock, but after ten years on the job it was just another routine call. But on this day she didn’t feel like that; everything is different now and no experience from the past can change that. She follows the strict instructions she has been given to send out a quarantine order on the immediate building, to inform the surrounding officers, and raise the alert level for the entire area.