by S. K. Perry
We sit together sipping our drinks and I want to tell him I feel like I’m spinning, that I’m struggling to be on my own, and sometimes the only time I feel anything at all is when I’m burning. Instead I ask how his fish and chips were, with Gabriella on Christmas Day.
‘Tricky,’ he says. ‘I don’t know that it ever gets easier. Just different, maybe. I’ll be glad to have everyone back from the holidays. Did you get my present?’
I look away because I’d forgotten about his little pile of buttons.
‘Ah,’ he says. ‘You didn’t believe in me.’
‘I’m sorry Frank; I just didn’t know what to think about it –’
‘Did you throw it away?’ he asks.
‘I threw it out of the window.’
I’m embarrassed and a bit ashamed, but Frank bursts out laughing.
‘But that’s perfect! Light and airy, I said. Out of the window is as light and airy as it gets.’ He smiles at me. ‘You shouldn’t keep magic inside, anyway. Try your pocket.’
I put my hand into my pocket and find the buttons inside. I pull them out.
‘Close your hands round them and shake,’ he says.
I do, and when I open my hand again they’ve turned into pound coins. I laugh and shake my head at Frank.
‘How did you do that?’
He pours me another cup of tea and it turns from blue to brown as he tips it into my mug. I realise I had stopped believing in him, and I’m glad to be back.
‘So, what have you got planned for your January?’ he asks.
‘I’m starting up a choir, did I tell you?’
‘No! Where’s my invite?’
I laugh.
‘It’s at the school where one of my piano students goes. Her mum teaches there and asked me to do it. I’m thinking about getting them singing some Motown.’
‘That’s a great idea. I could come down and teach them some dance moves too.’
‘Thanks, Frank. I’ll bear that in mind.’
‘Do! I’m almost as good at dancing as I am at drawing.’
He wiggles his feet from his chair in an attempt at a tap routine and I choke on my tea.
‘I’m thinking about saving up to go away for a while too,’ I say.
‘That’s not a bad idea. It does everyone a bit of good to see the world.’
‘It feels like running away though. Do you think it is?’
‘It might be. Or it could be running forwards. You don’t even need to work it out; if you went and it was a mistake you could always come home again.’
‘I guess.’
‘There isn’t really such a thing as a bad decision, Holly. If I’d thought there was I’d never have been able to get so good at dancing.’
I laugh at him.
‘It’s just that a lot of the time I really feel like I don’t know anything. And I don’t know why I’m doing any of the things I’m doing, and I have no idea what I want or how to achieve it. I feel panicked all the time.’
‘Everyone feels like that,’ he says. ‘Have another biscuit.’
24
On Thursday that week – in between cleaning and a piano lesson – I go to the Jubilee Library. I ask the librarian where the atlases are and I sit with one on a purple bean bag, opening it on a map of the world. The library is too quiet though – there’s no one else here – and I start to feel anxious. I phone Ellie but I guess she’s working because she doesn’t pick up, so I try a friend from London. She tells me I’m not supposed to talk in a library but there’s no one here to mind so I ask her where she’d go if she wanted to escape. She says maybe Iceland.
‘Holly, why don’t you just come home? You don’t need to run away again.’
‘I didn’t run away,’ I say. ‘I ran forwards. But I like the idea of Iceland, thanks. I’ll speak to you soon, OK? Love you.’
I hang up and sit reading facts about the physical and economic geography of Iceland. Then it’s time to head to my class, so I go and I teach it. I walk home afterwards, finding things I can count, like cars, or people wearing hats, and that way I don’t have to be alone with nothing. It feels like there’s an ant nest in my brain.
Later that evening I shave my legs and put red lipstick on. I go to the St James and sit at the bar drinking rum and eating prawn crackers. I talk to the guy who’s working but it’s his trial shift so he keeps getting distracted. Talking’s not enough anyway; I need to touch someone. I finish my rum and cut down to the sea and walk along Madeira Drive and past the wheel and up to the entrance of the pier.
I look at it for a bit; the electric lights make me feel dizzy and I’d like to be upside down. I close my eyes and listen to the music and suck in the batter smell and the sugar and the noise of people being swung around. I want to move my own body though; I don’t want to be flung through the air.
I light a cigarette and stand there looking at it. Then I walk down to the places that line the seafront. I wait in the queue for the Honey Club and slide in through the door, going straight to the bar. I stand for a while, watching the people around me. It’s midnight already, and they sway, pushing their bodies together in time to the music: hands fumbling with new buttocks, groins hard against strange hips. I want to find something to hold.
I drink shots, quickly, neatly, and walk across the room looking for someone as lonely as me. Nobody is. A man with green eyes reaches out for my wrist and smiles like a Halloween lantern: eyes too bright. I smile back, let him take me to the bar and drink the vodka coke he gives me, open my mouth for his tongue. He’s called Paul; he’s funny and sexy and he can’t dance. I dance for a bit anyway and he moves from foot to foot next to me. Then we drink some more vodka and kiss until I’m too hot in the club, and so we go and we lie on the stones on the beach. I don’t care that it’s cold. He gets on top of me and I can feel him getting hard. It’s easier this time without a dragon watching so we get a cab back to his and I rub his crotch during the ride and he breathes in my ear. I don’t feel anything but it doesn’t hurt.
Later, after we’ve had sex on the sofa of the flat he shares with some other students, he cooks me an omelette because I say I’m hungry. He tells me his mum taught him to cook and that he still goes home most weekends. I eat the omelette and then we kiss some more and I go down on him, put him in my mouth and resist the urge to bite. I leave while he’s sleeping and run home barefoot. I don’t notice I’ve cut myself until the morning when I go to put my trainers on and find that my right foot is bruised and bloody.
25
Ellie and I go for a drink the next night. She asks me why I’m hobbling and I tell her I cut my foot swimming in the sea.
‘Sweetheart, that’s horrendous. You may have all kinds of fish shit in that wound; I hope you’ve cleaned it vigorously.’
I order food but she says she’s already eaten. We sit there with our lies, and talk and drink and smoke a bit, and make each other feel better for a while.
26
The following Sunday afternoon Frank and I go to Gabriella’s house. She makes a lamb curry while we bake, and they both test me sporadically on my copy of The Highway Code, which lies open on the kitchen surface by the oven.
The radio’s on and Gabriella dances along. I want to sing but I feel too breathless, like I need to breathe in deeply just to keep on standing. It’s my theory test next week and I’m worried because my brain seems to be jammed on fast forward. I can’t focus on anything.
Frank and I are making clementine-and-ginger muffins and, combined with flat scents of lamb and erratic bursts of chilli and lime from the curry, the smells in the kitchen are thick and gorgeous.
I’m chopping the ginger and I ask Frank to pass a spoon to stir it into the mix.
‘You’re already holding one, you wally.’
I look down and the knife I had in my hand is a spoon. I don’t know how Frank did it but when I look up he flicks some of the muffin dough at my face and I flick some back and we giggle. He looks so funny with raw cake
on his face and I can’t stop laughing. He hurls some at Gabriella too and I have to hold onto the side I’m laughing so much. Even after the others stop I don’t; it makes my eyes run and I have to sit down and I’m still laughing and Gabriella just puts her hand on the middle of my back and waits for me to finish.
I drive Frank home in his car and then walk the last bit back to mine: the boxes of muffins in my arms, ready for delivery to Jackie’s cafe. Before I go Frank gives me a hug that lasts a long time, and when I get home I find a flower on my bed. I know it’s his magic that put it there. He’d say it was mine, but I don’t feel magic at all. I pull all the petals off. Then the flower’s kind of sad and bald and I wish I’d just put it in a vase.
27
I need to know when things will feel safer, Sam. I need to know when I’ll be able to find a space and just be able to be in it.
28
One of my piano students went to Barbados for Christmas and brought me back a little bracelet made of a leather cord with tiny cream shells. Even though they sell bracelets that are almost exactly the same in the shops along the front, it feels like a lucky charm next to the watch on my wrist.
I’ve brought my bike from home back to Brighton, strapped onto the back of the car. At the end of January Ellie, Danny, Duane, Mira, Sean and I cycle to the viaduct. We take picnics in our backpacks: flasks of hot coffee and sandwiches with thick slices of bread and the leftover Christmas ham my mum’s filled my fridge with. As we cycle, the little bracelet jingles against my handlebars and I think about my fight with Frank, me needing to shout at someone under the arches, falling over in the mud. The jangly noise of the bracelet doesn’t seem to be enough today either; I need to stretch my voice out too.
As the roads get quieter and calmer where it slowly becomes countryside, we speed up and Duane puts some music on, playing it out of speakers he’s fixed into the side pockets of his backpack. Old 90s RnB tracks blare out into the trees which frame the road. We’re embraced in the green cocoon of their stiff fingers. The branches bow slightly, their sharp needles held upright and alert to the beat. I’m glad the roads are empty; my mind can’t focus on the grey space underneath me, the lines painted across it. I feel dangerous.
I like that you’re dangerous, little kite.
We arrive tired and burning from the blood pumping close to our skin. We chain our bikes up and find a bench to sit and eat.
‘That was a ridiculously hard cycle,’ says Duane. ‘I think I’m going to die.’
‘Good,’ says Mira. ‘I’ll eat your food.’
I laugh.
‘Oh I see how it is, Holly; my adversity amuses you. I’ll remember that next time you’re in peril. I’ll just laugh right in your face and see how you like it.’
‘Peril?’ says Ellie, ‘We’re not in a fucking Indiana Jones movie, Duane. You just need to stretch or something.’
‘Yeah, I mean also I have the sandwiches,’ I say. ‘So you’re probably going to want to be nice to me, or Mira will be getting your food.’
‘Wow, what is this, let’s all pick on Duane day? I brought the music guys; I’m the party.’
We unpack the food quickly and descend on it, swallowing big mouthfuls before we’ve done much chewing. Ellie takes out a wrapped-up sandwich and sits with it in front of her. She has a few bites and Sean holds her hand.
After we’ve eaten, we lie on thick picnic rugs, listening to the music and smoking. It’s a freezing day but beautifully clear and the ground is dry and hard. Duane’s brought a football and the boys have a kickabout while Mira and I pick at the leftover ham and Ellie lights up another cigarette. She’s brought some research papers and sits with a biro and a highlighter decoding them. Mira and I flick through the Saturday papers, arguing with the articles and agreeing with each other. I can’t tell you what we say, just that we keep talking; there’s noise, the cold, the ground beneath me. At one point Mira asks me if I’m OK and I say, ‘I feel like there’s a bit of me that’s somewhere else; does that make sense to you?’
Ellie looks at me.
‘Darling, you’ve never made sense. It’s your air of mystery that makes you so very alluring.’
Then she laughs and throws some ham at my face.
‘Obviously I’m joking, babe. Have another bit of pig. Life’s just fucking hard, isn’t it? Sometimes we’re manic. Sometimes we may as well be dead. You need to do some yoga or something; this picnic rug’s got no feng shui.’
Mira shrugs at me and shakes her head.
‘Ellie’s always so useful and sensitive, isn’t she?’
It isn’t really warm enough to be sitting, so after a while we get up and join the game. We play three-a-side – Duane, Mira and me versus Sean, Ellie and Danny – with jumpers and backpacks for goalposts. It’s pretty haphazard and the ball smacks into our feet and bounces off with sporadic aim and little skill but it feels good to be running around. All I have to be aware of is my body moving, and the grass, and the ball. Sometimes when I kick it I think about conkers exploding, but then I run around a bit and remember we’re people not pigeons, and someone passes me the ball and I’m back in my body again.
The score is 5-all and Danny suggests the next goal be the winner. We immediately ramp up the pace, shooting more often and diving down in front of the goal to ward off opposing balls. Eventually Duane catches the ball on the side of his head and aims it down to Mira who crosses it to me in front of the goal. I don’t have that much skill on the ground and Danny’s coming towards me so I have to shoot right away or we’ll lose possession. I push it forward hard, just slipping it in past the left post, and Duane and Mira jump on top of me, celebrating our sudden victory.
As we scooch back over to start packing up for the cycle home I clench my jaw. I turn away for a minute to hold my face in my hands and close my eyes.
I wonder whether every time I feel good there’ll be a part of my tongue or my thighs or the dead ends where my hair frays slightly at the bottom that’s somewhere else with you.
29
I wish I’d made more of an effort to speak French to you. I liked it in the mornings when you’d roll over and tell me about your dreams in French, even though I didn’t really understand you. It always sounded a little bit dirty. I feel stupid I never asked you to teach me more. I think about trying to learn Yemba too. English sounds dry in the mouths around me, like dead wood.
Sometimes when I sit in my room and miss you I try speaking French; I feel like the extra effort I’m making might mean my words somehow reach you. I think that if I go somewhere everyone speaks French the chances of you hearing me would be magnified. I could sit under le ciel and whisper, Tu me manques. Je t’aime.
And I want to shout at you too, in English. Tell you how you’ve turned me into something empty: an eggshell broken in the trash, the sound of electricity cutting out. In my mouth you are a word I want to throw up but you cling to my gums like blood.
30
We cycle back to Brighton together and then split off to go our separate ways home. Duane says he’s left something at Mira’s so they go back together and Ellie and Sean are going the same way anyway so Danny says he’ll walk me back to mine. I laugh at him for thinking I need walking anywhere, but I’m grateful for the company. We get off our bikes and push them.
‘I’m glad you came back after Christmas, Holly,’ he says. ‘We didn’t know if you would.’
‘Ellie said that too.’
‘Well we are. You’re part of the group now.’
He reaches over and squeezes my shoulder and looks like he’s trying to decide whether to keep talking or not.
‘I’ve never met anyone like you, Holly. You kind of just open yourself up to things and let them hurt if they need to.’
I sit at home that night reading a book my parents have given me about grief. I look out of the window at my sliver of the sea and feel scared. Things sometimes feel like they’re starting to get solid around me but at the edge of every day is a shadowy
bit I know I might fall into, where I won’t wash my hair for weeks, or where I’ll scratch my skin until it bleeds, or run until I’m sick, or lie flat on the floor of my room until the tears make my skin sore. Sometimes I think I’ve fallen into it already, or that I’m always falling and always trying to climb back out.
This is what you’ve left me with, Sam, and I’m angry with you. My book says this is normal. I’d like to write to the author and ask if it’s normal for me to want to claw at your skin, but I think she’d just refer me to chapter two where it says that grief is unpredictable and I should allow myself to express my emotions in any healthy way I can.
I can’t think about any of this tonight. I feel hot and jittery. I want to be blank and numb.
I don’t know how I get down to the beach. When I’m there I take off my clothes and I go for a swim. I climb up out of the water when I’m crying so much I can’t breathe. I can’t feel the place the sobs are coming from. I’m frozen.
31
The air is thick and white. If it were London, I’d say it was going to snow. Here it just rains, soggy and ripe and cold. The starlings have gone. The seagulls blend into the air; it’s all feathers and blank eyes and sludge in between. Round beyond the marina, on the walk towards Saltdean, the waves slap harder and faster up against the wall and onto the path. On the tourist beach, the other side of the pier, it’s just empty space. The weekends are quiet: no one eating candy floss or feeding chips to the birds. The stones on the beach are wet. I am battered by winter. I look at the sea and imagine it tearing me apart.
32
On Wednesday I deliver cakes to Jackie’s cafe then sit in the corner with my morning coffee, jumbling up plans for my piano lesson later with the meanings of road signs and markings. I didn’t sleep well again the night before and I can feel a stiffness in my skin. I can tell it won’t go until the caffeine’s kicked in and I’m several rooms into cleaning Mrs Almeidy’s house. My phone buzzes.
Really sorry guys, I can’t make the quiz tonight. See you soon. Danny
I’m sure there’s a good reason for it but he really helps us out in the sports round and we’ll definitely struggle without him so it isn’t ideal, and it’s probably too late for us to find someone else. Plus he’s always the person we take the piss out of when we get stuff wrong. I say goodbye to Jackie and head out, reasoning in my mind that it’s the book club next week. I’ll see him then. It’s raining again.
