by S. K. Perry
We all sit there and cry together and smoke a joint and talk about how beautiful you were. Then we go in and dance and drink and rub our bodies together and hold hands and fall in love with the world and cry and dance and swirl around in it all, feeling broken and gorgeous and alive, and wishing you were too.
Back in the kitchen – later sometime – Mira comes over and puts her arms round me.
‘Holly, did you know that Danny’s gone home?’
‘What? No, I didn’t. Why did he go?’
‘I’m not sure; I thought maybe you two’d had a fight.’
‘No, I’ve barely seen him.’
She nods and flicks my nose as though to say don’t worry, and something comes on through the speakers that makes her throw up her arms. She grabs my hands and pulls me into the crowd of dancing and I forget about everything else.
I wake up the next morning on our living-room floor, wrapped up in a duvet that I must have gone and got from my room. There are empty bottles and glasses with dregs of liquid in them strewn across the floor. There are a bunch of cigarette ends in the glass of water that I’d obviously got for myself at some point the night before. I notice they’re straights and wonder if we popped out to get some or if they’re someone else’s. I go upstairs to find Ellie and she and Sean are sitting up in her bed awake and talking but looking a bit fragile.
‘Good morning, my little beauty,’ Ellie says.
‘Oh my God, I feel so far from beautiful it’s unreal.’
We laugh and they make room for me on the bed.
‘Sean, do you know why Danny left last night?’
They look at each other.
‘You’ve got to talk to him about it, Holly,’ he says.
‘I know; I’m sorry. I just don’t remember that much of the evening and I don’t know where my phone is and I’m worried I did something horrible.’
‘You weren’t horrible at all, you were hilarious. But I think Danny just wasn’t sure where he fitted into it all and that’s a conversation you need to have with him and not us.’
Ellie puts her arms round me.
‘Did you sleep downstairs? How’s the rest of the house?’
‘It’s a bit of a state but it’ll be fine. We just need to get everyone on it for a couple of hours.’
‘Sean brought a disposable barbecue over last night and we thought we could chuck everyone out for some bacon and sausages on the beach after the clean-up.’
‘The dream.’
I snuggle in with them for a bit and my head hurts and I hope that Danny got home OK.
19
The worst thing about a hangover for me is anxiety. I wake up the morning after I’ve been drinking – especially if the night before’s a bit patchy – and I feel tense. It’s like the top of my head has come off and my thoughts are sitting just above it, so I can’t quite make them make sense, and the rest of my body feels frantic because I’m not in it.
Normally you found my worrying annoying but – after nights out – if you’d woken up before me you’d see I was stirring and you’d get me a cup of tea with sugar in it. Before I asked you you’d tell me I hadn’t done anything to panic about. You’d let me lie tucked up in your body and you’d put your chin on my head because you knew it made me feel like you were pushing me back inside my skin again, and you’d kiss me and you’d tell me you loved me, and you wouldn’t mind that I needed to hear it. We’d eat breakfast in bed at lunchtime and we’d stay there all day feeling safe and being silly and sweating out the poison watching crap TV.
20
After a late breakfast on the beach our friends walked back off up the hill to the train station or went home, and I walked into town to bum around for a bit with Duane and Mira. Sean and Ellie went back to bed and the house was mostly clean but I still hadn’t found my phone so I hadn’t spoken to Danny. I text him on Mira’s phone and hoped he’d get in touch; Mum and Dad and Rob and Lucy were coming down for dinner and Danny was potentially coming too, but I felt too grimy and hungover to really think about it.
‘Shall we just go to the pub?’ Duane says. I wince and Mira laughs.
‘Hair of the dog I guess.’
It was a day that looked cold but not so much you needed a coat. I felt my skin getting revived by the outside as we walked along the street. The bacon had made me feel a bit better, like if I was sick now at least I would have something to throw up. The excess of people around me seemed messier than I felt, so the chaos was making me feel calmer. We sat outside the Komedia and drank pints and laughed about what we remembered from the night before.
After about an hour Danny phones and asks me to meet him by the seafront so I split from the others and walk down to find him.
I get there after him and as I approach the bench I think about how strange it is that a year ago I didn’t know any of them. It’s the same bench where Frank stopped to tell me I’d dropped my keys and I look down instinctively to see if there’s anything on the floor. There’s a flower there, a single blue stem, and I pick it up and don’t know what to think.
Danny stands up and kisses me on the cheek. We sit down next to each other.
‘I’m sorry I left last night.’
‘That’s OK. We missed you though. Were you alright?’
‘I just didn’t know what I was doing there. None of your friends knew who I was and I didn’t know if I was meant to tell them I was your boyfriend. We were all pissed and it wasn’t the right time to talk about it so I went home. I just need to know how you feel.’
I look at Danny and then I look at the beach. There’s a group of kids playing with a dog. Out at sea a couple of windsurfers are scooting along the top of the water. I think about how windsurfing would be a good thing to try and learn while I’m living here.
‘Ellie always says that adults are just bigger, uglier versions of children,’ I say. ‘That stuff is hard at our age because we still think that one day soon we’ll be a grown-up and know what to do about things so we spend the whole time feeling frustrated and confused we’re not there yet. She reckons it never actually happens but we all just get better at feeling OK about that.’
‘It’s a good theory.’
The dog runs into the sea and out again and shakes itself off on the beach, covering the children in spray. One of the boys starts crying and a woman sitting further up the beach tries to decide whether she needs to go and comfort him. One of the windsurfers falls off and I draw my coat in around me as the wind brushes over.
‘Are you cold?’
‘No, I’m OK.’ I look at him. ‘Danny, I really like you but I can’t be your girlfriend. I’m sorry.’
He grips his thighs and then pushes his hands down his legs and onto his knees.
‘I’m really sorry, I wanted it to work. I thought that it would. I’m just not there yet.’
He nods and stands up. He looks like he’s trying to decide whether to say something else. It reminds me of the night we walked home together after playing football at the viaduct, and I think about all the places where I’d still like to kiss him.
‘I know it’s still hard for you sometimes, Holly, but I thought this meant something more to you. I don’t know what to say; I think you’ve been a bit of a dick.’
‘I’m sorry.’
He nods again. I stand up too and hug him and he pats me on the back. I step back and he turns and walks away. I feel sad but I know it’s the right thing because when I turn around and stand there looking out at the sea, I’m thinking about you.
I go back to Frank’s and wait there for my family to arrive for dinner. I tell him what happened but I feel like he already knows and then I play the piano to him and the music washes away some of the stuff I don’t want to be there. We sip tea and eat cake and I wonder why it was that Frank found Danny, what magic it was that he needed.
21
In the evenings after dinner Ellie and Mira and I sit up chatting. I think about you more than ever. I don’t feel sad, mostly,
but I’ve started to want to talk about you more.
‘It’s nice to get to know Sam after all this time, Holly Jones,’ Ellie says. ‘He sounds like a treat.’
One night, I just come out with it, the thought that’s been too painful to say, that’s sat in the space beneath my ribcage since the coroner decided your death was a tragic accident.
‘One thing that gets at me,’ I say, ‘is I don’t get how it happened. He was always so careful and I don’t understand why he didn’t look before crossed. Sometimes I wonder whether –’
I can’t finish the sentence and I’m really crying, like I’m stood by the side of the road again with my dad and the cars streaming past and the pain stopping me from moving anywhere because I’m thinking about how hard it would be to get hit accidentally, how you could possibly just walk out into the road in a York suburb and not realise a car with a woman called Elizabeth Whitworth in it was coming at you at 40 mph, and why, if you had realised, you didn’t try to stop.
‘You can’t think like that, poppet,’ Ellie says. ‘That’s your grief giving you shit to keep you up at night. I just don’t believe that thought is true.’
I feel like a child.
‘But what if it is?’
‘Even if Sam woke up one morning and the world felt like too much for him, the only thing you’ll ever know for sure is what you had was beautiful.’
Mira slides along the sofa and puts her arm round me, ‘You’ve got to hold onto that bit, Holly.’
22
I think one of the worst feelings in the world – and by this I don’t mean emotions, I mean tactile things, and some good ones for me are rolling in sand, although not everyone likes this, or silk underwear, or sun on something which doesn’t often feel it, the belly maybe, things you touch, things you feel physically and that reach your brain as a feather or a cloud of settling icing sugar or a cold metal spoon on the tongue – one of the worst feelings in the world is water on the thighs from the inner rim of a public toilet: the splash from the flush, which has settled on the seat and attached itself to the bend in your leg that moves from your vagina round to your buttocks.
You haven’t noticed it as you’ve stood up and now it’s trapped in by a pair of tights and turned into a dampness on your upper back thighs that clings there, the reminder of someone else’s urine and a strange wetness with nothing to do with exertion – sexual or otherwise – and clumps lankly, stationary, like molecules of fat, or little pieces of mould inside a sandwich box you forgot to put in the dishwasher.
It’s not pleasant in the slightest, it’s the opposite; it’s disgusting and repulsive and it’s horrible; it gives me goose bumps and makes me need to wash, or at the very least wipe, but it isn’t the kind of wetness you can wipe off or even dry because, like I said, once it’s there, it’s damp and dank. It lurks, and it’s frightening.
It has been over a year, Sam, and I have only just stopped feeling like there is someone else’s regurgitated toilet water wrapped around my heart and filling up the gaps.
And I love you, Sam – so much – but I hope you know how absolutely horrible that’s made me feel.
23
Gabriella and I have been experimenting all summer with making ice cream and we’ve succeeded with a phenomenal pistachio and a slightly less good strawberry. The weekend after Wimbledon I’ve gone over to help her cook for a party she’s helping Talin hold for Cora’s fifth birthday. We decide to have another go at the strawberry in a bid to make Neopolitan and I arrive with several cartons of milk and a bag of fresh fruit. I can tell when I arrive Gabriella’s upset; she’s slicing things unevenly and fast, and she’s distracted when I speak to her. I wonder if maybe she’s had a fight with Talin. When I ask her what’s wrong she answers in a tired voice.
‘Zimmerman was found not guilty of murder yesterday, Holly. I’m feeling a bit angry.’
I hadn’t really known about the story but I’d watched the reactions unfold on twitter the day before so I know what she means.
‘In the Trayvon Matthews case, right?’
She looks at me, ‘Trayvon Martin.’
‘Right, of course. Sorry.’
‘That’s OK, Holly; it’s not your problem, is it? What does it matter to you what his name is?’
She puts the radio on. It’s a bit tense, but after a while something comes on that we both like and we sing along a bit. The recipe is pretty simple – it’s just the timings we messed up before – so soon we’re done, and we sit outside in her garden with glasses of water from the fridge.
‘I’m sorry about before, Gabriella,’ I say. ‘I’m an idiot.’
‘You don’t get a free pass because your boyfriend was black,’ she says, with a wry smile.
‘I know,’ I reply. ‘I am sorry about what happened. He was really young, wasn’t he?’
‘Seventeen. Same as Joseph would have been.’
She tops up my water from a jug and looks at me. She’s sad and when she speaks it’s heavy, like it costs a lot to be saying it.
‘I just think attention should be paid, you know.’
24
On 17th July I’m offered a job as the education assistant at the Theatre Royal Brighton. I tell my piano students I’ll teach them until the summer holidays, and one of the music teachers says she’ll keep my choir going at school. I’m really sad to leave them all. I even feel a bit nostalgic as I clean the cream house for the last time and dust down the locked drawers I’ve never seen inside of. It feels like a real start though, putting down some roots.
I’m with Gabriella when I get the job offer, and we go out for wine. I drink one glass and feel a bit tipsy so I don’t order another one. I walk home slowly thinking about new things.
Later, I wander down to the St James that night to meet the others for the quiz and I look out over the sea from Kemp town. There are things I really love here. I know one day they might all disappear but I don’t feel scared. I feel happy, and I know there’ll be sadness in tomorrow and happiness in tomorrow but underneath the emotions, which will always keep changing, I feel safe.
25
We have a heatwave, and Brighton sags with the weight of day trippers swelling on the beach.
During the week I love the bustle that the heat brings. The terraces of the clubs along the front fill with evening drinkers in flip-flops and T-shirts chucked on over bikinis. We all meet after work just west of the bandstand and lie on the stones in the end of the light. Danny and I bring our guitars down, and we sing a bit or sit around and talk about nothing.
It’s soon the school summer holidays and my new job means co-ordinating the community workshops set up for local children as a summer club. A couple of my kids from school are down at the theatre learning circus skills and I go and see them at lunchtime to hear what they’re up to.
‘It’s great, Miss, we’re learning how to walk on the tightrope.’
‘Hold onto that,’ I say. ‘It’s a useful skill.’
I’m gigging too, singing at little acoustic nights and writing songs most weekends. One day Sean and Ellie come down and watch my set and afterwards Sean says I should come into the studio with him in September and lay down some tracks for an EP. Ellie takes me for champagne at the Mercure to celebrate.
Danny and I don’t often get together just us anymore but he’s started seeing a girl from work. I sometimes feel sad that his stillness and mine didn’t quite sit together right, but things are OK between us.
At the weekends – when the town is fat with tourists sweating on every street corner – I lie in a deckchair on Frank’s roof and fall asleep in the heat reading a book, or go for a run in the dry air, the sun beating my skin into action. When my drink runs out of ice Frank shakes it and it fills back up.
Some days we sit with the day’s papers and the world feels like it’s getting too hot. Frank paces round the roof looking at the sky and the headlines, and frowns. I dissect them with Gabriella over summer trifles and sweet, crispy salads. Sh
e tells me I’ve become an expert at fresh pea soup.
I know that you would have loved this heat. In the mornings when I get up early for work I can almost feel you moving around in the kitchen with me as I boil my egg or pour my cereal. I miss you most when the sun is setting. I can see your body lazing in our back yard on Sunday afternoons with Duane and Sean as they tune into the cricket. I sometimes feel sad there aren’t any people here who remember you too, and I still want to talk about you more as the memories become less bitter. I decide that when I’ve settled into my job I’ll go back up to York and see your family again. I invite Alfie and Danielle to stay with me too, and they say they’ll come at the end of August.
26
I meet up with Rob and Lucy in London for lunch one Saturday, and afterwards we leave Rob to go elsewhere while I look at wedding dresses with Lucy and her other bridesmaids. At one point – while Lucy’s in the changing room – one of them asks me if I will be bringing a partner to the wedding and at first I go to give my default answer that my boyfriend was hit by a car and died.
I stop myself before it comes out though. I look at her instead and say, ‘No, it’ll just be me.’
After we’ve been shopping I stay over at Rob and Lucy’s place. We watch old episodes of West Wing and they tell me about their plans to go to Australia on their honeymoon. As we go to bed Rob hugs me.
‘You’re quite a woman you know, Holly. You grew up good.’
I laugh at him, but I fall asleep wondering if I was a woman before; when it was that I grew up? I think about how one day I’ll be seventy-seven like Frank and you’ll still be twenty-seven and I’m sad we won’t get full and wrinkly together; I’m sad we don’t get to see each other grow. I hope I was a woman when you knew me too; you were a wonderful man.
27
We all chipped in for a cheap barbecue at the start of July and at least once a week through August we drag it down to the beach and cook burgers and sausages, or kebabs and fish if we’re feeling more adventurous. Sometimes people we don’t know come over and join us, bringing food or bottles of beer and we all sit round in what feels like a hot pause, where nothing is real and the air is hazy and secretive and full of perspiration. The seawater is cold and blue and I float in it on my back, letting the sun catch its flecks in the hair on my skin like tiny pieces of mirror. I like feeling salty as I get out, lying on the beach in my underwear and eating dripping slabs of halloumi out of a paper napkin.
