‘I’ll pay for the bike,’ the woman said.
‘Yes, you will.’
‘I live just here. I’ll come and see you. Is there anything else I can do now?’
I tried to say something snappy, like ‘You’ve done enough already,’ but it was too much of an effort and, anyway, she looked upset and bothered and she wasn’t defending herself like some people would have done. I looked round and she was trying to close the offending door. It took two goes to get it shut. Dario picked up my bike and Davy put an arm carefully round me and led me towards our house. Dario nodded at someone.
‘Who’s that?’ I said.
‘Nobody,’ he said. ‘How’s your head?’
I rubbed my temple cautiously. ‘Feels a bit funny.’
‘We were sitting outside on the front step,’ said Dario, ‘having a smoke and enjoying the evening, weren’t we, Davy?’
‘Right,’ said Davy. ‘And there was a crash and there you were.’
‘Bloody stupid,’ I said.
‘Can you make it? It’s just a few more yards.’
‘It’s OK,’ I said, though my legs were quaking and the door seemed to be receding rather than getting closer. Davy shouted for Miles, then Dario joined in even more loudly, and the sound echoed round my skull, making me flinch. Davy led me through the gate and Miles appeared from inside at the top of the steps. When he saw the state of me, his expression was almost comic. ‘What the hell happened?’ he said.
‘Car door,’ said Davy.
I was quickly surrounded by my housemates. Davy tried to hang the bike on the hooks on the wall in the hallway. Because it was damaged it didn’t fit properly. He took it down again and started to fiddle with it, getting oil on the front of his lovely white shirt. ‘That’s going to need some work,’ he said, with relish.
Pippa came down the stairs and said something rude to Davy about how it was me that needed checking, not the bike. She gave me a very light hug, hardly touching me. Mick looked at me impassively over the banisters from the floor above.
‘Bring her through,’ said Miles. ‘Get her downstairs.’
‘I’m fine,’ I said.
They insisted and I was half helped, half dragged down the stairs into the large kitchen-dining area where we ate and talked and spent our time when we weren’t in our own rooms. I was placed on the sofa near the double doors and Dario, Pippa and Miles sat staring at me, asking over and over how I was feeling. I was clear-headed now. The shock of the accident had settled into simple, ordinary pain. I knew it was going to hurt like hell the next morning but it would be all right. Dario took a cigarette from a pack in his pocket and lit it.
‘We should cut her clothes off,’ he said. ‘The way they do in A and E departments.’
‘In your dreams,’ I said.
‘Do you need to see a doctor?’ Miles asked.
‘I need a hot bath.’
‘About the hot part,’ said Dario. ‘There might be a problem with that.’
Chapter Two
There’s something satisfying about the aftermath of an accident in which you haven’t really been hurt. Especially when you look worse than you feel. I felt all right, but there was a lovely bruise flowering on my calf, a raw graze down my thigh, a gash on my hand, and my left cheek had an ugly scrape. My wrist was swollen. I stung and throbbed and ached, but in a masochistically pleasurable way. I kept pressing my cuts to make sure they were still bleeding. After a shallow, tepid bath, I lay on my bed in old jogging pants and a T-shirt, and assorted members of the household strayed in to ask me if I was all right and to hear yet again how it had happened. I began to feel almost proud of myself.
‘It was all in slow motion,’ I repeated for the fourth time.
Davy and Dario, the two heroic rescuers, were looking down at me. Dario lit another cigarette, except it wasn’t a cigarette, and a familiar illegal smell drifted across my room.
‘You must have fallen in a really natural way,’ said Davy. ‘That’s why you didn’t get seriously injured. It’s pretty impressive. It’s the way they train paratroopers. But you did it naturally.’
‘It wasn’t in my control,’ I said.
Dario took a huge drag on his spliff. ‘Or like a really, really drunk person,’ he said. ‘When really drunk people fall over, they don’t get injured because their body’s so relaxed.’
‘Let’s have a look,’ said Mick, sitting on the edge of the bed.
I might have made a caustic remark if someone else had said that, but with Mick you don’t really make caustic remarks. He’s a man of few words. It’s as if it takes a painful effort for him to speak, and when he does the rest of us generally fall silent. I wanted to ask why he was more qualified than anyone else to assess the damage, but I knew he would simply shrug.
‘Does this hurt?’ he asked, as I flinched. ‘Or this?’ He pressed a hand against my ribs, then lifted each leg, one after the other, feeling along my calves over thick daubs of oil that no amount of scrubbing with warm soapy water had removed. ‘Nothing broken,’ he said, which I knew anyway.
Pippa appeared with a small bottle of blue liquid and a handful of cotton wool.
‘Will it sting?’ I asked.
‘Not a bit,’ she said, and applied a liberal dousing of disinfectant to my cheek.
‘Shit!’ I yelled, squirming away from her. ‘Stop at once!’
‘Be brave.’
‘Why?’
‘Because, because,’ she said mysteriously, slapping another sodden wad of cotton wool on to my thigh.
‘Have a drag on this,’ said Dario, offering me his spliff. ‘It’s good for pain and nausea.’
‘I’ll pass,’ I said.
‘Are you all right for the meal?’ said Pippa.
‘I’m starving.’
‘Owen’s bringing it on the way back from his studio.’
He arrived with an Indian takeaway in brown-paper carrier-bags and put them on the table, then looked up and saw me at the head, in a large chair, propped up with pillows. He frowned. ‘You get into a fight?’
‘With a car door.’
‘Those are some bruises,’ he said.
‘I know.’
‘They’ll be worse tomorrow.’
‘You should have seen her,’ said Davy, sitting beside me. He looked more shocked than I was. ‘She flew through the air.’
‘Like a human cannonball,’ said Dario, taking the chair on the other side.
‘Does it hurt?’
‘Not so much.’
‘Of course it fucking hurts,’ said Pippa. ‘Look at her.’
‘No. Don’t look at me. My nose is twice its usual size. How much do we owe for this lot, Owen?’
‘Eight quid each.’
There was muttering as people fumbled in pockets and purses, counted out coins and demanded change. Dario pulled a roll of notes out of his pocket, peeled off a twenty and tossed it to Owen. ‘Keep the change,’ he said. ‘I probably owe you anyway.’
‘Did you win the lottery?’ said Owen, with an expression of distrust.
Dario looked shifty. ‘Someone owed me,’ he said.
Everyone sat round the kitchen table and eased off the foil lids, pulled tabs on beer cans, passed round chipped plates and an odd assortment of cutlery. Pippa helped herself to Dario’s spliff and took a deep drag.
‘Are lawyers allowed to do that?’ asked Miles.
‘Not in the office,’ Pippa said, and looked round the group. ‘How often does this happen? It’s us and just us.’
‘Now we are seven,’ said Dario, clinking his fork against his plate for silence, then immediately shovelled an enormous amount of rice into his mouth and chewed for several seconds while we all waited. ‘Like the Seven Dwarfs,’ he said at last.
‘There are certain things we need to discuss,’ said Miles, rather formally. ‘To start with, can I say -’
‘You’re Doc,’ said Dario.
‘What?’
‘If we’re like the Seven Dwarfs -’
‘Which we’re not.’
‘- you’re definitely Doc,’ said Dario.