by James Rice
Mum’s starter is baked aubergine, stuffed with rice and blue cheese. Aubergines, rice and blue cheese are situated in different corners of the shop so Mum had to hurry back and forth between aisles, leaving little black heel-scrapes wherever she went. She was constantly mumbling but I was trailing behind with the trolley and couldn’t hear what she was saying. By the time we reached the seafood counter Mum was out of breath. The fishmonger was nice enough to wait. Mum leant on the glass, gulping down that icy air, the fish glaring up at her, their mouths gaping. Eventually Mum coughed and sighed and smiled and said she would like the finest Scottish salmon the fishmonger had to offer, please. She said that the salmon needs to be the climax of her meal. It has to be perfection. Mum’s favourite phrases are: ‘Immaculate’, ‘Perfection’ and ‘Wow Factor’. The fishmonger was only a teenager and didn’t really know how to reply. He just kept saying, ‘It’s good fish, this. It’s fresh.’
Once the trolley was stacked with salmon we hurried over to the drinks corner. The floor of Waitrose’s drinks corner is wooden to give it the look of an authentic wine cellar. Ursula Hampton only drinks champagne (other drinks give her heartburn) so Mum collected a few bottles and slotted them into the front of the trolley. Finally, the Hamptons are to be served coffee. Mum says a person’s coffee tells you a lot about them. Mum has a large machine that grinds beans and froths cream. She polishes her cafetière daily. Waitrose has an unprecedented range of coffee: Brazilian Daterra, Colombian Supremo, Kenya AA, Kwonggi Mountain, Monsoon Malabar, Colombian Reserve, Sumatra Mandheling, Mocha Sidamo. Mum had to try and figure out which flavour of coffee was most appropriate. She kept muttering, ‘I just don’t know, I just don’t know.’ She lifted a packet of Colombian Supremo and sniffed it. She examined the description on the back.
I wished she would relax about the whole thing. I kept thinking about the Prancing Horse around the corner and wondering if they served cocktails and if they’d serve me. I wanted to ask Mum if she fancied a cocktail, to relax her. I know she prefers places in the city with leather seats and atmosphere but I thought I might as well ask. I didn’t know what we’d talk about. I wasn’t giving much thought to it at all, actually – my mind was full of Elvis. I just wanted to buy her a drink so she wouldn’t go home and cook another blackened salmon, tottering around the kitchen in her heels, whilst all the time smiling and smiling. It must be exhausting. In my head I kept saying, ‘Do you fancy a cocktail?’ I thought, ‘I’ll say it on three,’ and counted ‘One’ and counted ‘Two’.
But then Mum dropped the Colombian Supremo and pushed the trolley into my stomach, forcing me back behind the bread stand. She shushed me, even though I wasn’t saying anything. She peered around the corner. After a minute I peered too. Ursula Hampton was at the olive bar, a basket hung over her arm, spooning olives into a little plastic tub.
‘I can’t bump into her,’ Mum said. ‘Not like this.’
I couldn’t work out why. Mum was wearing her heels and her hair and makeup were perfect. She looked beautiful. She kept repeating the word ‘No,’ over and over, under her breath. ‘No, no, no, no, no.’ Then she turned to me and said, ‘Just promise me, if she sees us, just promise me you’ll try and be normal.’
I didn’t reply to that because I didn’t know how to reply. I didn’t know how I could promise something I had failed to do my whole life. Ursula flipped through a couple of magazines, then headed to the checkout. A man came up behind us wanting a baguette and Mum apologised and passed him the largest one she could find. We waited until Ursula was out into the car park before making our way to the tills.
At the checkout Mum’s cards kept beeping. She kept rummaging in her bag for card after card, her protests quietening as the queue grew. In the end she split the bill over four cards and we left without looking back.
She didn’t play any Elvis on the way home.
09/12
It’s been a long day. I’ve spent the past ten minutes or so sitting here in the snow, trying to remember how exactly it all began, and it’s just come to me. Of course: the Italian leather couch came. This morning was the last possible morning it could arrive in time for the Hamptons’ meal. And this morning it arrived.
I waited until the van had rolled off down the avenue before I left my room. Mum was so excited she’d forgotten to pour the Colombian Supremo for the delivery guys and the cafetière was still steaming on the dining-room table. I headed straight to the front door but she rushed out of the living room, grinning and whispering to ‘Come and see, come and see.’
The living room looks much smaller with the couch. It’s a leather corner-suite. White. Mum kept stroking it with the tip of her finger. I know she wanted me to comment on its beauty, on how the white leather matched the white walls or something, but I don’t know about that stuff and I can never think of what to say at the time. In the end I just nodded encouragingly. Then she got all serious and told me under no circumstances was I to sit on it. I nodded again and stepped out to the hallway. She didn’t follow so I left for school.
First lesson was Geography. Ian and Goose were passing notes again, which is more geographically difficult than in English Lit., since Ian and I sit front left and Goose sits back right. It means that sometimes Goose’s notes (which he scrunches into tight little balls) land in my collar or bounce off the back of my head. They were discussing Lucy Marlowe again. Goose’s latest theory was that, after Ian had shown her the ‘magic of sex’, Lucy had realised how much she loved it. How much she needed it. He wrote that since Halloween she’s been out every night picking up guys just to try and relive the experience. He wrote that she’s now quit school to pursue a career as a prostitute.
Before Ian could respond the door opened at the back of the class and Lucy entered and Mr Cullman stopped explaining the possible outcomes of the collision of tectonic plates and just stared at her, every member of the class straining over their shoulders to join in with the staring. Lucy lingered in the doorway, one hand on her hip. Goose whistled. Lucy stepped past him to the front of the class and sat at the table alongside Ian. I didn’t want to stare like everyone else because I know it’s not nice being stared at, so I kept my head down. I just glanced up occasionally.
At first it seemed as if Lucy had stuffed two footballs down her blouse, but on closer inspection the tops of the footballs were bursting from the top of the blouse and they were clearly not footballs as they were covered with skin and frilled with the pink lace of a bra. Lucy kept her head up. She looked serious and sophisticated. After a minute Mr Cullman managed to look her in the eye. He muttered a welcome back and turned to the whiteboard.
Ian continued to stare. Eventually Lucy turned to him and said, ‘Do you mind?’ and Ian grinned in response, not looking up from her chest. She tried to carry on looking all pissed off and sophisticated but she couldn’t help smirking. She took a deep breath and her chest swelled, almost bursting from her blouse. Ian let out a squeal of excitement. I felt sick, light-headed. I don’t think Lucy’s Mr Spock T-shirt would fit her any more.
After lunch was English. We were studying act three of An Inspector Calls, which is Miss Hayes’ favourite part. Miss Hayes got excited reading it to us. She folded the book over, holding it with one hand so she could convey the words with the other. She circuited the room, stopping at her favourite passages to gauge our reaction. She adopted different voices for each of the characters. Ian and Goose were passing notes again but Miss Hayes just ignored them and concentrated on her reading.
I tried to concentrate on her reading too but it became hard not to glance at Ian and Goose’s notes. They were still discussing Lucy. Goose asked if Ian’d had a go on her implants at lunch but Ian wrote back that she wouldn’t let him because they were in school and if he got caught fondling they might get suspended. He could look at them as much as he wanted, though. He drew a picture of them. He wrote that after school he was going to Lucy’s house and he was sure they’d get up to you-know-what and he’d have a p
roper go on them then.
Then Goose started drawing pictures. The pictures were of the possible scenarios you-know-what might entail. In most of them Lucy was bent over, screaming with her eyes closed while Ian stood behind her, a big smile on his face. I felt that pressure building inside me again. I tried to concentrate on picking my fingers. It takes a few days for the effects of T-Rex Bleach to show on my hands but when it does they’re plagued. It’s like picking glue except it stings, the skin underneath’s so soft and pink and raw.
Then Goose’s notes were about you. About how you’ve also been off the past couple of weeks. He thought maybe you’d gone in for surgery, too. He drew more pictures, this time with your screaming face. He even drew your sunglasses. Ian just replied ‘Haha’ but Goose carried on, note after note after note. My head ached. I picked and picked till my fingers bled, till my copy of An Inspector Calls was patterned with bloody prints.
The bell rang. Everyone hurried from class. Miss Hayes smiled over at me, as if she wanted one of our little chats, but I kept my head down and left. Goose and Ian set off over the field. Last period was P.S.H.E. but Ian and Goose never go to P.S.H.E., they always sneak off somewhere, usually with a couple of girls.
Lucy was waiting for them, over by the sandpit. When Ian saw her he ran and hoisted her into the air. She screamed and laughed and slapped his shoulders, shouting for him to be careful: ‘They’re still sensitive!’ They sat together in the sand. Goose sat with them. They started kissing and Goose just sat there, watching.
I waited over by the bins. Eventually Ian leant over and whispered something to Goose and Goose nodded and stood and retreated to the hole in the hedge. By the time I crossed the field he’d disappeared onto the dual carriageway. Ian and Lucy were laid out, kissing in the sand.
It was 14:36. The dual carriageway was dull and empty. The sky was thick like cream. Goose was sitting on the wall of the canal bridge, his legs dangling over the edge. He was smoking a cigarette.
I put my hood up. I placed my hands in my coat pockets and crossed the carriageway. There was no wind but the air was very cold and each breath stung the hole in my tongue. I wrapped my coat as tightly as I could but the cold was somehow still seeping inside, clutching my bones and making me shiver. I tried to think of you, but all I could see was the version of you in Goose’s drawings, bent over, screaming.
I reached the canal bridge. I could just make out the tapping of Goose’s earphones. I gripped the insides of my pockets. My entire body was trembling. I thought any second he’d hear me, the slight swishing of my parka as I edged towards him, but he was too busy nodding his head to the music. There were strips of web hanging from his hair, clinging to his left shoulder, dancing in the air.
Whatever Goose was listening to was tap-tapping into some sort of climax. I took my hands from my pockets. My fingertips ached in the cold. I leant forward, till I could feel the warmth of his fleece on my face, till I could smell the sour mix of sweat and cigarettes.
That’s when I saw it: one of Them, emerging one leg at a time from the collar of his fleece. It wasn’t a particularly large one – about the size of a two-pence piece, including leg-span – but I froze all the same as it scurried down his back. It drew to a stop between his shoulder blades, level with my face. The earphones ceased their tapping. There was a silence in the air.
It perched there, still for a second, before extending a leg out towards me.
I pressed my hands into Goose’s back. The soft fleece burnt my stinging fingers. I half expected the fall to be in slow motion, like a fall in a film, but Goose barely had time to lift his arms before he hit the ice. The ducks scattered, squawking in alarm. Goose’s body lay there, arms spread, like he was making snow angels. Blood veined from his mouth across the frozen canal. The ducks watched him. I watched him. They moved in slowly, pecking at his sides and his back. I breathed.
Then I ran. My feet were numb and ached in the cold but I just kept on running. I must have kept running for nearly an hour. There weren’t many cars about and for a while I ran right along the middle of the carriageway, but then the school traffic started and I carried on along the pavement. I ignored the pain of my breathing, the stitch in my side. I ran the bus route, all the way down the Social De-cline. All the way out to the Pitt. I needed to see you. I knew that once I did, everything would be OK.
By the time I reached the church it was starting to snow. I leant against the wall, breathing deeply.
The sign said:
FORGIVE AS THE LORD FORGAVE YOU
I passed the Rat and Dog and turned, heading down towards the park. I crossed over to your estate.
And then I stopped. Scraps was there. He was standing in the middle of the road, sniffing at a pigeon that was spread across the tarmac. He stared at me for a second, recognition in his eyes. He bounded over.
I knelt to him. We were both panting. He sniffed at my pocket, licked my hands. I told him I didn’t have any salmon, sorry. I asked what he was doing out in the street.
Then I looked up and saw you, standing at the corner. I stepped back from Scraps. He woofed at me.
‘There you are,’ you said. You were talking to Scraps. He trotted over and you took hold of his collar and rubbed his head and told me you were sorry, glancing sideways through your red curling hair. You weren’t wearing your sunglasses.
In my head I said, ‘Say something, say something, say something,’ but I didn’t say anything.
Then you walked away. I thought maybe that was it. I was too scared to speak but inside I was aching for you to say something else, anything else.
You’d nearly reached the corner again when you stopped and turned to me.
You said, ‘You’re in my school, aren’t you?’ and I nodded and you smiled and said, ‘I’ve seen you on the bus. You live round here?’
I nodded again. It’s not lying, really, it was just nodding.
You asked my name and I told you.
You said, ‘I’m Alice.’
I tried my best to think of what to say next but my mind wasn’t processing anything. The snow was getting thick. It gathered in your hair.
‘Well, see you around.’ You walked to the corner, holding Scraps by his collar. Scraps looked back over his shoulder a few seconds before turning back to you. I just stood there, watching through the snow.
At the corner you turned back one last time. You said, ‘By the way, you shouldn’t stand there.’
I swallowed.
‘On three grids,’ you said.
I looked down. You were right – I was standing on a set of three grids. I stepped off onto regular plain pavement.
‘It’s unlucky.’
DATE UNKNOWN
So Mum and my father and Ken Hampton and Ursula Hampton are sitting at the dining-room table with knives and forks and big white plates of blackened salmon and mango rice and chipotle-whatever-it’s-called and they’re smiling and there are trumpets sounding softly from over in the lounge and nobody’s talking because everybody’s politely waiting to see who’ll be the first to take that first bite of delicious-looking salmon and Mum thinks but isn’t sure that one of the Hamptons should be the first to take a bite because after all they’re the guests but Ursula Hampton is sure that Mum should be the first to take a bite and ‘lead the meal’ because after all she’s the host and the only sounds are the long swooping trumpet-notes as they glide from Mum’s subwoofer in the lounge, past the vases of glittering black twigs and tall glass candlesticks supporting thick purple red-grape-scented candles to harmonise over the heads of the four diners, who still sit and still smile and still wait for someone to start eating and in the end it’s Ken Hampton who takes the initiative and under the polite-smiling gaze of the other three diners cuts a small slice of salmon and spreads it with mango rice and chipotle-whatever-it’s-called until his fork is loaded with an even mixture of the textures and flavours compiled on his steaming plate, nodding in turn to each of the diners before raising his fork to
his lips, however as he does so there’s this small but audible clink, Ken’s fork stopping dead before his face, Ken’s red and bushy eyebrows crawling into a frown upon his forehead and as a third trumpet joins the two soft trumpets playing a slightly louder, slightly sadder note it becomes clear that although Ken’s smiling lips have parted, his white wall of smiling teeth beneath have not and no matter how much Ken strains against the locked hinges of his jaw he cannot seem to part his teeth, cannot allow the blackened salmon and mango rice access to his mouth, cannot experience that smoky Mexican chipotle flavour, cannot do anything in fact but let the forkful of food slip back to his plate, splattering amongst his rice and splashing mango sauce up onto his salmon-pink shirt and by now several more trumpets have joined the increasingly sad trumpet music, this time playing even lower and more sustained notes, thick and deep like subtle but relentless foghorns and the focus of the diners has shifted to Ursula who’s attempting to take some of the limelight off Ken by slicing into her own plate of blackened salmon and mango rice and chipotle-whatever-it’s-called, delicately arranging a mixture of fish and rice on her fork before lifting it to her still-smiling lips, but as Ursula attempts to take a bite she too is met by a small but audible clink and she too finds her teeth unopenable and she too strains against her jaw-locked mouth but cannot get a single ounce of Mum’s delicious-looking blackened salmon past her gleaming white teeth and so she too finds her forkful of salmon splashing back into the mango sauce, speckling the tablecloth with a scattering of sauce spots and so as the trumpet music squeals ever louder from the subwoofer speakers in the lounge the focus of the four smiling diners turns to Mum who, even through her beaming smile, is clearly so appalled and embarrassed at her disaster-of-a-dinner-party that she has no choice but to take control, to ‘lead the meal’, to politely smilingly dig into her own plate of blackened salmon, mango rice, chipotle-whatever-it’s-called and show them how it’s done but as Mum obligingly slices into the food on her plate it becomes pretty obvious before she even raises her fork that her chances of success are likely to be similar to Ken and Ursula’s, that Mum is more than likely also going to suffer the inevitable clink, the inevitable jaw-lock, the inevitable slip-of-food-from-fork, yet still Mum persists, still raising her fork, still parting her lips, still trying her best to jab that fork through her still-sealed teeth and by now several more trumpets have joined the increasingly loud trumpet music, squealing chaotically and distorting harshly and far surpassing the appropriate volume for background music and my father is also trying to join in and eat some salmon and so now all four diners are attempting to open their jaws, to break past their smiles, to eat the food that Mum has spent so long preparing but no matter how much they fork, how desperate their eyes look, how many drips of sweat fleck the plates before them, they can’t seem to manage to stop smiling long enough to get a single forkful of salmon into the warm wetness of their mouths and the trumpets are wailing now, sustaining unmatching notes for far longer than any trumpeter could possibly blow and the diners are practically stabbing the cutlery into their faces, my father resorting to holding his fork towards him like a samurai when they stab themselves in old movies and he’s thrusting with all his might at his mouth and Ursula Hampton’s hair has slipped down over her eyes and she is hack-hack-hacking away at her face until eventually she misses her teeth and hacks off a hunk of the side of her cheek and Mum is now trying to pry open her jaw with her stainless steel knife and Ursula’s blood is staining the tablecloth and the jazz is building into a sort of swarming buzzing freestyle-jazz frenzy and as Ken Hampton finally breaks through his two front teeth two long curling black legs begin to wriggle out through the gap and
