Read Online The Swan Song of Doctor Malloy by Robert Power - Free Book Online

leaving them both distressed and depressed. Trixie’s mother has two talents: one, for taking off her clothes; the other, for finding the most awful, destructive and psychopathic men. The worst of an appalling bunch was Vince, a bouncer at a club in Upminster. One night, after breaking her mother’s jaw, he attempted to rape Trixie. It was only her screams, a neighbour’s call to the police and bangs on the wall that saved her. Vince fled, took a boat back to the Isle of Wight, and was never heard of or seen again.
    Lottie marvels at the tales Trixie tells. Of exotic strip clubs, dramatic escapes from disaster, life on the edge. It all sounds so vibrant, alive, even glamorous. This night Lottie has given up on her flute practice. Somehow it has failed to take her out of herself and the pain and loneliness she feels, feelings she works so hard to hide from her parents. Trixie is talking about her mother needing another operation on her cheekbone. There is something about the timbre of her voice, the shadows on the ceiling of the cars passing in the street, the sound they make as they whoosh by. Lottie looks around at the mauve walls of this empty space and feels hollow and collapsed. On the record player Joy Division tells the girls ‘love, love will tear us apart again’. Lottie feels that if she were not sitting down she would fall over, if she had no clothes on she would explode, if she had a gun in her hand she would fire it.
    â€˜Trix …’ she manages to say, slumping onto her side.
    â€˜What is it, Lottie? What’s wrong?’
    â€˜I don’t know,’ says Lottie, lying on the floor. ‘Something just came over me.’ And with that she sighs and groans and then breaks into sobs that are deep and real and immense.
    â€˜My mum, my dad,’ she cries. ‘Just one of them. One of them, please God. I just want one of them to put me first. Dad’s been at this crazy treatment centre. He says he’s alright. But what is he? A middle-aged alcoholic? A junkie?’ she sobs. ‘And my mum cares more about Christine the dyke and her psycho kids than she does about me. I just want to be put first. That’s all.’
    â€˜It’s alright,’ says Trixie, shuffling closer and holding her friend in her lap. ‘I know, I know. It hurts. Cry, baby, just let it out.’
    Lottie rubs her eyes. She sits up and moves away from her friend.
    â€˜I can’t,’ she says, smoothing down her hair, sniffling the last tear back down her throat. ‘I don’t know how to.’
    Except for the chalky white face powder, Trixie always wears black. Her hair, her lips, her toenails and fingernails, her jewellery, everything is black. As Lottie stifles the pain, chokes back the tears, Trixie rolls up her sleeve and reveals a series of small white scars, like railway sleepers running the length of her arm. Each cut is raised from her skin, whiter still than her milky white complexion. The girls look at each other. Nothing needs to be explained.
    â€˜It feels so good,’ confides Trixie, stroking her friend’s hair. ‘It’s a way of crying. To let all the pain seep out. Like the air out of a balloon.’
    Lottie is not shocked. Nothing surprises her. She’s already seen and heard too much from her parents. She thinks about so many things when she is alone. So when Trixie opens her handbag and pulls out a small black velvet pouch, Lottie is simply curious. Lovingly, Trixie takes each object out of the pouch, meticulously placing them on the purple satin material of Lottie’s bedspread: alcohol swabs, a small bottle of iodine, and finally, a delicate china figurine. It’s a mermaid. Trixie picks it up and shows Lottie the tail. It has been broken off to a sharp point.
    â€˜This was mine when I was a baby,’ says Trixie, rubbing one of the alcohol swabs on a space between two scars on her forearm. ‘My gran, my dad’s mum,