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“Oh, yeah maybe.” I answer, anything to get him to leave.
“Please do, I’ll see myself out.”
And with that he’s gone as quick as a flash. What a beautiful bastard.
Chapter Two
Getting to Know You, Getting to Know All About You
There’s nothing worse than not being able to sleep until three in the morning and then waking up at seven-thirty even though you have nowhere you need to be. Even worse is the fact that I can’t get back to sleep. My apartment is freezing and a layer of frost covers the one tiny window in my bedroom. I really hate January.
I pull the duvet around me and get up, then I dash for the switch in the hallway to turn on the heating. I go into my living room and sit on the couch, waiting for the radiators to kick in. I’m not letting go of the duvet until the place heats up. I tip my bare feet onto the floor but then quickly pull them back up and tuck them under my legs, the cheap brown lino is absolutely freezing cold.
I switch on the television and watch the early morning news headlines, absorbing nothing. I hate the fact that I don’t dream anymore, all I get is random words and sentences that make no sense running through my head. Sometimes all I can see is an image of Matthew unconscious in a bath of red tinted water. I don’t know which is worse, because the words give me a headache and the image is horrific.
When I feel the place has warmed up I go to the fridge to see what there is for breakfast and the pathetic contents say it all, I really need to go shopping. Nicky has been doing my groceries for
me every week, but I think it’s about time I took some of the burden off her. She’s helped me enough and I’ve been thinking that perhaps now it’s time I began helping myself.
I drink a glass of milk, and then on a whim I decide to wash my floors. I get a bucket out from under the sink and go through the motions of cleaning. In my purse I have exactly fifty-six pounds and forty-five pence. There are five days left until the next instalment of money gets transferred into my bank account from my dad’s. I really need to tell him the truth that I’ve dropped out of college. There’s no doubt he’ll be angry and that’s why I immediately decide to put it off for just one more week.
I decide to spend the money I have on food. I’ve been eating barely anything these days and spending the majority of my money on booze to drown my sorrows. No more spending my days in a drunken stupor just so that I don’t have to feel anything. I go into the bathroom and strip off to take a shower before I leave to go food shopping. I stare at the white, clean, empty bath for a moment and wonder if I’ll ever get into it again. Probably not, but thankfully I have a separate shower, otherwise I’d be going around like an unwashed hobo. Not that I’ve been very meticulous about my personal hygiene recently anyway.
I don’t have a lot of clothes in my wardrobe since I went a bit loony after Matthew passed. I was angry with everything, and I guess I took that anger out on my clothing. I took a knife to dozens of tops, trousers, skirts and ripped them to shreds. Then I stuffed them all into black bags and threw them out. Maybe it was cleansing. Maybe I was just mental. But now, as I’m freshly showered and clad in a clean towel, all I can find to wear is an old pair of black jeans that have seen better days and a white long sleeved wool cardigan.
It’s a twenty minute walk to the nearest Tesco, and I fill my trolley with all manner of items. I also get some deodorant, shampoo and shower gel. At the checkout a woman in her late thirties gives me varying degrees of dirty looks as she scans my items. What a bitch. I can tell that she hates her job, but that’s not my problem. The insides of my knuckles are red raw by the time I get home, the weight of the plastic bag handles having dug into them. My phone is already ringing inside of my apartment when I put my key in the front door. I hurry in, throw down the plastic bags in the hall and run to pick it up before it goes to voice mail.
“Hello?”
“Tegan, it’s Dad.” His tone is grim, which is not a good sign.
“Hello, um, how are you?” I reply.
“I got a letter from your college today,” he says, daring me to pretend I don’t know what he’s talking about.
“Oh, you did.” Shit, shit, shit! My inner voice screams.
“Yes.”
I draw a nervous breath. “Right.”
“They wanted to know if you’ve dropped out, since according to their records you haven’t been attending classes in nearly three months.”
“I – I’m sorry Dad.” Admittance and apology all in one, maybe he’ll go easy on me for the quick yet unpleasant reveal.
“So it’s true then?” his voice informs me that he’d really wanted the letter to turn out to be some kind of clerical error.
“Yes, and I really am sorry but…”
“Why haven’t you been going to college?” he interrupts, disbelief colouring his words. He’s been living in blissful ignorance of how far my life has gone down the toilet these past few months. I feel guilty for enlightening him, but it has to be done.
“It’s complicated.”
“Are you doing drugs?” Accusatory now, ah the old reliable.
Sometimes, my inner voice interjects, but I tell it to shut up. “No.” I answer, voice tight with nervous tension.
He lets out a low curse. “That doesn’t sound very convincing, Tegan.”
