Carnivore: The most controversial debut literary thriller of 2017. Jonathan Lyon
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.
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.’