Annabeth would very much like to tell her story. Explain how she came to be here. Chatsworth Square, Carlisle. Hundreds of miles from the last place she really called ‘home’; sickeningly grateful to the man who feeds and houses her, and who takes payment from her flesh.
She imagines herself into a different reality. Tries to enact some form of metamorphosis upon her surroundings. Comes up against the impenetrable actuality of the rotting squat where she has been waking up these past weeks. The big Victorian house is all flats now. Bedsits. Temporary digs for student types and the perennially unemployed. Smokers. Drinkers. A bass player and his girlfriend in Flat 3. Always a stream of visitors. Hard to know who lives here and who is just passing by to smoke a joint and strum a guitar. A foreign family, for a while; exotic smells drifting from their flat on the second floor. They left after the third burglary.
Annabeth considers herself. Tries to identify the individual feelings within the complexities of her mood. She realizes she is at once excited and giddy and absolutely terrified. Feelings are returning like blood flooding into a dead limb. She’s been numb for so long. Anaesthetized herself. Shut down all the parts capable of compassion. For hope.
And yet suddenly, that is what she feels.
Annabeth.
Goosepimples on her bare arms. The white lines she has carved into her skin seem to blur and pixilate. White lines, neat as train tracks, puckering closer together.
Wobbling now. Unsteady. Reaching out and putting her hand on the inflatable mattress. It sags. She’ll have to blow it up again soon; smear lip gloss on the nozzle and exhale until she sees stars.
She lowers her head, her celestial beseeching briefly halted. Takes a quick inventory. Checks that everything is where it should be. She has few possessions, but those that she does possess are to be cherished. Her snow globes look cheerful. Six of them. Stonehenge. Colchester. Edinburgh. London. Paris. Tunisia. The last two were gifts. She has never been abroad. They form a fragile circle around her little CD player; dribbling some tinny pop, so quiet it sounds like a whispering from a distant room. A tangle of Christmas lights is woven through the slats, throwing a multi-coloured glow onto her sparse possessions. Make-up, in a sparkly bag. A stack of paperback books, retrieved from a pile dumped outside the charity shop where she had spent two cold, unmemorable nights. Three pairs of shoes, lined up neatly by the wall. Battered white trainers, a pair of Army-style boots, and her ‘work’ shoes. Four-inch heels; black and strappy. T-shirts, jeans and her bomber jacket spill from a rucksack.
She’s barefoot now. Barefoot, kneeling down, staring at the ceiling; mascara brush to her eye, mouth open in concentration.
There’s a pain at the back of her neck; a big fist of tension and gristle. She pictures a knot in a damp rope. A door opens in her mind. Something she’s read. Sees nimble little fingers, pale and bloodied, picking at tangles of tarred thread. A line of poetry, long forgotten. Something about Satanic mills.
She blinks, and it’s gone again. She’s still on the floor in the empty flat. Still looking up, neck extended; a chick waiting for Mama to regurgitate some grubs. Still waiting for him. Her benefactor. The man who keeps her safe. Safe from everybody but him.
Annabeth.
Still doing her make-up. Still turning her eyelashes into spider legs. Still smearing greasy lip gloss onto lips that she has never liked. They’re too thin; the top one barely there at all. She has to perform miracles with an eyebrow pencil to make them seem even vaguely alluring.
She lowers her head. Pulls a face. Steels herself, and flicks her head skywards again. Checks herself over. It’s hard to tell, from the angle, but she knows she’s done the best that she can. Not even the best make-up artist in the business could guarantee perfection if forced to use a mirrored ceiling to apply their slap. She’s suggested to her benefactor that he bring her a little hand mirror with his weekly delivery. So far, he has paid her no heed, and she knows he does not like being pestered. She will ask him again, when the time is right. For now, she will continue to use the mirrored ceiling, installed long before Annabeth took up residence in the damp, dingy space. Walter has helped a lot of girls, over the years. Enjoys laying back and watching his waifs and strays show him their appreciation.
Annabeth rolls her head from left to right. Kisses the air. Kisses it again: a loud smacking together of her lips. So, this is it. This is the moment. This is when it will happen, or it won’t. Christ, how she hopes she’s got it right. She needs him to see her properly. To see more than the skinny, dead-eyed girl he picked up and decided to keep for himself. More than just his favourite place to release the tension after his difficult day. She wants him to think of her as a future; as somebody who could care for him; help him, support him. She needs to make him see that there is a soul worth loving inside the body that gives him such pleasure. She needs to make him see who she might have been, had things been different. Had life been kinder. Had she not made such terrible mistakes, or trusted the wrong people, or said yes when she should have said no.
She hears the sound of the fire door slamming shut one floor beneath. There’s a tremble in her chest – a feeling that spider eggs are hatching under her skin. She hears footsteps. The quiet jangle of keys; chains
