Day 1

3,103 words.

The quality is shocking, no two ways about it. I feel quite deflated. It now feels like if I’m going to finish, it’s going to be a really hard, thankless slog. I can’t remember if I felt like this at this point last year. Maybe. One thing I do know is that having a young baby does reduce writing time considerably.

I suppose I’m going to have to take NaNoWriMo in the spirit it’s intended and be happy with quantity, at the expense of quality if needs be. And from that point of view, over 3,000 words in a little over 24 hours ain’t bad going at all.

Anyway, here it is: Day 1:

 

1. Making a Stand

 

There was a familiar shape in the distance. If he squinted his eyes, Mark Selwyn could just about make it out. For some time it wasn’t obvious whether the shape was actually there or merely an illusion, some kind of malevolent spirit that Mark’s subconscious had projected onto the refraction of the streetlights in the early morning fog. But a few paces on it became apparent that there was no mistake. He slowed his pace in the vain hope that the shape would somehow drift away, that it would fade back into the London grey. No such luck. Instead, with each step he took, it became larger and less ambiguous: there was no doubt now. Soon he could make out its multi-coloured patchwork jacket. Then its wind-blushed cheeks came into view, followed by its wild brown eyes. There was no escaping it now. At last, it was no longer just any shape, it was the definite curvy shape of Camille Barrett.

She stopped in her tracks and gestured towards Mark, as if a third party was at her side. “Would you look who it is!” she said. “Oh my! My, my, my. How marvellous to see you! Or should I say, how Mark-ellous?” She guffawed at her own bad joke, taking hold of Mark’s arm at the wrist as she did so. He laughed as best he could, at the same time just about managing to slip from her grip. 

“Camille, it’s good to see you, but I’m afraid I’m in quite a rush—” 

He tried to move away but she sidestepped into his path. Her face suddenly became serious. “Whatever happened, Mark?” she asked. “We had such a nice time, didn’t we? You lost my phone number I suppose?”

“Well—”

“Yes, of course you did,” she said, dismissing all possible alternatives with a wave of her hand. “Well, these things happen. I got in touch with the agency but they wouldn’t give your number to me. They said that it’s against company policy. I expect you did the same. I explained to them that you must have lost my number, that we’d had such a nice time.”

“Camille, listen: I’m really sorry to do this but I really have to be getting along…”

“Okay, okay, just a moment,” she said. She produced a pen from her bag and raised an eyebrow. “Well?”

His bus appeared in the distance, turning the corner at the bottom of the street. “Look, Camille, I’m sorry but if I run I can catch that.” He began to back away from her, ready to turn and sprint to the bus stop. “Another time perhaps..?”

“Do not walk away from me,” hissed Camille, but her voice was too low for Mark to hear.

“Excuse me?” he said, half turning away from her.

Then, quite unexpectedly, Camille collapsed. There was no warning, no sign. She simply crumpled into a multi-coloured patchwork heap on the floor. Mark stopped in his tracks. The bus passed by. It continued up the street, past the bus stop. Mark craned his neck to watch as it disappeared around a bend further up the road. 

Everything was suddenly very silent. 

He turned back to face the body on the ground. Camille appeared to be breathing. At least, he thought he could see her breath, small clouds rising from her lips. But that didn’t mean anything. She could die at any moment, he supposed. He didn’t dare approach her. Mark Selwyn had never seen anyone die before, let alone someone he’d once been on a date with.

It was a little after 6am and Archibald Crescent was completely deserted. Nobody had seen what had happened. Mark was the only witness, the only person around—

He had an idea. He could walk away. It was distasteful, sure, but it could work. He was only a minute or two from home. Yes—he could go home and forget all about this.  He’d never have to see her again. He could call in sick at work. When was the last time he was off sick? April? May? It had been nearly a year, he was sure.

At this most inopportune of moments, it suddenly occurred to Mark that he’d never pretended to be ill in all of his working life—some twenty-five years. In all that time, he’d probably only ever taken a dozen days off due to sickness. What a depressing thought! Why was he so straight?

Camille groaned a little, taking Mark by surprise. It was crunch time. The fact was, he hated the woman. They had dated once and it was a disaster. She was crazy. She had talked about her family all night and they sounded even crazier. She irritated him from the first moment her saw her. If he’d have had any courage at all, he would have walked out halfway through the meal and not looked back. 

This was a chance to put it right. Because the fact was, if he stayed now and she lived, he would have to see her again. She would bully him into it, he was sure. But if he walked away… Well, that would say something, wouldn’t it? He would be making a stand. He could walk up the street, back to his flat. Once there he would call work and tell them he’s sick. Then he would go out and…and… what? Sit in the park, that’s what! Yes, that’s what he’d do. He’d sit in the park in his big winter jacket and big winter gloves. He’d feed the ducks bread. Fresh bread, not the stale stuff from the back of the cupboard. Yes, he’d do it. He’d make a stand.

He took a confident stride forward, past Camille, in the direction of a new future.  Then, in an instant, the future, the street, the whole world—all of it simply vanished. In its place was a slab of solid pavement, and he was heading for it at an alarming speed. 

A second later he hit the ground, face-first. 

Some kind of spasm had shaken Camille, causing her arm to lash out and sweep his legs clean out form under him. He was sprawled on the floor. She looked at him, conscious now and with pleading eyes. “Ooh,” she moaned. “Mark… please… help me…”

 Mark sat up and faced her. “Do you want an ambulance?” he asked, fully aware that by speaking to her he was compromising his whole plan.

“No… no, I just want a glass of water and to sit for a while. Somewhere warm. Do you live around here?”

“Yes, but—”

Camille pulled herself onto her haunches and then shakily to her feet. “Oh, thank you Mark. Thank you so much.” And before Mark knew what was going on, he was walking home with the woman on his arm.

Once in his flat, Camille went for a lie down. “Do you want to join me?” she asked. “You could keep an eye on me…” Mark declined politely. As soon as she was asleep he called his work. “No, no, I’m not ill,” he explained, “I’ve just got some things to take care of. Yes, no problem. I’ll make the hours up on Saturday.”

There will be other days for the park, he told himself.

 

 

2. A Touch of Rouge

 

It was terrible, just terrible.

Valerie Barrett’s arm hurt. For a moment she imagined she knew how Jesus had felt on his cross. She imagined his arms must have hurt.

She was scrubbing the kitchen ceiling and had been doing so for the better part of an hour. Rowan had scrawled various obscenities across it using Camille’s lipstick. Now, of course, he was nowhere to be found. Neither her or Camille had come home last night.

Valerie worried she had lost control of her kids. Not that they were technically kids anymore. Camille was the eldest at twenty-eight. Valerie should have stopped worrying about her by now, but she was just such an odd girl. Perhaps they were all odd, for that matter. Rowan was certainly not quite normal, but at seventeen he was the youngest. Teenage boys are all odd. Anyway, it was proven that his behavioural problems were medical. They’d been diagnosed. That meant he wasn’t odd, he was ill. And everyone knows that odd and ill are very different things.

Valerie’s arm had by now become so numb and drained of blood that it had almost stopped hurting altogether. She had managed to scrub most of the lipstick off the ceiling but there was still a little left—such awful words he’d written! 

It was terrible, just terrible, and Mr Wallace was due any minute.

“Sara, love,” Valerie said. “Can you help me out here, please?”

Sara, Valerie’s third-born, opened the fridge and prodded around inside for a while. She wore just a black dressing-gown, which she closed tightly around her against the cold of the fridge.

“Sara, please… it’s all over the ceiling and my arms are—”

“Just leave it. It’s fine.”

“Have you seen what it says?”

Sara looked up at it momentarily, and then at her mother. “What difference does it make if it’s there or not? It’s not like it interferes with the hob or the kettle. If the kitchen was flooded like the bathroom is, I’d understand you wanting to do something about it.”

Valerie sat down at the kitchen table, her arms limp by her sides. The sensation of blood moving through them was at once relieving and uncomfortable. “That’s the problem, Sara. I’ve got Mr Wallace coming over about the plumbing any time now.”

Sara joined her at the table with an entire block of medium cheddar and a large kitchen knife. “I’m sure your Mr Wallace couldn’t care less if the word ‘cock’ is written on the kitchen ceiling, mother. And anyway, he won’t even be in here. He’ll have his head in the toilet, if he’s doing his job properly. That’s where the problem is.”

“That’s not the point and you know it—Oh, Sara, get a plate, please. Honestly. I don’t know how you stay so thin, eating cheese like that.” 

Sara shrugged.

“You can reach up there a lot easier than I can, you know,” Valerie said.

“What? So because I’m tall, I should clean my little brother’s mess up? No chance. It’s not my fault he’s crazy.”

“He’s not crazy, he—”

“He’s ill. I know, I know. Next thing you’ll be telling me Cammy’s not a nympho.”

“Sara!” Valerie shouted. “I do not want to hear you speaking about your sister like that!”

“Okay, well, you go back to worrying about the lipstick instead of thinking about what your eldest is up to. Good to see you’ve got your priorities straight, mother dear.”

 Sara stuffed a large chunk of cheese in her mouth and chewed noisily. Valerie, exasperated but long since resigned to Sara’s moods, went back to cleaning the ceiling. She didn’t even know the meaning of some of the words written there. It seemed like an awfully long time since her children were babies, since they looked up to her. These days, it was more like having four lodgers in the house. 

Perhaps, Valerie thought, lodgers would be easier. She was pretty sure most lodgers wouldn’t write ‘tit face’ on the kitchen ceiling in rouge lipstick.

 

 

3. Button Moon

 

Rowan had spent the last of the money he had stolen from his brother Jim’s room on a can of cider, at a little after three in the morning.

He was woken at five thirty on a park bench, with a duck quacking in his face while its friend tugged at his trousers with a vice-like beak. “Piss off,” he growled at them. He was in no mood for nature. It took some aggressive posturing on his part to convince the ducks they were better off elsewhere. By the time they had gone he was left feeling quite nauseous from the exertion. He couldn’t remember the last time he ate. Yesterday lunchtime, perhaps? He checked his pockets. Empty. At his feet was the can of cider that he’d bought with his last coins: useless now. He kicked it into the lake, where it landed with a satisfying splash.

As he left the park, he had a little luck. The third phone box he passed spat out three pounds twenty with minimal encouragement. He headed for the nearest bus stop, pausing only to vomit what felt like fire from the depths of his stomach. He imagined he looked a mess. While waiting for the bus, he spent a few minutes trying to make out his reflection in the glass that shielded the timetable. He couldn’t. There was no-one else around so he smashed the glass as punishment. Rowan firmly believed that if something is not fit for his purpose, then it is not fit for any purpose at all. Such was his way.

The bus arrived and he boarded. There were no other passengers so he decided to save his three pounds twenty and walk straight on without paying. He made his way upstairs with the driver shouting after him. For a moment he thought there might actually be a face to face confrontation. But the driver never left his cab and by the time Rowan had sat down, they were moving.

After a few minutes Rowan was overcome by tiredness so he sprawled out across all the seats on the back row and dozed. The early morning light occasionally caused him to stir when it flashed across his face as the bus turned this way and that. Aside from the developing hangover, dry mouth and desperate need to empty his bowels, he felt quite content. He even hummed under his acrid breath. The tune was the theme from a show he used to watch as a child called Button Moon. He sang the words he remembered. “Mmm mmm to button moon / we’ll mmm mmm Mr Spoon / to Button Moon / Button Mo-on.” He was reminded of times when he sat with Camille watching it. He could only have been four or five. She was eleven years older than him, practically a second mother—but one quite different to his real mother. “Mr Spoon’s a bastard, Rowan,” she would say. “Can you say ‘bastard’?” He would oblige, of course.

Right then, unbeknownst to Rowan, his big sister was directly outside the bus, collapsing, pretending to be ill. If he had known she was there, he would have got off for sure. He would have asked her if she remembered teaching him to swear. If she’d have said she didn’t, he probably would have shouted abuse at her, or at Mark Selwyn, or perhaps the next person he passed in the street. 

Instead, he fell into a deep sleep, in which he dreamed he was abducted by monster ducks from the moon.

 

4. Defiled

 

About an hour after they arrived back at the flat, Camille began making a fuss. Her first reaction on waking in Mark’ bed was to yell accusations at the baffled accountant, who could do little more than scratch his bearded cheek nervously.

“What did you do to me?” she demanded to know. “Am I raped?”

“Camille!” he said, gesturing for her to keep her voice down. “Of course not… How could you—?”

“What am I supposed to think? Why am I here?” Camille threw her arms out furiously. Curling her nose up, she inhaled slowly and deeply: “Ugh… This quilt stinks!” She threw the offending bedcover onto the floor. “And look at this room. Tasteless! Is this where you sleep?”

“Yes, I—”

“Is this where you defiled me?”

“Please don’t shout… the neighbours upstairs…”

“They are my witnesses!” Camille yelled, a ringed finger stabbing in the direction of the ceiling. “I’ll get statements! I’ll see you hang for this!”

“I didn’t touch you. You collapsed,” he said.

“I’ll bet. I’ll bet I did. I’ll bet I bloody did. If you drug a woman of my height, that’s what’ll happen. I bet I went down like a sack of potatoes. I’m five-foot-two. You could have killed me, you maniac. My heart… God knows what your rape-a-date drugs would do to a defenceless woman like me. I suspected you, Mark. That time we had dinner, I suspected…”

Mark had now fully gathered himself. He’d lost patience with her altogether. “Shut up, Camille!” he yelled. 

She did as she was told, automatically hanging her head like a child being told off by her father. “You’ve not been raped, okay? Not by me, and not by anyone else. You’ve not been drugged either. Do you understand?”

Camille nodded, toying petulantly with the gold ring on her right hand. She vaguely gestured at the ceiling and mumbled, “Maybe you should keep your voice down…” 

Mark leaned in close to her. “You collapsed, in the street outside. I brought you in. You wanted a lie down. How can you not remember this? Are you concussed?”

Camille’s expression softened. “I trust you, Mark. You know? I trust you.” She sighed. “If you say you haven’t touched me down—down here, I believe you.” Mark froze in shocked silence, unsure quite where to look. Finally, Camille withdrew her hand. And then, as if nothing had happened, she asked, “So Marky-Mark-Mark, what are we going to do today, then?” She had the same bubbly tone she’d spoken with earlier, when they met. Mark shrugged. He could see no way out now. He was trapped. He knew what was coming—a full day with Camille, a woman who was clearly even more unbalanced than he’d thought.

“We should do something,” she declared, practically leaping to her feet. “I mean, all of this, it’s got to be a sign, hasn’t it?”

Mark shrugged again, more despondent than ever. Thoughts of a quiet day feeding the ducks in the park seemed like a lifetime ago. Work would have been better than the prospect of what was ahead of him. “Perhaps you should take it easy today,” he suggested hopefully. “Or call someone. A friend or  something. You know, to tell them you’ve not been well.”

“That’s sweet, it really is. But I’m fine. And anyway, this is fate, Mark. I mean, just fancy it. We bump into each other by chance and end up in your bedroom together.” 

She tapped him on the nose.

“These things don’t just happen, my lovely Mark. Nothing just happens.”

 

 

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