by S. K. Perry
I kiss you both at the same time. I feel ashamed and scared because I want something I can’t have and something I can.
33
The girl who brought the bracelet back from Barbados for me has a beautiful piano. She plays well and I enjoy teaching her, but something about the damp drying in the air makes my fingers itch and I ask her mum if – after our lessons – I can stay and play by myself for a while. She says yes and so Louisa sits on the sofa with a lemonade and I play, stretching the notes out under my fingers and feeling the music in the air around me.
I get into the habit of popping in to Frank’s most days before bed and on days when I go round after playing the piano I arrive with my head full of music. Frank and I sit and listen to records instead of talking – his knitting needles clicking in their own rhythms – and I sing along.
One Friday night, after I’ve been playing at Louisa’s, Frank tells me he thinks music is a bit like the sea; it gets inside you and washes out some of the stuff you don’t want there.
‘I feel like it keeps in some of the stuff you don’t want to lose too.’
Frank looks at me for a few seconds.
‘It’s just working out the difference between the two, isn’t it?’
Afterwards I cycle to Danny’s house. He’s ordered takeaway curry, and we eat it on his balcony. I have matar paneer and Peshwari naan and he eats chicken jalfrezi with chapati. I’m glad it’s not Chinese, and the view of the sea is so different from the rooftops outside your flat but I can’t help thinking about that night you bought a piece of London and we sat and pretended to fly on your balcony.
Danny makes me laugh. He is witty in an easy kind of way and he teases me about how much I love to hear the sea breathe. The little street lights along the front start to glow before it’s completely dark and everything hums in an orange in-between time. I’m sorry, Sam, but I don’t want to be thinking about you.
It starts to get cold so we leave all the plates and boxes outside and come in. The table in his living room is covered in sketches; he’s brought some work home for the weekend. I haven’t seen his artwork before and I trace over an ink sketch of a child playing in a stream with my finger. I’m surprised by how much movement there is in the image, and it makes me think of the little kids who run down the beach at the weekend, amazed by the sea, with tiny arms flailing around to keep them balanced as they charge into the water.
‘Do you like it?’ he asks.
I nod, and he puts his hands against mine, pushing his fingers between my fingers so they interlock. I’m aware of the curry taste in my mouth still and think about cleaning my teeth but he’s already kissing me so I fold into him and let his tongue find mine. He takes off my clothes but I don’t want to be naked on my own so I take off his too. I’m sitting on the table and he’s standing in front of me and I wrap my legs around him. He picks me up and carries me into his bedroom.
‘Come under the covers, it’s cold.’
He puts me onto the bed and I get under the duvet and he lies down next to me.
‘Are you OK?’
‘Yeah, I think so.’
‘We don’t have to do anything.’
I nod.
‘I know; I’m OK.’
He smiles at me but I’m finding it difficult to look at him. He moves in next to me and kisses me and I kiss him back. I don’t know what I want but it’s easier to close my eyes and breathe into it than to try and work out what I’m feeling. We kiss some more and I pull him on top of me.
‘Holly, I should get a condom.’
‘Yeah, OK.’
He gets one out of the drawer by his bed and he puts it on while he kind of straddles me. I want him to get it on so I can pull him in closer, have him lean down on me like a blanket. I’m cold just lying there, watching him. When he’s done he puts the packet on the floor and moves his body in close and pushes into me. I hold him there. We go slow and he looks at me but that’s too much so I pull him in so his face is over my shoulder and we’re flat to each other. He starts to move faster and I don’t want it to stop but I think I’m going to cry so I let my breathing get louder and pretend to come. He finishes just afterwards and I don’t want him to move away. I pull him close and we lay tucked up in each other until I’m asleep.
In the morning the others come over with breakfast but it’s a blue day so we pack up plates and mugs and flasks of coffee and take it down to the sea with the guitar and a bunch of books. We stay there all day and the sky stays bright. I feel shaky and tearful but I don’t really know why. We swim and sing and sit curled up in each other like none of us have ever felt sad. Around lunchtime I walk up to get a coffee from the cafe with Mira and Ellie, who holds my hand.
‘Are you OK, poppet? You’re quite quiet today.’
I look at them and I don’t know what to say. I just start to cry and they stand there and hold me while I shake it all out.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘I’m fine; I don’t know what’s wrong with me.’
‘Never apologise for feeling things, darling,’ says Ellie.
‘It means you’re still alive,’ Mira says. Then she looks at me, ‘Bad choice of words?’
I shake my head and smile at her.
‘Thanks, Mira, I’m alright.’
She shrugs.
‘You don’t have to be.’
We get the coffee and walk back to the others. After a bit Ellie says she’s cold so we go back to Danny’s and drink beer and then tequila, and Sean has some pills so we take them too and then we get a cab into town to go dancing and at some point my brain forgets to remember what’s happening. I go home to mine that night and I’m there with Danny again. I’m high and soft and all I want is to squish into him so we kiss and fuck and I don’t feel sad at all. Then it’s Sunday morning so I get up and go for a run and while my body’s moving fast I stop trying to work it all out.
Later when Danny’s gone and I pick up my pen to write a song I start to think about you again. I don’t want to sing then; I sit in the shower instead and think about this time last year, and about how you’d feel if you knew I was wrapped up in someone else.
Summer
The sea keeps moving.
I am driftwood: sat washed up,
holding myself still.
1
Before I leave the little room in Kemptown I sit and use Copydex to push the wallpaper back together. I’ll miss my view of the sea. When I unpack again I put your jumper away in a box under the bed. It’s getting worn out and the nights aren’t so cold anymore. I change my mind when I go to sleep though and get it back out.
My new room is bigger and I want to stick photos on the wall to make it feel full. But all my pictures have you in. I’m trying to leave you behind.
All this moving makes me feel like I haven’t gone anywhere at all. This is not your town but you’re mine and we’re still here. I’m a tug of war without any fighting; I can’t pull away. Danny’s coming for dinner and I don’t know if I can put your face on the wall.
2
I put lots of stuff in storage when I left for Brighton. Before moving in with Ellie and Mira I shifted it to Mum and Dad’s and then into the new place. When I went to get the last batch Danny came with me to help. I put my guitar in the boot and it felt good to be bringing it back to Brighton with me. After the car was packed we all sat around the dining table drinking tea before he and I drove back to the coast. I told Mum and Dad about the job I didn’t get at Kew Gardens. They said to keep my eye out for similar things and to keep trying.
Later Rob rang the house and we put him on speaker phone. He told us they’d picked a date for the wedding and would be getting married in January. He asked me if I’d come and stay for a weekend over the summer to help Lucy with some of the dress-type stuff and I said I would. Danny looked at me across the table and smiled, and I smiled back and thought about you.
On the way home we stopped off for petrol and Danny came back to the car with bags full of shopp
ing.
‘What’s all this?’
‘A surprise. Mind your own business, Hollywood.’
I sit in the car with my feet on the dashboard and my chair flipped right back. Danny drums along to the music on the steering wheel. The sun’s going down and he looks good in the dusky light. I lean over and give his hand a little kiss on the gear stick. He looks at me and laughs.
‘What?’
‘Nothing, you’re just nice.’
He smiles and I smile back.
That night he cooks dinner for Ellie and Mira and me with the ingredients he’s picked up at the garage. He makes a terrible risotto that somehow manages to be burnt and undercooked at the same time.
We laugh about it and get pissed, the four of us, drinking cheap vodka with tonic and lime, and filling the kitchen with reggae and smoke and dancing. At one point Ellie persuades Danny to draw caricatures of the three us and we tape them to the fridge. He’s pissed so they’re kind of wonky and we laugh as we struggle with the Sellotape.
In the morning we sleep wrapped up in each other for hours, our mouths like attics: musty with smoke and snatches of memories from the night before.
3
Sometimes – when we’d had a fight – you’d go and get your toothbrush and come and find me. You’d dance around, stretching your face out, mouth full of toothpaste, until you made me laugh. I’d stop being angry and you’d kiss me and get toothpaste all on my face, and I’d tell you that you were disgusting.
Mira cleans her teeth while she’s sat on the loo. The next morning, she leaves the door open and blows a raspberry at me when I walk past. She sprays toothpaste all over her thighs.
‘You’re disgusting,’ I say, and we laugh.
4
Gabriella went out with her doctor again a few days after the wine tasting and they’ve started to see each other a lot. He has a young daughter called Cora and one weekend at the end of April I go round on the Sunday and find them sitting in her kitchen. Cora’s bent over a bowl of dough and Gabriella’s showing her how to knead it.
‘You’re Holly.’
‘It’s Talin, right? Nice to meet you.’
I sit opposite him on a wooden stool and watch Gabriella show Cora what to do. Cora laughs as flour springs up in her face. Talin has an easy smile and he watches his daughter lazily as he asks me about teaching and home and what I think about Purple Hibiscus, which we’re reading for the book club.
Once the bread’s in the oven, Cora comes and sits on my lap and tells me she’s going to meet a magician later. I tell her she’s very lucky and she says she already knows.
‘Have you met him?’ she asks.
‘I have,’ I say. ‘He rescued me once, by the sea.’
‘Were you drowning?’
‘Kind of. Although it was more like I’d forgotten how to fly.’
She looks at me with big eyes.
‘Are you magic too?’
‘No,’ I say, ‘but Frank’s quite good at making you feel that way. You better watch out for things that just appear in your hands. He’s very clever like that.’
As I go to leave later on Gabriella follows me out into the hall.
‘What do you think?’ she says.
‘He’s lovely; I definitely approve.’
She gives me a hug.
‘Have fun with Frank.’
I walk away feeling a bit left behind. I sit on the curve of the marina wall and watch the waves. Sadness comes at me from nowhere sometimes. I don’t mind; it feels like part of me is lost without it. When I’m sad, I know you were real. When Danny calls I ignore it. I turn off my phone and watch the waves. I’m scared of hurting him but I need to go slowly, like the water does when the last bits of a wave are slipping back down the beach and into the sea.
5
We plan a big house-warming for June and send invites to all our friends from school and university. I put letters inside mine, memories and apologies, and texts start to trickle in from the different spots of home I have. Things are changing. I have a house in Brighton where I unpack and stretch out. My old friends anchor me and I start to feel like I’m climbing in the sky again. But I’m in between things, living in gaps, still trying to find somewhere to rest for a while that feels like it fits. It’s like there’s a tightrope stretched and shaking inside me and I don’t know who or what to balance on it. I watch the people at the West Pier trying to walk on the rope between the poles and sometimes they fall. Maybe that’s all that balancing is: the bits in between collapse.
6
Danny and I go cycling at the weekend. I strap my guitar to the back of my bike and he laughs at me. We go east along the coast and stop for a picnic at the top of the cliffs. We sit for a while, him drawing, me writing a song. The sea is all frothy and rhythmic and after a while I put my guitar down and doze for a bit, my head in his lap and my eyes on the water. That evening we play chess at the St James again and I win in six moves. He pretends to be outraged and I laugh at him.
‘Playing you is no fun; it’s way too easy.’
‘I don’t understand it, you seem so nice but give you a chessboard and you’re a ruthless serial killer.’
‘That’s kind of the point, DeVito.’
It’s a beautiful evening so we leave the pub and walk down to the front. We buy doughnuts at the entrance to the pier and I really want to go on a rollercoaster so we wander down through the arcades to where the rides are. We get tokens from the guy in the kiosk and get in the queue.
During the ride Danny shouts at me over the noise and the whirling.
‘You’re really sexy upside down.’
I look across at him and he laughs.
7
I still have the card you gave me for my birthday last May. It’s in the bottom drawer of my desk underneath a bunch of other bits and pieces, pretending it was put there by accident.
It was the kind of day where London swells in heat. We decided at the last minute to cancel the reservation we’d made for lunch and we spent the day by the canal in Angel. We went to a supermarket and you bought a birthday picnic: bottles of lager, avocados, mozzarella, salt-and-vinegar Chipsticks, raspberries and those Dutch circular waffles with syrup in the middle of them. We sat on the bit of the towpath that sticks out into a kind of veranda on the stretch between Angel and Hoxton and scooped the avocado out of its skin with our fingers. We laid down and swigged beer and talked about nothing, smiling in the sunshine, and our friends trickled down to meet us, bringing music and blankets.
I sat between your legs, supported by the width of you, eating raspberries squashed between layers of waffle: messy and delicious like your mouth, and our bed where later – between your legs – we’d locked into each other’s bodies with the pink stain of raspberry juice still on our fingers.
8
One Wednesday Ellie and Mira persuade me to perform at the open mic at The White Rabbit, the one we’d stumbled into after the first book club. I’m nervous but the girls just laugh at me.
‘Babe, literally nothing could go wrong.’
‘Chill out and eat your chicken.’
By the time I perform they’ve both had so much gin they’ll think anything I do is great. I’m glad; I need it not to matter how this goes; I’ve just got to do it. I close my eyes and sing and as soon as I’ve started I don’t feel out of practice anymore. When I get to the chorus and open my eyes I half expect you to be there dancing in front of me, smiling, all twisting limbs and hard, heady love. I see the girls instead, giving me a thumbs-up and waving from the corner.
9
The book club come over for dinner on the night before my birthday. We order a massive Indian takeaway, and Noel brings Jim, Jackie brings her husband and Duane, Sean and Talin all come too.
We squeeze into our living room and drink wine out of mugs. We eat Peshwari naan and lamb bhuna and vegetable biriani with samosas and saag aloo. I tuck in between Danny’s knees and Jackie whips out a cake with candles that we light with
Ellie’s lighter, and they all sing ‘Happy Birthday’.
After we’ve eaten we persuade Frank to do some magic and he tells us a story using props he plucks out of mid-air. I ask him to do the fire trick he’d started by accident in Germany and he says we’ll have to save it for another time. Then the hat in his hand starts smoking and he waves it around to beat up the flames and put them out again.
When he’s finished everyone drifts home, and we have to ban Jackie from doing any of the washing up in order to send her away. I stay in the sitting room with Ellie and Mira and the boys until midnight: smoking and finishing off the wine. At midnight the others say happy birthday and go off to bed, and Danny and I stay curled up together on the sofa. He kisses me and I put my feet onto his, feeling the rough wool of his socks warming up my bare toes.
He says, ‘What’s in your brain, Holly?’ and pushes his fingers into the skin of my forehead.
I don’t know whether it’s OK to tell him so instead I brush his fingers away with my head. I move it closer to him so my face is touching his.
‘When you were little, what did you want to be when you grew up?’ I ask.
‘A farmer.’
‘Are you being serious?’
‘Yeah. I always wanted to own my own cow.’
‘But you’re such a town boy.’
‘What are you talking about? I’m from the seaside. Really, I should’ve been a surfer.’
I laugh at him and he slides his hand around my back and pulls the rest of me in close.
‘You feeling old, birthday girl?’ he asks.
‘I don’t know what I’m feeling. Tired.’
We lie there for a bit with his hand resting in the small of my back.
‘You know I could’ve been a farmer,’ I say. ‘I sheared a sheep once.’
‘What?’
‘Yeah. One of my friends lived on a farm and his dad let me help with the shearing once.’
‘Ah that’s right, I always forget you’re actually a Surrey girl. You’re not really a Londoner at all, you’re a country bumpkin.’
