Carnivore: The most controversial debut literary thriller of 2017

I moved the car into a lane towards Wandsworth Bridge.

‘So,’ she said. ‘I get home last Tuesday – you’re still gone, so I’m still heartbroken – and the bitch with the ADHD kid has stole all our pasta so there’s nothing to eat except fucking instant coffee and I’m about to have a full-on breakdown – and then Sandra comes in and she says I’ve got some post, and its an envelope just saying ‘For Dawn’ on it – with a key inside. It’s a car key. And Sandra’s being so fucking nosey but she’s saying she can give me some rice so I’m humouring her and I’m chatting to her about Kimber and about how I met him down the Rockway a week earlier, and I’m saying you’re sulking cos I’ve met a new man – and how he’s very attentive to me – and how I fell asleep at his flat and that’s what made you jealous, weren’t it? But what I didn’t tell you was that his flat is fucking fancy so I knew he’s got money – and I didn’t even fuck him, and the next day I see him again after you’re gone and then the next day again and then I’m seeing him every day like we’re teenagers. I was saying to her, I was saying it was overwhelming, but it was something that he needed and that I needed, and it felt like very child-like, it was just nice, you know? Until there’s a night when he has to go to work, so I come back and you’re still gone, and then here’s this car key in our kitchen, and I’m thinking this can’t be him, but who else’s it going to be? So I just go into the street and Sandra’s behind me and I press the car-key button and this fucking white beauty flashes at us across the road. And it’s got petrol! And there’s this phone inside with a text from him saying ‘happy new year’, even though it’s autumn. Like, what the fuck?’

‘He sounds like a serial killer,’ I said. ‘What does he expect in return?’

‘Don’t you get bored being this cynical? It’s a gift. It’s love. He knows we’re stuck in a hostel – I told him I got a son, and I gave you a fucking five-star review sweetheart, even though you’re a little shit – and he speaks fancier than you and he’s attracted to me, so fuck you. Life is about to happen to us!’

‘Why do you keep saying that? You sound like a televangelist.’

Sunlight flashed from the Thames as we crossed it. Ahead of us rose the advert sculpture of Wandsworth Bridge roundabout – a model atom with electron paths of white steel and four billboards for a nucleus – a microcosm of all London now, perhaps – the nucleus sold for the sign.

‘So fucking what?’ she said. ‘It’s my motto now. And it’s true. You’re torturing me with this negativity! It’s not civilised!’

I imagined swerving into an oncoming car so that it crashed into Dawn’s door. Our soundtrack climaxed in a fanfare. She wasn’t wearing a seatbelt.

‘Everyone knows civilisation comes from torture,’ I said, with the sun still in my eyes. ‘Millions of bodies maimed and broken. Cruelty is the agent of progress. Perhaps it didn’t need to be, but it was. Think of all the different kinds of labour, in war, in slavery, in revolution – in industry and agriculture – over the last three hundred years, or the last three thousand years, it doesn’t matter – from the mines of the bronze age to the skyscrapers now – temples, railways, harvests, factories – they were all worked on by bodies under torture, minds reduced to screams… Just so a few men, in comfort, could speak about iambic pentameter and the speed of light.’

‘Where’d that come from?’ she laughed, swigging from the bottle.

The traffic lights ahead went red. Thoughtlessly, I pressed on the accelerator. The sound of a flag flapped around my ears, as the wind sped up – and my muscles turned to gold – and then a trumpet blast, a punch – and the car was shunted sideways.

I snapped into my seatbelt, as metal hands clapped once beside me. There was a wail. But I drove on – into the wind, uphill, as the city split open and a sea spilled out of me – and in the mirror, the car that had hit us continued behind us, a little blackened – and the trumpets changed.

The sky was the hull of a ship – a whaler with sails of living lions – and as the lions roared, gems fell from their mouths, mingling with flowers – carnations and carbuncles – in a wave of red that washed over the car.

Dawn, dazed, lifted the bottle to her lips, and drank – though most of the wine had spilled out over her. Then she turned to me, slowly, in wonder – with a mask of blood on the far half of her head. I wanted to scream out of the window, ‘Nobody’s strong enough to be loved by me!’ But I laughed instead.

For a second, London seemed an unknown city – and I braked with my eyes closed, offering myself to the sun.

Dawn drank again from the bottle, still stiff with shock. The blood dribbled like sweat from her hairline, where it had hit the edge of the door – and I looked at it like it was mine, more than my own blood was mine – or rather, I looked at her wound like it was mine in the same way that the wounds on my back were hers.

‘What’s happening?’ she whispered.

‘We’re going to our new house,’ I said.

‘Oi, how d’you guess that?’ she asked, disorientated, dabbing at her cut in disbelief.

‘You just told me,’ I said.

‘Oh, yeah, ok yeah – he’s got us somewhere to live, Kimber’s got us… it’s not a council flat, but we knew that dream weren’t coming true, sweetheart, this is as good as it’s going to get, it’s…’ She was speaking too quickly to keep up with herself. ‘It’s fucking good – we just need a… a five hundred pound deposit – and that’s insanely small, you got to admit, he’s in love with me – and then the contract’s legit, then, then, then that shows the contract’s legit.’

‘So we’re putting our entire lives in the hands of some guy you met a week ago?’

‘You want to be in a fucking homeless hostel forever?’ she shouted, at last reacting to the crash with anger. ‘It’s been two years, Leander! I can’t live like that anymore – and you weren’t even living.’

‘I could have found a —’

‘We’ve been fucking trying! You found us fuck all. Being pretty made you lazy, I told you – you’re stuck, and I don’t want you fucking stuck. I love you, alright?’ She was anxiously smearing her own blood across her face. ‘I done us a good thing, sweetheart, admit it – I got us out that fucking misery nest. Don’t try and get outraged at me, it’s too late, I signed the contract. It’s done.’

‘Ok, ok,’ I smiled, and drove on. ‘Ok. I can pay the deposit. I’ll give you the five hundred.’

‘Baby!’ Nearly weeping, she kissed me on the cheek, forcing an arm behind my back to wrap me in a hug, pressing her bleeding head into mine – aroused by the intensity of our shared shock. ‘Fuck,’ she said, as she shrank back in her seat. ‘Fuck… That cunt drove into us.’

‘He wasn’t looking,’ I said, knowing she hadn’t seen the traffic lights change.

She peered out of the open window, dripping blood onto her door. ‘He dented us!’ she shrieked. ‘That fucking cunt. My new fucking car. Fuck! Your fucking squirrel – I told you that was an omen. I fucking told you. Cunt!’ She fell back. ‘But still it didn’t get us good enough, did it? We’re still alive. Didn’t fucking work.’ She cackled. ‘Actually can I have six hundred pound please? For dinner as well.’

She reached distractedly into my tracksuit pocket and took out the stack. ‘All fifties! I love it.’ She counted. ‘This is only five hundred though? You said eight hundred.’

‘Wait.’ I took my right hand off the wheel and dug into my pocket, careful to take out only six more notes. ‘You can’t have all of it.’

‘Ok babe,’ she said, counting it and returning me four fifties, ‘I’m going to cook us a banquet, alright? You made money, I got us a place to live. We’re back on track! But I knew you’d try and sulk so I had to arrange it while you was away, didn’t I? And I could only tell you while you was busy driving for me, otherwise you might of got too angry and run off. I can be cunning when I need to be.’ She spoke with a nervous rapidity, like she was trying to deny the severity of her own injury – or perhaps because she was too drunk to understand it. ‘I know how to cook, you know – and turn down that road – yeah that one,’ she pointed. ‘And head to the right.’

‘Wait, where are you driving me to?’ I asked, as if I’d only just realised what she was doing.

‘You’re the one driving,’ she said innocently. ‘And not very fucking well.’

‘Didn’t Francis move around here?’ I stopped the car.

We’d reached the tip of Wandsworth Common. Beside us, the outlines of a football pitch had been painted white onto the grass – and this paint had been churned up by schoolchildren in the mud – into a Morse code that had stiffened overnight.

‘You fucking know he did,’ she slurred. ‘And you know you’re being an evil little shit to him. He came badgering me banging down our door when I was packing us up – so I had to tell him where we was going, so he’s going to find you anyway. And he’s got my number now and he’s been ringing me every fifteen fucking minutes even though he hates me – and I know he’s ringing you and you’re ignoring him. So fucking sort it out. I know you think you can hide your feelings from me but you can’t. So you’re going round his house and that’s that.’

She was wrong, of course, but I wanted her to believe that she knew what desires I was repressing. I had assumed that by ignoring Francis’ calls, he would contact her, since he knew I lived with her – and that she, in her sympathy for us both, would force me to see him. What I hadn’t predicted was that she would make me drive to his home, while gloating about her powers of manipulation. I turned to the window to hide my smile, sighed in cartoon exasperation, and drove on. Across my chest, a new welt grew from where the seatbelt had cut into me in the crash – a counterpoint to the lashes along my back.

‘Good boy!’ she said. ‘I’ll text you our new address. And get there for dinner, ok, cos I’m going all out. I’m going to go Kimber’s first and I’ll get us some of his painkilling, which is better than —’

‘What, is Gibbon a heroin dealer?’

‘Fuck off, his name is Kimber – who are you, trying to mock someone’s name?’

‘How dare you? There’s a long history of heroes named Leander.’

‘Shut up, you’re not a hero. Kimber’s a hero. And no, he’s not a dealer, or he’s not just a dealer. Either way, whatever, he has a link. And it’s good. Actually, can I have another twenty?’

‘No, I’ve only got fifties.’

‘Leander, please! Please. We’re here now anyway. Come on, I’m your fairy fucking godmother.’

I parked, gave her another fifty, mock-begrudgingly, and got out. Squirrel blood scarred the bonnet in four lines like giant claw-marks. Dawn staggered round to my side, unbalanced by concussion – and hugged me.

‘Be brave for mummy, alright? Ah, is this hurting your bruises? I’m sorry,’ she said, without much sorrow in her voice. ‘Fuck that man and his belt, babe – we’ll fix that later, alright? I’ll get us the heroin, just don’t lie down on it, yeah?’

‘You too,’ I smiled, touching the wound on her forehead with my thumb. ‘We’re matching almost.’

‘I know, we’re a right pair – but yours weren’t an accident and you don’t deserve nothing like that – so you go in there and you go be nice to that boy waiting for you – cos you can’t fucking throw it away like I did just cos you think you don’t deserve love. I’ll see you later, alright – don’t keep my banquet waiting.’

I withdrew from her embrace with my eyes to the ground. Dawn laughed at what she saw as a rare apprehensiveness on my part. Really, I was excited, and not for the reasons she supposed. She didn’t know that Francis still had a girlfriend – a girlfriend I’d been systematically goading towards breakdown.

‘Love you!’ she yelled, embarrassingly loudly, and tottered to the car, combing a hand back through bloodied hair.

Drunkenly she drove away, into the end of the afternoon. The crash had made me bold, and my new scars felt like an exoskeleton – a defence against any next attacker. So, boldly, I shivered towards Francis’ doorstep, hoping I was entering a fight.

3.

Francis opened his door after two rings, topless and barefoot in black ripped jeans. A muscular model, used to being adored, he was attracted to me because only I could make him feel nervous, although he seemed now to be in a state more heightened than that. The delay suggested he’d been distracted – and his girlfriend’s voice from beyond the hall confirmed it.

‘That’s him, isn’t it?’ she shouted.

He smirked at me, squinting, his thick lips slightly parted into a pout. This was his default expression – cocky and confrontational – like he’d just told me to undress and earn his attention. But I wore my default expression too – the wounded lost boy, who had suffered too much to be affected by anyone’s charms. He half-leaned in for a kiss, but decided against it, with his girlfriend so close – and instead tugged me inside.

‘Make yourself at home,’ he said with mock-courtesy.

Eva appeared in the kitchen doorway. Her face was painted white, with false lashes and thinned violet lips beneath hair stacked in rolls, some of which had dislodged. Tears had leaked mascara around her eyes. She wore stilettoes and a stiff silk kimono, and, on her fingers, talons dangled chains that swayed as she clawed the air.

‘Don’t fucking come near me, you’re evil!’ she shouted, as we came nearer.

She backed into the kitchen. Francis’ clasp on my upper arm tightened, and his close breath on my neck transferred his arousal to me.

‘She got here straight from set,’ he said.

‘Yes I came from set!’ she shouted. ‘Don’t talk like I’m not here.’

‘And what character are you playing now?’ I asked.

‘Don’t talk to me,’ she spat, edging round the kitchen island. ‘You’re fucking evil. You were playing me yesterday. But you left your account on.’

Francis released me, confused by this statement. I leaned into the fridge, thinking of thickets of fly-eating flowers – snapping at her words and swallowing them until they dissolved. Her words were not really her own, anyway, they were mine – or rather, they were the words I’d hoped she’d say, in this play that she was performing for us – which I’d designed.

‘You left your account on – and I’ve read every message you’ve sent to each other.’

‘What’s she saying?’ Francis asked.

‘You’re so fucked up!’ she shouted. ‘I knew you were cheating and you knew I wasn’t going to let that go, so you sent me Leander, didn’t you? And I thought here’s my consolation prize, a bit of relief…’

She tore open a drawer and threw a fork at my head. I ducked.

‘You let me be the sad drunk girl,’ she shouted at me, ‘looking for a rebound fuck, crying about my cheating boyfriend. You made yourself available, all innocent, making no moves, letting me do the drinking, letting me do the talking. You let me wonder what girl he was cheating on me with. But it was you!’

‘You never asked,’ I said.

She screamed in frustration.

‘What’s she saying?’ Francis asked again, drooping in horror into the countertop. ‘You fucked her?’

‘Don’t pull that shit with me!’ she shouted. ‘Don’t pretend anymore – I can’t deal with more pretending. You’re a faggot and I’m a fucking joke. You wanted to humiliate me. And you did! You probably told him to leave his account on!’

I smiled at the accuracy of her analysis, which was only incorrect in presuming Francis’ complicity in my scheme.

‘You’re being ridiculous,’ I said. ‘Nobody is that scheming. You wanted to fuck me, and I’m not exclusive, so why would I tell you about me and Francis? Why would I leave my account on on purpose?’

Francis deflated in shock. I slid to his side. Eva was operating within a tedious genre, but her costume suggested other worlds – and I imagined ancient aristocrats, gathered on a mountain during some solstice – princesses in robes so heavy they could barely lift their legs, and princes weeping openly – as an astronomer-priest, interpreting the arrangement of the stars above them – commanded them to impale themselves on their own swords.

‘I’m just telling her what she needs to hear to get rid of her,’ I whispered.

‘But why did you…?’

‘This is the only way she was going to give up.’

He tried to smile like he understood, like he was playing this game on the same level as me – but his hands were trembling.

‘You’re fucking disgusting!’ she shouted. ‘You just wanted to… you just wanted to break me, didn’t you? And it – it worked!’

‘You’re being ridiculous,’ I said. ‘You chose to have sex with me.’

‘I know I fucking chose, but it wasn’t an informed choice! You’re evil. You’re… Am I that bad of a judge of character that I don’t… Look at me! When I found out,’ she turned back to Francis and started to cry. ‘I felt physically sick, because I still love you. I love you!’

I backed away from Francis to make him feel more exposed to Eva’s theatrics. Her voice had taken on a murky blue tone – and I thought of sea foam, lit by the kind of moon I’d only seen onscreen.

‘I’m not going to pretend,’ she said. ‘When you moved into this house, and… and I’m not putting all the blame on you, but when I asked if there was room for me and you said of course there was, I thought… I didn’t renew the contract on my flat – and I’m being thrown out next week. I’m going to be homeless and it’s because of… it’s because of me. It’s because, even when I knew you were cheating, part of me still thought you wanted to live with me and I was going to move in here… and… and now I have to find somewhere else and that’s so fucking stressful. Don’t you… Is this just funny to you?’

‘Eva,’ Francis said softly, moved by her anguish more than her anger. ‘This is – you’re over-acting.’

‘Yeah and I’m good at it! I’m good at it. And so are you. But somehow I’m the one who feels shit, I feel guilty, and why should I feel like this, why do you get to be happy and I don’t? Why do you —’

‘Eva, this ain’t how you talk,’ he said, exasperated by how effectively she was making him pity her. ‘You’re being like… a shit TV show.’

‘I’m a fucking amazing TV show. And you’re a faggot and I’m a fucking side-piece.’

‘I didn’t even know what —’

‘Oh you didn’t know?’ she shouted. ‘You didn’t know you were gay until… what? Until just now? I didn’t fucking know! And at the same time I’m scared, I’m scared you’ll never talk to me again – and I have this pattern of falling back to you even when you’ve fucked me over and I just… it’s pathetic! I know what I’m doing means we’ll never speak again, and that hurts me, because you made me happy. I loved you, even though you’re a bad person, I still love you, but I can’t keep wondering and worrying about what I am to you anymore!’

She laughed suddenly, as though enjoying her own B-movie performance – and then breathed in and reined her expression back to despair. I glimpsed my reflection in the mirror behind her and saw that pain had made me pallid. My body felt like a zoo in revolt – its animals twisting open their cages to rampage through the halls – killing the keepers, trying to find the main doors – but the main doors could never be unlocked – and so they were trapped still, under the vast dome of paraffin that I wore as my skin – and I remained silent. She turned to me.

‘And I liked you, Leander. I thought you were on my side, I thought you could get through to him – but you’ve already got through to him, further than me, and you have no remorse, no sympathy, nothing, you’re both just standing there laughing at me, and for some reason I’m sorry. I’m fucking sorry I wasted a year on you, I’m fucking sorry that you were the only thing that made me happy, that when my friends said “Oh, you’re glowing” that it was you, and all the time you were just thinking about fucking other men. Every morning I woke up waiting to hear from you and every night I went to bed thinking about you. And it was a lie.’

‘No it weren’t,’ Francis said. ‘This ain’t you.’

‘Don’t fucking do that, don’t try to dismiss me. You saying this isn’t me?’

She fumbled desperately in the drawer before her for a knife.

‘You saying this isn’t real?’ she shouted, and stabbed the knife into her wrist, screeching more in fury than in pain.

I laughed. Francis leapt towards her.

‘Eva, Eva! You’re being ridiculous.’

‘Get the fuck away from me!’ she screamed, slicing the air.

She threw the knife at his feet, flecking us with blood. He jumped back, the muscles of his torso rippling leanly with adrenaline. She ran down the corridor, pulled open the door with a final pantomime screech, and stumbled out into the evening – leaving the wind to slam it shut.

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