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

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СКАЧАТЬ I opened the door.

      Francis kissed me twice goodbye. The evening smelt of cold wrought iron and all the leaves that had fallen were stirring. I refused to reassure him with parting words. The sky was a deceitful blue, not far from ultramarine – but it wasn’t radiant enough, or resentful enough to be the same – and ultramarine’s pallor, like mine, required a pain that the evening didn’t have.

      I knew Francis was watching me walk away as the streetlights turned me amber. There was a nearby bus that would take me to my new address, and to the pain relief I’d been promised. As I turned the corner, I took off his necklace and threw it in a bin.

5.

      I didn’t know which buzzer to ring so I rang them all. Dawn answered like she’d been waiting at the intercom.

      ‘Who’s that? Is that Leander? You’re early.’

      ‘No I’m not,’ I said.

      ‘Who is it then?’

      ‘This is Leander, but I’m not early.’

      ‘Oh shut the fuck up and get inside.’

      She buzzed me in.

      ‘Wait, what floor is it?’ I asked, but she’d already hung up.

      I climbed the stairs in darkness, listening to the suppertime clatter through the walls. My muscles felt like diseased clay in a kiln, unmoulding in defiance of the heat. A star orbited my brain. Between the banisters of the third floor, a light shone. Dawn was waiting in one of its doorways, wine bottle in hand. She’d cleaned the blood of the crash off her face, but its wound was visible still through her hair – the colour of boiling plums.

      ‘You seem… deflated,’ I said.

      ‘What a nice way to greet your mother, you cheeky shit,’ she said. ‘How about, “Oh I never seen you look so elegant, you look like an English rose!”’

      ‘I’ve never seen you look elegant…’

      ‘Oi!’ She raised her hand to slap me. ‘You can’t come in till you give me a compliment.’

      ‘Ok, you do look quite… roseate.’

      ‘I don’t know what that means, but I know it’s not a fucking compliment, you runt. You’re not getting in with that.’

      She stepped back and began closing the door.

      ‘Ok, sorry…’ I said. ‘I mean you look like a blossom of damask, twined with eglantine beneath a nightingale singing threnodies into a well.’

      ‘Better... but that didn’t end right, did it? You can do better than a well.’

      ‘Ugh… I’m hungry, please. Ok, you look like Cleopatra under opal noon-light in her roof garden, riding a glass dildo full of bees.’

      ‘Better… one more compliment and you get to enter the roof-garden,’ she opened the door wider, but kept her palm up in prohibition.

      ‘Ok, you look like an apricot-soft eclipse watched from a yacht shipping laudanum and labdanum across the Levant.’

      ‘Perfffffect – there you are my darling, come in, come in – welcome to our new home!’

      She stepped aside, unbalanced – and as I entered, she fell onto me into a hug.

      ‘What you doing strutting in like that?’ she said. ‘Hug your mother properly!’

      I put my arms around her and she rose to kiss me on the mouth. Her tongue was stale from cigarettes. I twitched away in disgust.

      ‘Are you high?’ I asked.

      ‘Don’t be stupid, I just had some of the red!’ She lifted the bottle up to my chest. ‘It’s the posh stuff. It costs twenty-five pound! Try it!’

      She fed it to me with her head turned away. I tried to drink, but it spilled over my chin – so she tried to lick it off.

      ‘Ok, thanks,’ I said, pushing her away. ‘Tastes great. I’m hungry…’

      ‘Yeah, yeah, course – let me give you the tour.’

      She ignored this second prompt for food and instead yanked me into a cramped shower room.

      ‘This is the spa,’ she said, flicking the switch beside her.

      A light strip above us hummed into a glare. Her pupils were pinpricks in the mirror. And her expression – still sharp and handsome and untrusting – had a gentleness to it that was only there when she was high, and made her look like she wanted to be told lies.

      ‘You’re high,’ I said. ‘You started without me.’

      ‘No, darling, course not.’ She turned off the light. ‘I could never start without you.’

      ‘But you got some heroin?’

      She twirled in evasion and pulled me back out into the living area.

      ‘This is the Napoleonic suite.’ She gestured to a double bed, a dining table, and our two suitcases between them.

      ‘You can sleep with me if you want, but I thought you’d prefer your own wing. No need to share anymore, we’re living the high life!’ She pulled me towards a door beside the bed and opened it onto a tiny room with a single floor mattress and a lamp without a shade.

      ‘I actually love it,’ I said.

      ‘I knew you would, darling, you love that depressing garret shit. You can finally live your dream of being a consumptive Russian aristocrat in an attic. Isn’t that what you said? It’s almost an omelette. No – what’s worse than an omelette?’

      ‘Nothing, I hate omelettes. Unless you mean oubliette?’

      ‘Exactly sweetheart, it’s the perfect oubliette for you. I knew you’d love it. I done right didn’t I? I sorted us out! Just you and me, fucking finally… But let me finish the grand tour,’ she prodded me towards a small square kitchen through an arch beside the dining table. ‘And so – here is the Michelin-starred restaurant.’

      ‘And have you managed to create any Michelin-starred food?’

      ‘Not yet, we only just fucking moved in!’

      ‘But you promised me a banquet.’

      ‘Oh I know I did, didn’t I, darling, but there’s never enough time. Sorry sweetheart, I’ll make it another night.’

      ‘That’s not like you. You were so keen on proving your culinary abilities earlier.’

      ‘I was just showing off,’ she said, with mixture of sarcasm and self-pity. ‘I wanted you to be impressed. I was making it up! Can’t we focus СКАЧАТЬ