Monument

Standing on the kitchen table, Valerie Barrett scrubbed the ceiling as hard as she could.

Sara was poking around in the fridge. “Just leave it,” she said. “What’s the big deal?”

“Have you read it?”

Sara looked up. “Fuckpit,” she said. “Arsebastard.”

“Mr Wallace is on his way—”

“Who?”

“—to fix the toilet.”

“Then that’s where his head will be.”

“What?”

“In the toilet. Not looking at the kitchen ceiling.”

“That’s hardly the point.”

Sara brought a block of cheddar and some bread back to the table.

Valerie shook her head. “You used to be such sweet babies... Now you’re writing this filth on the ceiling.”

“What’s this got to do with me? Where is Rowan, anyway?”

“I threw him out.”

Sara snorted laughter. “You did what?”

“He was drunk. He was out of control. Just look at this...” She stabbed a finger at the shaky writing above her head.

“Cockermouth.”

“Sara! For God’s sake!”

“No, look. There.” Sara pointed at a different scrawl, near the light fitting. “Cockermouth, it says. That’s in Cumbria.”

“You mean Cockermouth.”

“That’s what I said.”

“He’s written Cock in mouth.”

“Oh.”

Valerie dunked her sponge in the bucket and returned to her scrubbing.

“I thought maybe he’d gone up north," said Sara. "I thought it was a clue.”

“Clearly not.”

“No.”

The doorbell played the first four notes of Big Ben’s chime.

“Oh no, it’s Mr Wallace, he’s here...”

“I’ll get it,” offered Sara.

Valerie gingerly stepped down onto a chair, then the floor. “Okay, but give me a sec to put the cleaning stuff away.”

Sara left the kitchen.

“Mum!”

Valerie wiped her hands on her dress, arranged her hair and went out to the hall. In the front porch, where Mr Wallace should have been, there were two policeman.

“Mrs Barrett?” asked the younger of the two.

Valerie nodded.

“Is this about Rowan?” asked Sara.

“Rowan?” repeated older policeman.

“What’s happened?” demanded Valerie.

“Are you Jim Barrett’s mother?”

“Oh God. What’s happened?”

“He’s okay,” said the younger one. “But he’s at the hospital. He’s—”

Valerie slumped backwards against the wall. “Oh God, oh Jesus—”

“He’s going to be okay, Mrs Barrett. He was mugged, but he’s going to be okay.”

“But no, that can’t be right. He’s upstairs, he hasn’t been out...”

The front door was still open. A large man in blue overalls rapped his knuckles against thin air.

“Knock, knock,” he said.

“Wallace?” asked Sara.

“At your service!”

“I’m afraid he’s not upstairs, Mrs Barrett,” said the older policeman. “He’s definitely in the hospital.”

Mr Wallace’s eyebrows took up the concerned position. “This is a bad time...”

“Sara, check for your brother upstairs.”

“What’s the point?”

“We can drive you to the hospital,” said the younger policemen.

“I’ll come back,” said Mr Wallace. “I’ll call - or you can call...”

Everyone fell silent.

“No, you’re here now,” Valerie said at last. “Go on up.”

“Help yourself to tea and coffee,” added Sara.

Valerie didn’t hear.

Mother and daughter arrived at the hospital with the two policemen a short while later.

Jim’s face was blotchy skin on grapes.

“Fuck, Jim,” said Sara. “Impressive.”

“I’f okhay. Coul’ be much wurth.”

“Rowan and Camille should be here,” said Valerie.

“I’ll call them,” said Sara.

“Can’t phone from im heer,” said Jim, pointing at a no phones sign. “Hoshptle roooools,” he added.

Sara wasn’t listening. “Rowan? Oh for fuck’s sake — voicemail.” She hung up and called another number. “Hello? Camille?” she hollered into her phone. “Where are you?”

“Fuck knows,” said Camille. Next to her, a bulge in the duvet groaned. “Who the fuck are you?” she asked it.

“Camille, listen, Jim’s in the hospital,” Sara continued.

“The fuck?”

“Mugged. Last night.”

“Thith mor’in,” corrected Jim.

“Just get down to St Edwards, okay Camille?”

“Yeah, yeah, okay,” Camille said, hanging up.

Camille got up onto her knees. She was naked but she padded herself down as if she wasn’t, as if she was looking for something.

Lifting the corner of the duvet revealed a man’s sleeping face.

She poked him until he woke up. “Who’re you?” asked Camille.

He said something like, “Ugh.”

Camille gestured towards her cropped pubic hair. “Am I raped?” she asked.

The man’s eyes were red and his breath smelt like sewers. “Whathafuckraped?”

“It’s not complicated, dickhead. Raped.”

Camille padded herself down some more, peered over her right shoulder at her back, squeezed her thighs together then let them relax, moved her jaw between her thumb and forefinger. “I’m fine,” she said.

He looked at her blankly.

“Good. I’m off to see my brother in the hospital.”

As she arrived, a nurse and Sara were helping Jim into the chair next to his bed. She waited until they were finished before approaching.

“Look at your fucking face, Jimbo,” she said.

Valerie tutted.

“Ith no’ tho bad,” said Jim.

“Well, I want the story. I don’t want to have brought this hangover all the way here for nothing.”

Jim pointed at his face to show it hurt to talk too much. “You,” he said to Sara.

Sara relayed the story Jim had told her and Valerie, about how he was jumped outside the corner shop at the bottom of the road by a couple of kids.

“That’s it?” asked Camille.

Jim nodded.

“Right, I’ll be back later then.”

“Where do you think you’re going?” asked Valerie.

“I think I’m going home for a shower.”

“You’ll do no such thing. Your brother needs you.”

But Camille was already gone.

Rowan woke up on a park bench. There was a duck tugging at his trouser leg. He tried to shoo it away.

“Piss off,” he said.

The duck responded as best it could with its limited vocabulary.

There was an unfinished can of cider on the grass under Rowan’s bench. He poured it over the duck’s head. Aggrieved, the duck pecked him ferociously in the thigh and groin.

Rowan retreated.

Outside the park gates he bumped into Rotting Nick.

“Who’s this?” Rowan asked pointing at the little flame-haired man standing next to Rotting Nick.

“Rod.”

Rowan sized the newcomer up. “It’s gone eleven. I don’t know about you, but I need a drink.”

They walked to The Yellow Torch in Camden. It wasn’t open yet so they waited outside.

“I tried to call you,” said Rotting Nick.

Rowan checked his phone. Missed calls: RN (1), Cammy (3), Sara (4). “I was asleep,” he said.

Rod offered cigarettes around and they smoked in silence until Pete opened the pub doors.

“You’re late,” said Rotting Nick. “It’s after eleven-fifteen.”

“Do you want a drink or not?” replied Pete.

“Come on,” said Rod. “My round.”

The three of them sat on high stools at the bar. At midday, Pete brought them toast, on the house. They ate it with their beer.

When Rod went to the toilet, Rotting Nick let Rowan in on a thing or two about his new companion.

“He’s fucking mental.”

“Who is he?”

“Simon offered me seven pills and a quarter of a sheet of acid in return for taking Rod off his hands for the night.”

“Who’s Rod to Si?”

“His fucking brother-in-law or uncle-in-law, I don’t know. Something to his wife definitely, because Simon was saying the little fucker had been pestering her to stay the night at their place and well, you can imagine how Simon took that. I said I wouldn’t have much use for a quarter of a sheet of acid and in any case I wasn’t interested in babysitting the gnome, but Simon was persuasive, so I said, ‘Alright, but I want beer money too.’”

Rotting Nick looked around, checking that Rod was still in the toilet.

“So this was about midnight last night,” he continued. “Simon introduces us and Rod suggests we go to a place he knows, tells me I’ll like it - ‘Your kind of place,’ he says - straight off the bat, like he fucking knows me or something. Anyway, we end up in some shitty old man strip pub. They charge six and a half quid for a pint and the birds all look like fucking Maggie Thatcher. But Rod says, ‘Don’t worry about it, it’s fine.’ I tell you Row, it doesn’t seem fine to me because I’ve only got a tenner, and tenners have to last, don’t they? So we have a pint, watch these droopy cunts parade around a bit, then leave. And Rod says, ‘Where now?’ ‘Back to the squat,’ I say, ‘I’m fucking skint.’ But he laughs and pulls out a fistful of fivers. ‘Where’d they come from?’ I ask. ‘The strippers,’ he says laughing. ‘See the state of them? It’s only right they pay us to sit through that shit.’ I thought, ‘Fair play,’ and said so, but he’d fucking lost it, Row. ‘They should pay us!’ he kept saying, like it was the funniest joke he’d ever heard. He was laughing so hard he could hardly breathe. He fell about all over, knocked over a motorbike and everything; told some bloke to fuck off—”

Rod was on his way back. Rotting Nick went quiet. He and Rowan drank their drinks.

“Fuck,” said Rod, “I think this afternoon may get a bit messy…”

“Why’s that?” asked Rotting Nick.

Rod clapped him on the back. “I just took the acid and seven pills I found in your pocket, big man.”

Under the circumstances, Rowan and Rotting Nick did the most sensible thing they could. A couple of hours later, while Rod was in the toilet being sick, they drank up and left.