The Tied Man

Lilith ran her palm across the frigid, whitewashed stone.  ‘She can lock you in.’

‘Only when I play up.  Believe me, you haven’t lived until you’ve had to shit in a bucket for a couple of nights.’  I lay back and pulled my duvet over my head.  It felt like a day for hiding.  Bran grumbled at the disturbance, but soon settled onto my chest.

‘So,’ Lilith asked, ‘on a scale of one to ten, just how fucked would you say we were?’

‘Eleven,’ I replied, my voice muffled by an inch of polyester filling. ‘Um, I don’t mean to be rude or anything,’ I said, ‘but you’re actually scaring me now.  This to do with her?’

I heard Lilith kick a bag full of dead clothes to one side so that she could close the door behind her.  ‘Yeah,’ she finally said, in a quiet, dangerous voice.  ‘You could say it was something to do with her.’

‘And?’

‘It seems my sweet, pliable stepmother’s finally seen sense and fucked off without warning.  Taken Daniel out of Blaine’s grip.’

I emerged from the duvet and frowned, trying to equate the good news with the expression on her face.  ‘But that’s good.  Isn’t it?’

‘Oh, yes.  Amazing.  And only marginally less likely than the second coming.’

‘And..?’

‘And now you’re ‘it’, Finn.  My – what should I call it?  My motivation?  My raison d’être?  My shiny, new and improved grounds for staying put and keeping my mouth shut and doing whatever that twisted bitch wants me to do.  Your ability to walk unaided depends on my good behaviour.’

‘Oh shit, no, you’ve got to be kidding me.’

‘Yeah, this is my special comedy face, Finn. Well spotted.’  Lilith leaned against the door and buried her head in her hands.  I wondered if she was about to cry, and wondered what the hell I would do if she did.

I held Bran tight to me so that her heart quivered against my chest as I searched for the right thing to say.  I felt the words carefully with my tongue before I allowed them to escape. ‘This is it, Lili.  Your chance.  Just get Henry to take you across the lake, and that’s it.  You’re gone.’

Lilith just kept to her hands to her face like a mask.  I kept going. ‘Lili?  Are you listening to me?  I don’t matter!  You’ve known me, what? Two months?  I’m nothing, Lili – you’ve got a life out there waiting for you and all you need to do is step into that boat!’

Silence.

‘Please go.’

‘I can’t.’

And that was it.  For reasons she did not want to give, and I most certainly didn’t want to hear, Lilith’s freedom had been snatched away from her before she even knew it was there.

I heard her release her breath, let out in a long sigh that could have been anger or exhaustion.  Probably both.  ‘Bloody hell Finn, I don’t do this!  I don’t keep fucking goldfish on the grounds they’re high fucking maintenance!’

‘I know.  I know, I know and I’m sorry.’

‘What the fuck are you sorry for?’  Lilith asked.

‘How about dumping on your entire life, as a starter?’

‘Oh, for fuck’s sake.’ Lilith rubbed wearily at her shoulder.  ‘You’ve never really had a choice in any of this, have you?  Even back in Dublin.  You got yourself trapped years ago.’

I risked pulling the duvet down so that just my eyes appeared.  ‘She been telling you stuff?’

‘Showing me ‘stuff’, to be accurate.  A picture of you.  From back then.’

‘What, the one of me toutin’ for business?’

‘Aha.’

‘I look about twelve, huh?’

‘If that.’

‘January it was, and fucking freezing.  Day after that was taken, I was done over by a punter – a real vicious bastard.  Liked it rough.  Dragged me into a public lav, fucked me like an animal, then legged it with a day’s takings and my wrap of smack.  Next thing, this posh cow got me in her car, stuck a glass of whiskey in my hand and told me she could take me away from it all.  I was a sucker for a cliché.’

‘She arranged the whole thing,’ Lilith stated, seeing through the bullshit in a way that I had failed to.

‘See, you’re way smarter than me.  The entire time she was talking, she was playing with this poly bag with half a gram of pharmaceutical grade smack in it.  By the time she shoved a contract under my nose, I was slavering like a mad dog.’  I shook my head at my stupidity. ‘Let’s just say she got a damn good deal.’