Free The Long Fall by Julia Crouch

me to keep me going, but I didn’t fancy getting caught at customs. Poor old Mum was so amazed that I could stay up all night doing my A Level revision! And it helped me get through those awful, boring Ripon parties with the vomiting boys and the crying girls.
    Stop writing about that now, Em! All that life is dead to you. You’ve only got your brilliant future to look forward to.
    You have to remember that. ALL the bad stuff is in the past: Dull Ripon, The French Shit, all that. Don’t dwell.
    Back to the good stuff: Ena!!!
    She’s told me not to buy Marlboro when I run out of papers, because they’re too expensive. What I need to get is Karelia, which are twenty drachs a packet: crazy cheap. She gave me one of hers and it was rough, like smoking sandpaper, but I could get used to it, I suppose.
    After our third Amstel, she held out her hand and slipped me four little pills. Valium, she said. Mixed with the alcohol ‘it really kicks the buzz up’.
    Sounded good to me.
    So, here it is for the record: If you drink three bottles of Amstel, take four Valium, then chase it down with another bottle, then yes, your buzz is kicked. It’s like being really, really stoned – the silly part of being drunk is heightened, but you also feel chilled and slowed down somehow. Like you just don’t care.
    (You have to get it right, though, Ena says. A little too much of either pills or booze and you end up dead.)
    Not caring is good for me right now. It’s also a pretty effective method of pain control. My bruises and cuts and the dull ache between my legs are but whispers of their former selves.
    Me and Ena stayed at the bar talking on and on until it closed. She’s a reader too, and we riffed on Hermann Hesse and Emily Brontë and D.H. Lawrence. I can’t remember what, really. I was pretty wrecked by the time we left.
    A creepy man came up to us and said, ‘Hello, baby,’ to Ena. She just told him to fuck right off out of her face. I’m going to do that next time!
    Although I was tempted, I didn’t mention Marseille and The French Shit. I’m not going to shout out about how I am a victim, how I let all that happen to me. It’s not a good image to put out to someone when you first meet them. It’s too heavy. And I don’t want to keep on reliving it.
    I’m holding out great hopes for Ena. I told her about how I was searching for authenticity – for a world unspoiled by tourism and travellers and pollution. She says it’s out there, that I should go out to the islands, that I just have to keep on travelling till I find it.
    I could have kissed her, you know? As she talked, I kept looking at her mouth, which is beautiful – lopsided and funny, a little loose around the words. I wondered if perhaps I could ever fancy a girl. Boys might be out of the question now. If I think of a penis, it’s that one particular penis, the penis of horror.
    No. A boy would freak me out.
    But no one has touched me, even casually, since The French Shit. Perhaps if I got a tender touch from someone – Ena, say – then might that cancel out some of the hurt?
    I’m going to see if she’ll travel with me for a bit. I’d feel safe with her. She must be ten inches taller than me, she’s quite muscular and she doesn’t take any shit. Again, when some creep hissed at us when we were walking (or rather, staggering) back to Peta Inn, she just launched into him with a load of Australian swearing. She hasn’t got any of the qualms I have about offending people. And she lives so happily in her skin. I wish I were more like her.
    So yes, the Valium and beer has made me feel really good. Oddly, though – because I thought Valium was some sort of tranquilliser – I’m finding it difficult to sleep. So I’m making the most of it by writing this by torchlight. Ena’s out cold, though. I can hear her snoring underneath me. It’s a sweet sound, like a little snuffling pig.
    I wonder if I’m in love with her?
    She says I have to try the speed too