In at the Deep End

by Kate Davies

  The good thing about skating is that there are lots of opportunities for hand-holding and falling on top of each other romantically. The bad thing about it is everything else. We spent a couple of hours clinging to the rail at the edge of the ice, watching 13-year-olds show off their triple axels in the middle, and when we couldn’t take the crowds and the tinny Christmas music any more, we went to Shoreditch to find some food.

  ‘What kind of food do you fancy?’ I asked her as we walked down Brushfield Street, trying to adjust to our skate-free feet.

  ‘You choose,’ she said.

  ‘OK,’ I said, feeling an exciting sense of responsibility and power. ‘There’s a really good Sichuan restaurant down here.’

  ‘Lead the way,’ she said, so I did, walking on the traffic side of the street.

  Carys and I were still seeing each other a couple of weeks later, so I asked her if she’d consider catering for Alice’s anti-patriarchy-themed hen party. She said yes, and she came up with an entire menu inspired by the suffragette colours: beetroot carpaccio to start, mint and pea risotto for the main and panna cotta for dessert.

  ‘You’re so clever, Carys!’ Alice said as we sat around Carys’s dining table, studying the menu. ‘But you know the suffragettes were actually quite problematic? I know intersectionality wasn’t a thing in the Edwardian era, but they didn’t campaign at all for working-class women, or women of colour—’

  ‘Alice, mate,’ called Cat from across the table, ‘can you stop trying to be woke, for one night? Let’s forget about politics and get trashed!’

  Everyone cheered, ‘Yeah!’

  Alice leaned towards me and said, ‘Did you hear that? Cat called me “woke”!’

  Cat opened the bottle of champagne she’d brought and poured everyone a glass. She was obviously feeling more flush than usual – probably because she had just found out that Menstruation: the Musical was transferring to Soho Theatre for a month-long run. She took a sip of champagne through her willy straw, and asked, ‘What’s your wedding dress like?’

  ‘Black,’ Alice said happily.

  Samira, Alice’s best friend from school, said, ‘I’m guessing your dad isn’t walking you down the aisle then?’ Samira was a bit more traditional than the rest of us – she was responsible for the willy straws.

  ‘No. Julia’s walking me,’ said Alice, quite proudly, I thought. ‘And Dave’s walking down with his brother.’

  ‘And you’re not taking his name,’ said Samira.

  ‘He’s thinking of taking mine,’ said Alice.

  ‘That’s so romantic!’ said Carys.

  ‘Dave’s surname is Pratt, though,’ I pointed out, ‘so he has a bit of an ulterior motive.’

  The champagne didn’t last long – we moved on to prosecco, then red wine, and we were pretty wasted by the time we’d finished eating. Once we had cleared the table, Samira handed everyone a lump of Plasticine, and we had a penis-making competition. Alice judged our entries. There were a real variety of sizes and shapes. Cat’s won first prize – it was horribly lifelike, complete with veins and foreskin. Carys’s was the biggest, but also the least realistic.

  ‘I hate to say this,’ Alice said, examining it, ‘but I think this one comes in last place.’

  Carys looked quite disappointed. ‘It’s too smooth, isn’t it?’

  Alice nodded. ‘And there are no balls.’

  ‘Carys is a gold-star lesbian, though,’ I said, putting my arm around her. ‘So she’s at a bit of a disadvantage.’

  I stayed behind after everyone had left to help Carys clear up.

  ‘So,’ I said, as soon as we were alone.

  ‘So,’ she said back.

  ‘Shall we leave the washing-up till the morning?’ I said.

  ‘Good idea,’ she said.

  And I pushed her back onto the sofa.

  Our teeth clashed the first time we kissed, but we laughed and kept kissing anyway. ‘Let’s go to the bedroom,’ she said.

  I undressed her first. I’m proud of that. And then she pushed me back on the bed and undressed me.

  ‘What do you want me to do?’ she asked me.

  ‘Fuck me,’ I said.

  ‘Fingers?’

  ‘Lots of them.’

  I was worried she wouldn’t be as good as Sam – that my run of good lesbian sex couldn’t last forever, and that she’d be half-hearted and a bit too fond of licking. But she wasn’t. She fucked me slowly, deeply, and the fairy lights around her walls danced as the bed moved, and I closed my eyes as I came, and she laughed as she looked down at me, and I said, ‘What?’ and she said, ‘You’re just really fit’ – and then we tried to 69, but neither of us could reach properly, so I fucked her from behind, and she shouted, ‘Wow!’ as she came, and we both laughed again and collapsed in a heap on the mattress.

  ‘I’ve never really had funny sex before,’ I told her afterwards, as we made ourselves toast in the kitchen. ‘Good funny, I mean.’

  ‘What’s the point of sex if you can’t laugh about it?’ Carys said, passing me the butter. ‘Here. I’m going to put cinnamon and sugar on mine. Want some?’

  ‘Definitely,’ I said.

  We closed our eyes as we ate it.

  ‘This tastes like New York City,’ I said, crunching my toast. ‘I’m pretending I’m eating cinnamon toast for breakfast in my Brooklyn brownstone.’

  ‘I’m not,’ she said, and she smiled. ‘I don’t want to pretend I’m anywhere else when I’m with you.’

  50. CHRISTMAS SPECTACULAR

  I was so busy in December, I didn’t have time to watch one straight-to-Netflix Christmas movie. I didn’t even have time to feel maudlin when I heard Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker playing over the speakers in John Lewis, even though it usually reminds me of the end of my dance career and sends me into a weeping, doughnut-eating self-pity spiral. When I wasn’t at work, I was either preparing for the Fast Stream assessment centre, or teaching the beginners’ swing dance class, or – best of all – rehearsing for the Friends of Dorothy Christmas Spectacular, which was running for three nights at the Leicester Square theatre. Except that wasn’t really best of all, because on Saturday nights and Sunday mornings, Carys and I would hang out and eat delicious croissants and have excellent sex.

  Carys and Cat came along to the first night of the Christmas Spectacular. We performed a penguin-inspired Charleston to ‘Happy Feet’, followed by a tricky routine to ‘Singin’ in the Rain’, which required us to twirl red-and-green umbrellas. My umbrella wouldn’t open properly, but I was standing near the back, so it probably didn’t matter. After the final number, ‘I Saw Daddy Kissing Santa Claus’, the audience gave us a standing ovation. I stood there, bowing and blinking in the stage lights, smiling and smiling. I caught sight of Cat in the audience, and she was crying, and I cried too, until Zhu whispered to me to pull myself together.

  Once we were back in the dressing room – it was so exciting to have a dressing room, with lights around the mirrors – Zhu slipped me a £50 note.

  ‘What’s this for?’ I asked.

  ‘Your share of the ticket sales,’ she said.

  I held the note tight. I had done it. I was a professional dancer again.

  I moved in with Cat just before Christmas, to a two-bedroom house (an actual house, with our own front door) in Highams Park. We persuaded our friends to come round for a pre-Christmas dinner, despite the terrible transport links. Everyone brought a bottle of wine and we drank them all, which was probably why Bo ended up running naked around the block at two in the morning, screaming ‘Gender is a construct!’

  After we’d pulled the crackers and eaten the turkey, we all gathered around the television for the soon-to-be-traditional screening of Cat’s German supermarket commercial. Lush strings played as she carried a plate of food to the table.

  ‘Bit phallic,’ Ella said, as on-screen Cat closed her eyes and bit into a bratwurst.

  ‘Kind of sexy, actually,’ said Zhu, and she reached out for El
la’s hand.

  On screen Cat smiled at everyone Germanly while a deep-voiced woman said something we couldn’t understand, probably about what good value the sausages were.

  Everyone cheered.

  On actual Christmas Day, I arrived home to find my mother in the kitchen, dressed as Lizzy Bennet, looking over some sort of blueprint with Dad (Frankenstein’s monster). I could hear my aunts and uncles in the living room, arguing about which of my cousins made the most convincing Hermione Granger.

  I put my bag down and hung the empty picture frame I was carrying around my neck to complete my costume (Griet from Girl with a Pearl Earring). ‘What’s going on?’ I asked.

  ‘Just looking at plans for the building work,’ she said.

  I stared at her, amazed. ‘You’re not,’ I said.

  ‘We are,’ said Dad. ‘She’s come to her senses.’

  ‘I have not come to my senses,’ Mum said. ‘We are not having an entertainment centre. We’re having a tasteful kitchen extension, that’s all. With French windows. And underfloor heating. And maybe a side return. And while we’re at it, we might as well see about getting the loft done.’ She smiled. ‘We’re going to give the neighbours a taste of their own medicine.’ She picked up a bowl full of crisps from the table and held it out to me. ‘They’re champagne and prosciutto flavour. Revolting, but moreish!’

  51. IT’LL PASS

  One Sunday morning in February, Cat told Carys and me that she hadn’t had sex for six months. She didn’t so much tell us as shout it, really – it came somewhere in the middle of a monologue about how we had to stop having loud sex at three in the morning. We were eating bagels at the time, and I almost choked on a piece of smoked salmon.

  ‘You literally woke me up,’ she said. ‘Right in the middle of a sexy dream.’

  ‘Who were you dreaming about?’ Carys asked.

  ‘I don’t fucking know,’ Cat said. ‘I have sexy dreams about fucking everyone at the moment, I’m fucking desperate!’ Which is when she told us, about the six months.

  ‘Wow,’ said Carys.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘It’s just a dry patch. It’ll pass.’

  ‘Don’t be so fucking patronizing,’ said Cat. She’d accused me of being patronizing several times since I’d got into the Fast Stream, which wasn’t really fair, as I hadn’t actually been that smug about it. I was going to be an HEO (D) (The D stands for Development!) in the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. I hadn’t even started yet and she was already lobbying me about arts funding for regional theatres.

  Carys and I thought it might be a good idea to get out of London for the day. I was teaching swing dance at Eric’s old care home that morning anyway, and there was a queer arts festival on in Brighton, so Carys came up to join me for the afternoon.

  She went to a life-drawing class while I was teaching, and at lunchtime we watched a drag-king improv team perform a twenty-minute set inspired by the word ‘cabbage’. We considered going to a poetry jam after that, but Carys said she wouldn’t be able to watch performance poetry with a straight face, so I took her to visit Eric’s spot at the garden of remembrance instead.

  I put a bunch of tulips on the grass in front of his rose bush, and introduced Carys to him, but silently, so she wouldn’t think I was mad. ‘This is my new dance partner,’ I said, in my head. The sun came out from behind a cloud after that, so maybe he was listening.

  As the sun set, we walked arm in arm along the seafront, towards the burned-out West Pier, looking for the hotel where Oscar Wilde had once stayed with Bosie. We were talking about what to have for dinner – sausages, maybe, or chilli con carne – when I noticed someone walking towards us, pushing a bike. Someone tall, and dark-haired, and golden skinned.

  She wasn’t as beautiful as I remembered. Maybe that’s because she had such an ugly look of hate in her eyes. She called after me, ‘Fucking hypocrite!’ and Carys turned to challenge her, but I said, ‘Just leave it,’ and we walked on, past the crouching, spidery remains of the old pier.

  ‘I can really see what you saw in her,’ Carys said.

  ‘She wasn’t quite that sweary when we were together,’ I said. I liked that I could joke about it; I didn’t want Carys to think I still cared about Sam. But of course I did – less than six months ago she and I had been the ones in love, walking arm in arm along a beach, full of hope and fish and chips. I wanted to call out to her, to tell her how sorry I was, and for her to apologize to me. But I knew there was nothing I could say to make things better.

  So we kept walking along the seafront – but I still felt dirty and guilty and full of adrenaline, and I wanted to do something stupid, so I stopped in the middle of the concrete walkway and said, ‘Let’s go in the sea!’

  ‘No,’ said Carys.

  But I don’t like people telling me what I can and can’t do these days, so I started rolling up my jeans.

  ‘It’s the middle of winter,’ said Carys.

  ‘The sea’s warmer in winter,’ I said. ‘I’m not going to swim. I just want to get my feet wet.’

  ‘You should keep your shoes on till the last minute,’ said Carys, but I didn’t listen, and I ran towards the water saying, ‘Ow, ow, ow,’ as the pebbles bit into my feet.

  I stopped at the water’s edge and turned to see if Carys was behind me. And she was, pelting down the beach towards the sea.

  I yelped – I didn’t want her to beat me to it – and ran into the water, up to my ankles.

  The sea was freezing and exhilarating, and it stopped me thinking about Sam, and we kissed and laughed and splashed each other. And then we ran back up the beach, because we couldn’t feel our toes any more.

  We dried our feet with our socks and pulled our shoes back on, our skin sticky with saltwater. And then we turned away from the sea and walked to the butcher to buy sausages – two extra for Cat, to make up for the loud sex – as if it were an ordinary day.

  Acknowledgements

  I’ve been writing this novel for a very long time, so please excuse this Oscars-acceptance-speech-style acknowledgements page.

  Thank you first of all to Judith Murray, the very best of agents and women. I am so very grateful to you for everything. Here’s to a future full of cocktails, salty rimmed and otherwise. Thank you also to Kate Rizzo for finding such excellent publishers in other countries, and to the rest of the team at Greene & Heaton, especially Eleanor Teasdale, Rose Coyle, Holly Faulks, Alisa Ahmed and Imogen Morrell. Thank you to Sally Wofford-Girand for finding In at the Deep End the perfect home across the Atlantic, and to Emily Hickman, my brilliant film and TV agent.

  Thank you to the amazing Suzie Dooré for believing in this book and for being funnier than me and a delightful person as well as a brilliant editor. Thanks to everyone else at The Borough Press, particularly Ore Agbaje-Williams, Micaela Alcaino, Emilie Chambeyron and Fleur Clarke.

  Thank you to the wonderful Lauren Wein for being such an insightful editor and the best champion I could have hoped for in the States. Thanks to Pilar Garcia-Brown, Liz Anderson, Larry Cooper, Hannah Harlow, Christopher Moisan, Taryn Roeder and everyone else at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

  Thank you so much to my other editors, Jasmin Duering, Erika Degard, Jacqueline Smit and Iina Tikanoja.

  Lots of people gave me notes on my book and advice of all kinds. Thank you to Linas Alsenas, Grant Foster, Nina Gold, Annalie Grainger, Rachel Hewitt, Hanna Johnson, Eishar Kaur, Laura Macdougall, Jack Noel, Helen Thomas, Piers Torday and Jo Wickham.

  Thank you to Marcia Williams and Rufus Williams for all the inspirational weekends in Lyme Regis.

  Thanks to all the people who have written with me over the years, especially Michael Bedo, Katie Cotton, Ellie Farrell, Mo Oldham, Alice Sanders and the Walker Books Write Club.

  Thanks to the Black Dog in Vauxhall (great coffee), the Breakout Café on Caledonian Road (amazing porridge), the Southbank Centre members’ bar, the British Library, the London Library and the Arvon Clockhouse
retreat. Thank you to Karen McLeod’s creative writing course at The Bookseller Crow, Ways into Screenwriting and Stand-up Comedy at City Lit, Chris Head’s sitcom writing class, Monkey Toast and Free Association improv classes and the Alphabetties.

  Thanks to my friends, especially Naomi Baars, Laura Barnicoat, Michelle Erodotou, Flo Bullough, Jamie Gabbarelli, Steffi Hunt, Cath Hunter, Rachel Jones, Nic Knight, Alexia Korberg, Rachel Korberg, Kirsty Malone, Luke Massey, Aurelie Marion, Marina McIntyre, Charlie Moyler, Anna Nagy, Hannah O’Sullivan, Albi Owen, Lynton Pepper, Amy Perkins, David Perry, Jenny Prytherch, Nick Sharp, Debbie So, Ying Staton, Will Tosh, Louie Stowell and Zoe Vanderwolk.

  Thank you to my family and the Campbell and Fitzpatrick families. Sorry about all the sex scenes.

  Thanks most of all to Sarah Courtauld and Zanna Davidson, fellow members of the embarrassingly named Sacred Circle. I wouldn’t be a writer without you. We vow.

  And thank you to my incredible wife Victoria, who always believed I could write, even though she had no proof because I refused to show her my work for years. This book is for you.

  About the Author

  Kate Davies was born and brought up in north-west London. She studied English at Oxford University before becoming a writer and editor of children’s books. She’s also a screenwriter, and had a short-lived career as a burlesque dancer that ended when she was booed off stage at a Conservative club while dressed as a bingo ball. Kate lives in East London with her wife. In at the Deep End is her first novel.

  About the Publisher

  Australia

  HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd.

  Level 13, 201 Elizabeth Street

  Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia