by Matthew Crow
‘Maybe one day you’ll do everyone a favour and hit a vein,’ Demi said.
‘You’re so deep,’ Sasha said to me with a roll of her eyes just as Sarah bumped past her, knocking her with some clout against the coat-hooks.
‘You want to be more careful,’ Sarah said quietly, staring straight into Sasha’s eyes as she and her crew left the changing rooms.
That lunchtime, I was due to leave for a doctor’s appointment. Dad had written me a note. I was to leave when the lunch bell rang and was due back sometime before food technology.
I had zero intention whatsoever of returning, so when the bell rang and the rest of the class rushed for the canteen, leaving their stuff at the desks, I quietly packed up for the day.
On my way out, I heard Leiah Corelli tearfully screaming down the phone.
‘Well it’s not here! Yeah, well, how am I meant to know where it is! NO DAD THAT’S NOT FAIR I HATE YOU!’
The entire scene was nauseating.
Without thinking about it, I stopped, turned round, and went back to the classroom. I found Leiah’s coat easily, still on the back of her chair where she left it. Very calmly I bundled it into a tight ball, wrapped it in my wet towel and jammed it into the depths of my gym bag.
Then, I walked down the corridor, past Leiah, still wiping tears from her eyes, right out of the school and towards the bus stop.
When I got home from school that night Dad had already left for work. I spent the evening in the bath, washing away the stench of chlorine, and going over the day’s events. The episode at the pool had left me shaken.
I got out of the bath and got dressed, knowing what I had to do.
Downstairs, I stuffed Leiah’s coat underneath my own and headed out again, bound for the beach with the specific intention of finding Sarah.
I sat on the sand waiting for what felt like for ever, but just as I was about to give up hope that she would appear, I saw her in the distance. She was coming from the lighthouse, towards the beach. I watched her as she gradually came close.
Wordlessly she nodded hello and sat down beside me.
‘Sasha is a proper arsehole,’ she said, lighting a cigarette.
‘I know,’ I said.
‘You shouldn’t listen to her.’
‘It’s hard not to. She’s loud.’
‘She’s not hard to silence, her. Just give her a good whack. She’ll soon get the message.’
I smiled.
‘That Donna’s all right, though. You should stick with her.’
We sat staring at the ebbing tide.
‘I got you something to keep you warm,’ I said eventually, standing up and retrieving Leiah’s stolen coat from beneath my own. I chucked it at Sarah, who laughed as she recognised the garment. ‘It’s not like she’s going to need it to keep warm in Belgium now is it?’ I said and she sniggered again, putting the coat on and zipping it up.
‘Cheers,’ she said. ‘That’s really decent of you’
‘I just maybe wouldn’t wear it at school if I were you.’
‘I’m not an idiot. Do you want some money for it?’ she asked as I made my way back over the beach.
‘No,’ I said. ‘Just knowing she’s without it is enough for me.’
Sarah sniggered again and yelled down the beach at me.
‘You really are a proper bastard aren’t you?’ she said as I turned and shrugged. ‘I love it.’
PART TWO
Most People Just Visit
7
Most People Just Visit
I met Jacob properly on the day of my birthday. In fact, that day I met him twice.
‘Where’s the birthday girl?’ my Aunty Stella asked as she made her way through into the living room after breakfast. She was Dad’s youngest sister though older than him by a decade, and like all of Dad’s family she was afflicted by an unaccountably sunny outlook that I could not fathom. I always felt most comfortable with glib asides and lazy sneers.
I truly was a Veronica in a land full of Heathers.
‘Well, haven’t you been spoiled?’ she said, placing my presents on the table in the front room and attempting to wrap her arms around me. As usual I tried to sidestep this but still found myself on the wrong end of a hug. ‘You’re looking well. Nice to see you back on your feet. No point in being miserable, eh?’
People did this occasionally, I found, around mental illness. They’d come at you with this forced joviality. It’s as though they imagined the excess happiness would rub off somehow; that maybe you’d become well again as if by osmosis or some shit.
‘I’m so glad you’re on the mend. You’ve got the world to be happy for, birthday girl. You’re young…’ she said, taking a handkerchief from her pocket and dusting a corner of the mantelpiece, ‘… and I was just saying to your Aunty Joyce the other day you’d be the prettiest little thing if you made the effort.’
I managed a noble eleven minutes before making my excuses and leaving half an hour early to wander the promenade before my annual birthday lunch with Donna, and to tend to an errand, whose prospect had made my stomach churn all night.
I had decided that if I wanted to know what had happened to Sarah then I’d have to walk in her footsteps, follow her ghost down some of the paths she’d kept to herself. Only for a short distance, perhaps, but far enough to try and see where it was she’d been trying to get to.
It was clear to me now that Sarah had been frightened. She never told me as much, not in so many words, but I could sense it; I could see that she was running from something she couldn’t escape. Hiding in plain sight from whatever dangers she feared the most.
I could never put a finger what exactly was wrong with her.
Something about Dan Vesper had sent a chill through me. I knew this fear and foreboding was precisely what I had seen in Sarah.
Dan was the key to unlocking the truth about what had happened. Somehow he was responsible and somehow he had to pay. No matter what anybody said, I knew he was the one who had caused her to disappear. If I could get to him then I could get to her.
Emma Nolan stopped and did a double take as I made my way towards the club’s entrance. She was leaving as I was entering and seemed displeased with both situations.
Mostly at school she was known of, rather than known. Sometimes she spoke to Sarah, but mostly kept to her own dead-eyed clique. They were a group that laughed often but never smiled; their enjoyment came from the misfortune of others. Cruelty was their currency and any childhood charm – which was sparse to begin with – had long since been overlaid by thick foundation and laminated eyebrows permanently pencilled into arched disapproval.
‘Hi,’ I said flatly as she stood between the closing wooden doors, blocking my path.
‘You’re going the wrong way,’ she said, tucking an envelope into her satchel, staring down at me from the subtle pedestal of the step. ‘It’s invite only.’ She pushed her way past me.
‘I guess I’m one of the lucky ones, then,’ I said, opening the door.
‘Don’t say I didn’t warn you,’ Emma threw over her shoulder. I watched her as she climbed into the back seat of a waiting car with blacked out windows and the type of exhaust jigged to make the sound of an explosion at even the gentlest press of the pedal.
I had texted Dan once, tentatively, when my curiosity had got the better of me. And then again in a panic, when his reply was more prompt and demanding than I’d have anticipated: Glad to see you’re a friend. Meet me at lunchtime. You know where to find me.
My message back sounded jumbled, even with the benefit of spellcheck, but implied that my tight schedule may not permit our meeting at short notice. See you tomorrow, came his text in return.
A nightclub during the day was as sad a sight as I could imagine.
The scuffs and dents usually hidden by darkness and the glamorous swirl of strobe lights are writ large and obvious. The room was quiet, save the tinny sound of a song playing low on an iPhone somewhere. The floor was filthy an
d the walls were peeling. Even the smell of bleach masking the fading scent of bodies – the dim, jarring notes of sweat and scent – seemed sinister.
It looked like a crime scene. A tragedy.
One or two bodies milled about but it was otherwise empty. The sharp sound of a torrent of glass smashing into shards echoed in the distance. Bottles behind the bar were checked and sniffed for signs of skimming, and a man sat crouched by a hissing barrel as he struggled with a length of unruly piping, like a snake charmer urging his serpent into submission.
Dan stood behind the DJ booth counting some form of currency. When he spotted me hovering nervously beside the bar he dismissed the two cohorts that lounged either side of him and jumped down to the dance floor with a firm thud.
‘Pleased you could make it,’ he said, leading me by the waist towards the bar.
I smiled as best I could and followed his lead as the music faded to silent.
‘Get us a drink,’ Dan said to the barman’s back, who turned grudgingly but obediently and then made towards the optics.
When I tried to object Dan raised his hand gently to my mouth, pressing my lips shut with his cold thumb.
‘A toast,’ he said, turning my head gently one way and the other, before slowly lowering his hand to his side. ‘To our new enterprise.’
‘I really don’t know,’ I said, as two shots of vodka were placed in front of us and Dan raised his glass to mine, clinking before knocking it back.
‘Let’s not ruin the special moment. I’m pleased you’re going to be working for me,’ Dan said, nodding towards my vodka. I downed it in one, and felt it bloom inside of me like some toxic rose.
I had to play along; no going back now. Nausea occupied nine tenths of my insides.
‘It would just be some flyering, yeah?’ I said eventually, when I could force my voice to work.
Dan smiled and leaned his elbow on the bar, knocking a half empty beer bottle onto the floor below.
The barman’s eyes met his and Dan nodded once towards the mess.
‘Go get the broom,’ he instructed as the barman began pooling the glass with his foot. The barman nodded and made his way towards the back of the club and out of an emergency exit door.
Once we were alone Dan looked at me like I was a puzzle he was trying to work out.
‘You don’t talk much do you?’ he asked, smiling as I shrugged.
He reached behind the bar and retrieved a stack of flyers bound with elastic. ‘I want you to hand these out, to start with,’ he said, slipping the flyers into a brown envelope and folding it once over on itself.
I accepted the package and slipped it inside of my bag.
‘I’d assumed flyering was the beginning and the end,’ I said suspiciously. ‘Just a chance to make a bit of money.’
He grinned. ‘A girl needs ambition.’
‘A girl needs free time,’ I said, attempting a joke as I stood up rod straight, desperately intoning it was time for me to leave.
‘Nothing’s for free,’ Dan said, reaching into his back pocket and pulling out two crisp notes which he slid into the top pocket of my shirt.
‘Cheers,’ I said, trying not to show any kind of pleasure whatsoever.
‘I’d like to have a proper drink with you sometime,’ he said smoothly, as I readied myself to leave. ‘Why not come to the club night next week? It’s going to be a big one.’
‘You celebrating something?’ I asked and Dan smiled as he shook his head.
‘I think I’m going away for a while,’ he said as my blood ran cold. ‘Might as well make the last night count. There’ll be cheap drinks. And an afterparty, too, if I like you enough.’
‘Where?’ I asked, unable to stop myself. ‘Why?’ I asked, before checking myself and blushing at my outburst. Dan leaving town was a possibility I had never anticipated, even before his presence had mattered. He seemed to be as much a part of the area as the sharp breeze and the lingering sadness that pervaded even the warmest days. The thought made me as furious as it did panicked. My mission now had a deadline. I would have to get to the bottom of what happened to Sarah before Dan had the chance to slip away into the shadows.
‘Just fancy a change of scenery,’ he said, coolly but cautiously, as if he could see through the first layer of skin that most people took to be the surface. ‘Nothing more sinister. So you’re coming then?’ he asked as I nodded on instinct. ‘You’ll be at my last hurrah?’
‘I’ll be there,’ I said. ‘I promise.’
‘Good,’ Dan said. ‘And we can have that drink.’
‘It’s on me.’ I took the money out of my top pocket and transferred it to the one on the back of my jeans.
‘Go carefully,’ he said as I made my way out of the club. ‘Oh… and Claudette,’ he added, stopping me dead in my tracks just feet from the exit. ‘Many happy returns.’
Safely outside I stopped to swallow what felt like vomit in my mouth.
‘Oh what’s this?’ Donna asked, teasing her fingers over the envelope which prodded out from my bag as we waited in line at the café. ‘A present from an admirer?’
She herself hadn’t bought me a birthday present but had written an IOU for a hand-job in my card, so at least I knew that she cared.
I shook my head and closed the bag.
‘It’s nothing.’
‘What’s in the box!’ Donna yelled, grabbing hold of me, doing her best impression of Brad Pitt in Se7en. ‘WHAT’S IN THE BOOOOOOOX!’ she yelled again as old ladies tutted and brushed past us.
‘Just some prescriptions and stuff,’ I mumbled as we reached the counter. She eyed me sceptically but let it go.
‘Hi Deb, can we have…’
‘I’m on my break,’ Deb snapped, heading back into the kitchen. ‘Jacob, get up here now!’
A boy made his way to out front to take our order. He was older than us though not by much. You could tell by the way his arms were covered in tattoos. Long sleeves of characters and emblems grew up towards his elbows like ivy.
‘Oh hello,’ Donna said, in her smoky old-lady-letch voice. ‘What do they call you?’
‘Jacob,’ he answered. ‘What can I get for you?’
Where I live a person’s voice is like their postcode. You can pin someone down to within a three-street radius by the way they pronounce the word ‘theatre’. Not Jacob. His voice was clean and infinite. He sounded like everywhere and nowhere all at once.
‘Hmmm,’ Donna said, clearly eyeing up her next move. ‘What can you tell us about today’s special?’
‘We’ll have two sundaes,’ I said, in an attempt to stop her in her tracks. ‘And two Cokes.’
‘Coming right up,’ he said, scribbling our orders down on an oil-spattered notepad.
‘You’ve a hue not borne of these shores,’ Donna said as he was writing. ‘A foreign sort, are you?’ she asked.
‘I’ve been travelling, if that’s what you mean?’
‘Cultured,’ Donna said. ‘Where?’
‘Australia, then Thailand, then China. Then Europe.’
‘And now the splendour of the North-East coast?’ I said.
‘It’s a stop-gap,’ he said, looking up at me.
‘What were the rest? Failed attempts at taking root?’ Donna asked as she took a lolly from the top on the counter and placed twenty pence on the till.
‘Something like that,’ he mumbled, and made his way to process our orders.
‘Just nipping to the bathroom,’ I said as Donna made her way to the table.
By the time I got back, Donna had true to form made her way through half of her sundae and most of the cream on mine too.
‘Here, get this down you before I beat you to it,’ said Donna, pushing my ice-cream glass towards me. ‘You’re going to need a sugar rush for the arcade session later.’
I sighed and took a token spoonful of ice cream as Jacob cleared tables behind us.
‘Happy birthday,’ he said quietly, as he walked past our table.
‘I’m psychic,’ he said, pointing to the birthday card Donna had placed beside our menu.
Later that day Donna was sleeping off a sugar coma and Dad had banished me from the house for an hour – ostensibly to make some important phone calls, but I knew the routine. He would be inflating balloons and hoisting banners around the dining table in preparation for my birthday feast. Every year I pretended I had no idea. Me walking in and pretending to be floored by surprise was part of the ritual, and who was I to deprive him of his fun? So, with little else to do, I was walking alone along the beach. That’s when I saw Jacob for the second time.
Jacob was poised in downward-facing dog on a rock by the shoreline. He stayed in position for a minute or two before his body began to tremble slightly, and slowly he untangled himself before sitting on the rock and, curling his legs beneath him, back towards me, facing out to sea. After a while he gently leaned back and inhaled, face up to the skies.
‘Are you doing yoga?’ I said behind him.
‘It’s very centring,’ he said as he exhaled so that his words sounded like a whisper on a breeze.
‘You’ll sharp be back out of line when you get your head kicked in,’ I said, making my way towards him
‘Excuse me?’ he said, raising his head up to the sky.
‘I don’t mind. It’s good. I tried it once but my body doesn’t bend that way.’
‘Everyone’s body bends that way, it’s just a matter of practice.’
‘Whatever. I’m just saying. It’s not a yoga-in-public type of town. That’s all. Someone at school once found a picture of Chris Farrow doing sword dancing and he had three teeth knocked out.’
‘You must be so proud of your hometown,’ he said.
‘Aren’t you the boy from the café?’ I said after a moment, pretending I’d just found his place in the rich Filofax of my social interactions.
