by S. K. Perry
Frank says that as summer winds down through August it always feels like a new year to him. He used to travel so much when he was working that I think he finds it hard sometimes, living in one place and just watching the rhythms of the seasons. I think I know what he means, and I wonder if I’ll feel like him when it’s autumn again and the chlorophyll is draining from the leaves, urging him to move on and find a new audience for his magic. But we have the sea and – like he told me on the day he first found me – when you sit by the water it really does feel like things will be alright.
28
I find the melody for the song about our night in Rome when the heat breaks and the thunder sets in. It’s a Monday evening and I’m walking home from work. The sea swirls and groans and I think about what it would feel like to swim in it.
It’s pouring with rain, but I go to the beach and I lie down and look at the water falling out of the sky at me. I stand up and strip down to my underwear and hobble to the edge of the water. The stones under my feet mean I walk in jerks, my body twisting and settling with each step. I test the water with my ankles and I plunge in. The waves knock me over again and again and I climb back into them and let them toss me up and grind me back down into the stones. I am laughing and dancing and I feel like the sea is in me, even though I’m in it, and I scramble out, bruised and with cuts on my elbows and knees. I use my jumper to dry off a bit and I pull my jeans and my T-shirt back on and it’s sad and it’s beautiful.
I run to Frank’s because I know I have the song in my head now and I want to try it out on the piano, but he makes me have a warm shower and a cup of tea before he’ll let me play. I sing him the song and my fingers spread out over the new melody and he sits with tears in his eyes. When I finish he says, ‘I knew that you were a magician when I met you.’
And I say, ‘No, Frank, the magic is all yours.’
29
In September Ellie, Mira and I are going to stop smoking. We’ve decided we need a holiday so we’re going to put the money we’d have spent on tobacco and Rizlas in a jar in the kitchen and save up for Eurostar tickets to Paris. We’re going to walk along by the Seine and drink coffee in cafes on crisp winter evenings and speak French. I’m going to read Jude the Obscure while we’re there and I’ll probably hate it.
I’ve been thinking about starting a band and I have the EP to think about next month too. When I mentioned it to Frank he said that when I start making music videos I should remember how good he is at dancing.
Danielle and Alfie are arriving next week and I’m going to take them into the arcades on the pier and take Alfie on the ghost train. I’ve told your mum I’ll come and visit her soon too, but she’s off on a cruise in September and Danielle says she’s been getting involved with their local Sunday school. I think she’s OK too, Sam. I hope you are.
I sometimes get the train into London and walk around and smell the air. I can see your face on the breath of the city and I can feel you like sweat on my palms: memories of your skin print on a street corner. And London is the same as it always is and I trace your patterns in it.
But I can’t smell you anymore, Sam. Everything just smells of the city and you’re gone so all I can find on my pillow and my toothbrush when I go home to Brighton again is me. I sometimes sit and cut things up: bits of paper into other bits of paper I don’t really know what to do with. I stand and watch the sea and think about going travelling or how I don’t really know what I want to do with my life. I remember what Frank said about the fact I can’t put it in a box or paint it purple and I go round to Gabriella’s house instead and make goat’s cheese and beetroot balls. Most days I’m fine.
But, Sam, I can feel you in the air by the sea when I stand and let the waves get inside me. I look at them crashing down on the beach, breathing and tumbling with something like a voice inside them, and even though the wonky tooth in the bottom row of your smile is just ash in the wind now, and I can’t remember what you smell like, I find you there in the water, and we fly up into the air like kites.
Acknowledgements
Thank you to Aki Shilz for permission to use her poem for the epigraph. Aki’s poetry and her brilliant work with Losslit is on Twitter @AkiShilz. Thank you also to Denise Riley for kind permission to reprint the lines from her poem ‘Shantung’ on page 69. ‘Shantung’ was originally published in Mop Mop Georgette (Reality Street, 1993).
To Laura West, you have made me a better writer and made this a much better book. I am enormously grateful for everything you’ve done and continue to do for me; thank you so much. Thank you Nikki Griffiths for believing in me and for giving this book its chance at real life. Thanks too to the extended teams at David Higham Associates and Melville House, including Marina Drukman for her beautiful cover design.
Thank you for the creative and professional development offered me by the teams at Mslexia Novel Competition and the Northern Writers Award; Spread the Word, in particular Laura Kenwright; Roundhouse London, especially Sylvia Harrison and Bohdan Piasesci; Cityread; the Soho Society, particularly Clare Lynch; and #Losslit. Thank you to my teachers Gaye Penfold, who encouraged me to write; Dr Kathryn Murphy, who taught me so much about reading; and Sarah Branston, who nurtured my imagination and resilience. From my time at Goldsmiths, thank you to Vicky Macleroy, Ardu Vashil and my MA group’s feedback and encouragement. Thanks in particular to Belinda Zhawi, my partner in crime from that time. To all my friends, colleagues and mentors who’ve supported me through this process, thank you so much. I’d like to acknowledge Jasmine Cooray, Toni Stuart, Miriam Nash, Dr Maria Neophytou, Dr Nathalie Teitler, Arabella Lawson, Phoebe Sparrow, Guy Macines-Manby, Ali Livesey, Dean Atta, Linda Biney, Kate Phillips, Sahar Halaimzai, Antosh Wojcik, Sophie Fenella, Matt Simmonds and Sarah Coveney.
Thank you especially to early readers Sarah Anson and Sarah Chesshyre, who read through the night way back at the beginning, and to Ben Perry who told me what needed to happen to make it work. Thank you to Dr Georgie Torlot for talking me the through the medical bits, and to Jake Perry for checking my French.
Thank you to my extended family for your continued support: the Torlots, Jacksons, Plummers, Stallards, Reads, Marshalls, et al. To Genevieve Dawson, Lewis Turner, Rachel Diamond-Hunter and Michael Diamond-Hunter, thank you for being my team; I’m so grateful. Kayo Chingonyi, you’ve been so generous and patient throughout this process; for being my partner and my friend, thank you so much. To the Perrys: Dad, Mum, Jake and Ben, thank you for your unwavering support, encouragement and love. This would never have happened without you.
Reading Group Guide
1. Some attribute the process of grief to five stages: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. How does Holly’s experience with the loss of Sam fit into these stages?
2. The Monty Hall problem is presented as a way for Holly to explain how she gets angry at things she cannot understand, yet later on Frank says that magic is one of the few things that makes people happier when they don’t understand it. Do you think Holly’s delight at Frank’s tricks shows that she still has some desire to change?
3. Do you feel as if Frank’s group of “broken people” serves a beneficial purpose to the members, or is it simply because “lonely people just want to be around other lonely people”?
4. When Rob gives Holly a watch he says that he “doesn’t believe time makes stuff better, we have to make it better for ourselves.” Is Holly trying to make things better or is she just letting time pass by?
5. How does the meaning behind Sam’s nickname for Holly, “little kite,” evolve from a simple pet name?
6. Do you feel Holly’s one-night stands and her relationship with Danny were healthy and necessary in her healing process, or were they destructive and selfish?
7. How did you feel about the way Holly ended things with Danny? Did they make a fitting couple?
8. When Holly decided not to visit Frank in hospital, did you have sympathy for her or was she being inconsiderate?
