Being by Kevin Brooks Read Free Book Online Page A

against the wall, and when I was done I felt weightless and empty and hungry. My urine smelled bad. I smelled bad. Sour and sulphurous, like the smell of someone else.
    I washed my hands and looked at myself in the mirror above the sink. The glass was cracked and dull, and myreflection was smeared and unfamiliar. I said hello to myself.
    ‘Hello, Robert.’
    It was good and bad to be alone again.
    I rubbed a finger of hot water into my gums and over my teeth, then leaned over and retched into the sink. Nothing came up but some thin spitty stuff that stuck to my lips in shiny strings. I wiped it off with the back of my hand and rinsed my mouth from the tap. The water tasted metallic. I belched, then my stomach heaved and I threw up.
    I wanted to cry then. I was so scared, so sick, so confused… so everything. It was too much, all of it, too much to think about… I didn’t want to think about anything. I just wanted to cry, uncontrollably, like a lost child sobbing for its mother… but I couldn’t.
    I can’t.
    I’ve never been able to cry. Whenever I feel like crying, something happens to me – a door closes, the lights go off, I disappear.
    I took the bottle of water from my rucksack and rinsed out my mouth again and again – rinse and spit, rinse and spit, rinse and spit – until all I could taste was the clean tang of water. I looked at myself in the mirror again. What I saw was just a face – pale, tired, confused – but still just a face. I sniffed, spat a final gob into the sink, then I began to undress.
    It didn’t feel good, standing naked in that stinking little rattle-box… naked and cold and sick. It seemed dirtyand wrong, and it made me feel as if I didn’t know myself any more.
    I gazed down at my belly.
    It didn’t look too bad – a crooked black gash, a reddened slash. Pink. Some white. Bruise-brown and dirt-yellow. A slight swelling. It was healing fast… I was healing fast.
    Most of my early childhood is hazy. The memories are there, but they don’t mean anything to me. Unknown people and unknown places. Faces, voices. Houses, Homes. Hard wooden chairs, squeaky floors, the smell of disinfectant. None of it means anything.
    But I do remember things.
    I remember a voice, from a long time ago. A woman’s voice.
    ‘Oh, he’s a fast healer, that one,’ I remember her saying. ‘He’s a fast healer, all right…’
    I don’t remember who she was, or what she was to me.
    But she was right. I am a fast healer. Cuts, scrapes, bruises… I’ve always healed quickly. Quickly and cleanly.
    I dressed in the clothes I’d got from Sainsbury’s – underwear, trousers, shirt, jacket, shoes – then I transferred the contents of Ryan’s jacket to my new jacket and stuffed the old clothes into the rucksack.
    A final look in the mirror, then I flushed the toilet and left.
    As the train rattled and hummed through the darkness, I gazed through the window and tried to think about things – what was I doing? where was I going? what the hell wasgoing on? – but I just couldn’t do it. It was all too big. Too confusing. Too much to think about. And I was so tired. I just wanted to close my eyes and drift away… just for a moment…
    I closed my eyes.
    I didn’t know where I was when I woke up. The train had stopped at a station and now it was just sitting there – humming and murmuring, hissing and moaning, not going anywhere. I looked out at the platform. There weren’t many people around. No station staff. No uniforms. No men in suits. I looked around for a station sign, but I couldn’t see one.
    The train groaned for a moment, something hissed… and then it went quiet again.
    I sat there for a minute or two, listening to the ticking silence, then I got up, walked down the aisle and got off the train.
    As I left the station and started walking, I still didn’t know where I was. I think it was probably Romford or Ilford, somewhere like that. One of those ford places. Somewhere near London, but