Moving like a shadow, I take another breath and give a little knock on the door to let her know I am there. I feel guilt. Like you might have just accidently kidnapped a person kind of guilt. I shake it off and unlatch the door. I put the torch of my phone on and light up the shed.
‘I’m back,’ I whisper. I can smell the alcohol on my breath as I look down and see she’s asleep on the floor.
It’s the only way I can tell if Mum’s awake or not: if she doesn’t call my name when she hears the latch, she’s asleep. I don’t dare get too close in case I wake her; I gently tiptoe past – I can see her worn, expired wedding ring, it somehow still seems to sparkle, even after all these years, as though it is punishing her. Reminding her of what she has lost. Or maybe she is secretly taking care of it. I don’t know why she still wears that stupid bloody thing.
The TV is nattering away. I turn round to the girl and usher her to follow me. She freezes when she sees the TV. Her eyes ping-pong about, dilating and thinking little ideas. She looks to me as if to say Are you NOT seeing this? Weird.
Before I know it, I’m holding her small hand and squeezing it and together, somehow, in my drunkenness and her drowsy newness, we make it upstairs and into my room.
‘Phew.’ I sigh with relief and turn my lamp on. My room. Simple. A single bed. White walls. A small TV. A few books and DVDs. A laptop. A chest of drawers, some weights that I never use and a football. That’s about it. It looks depressing, until I see her inside it. Suddenly it feels as though she was meant to be here, made for my room. It feels so weird to have this … girl in my house … And now … Her eyes. Wow. They are … splashing. I shake my head and rub my eyes. ‘Sorry,’ I whisper. ‘We have to whisper.’
She laughs. ‘Why do you always say sorry so much?’
‘Oh, sorry, do I? I mean – sorry.’ And then we both laugh again. ‘I was about to say sorry for leaving you. But I’ll wait until later. I’ll try spreading them out a bit more.’
‘I didn’t notice you were gone for so long. I fell asleep. I was so tired. And that cake was so good. But it gave me a bit of bang in my head.’
‘A bang in the – ha ha. That will be the sugar. It was pretty sweet.’
‘I don’t know what that is.’
‘Sug— You don’t know what sugar is?’ I say like a pisshead. I slur on my words a bit. Fix up, Ror.
‘No. But I liked it. And I want more.’ She says that in a dead serious tone.
‘I’m sure I can get you more. Hold on.’
Trying not to rattle about in the kitchen and wake Mum, I scoop up what I can: crackers, cheese, jam, bread. An apple, bit brown but OK. Butter. Crisps. Chocolate. A bottle of water. And another big slice of cake. I haul the bundle upstairs in my arms.
‘What’s all this?’ She begins rustling through the night picnic. I don’t tell her to be quiet because I don’t want her to be. Her voice makes everything OK. She reaches for the butter first, unwrapping it from its shiny gold-foil paper like treasure. I go to pass her a cracker but she is licking it off the knife on its own. Her eyes roll to the back of her head as though she is having a fit, but this seems to just be her general reaction to food. I am stunned by her and forget to speak for a second.
‘No, don’t eat butter on its own!’ I say, trying to give her a cracker.
‘Why? This is the best thing I’ve ever eaten!’
‘Better than the cake? There’s more cake here.’
‘But this butter is so good.’
‘Really? OK. Sorry, we don’t have much, it’s all I could f—’ Agh! ‘I said sorry again, didn’t I?’
‘Yeah.’ She picks up the whole block of butter and bites into the wall of it. Chewing and squashing the yellow block with her tongue; it smushes out of her teeth. She grins a dirty smile. ‘I’m Lorali.’
‘You’re what?’ I slice up the apple.
‘Lorali. That’s what they call me.’ Oh. I stop and take her in. Her freckles. Her eyelashes. Her cheekbones, her tongue melting the butter down, working it to smooth liquid.
‘Lorali? Your name is Lorali?’ On my tongue, when I say it, it feels like sherbet is dissolving into every hole. That is just such a fit name. Lorali. Lorali. I am a bit in love. A bit in love with this weird girl wearing my clothes, stuffing butter into her mouth off a knife. ‘It’s a really nice name.’
‘Thank you. It’s water?’ She is pointing at the bottle.
‘Nah, it’s vodka …’ I joke. A joke that goes down like an old lady on an icy step. ‘Yeah. Do you want some?’
‘I think so. Is that OK?’
‘Yes, of course. It’s for you.’ I smile and hand Lorali the bottle.
She drinks and drinks and drinks and drinks and drinks and drinks and drinks. I mean, I have never in my life seen anybody drink like this before. She doesn’t even look pained or breathless; the drinking just goes on and on until the whole bottle is sunk. I need to take her to a house party – she would floor the boys.
‘Thanks.’ She wipes her mouth. ‘It’s not salty. It’s like spring water, river water.’
I try not to stare. What a thing to say. But she is going to need a wee after that. I hadn’t even thought. ‘Shall I show you where the bathroom is?’
‘Sure.’ She gets up to follow me.
‘We have to be quiet,’ I whisper.
‘OK,’ she whispers back, following me out onto the landing.
She looks confused when I show her the bathroom.
‘You OK?’
‘What is this bathroom?’
‘Well, I know it’s not all posh and whatnot, but feel free to use whatever you want. Do you want a shower or –’
Her attention span is short. Already distracted she begins looking at the products lined up by the bath, the shampoos and conditioners and bubble baths – opening them and touching the liquids and smelling the perfumed scents, reacting dramatically to each one. Lavender. Coconut. Verbena. I watch her open a tube of face wash and put it to her tongue.
‘No!’ I say. ‘That’s for washing … your face. Not for eating.’
‘It smells like kelp.’ She looks worried; I take the tube from her and read the back.
‘That’s because it’s made from kelp.’ I don’t know much about beauty products. To be honest, I didn’t even know I knew the term beauty products. Sometimes with Lorali I feel a bit like I am talking to a teacher or one of my mum’s friends. Like I have to impress them.
‘How strange.’ She looks disgusted. She can bloody talk about strange.
Then suddenly. Out of nowhere. She wees. Right there. On the floor. Into my jeans. Onto the tiles. And then she looks up, laughs and says, ‘Oh …’ She curls her hair behind her ears and looks embarrassed.
I close my eyes to pretend this isn’t happening and reach for the bleach.
Back in my room, I lay out a new clean T-shirt and a clean pair of boxers. Dim the lamp. We are talking quietly and the warm yeasty smell on my breath from the beer is beginning to go away.
‘Do you want to change into these?’ I smooth the T-shirt out. My drunken clumsiness is wanting to be close to her. I can smell the washing powder. She looks at the clothes she is wearing and nods and begins stripping. Shit. Whoa. Whoa. Whoa.
‘OK. OK. You can do that. Do you want to go to the bathroom? Or … how about … I’ll stand here. I won’t look, I promise.’ I go to the corner of the room, against the window so I can’t see her. Elvis would have peeked but not me. And even when I see the soft folds of her body arcing and bending reflected in the window, I close my eyes because I promised I would.
She is in my bed and I am on the floor.
‘Rory?’ she asks, piercing the moment.
‘Yeah?’
‘Thank you.’
I wasn’t expecting that. I shuffle around, thinking of what to say, until I just say like an IDIOT, ‘Don’t mention it.’ I think I get away with it though.
I try to control the jittery fireworks that are shooting around my belly and ac
t normal. Even though I’m proper gassed. Gas mark 500! JurGASic Park! GASSED GASSED GASSED GASSED GASSED! THERE IS A GIRL IN MY BED! A PRETTY GIRL IN MY BED.
I click off the lamp and darkness floods the room. My eyes adjust. My heart is thudding. We soak in the darkness. I think about how maybe I managed to play it a bit cool today and I am quite pleased with myself; other than the drunkenness and nakedness, I think I did all right.
That is, until the bright green glow-in-the-dark stars stuck to my ceiling think it’s their time to show their adolescent faces. I have had them up since I was little and always wondered why I never took them down, but now I know it was for them to go ahead and ruin my life right at this moment.
But –
‘Wow,’ she says, almost breathless. ‘How beautiful.’
STARS
I have never seen stars before. I know these are not real stars because we are inside a house. And I know of houses because Opal told us. She told us about grass. And roads. And shops. It’s not all about telling. Some is about reminding. Some of the Mer remember scraps here and there but Opal knows the most. Opal taught us about animals. And religion (which is so confusing. You cannot hold religion.) And dreams. And insects. All those legs. Why does anything need so many legs? She told us about graveyards. And clouds. And nightclubs. And the cinema. But not the swimming pool. Strangely. But of all these things, the stars were the one thing I wanted to see the most. The one thing I couldn’t get my head around. Some of the others were allowed to go up. But I wasn’t. I was too precious. Too treasured. They said. When really I think I was just sheltered. They didn’t want me to know the truth.
The sky and space were too far away for me to imagine. That’s why I think Walkers have the best life. Because they are in the middle of the sea and the sky. They get a bit of both. Sail a ship. Fly an aeroplane. Deep-sea dive. Be an astronaut. They are free.
I think about the boy on the floor. Every breath he makes is even. Even and loud. Everything is loud. The air is sharp. It could stab me with its edge. But I know I am safe. Even without the security of what I had before. But my mother. What will she be doing now? She surely won’t let me slip away so easily? She will be mad and full of sadness. Inhaling herself to a sponge. And Zar. He will be tending to the gardens to busy himself. Wandering the roots of the petrified forest without me. Without his little girl shadowing his every move. Replaying what happened at my resolution. How badly it went. He will walk the whole way round the wood. Hoping to find me hiding behind a trunk as I used to. He will be searching for my colours on the walls of the trees. In the coral and caves. And they won’t be there. He will only want to explain. To say he did the best he could. It wasn’t his fault. But I had acted so fast. And it was too late. I was the first one to ever surface. They said I’d never make it. And look how I’ve made it.
THE CETUS
Now it is dark. The moon, a skinned onion, white and mighty, with reluctance I’m sure, helps to guide the Cetus through my calm.
I can’t be biased, though I can tell you that the Cetus is the most feared pirate ship in the world. A villainous, wicked ship, with its crew, the Cavities, even worse. To call your ship such a name only certifies that the pirates aboard are bloodless and nasty; that they fear nothing and have little respect for the water and all that inhabits it. Any right-minded sailor or pirate with a regard for superstition knows that just saying ‘Cetus’ on board is a terrible omen, so you can imagine the statement these women and men are making. With charcoal-black sails, masts like cindered kindling and an engine that pollutes a vile sludgy smoke into my bodies, they hum over my surface. Other than the purr of the engine, the pirates’ snorts and the vile spitting, the only other sound is the clanging knell that hangs round the neck of the mermaid skeleton roped to the mast of the ship. The brittle, dry salt-drenched bones. And not just any mermaid skeleton; this is the carcass of Netta, Lorali’s grandmother.
A BRAND-NEW DAY
I can’t keep Lorali here. Not with Mum’s behaviour, her pills and the cleaning and uptightness. Besides … I don’t know where Lorali has come from … or run from. I have to move Lorali. But where to?
Mr Harley’s shed is no good. It’s cold and he uses it too often. I’m just about to flick through the contacts list on my phone when a text comes through from Flynn.
Granddad going nuts today. Doing my head in! Am around if you are – need some company!
Flynn. Of course. His granddad owns some properties in Hastings. One is bound to be empty. It is worth a try, and a risk that I just have to take.
THE LIGHTHOUSE
I arrange to meet Flynn at his granddad’s lighthouse.
I trust Flynn. He isn’t one to ask questions. But getting Lorali to the lighthouse is taking longer than expected as she wants to stop and look at just about everything. She wants to touch the bricks of houses, lie in the grass, hold the postboxes, stroke the cars. No girl gets that hyped up over a cashpoint.
I never cry. Not even when my dad left. The last time I remember crying was once at a programme where this dude of a gorilla had to have his arm amputated. The gorilla sanctuary person was worried because even though it was the best thing to do for the gorilla’s health, gorilla life is all about survival of the fittest, about strength and being king of the jungle and all that. The keeper was worried that the amputation would make the gorilla an outcast. That the other gorillas would turn on him for his disadvantage. But they didn’t. It only made them protect him more. They carried him on their backs proudly and helped him find food and climb trees. It was proper touching. It reminded me of me, Flynn and El a bit.
I’m lucky to have them. Friends that I can trust.
Does Lorali have anybody that she can trust?
We can already hear the screeching of Iris’s violin from outside the lighthouse. It sounds like a seagull having its throat slit. The antique shop is open but you wouldn’t know it. There are no customers; there rarely are. We step inside.
‘He’s lost the plot,’ Flynn says under his breath, briefly noticing that I have a girl with me who is wearing my clothes but, as expected, asking no questions. Flynn is wired differently from me. Sometimes – no, often – Flynn’s shyness is mistaken for rudeness. Luckily his unusual behaviour makes no difference to Lorali. But there is something. Isn’t there? About her that makes her not like anybody else, something that I can’t quite make sense of. I was drunk last night but her way seemed alien to me. She was foreign. Outlandish. A species of her own.
We follow the squawks of the violin. The shop has its lights on, bringing life to every old brass lantern, freaky china doll and strange Moroccan lamp; all the silver spoons are lit up under the warm amber glow, the crumbling chipped vases and pots stacked one on top of the other like disfigured dinosaur spines. Brown crinkled books and faded damp newspapers, sleepy vintage handbags and ghostly Victorian prams. Rusty coins, necklaces, bent-back maps, stained moth-eaten Persian rugs, odd dead gloopy mysterious things in jars – and then that smell. That rank, foggy smell of oldness and dryness and forgetfulness. That warm, sweet reek that Flynn’s jumpers always smell of. Of cedar wood and cobwebs and muggy sea air. A smell I know. Lorali is fascinated by the shop and gently touches the scaled teapots, coal buckets and shields hanging from the ceiling, her eyes widening.
Iris is standing in the centre of his study in the converted lighthouse. He is by the big open window opposite where the cliff face has fallen. I can’t believe the sight of it, how it has fallen like a mound of crumbled sugar. It looks like something from Roman times.
Iris is scratching something terrible out of that violin and I want to bash it over his head. Flynn and I hold our ears and go over to him. He is a massive wreck of man. At six feet seven he stands proper tall, and is only fat around the middle, like on his tummy and back and that. He isn’t bent over either, like how some old people become. He is strong, like a stuffed bear. His hair is white like cotton wool.
‘Granddad. GRANDDAD!’ Flynn shouts to comp
ete with the violin, and pats him on the shoulder. ‘Rory’s here!’
‘Eh?’ Iris suddenly stops playing and puts his bow down. Lorali immediately bursts into applause. Has she never heard a bad violin before? My god. Iris blushes from the claps; he smiles and his cheeks redden in a glad shyness. I’ve never seen him do that before. Then he completely ignores Flynn and me, and his smile stops dead in its tracks as he looks Lorali right in the eyes, and with a straight face, his jaw wobbling, he says in a voice I haven’t heard before: ‘Your mother’s worried sick.’
THE PALACE OF QUEEN KEPPEL
There is a giant petrol-blue octopus. I can’t tell you his exact size as he is thousands of years old and very antisocial. But his head alone is bigger than any ballroom that any Walker ever danced in. Eight tentacles, each reaching for miles, trail my ocean floor in the search for the missing Princess Lorali. The suckers shoot beams of light through the water. And the lantern on his head casts distorted patterns on my bed. The search is slow but thorough, and no rock goes unturned.
Queen Keppel’s palace, deep in my blue, is a tall stone castle. Built from sandstone but not that chalky yellow colour – it is a coral blush rose and carved in the most fascinating natural grooves and lines in the walls from my waves, fossilising my movement. The palace has gill slits in the walls, and is constantly breathing, circulating fresh water in and out. The windows are gaping mouths and the roof is a mosaic of broken shell, fallen glass and chipped odd ends of worn plastic that shine like scales, spitting speckled light everywhere.
Lorali Page 6
