by Sarah Moss
Becky rubs at the tray, whose non-stick has been coming unstuck for years, with the brush. There are bits of yesterday’s onion tangled in the bristles and she’s not going to pick them out. I want to be dead, she hears in her head, I want to be dead. She’s already washed the ‘sharp knife’ which isn’t sharp at all, skids off tomatoes and inflicts blunt-force trauma on cheese, and anyway it’s as hard to kill yourself with a knife as it is, apparently, easy to kill someone else. They had a prevention session at school, led by this seriously hot guy with dreadlocks who’d been in prison and didn’t want any of them to have his life and Preti and that lot sat at the back and giggled.
I want to be dead.
In America, she knows, you can get the police to shoot you just by acting a bit weird with your hands in your pockets, which is a bummer if you’re a weirdo with cold hands but must save suicidal people a lot of time and trouble. There’s no way she’s going to get the burnt-on fish off this tray with the brush, it’s completely pointless, what Mum’s making her do. Do get on with it, says Mum, it’ll take you all night at this rate, doesn’t have to be such a performance, you know. The kettle boils and Mum reaches round Becky – too close, unwashed hair and that awful hippy deodorant – for her box of herbal teabags. She chooses one each night, as if they weren’t all the same anyway, as if dead leaves and hot water constitute some kind of celebration. Mum opens the box and stands there pushing her nose into it. It’s her holiday treat, the selection box, at home she just buys supermarket chamomile, smelling of wet hay and loose because teabags are bad for the environment, which means that Mum’s special treat is to destroy the planet Becky’s going to inherit. Mmm, she says, now I’m saving the last of the cinnamon ones, I suppose I should have the lemon and ginger, I’m going to have to drink it sometime, but maybe mint and fennel tonight. Becky could wreck Mum’s whole system of self-punishments and rewards by making herself a cup of apple and elderflower tea one morning. Buy a bottle of wine, she thinks, or vodka. Go down the pub and get off your face on Baileys. Eat a whole tub of fucking ice-cream but stop wetting yourself over the teabags, Jesus Christ. Mind out, she says, I thought you wanted me to finish the washing up. No need to take that tone, says Mum, opening the little paper envelope as if there might be a golden ticket inside it, almost kissing her disgusting teabag. What tone, mutters Becky, and when Mum doesn’t respond, how do you know what tone I need.
I want to be dead.
She’s not going to get the burnt fish off the tray without taking the non-stick surface with it and anyway what does it matter what’s on a baking tray once it reaches 200C, surely that’s enough to sterilise whatever’s survived washing up. She goes on swishing the brush around until Mum’s settled herself in her armchair – if she gets to be that old, Becky will kill herself the day she first groans on sitting down – and then tips out the mucky water, runs the tray under the tap, watching a rainbow film of oil glisten and flow, and balances it behind the pile of more-or-less clean dishes on the draining board. She’s going to go see the soldier again, she thinks, because even hanging out with a weirdo in a wet tent is better than this. Being dead would be better than this. And he’s not that weird, actually, Gavin, he grew up in Lennoxtown, went to the Academy, normal enough, it’s just that then he joined the Army and ended up fighting in Iraq, though he won’t tell her what the fighting was about. Oil, he says. Money. Politicians in London telling lies. You don’t want to know. He stops looking at her when she asks about Iraq but she tried it anyway, what was it like then, out there? Did you kill anyone, she wanted to ask, because imagine crouching in a tent with a man who has killed someone and why else do soldiers go places, but she didn’t quite have the nerve. I don’t talk about that, he said, you need to get off home now lassie. Next time she took him a pack of biscuits from the cupboard and chatted about the weather and how weird it is in the park, the way everyone’s watching each other and there’s nothing to do and somehow this is meant to be more fun than being at home. He was definitely happier talking about her life than his, even made eye-contact once or twice. Don’t leave it like that, says Mum, everything’ll fall off, have a bit of sense. Some of it wants drying and putting away, you can’t always wander off and leave everything. I’m not trying to wander off, says Becky, I was just putting the tray down. Well, now you can pick it up, says Dad, and dry it and put it away the way Mum’s telling you. She wants to scream. She wants to throw the fucking tray at the wall. I washed up, she says, Alex can dry and put away. Oh for goodness’ sake, says Mum, Rob, you deal with her, and Dad stands up. Rebecca, can you just for once do as you’re told, can we just for once have one peaceful hour before bedtime without you whining and bickering. Your mother cooked for you, you’re too old for this, you’re acting like a spoilt child, you can’t expect to be waited on hand and foot, now take that cloth and dry those dishes and put them away or there’ll be trouble, do you understand? No, she thinks, actually I don’t, I don’t understand any of it, all this fuss about teabags and washing up, it’s not normal, normal parents would just be grateful I’m not taking drugs or sleeping around. Normal parents would be grateful she’s actually here with them in the stupid cabin in the middle of fucking nowhere, none of her friends have to do this stuff. Trouble like what, she says, and Dad looks at Mum and sighs and sits down again. Trouble like you won’t like, he says, trouble like not having any money and not being allowed to go out and if you really push it, trouble like not having a phone. Becks, can you just finish the job.
There isn’t anywhere to go out, she says, who even wants to go out, and in case you haven’t noticed phones are basically useless here, I’m not even taking photos because who wants to remember this, I can’t exactly post, can I, more rain on more trees, rain again, trees again, more rain, more trees, hashtag summer holiday, hashtag family fun.
Oh shush, says Dad, enough. I’m a man of many powers but even for you I can’t control the weather. Promise you, princess, when I can make the sun shine, I will. Now dry the dishes, Becks, please.
Becky picks up the damp tea towel with a map of the loch on it and dries the tray. She’s definitely going to go see Gavin, assuming he’s there but where else would he be, a day like today, though he does go out in the rain. You’d have to, wouldn’t you, can’t lie in a tent all day. He picks berries, he’s got these grubby big glass jars with the labels peeling off them, probably from the pub, Branston pickle and mayonnaise, full of bilberries and also orange rowans which don’t even look edible, but he must get some money from somewhere because there are also sweetie wrappers and tins of stew, the really cheap own-brand stuff from the supermarket at the foot of the loch. If Mum and Dad weren’t always here she could make him some sandwiches.
Some black stuff she hadn’t noticed comes off onto the towel, but it needed a wash anyway. Dad did take her phone for a week when they spied on her and found out she’d been posting stuff during lessons, which was school’s fault the classes were so boring and also school’s fault because if the teachers don’t even notice half the class on their phones they’re clearly not paying much attention either and they’re the ones getting paid. So she took his phone from his jacket pocket and held it hostage for hers and he went through her room when she was out and found his phone but also some private things and she was so angry she banged her head on the wall in front of him and he yelled at her that she was crazy and hysterical and then they didn’t talk for several days until she found her phone on her bed one afternoon when she came home from school, with a stupid mushy note from Dad.
Mum sniffs and then slurps her tea and sighs. She can’t possibly be tired, they haven’t done anything this whole week. Though Becky is tired, she thinks, she would like to get under her duvet and stay there for days, until the end of this alleged holiday, until the season in her head changes and she feels like getting up and maybe that will be never. She watched one of Dad’s stupid wildlife documentaries with him once, she can’t remember why, must have been really bored, and there w
as this Arctic vole thing that sleeps about nine months of the year and is basically nearly dead, its heart beating like four beats a minute, just enough to stop the blood congealing in its veins, only every few days it has to wake up enough to shiver for about half an hour so it doesn’t completely die, and if she could do that, she thinks, if she could be just not-dead until she’s grown up, then maybe she could keep going. Though then you’d wake up at eighteen with no Highers, and if the teachers are right you’d be better off dead anyway.
She pushes the tray into the oven so that it bangs against the back and while Mum is still jumping she slams the oven door. There, she says, OK, can I go now or would you maybe like me to scrub the floor first? Well, says Dad, if you’re offering now, sure, go ahead, but Mum says, Rob, don’t tease her, yes, Becks, go on, why don’t you go join Alex at the pub, we can run to a couple of quid for a bottle of ginger. Take your phone, catch up with your friends. Join Alex at the pub, she thinks, you have to be fucking kidding, plus it’s still pissing it down out there so she can’t even just go hang around the beer garden for the wifi and also she doesn’t really feel like going on her phone any more, it’s not as if she has anything to tell anyone. Still raining. Still bored. Still sharing a room with my brother, eww. Becky hasn’t actually seen Jamila for months; her parents finally managed to move to India, ‘back to India’, they say, better opportunities there for the children these days, but it’s not back anywhere for Jamila and she doesn’t want better opportunities, she just wants her friends. Even so, she’s seeing the world, isn’t she? It’s better to be complaining about hot weather and nosy aunties than rain and your mum’s stupid hippy tea. Tanya’s mum’s paying her (not enough) to look after her little brothers, Megan’s at home and actually having the best time of any of them because her parents are out at work all day and her sister left home last year so she can basically do what she likes, which is sleep all morning and upload videos of herself making her own face packs out of weird stuff she buys from the wholefood shop.
I still don’t see why we can’t get wifi here, Becky says, leaning against the counter so it digs into her hip and hurts, then we wouldn’t have to be always going off to the pub, you know Alex is going to try to buy beer one of these days, you’re basically driving us to drink, I bet you can get weed in that pub as well if you know who to ask and you’re always telling us it’s not like the stuff that was around when you were our age, what if he gets hallucinations and paranoia and goes bipolar, won’t you wish you’d just paid for broadband? I’m not having the wifi conversation again, says Mum, you can come and sit here with us if you’ll stop complaining for half an hour or you can go to your room or you can go to the pub. Those are your options. Oh no they’re not, Becky thinks, you have no idea, and I hate you, I never asked to be born, you have no idea what it’s like being a teenager now seeing as there wasn’t even like Facebook when you were young, but she said pretty much exactly that last week and her parents shouted ‘bingo’ and laughed, and though they’d just proved her point Becky cried and then Mum was sorry and tried to hug her even though she was the one who’d made her cry in the first place. Fine, she says, and manages to get a good slam out of the bedroom door despite the thick carpet.
Becky drops face-down on her bed, though in a minute, she thinks, when she’s finished, she is going to go find Gavin’s tent. Hot night out or what? The mattress is harder than at home and it hurts her breasts, which are tender today. She presses her face into the pillow and wonders how people die of having pillows over their faces – a pillow’s not airtight, is it, she’s breathing depressingly well through it so why can’t everyone else? Like everything here, the pillow smells of plastic and mildew, the whole building, the whole shell of all their so-called holidays, tacky and temporary. Gimcrack, she thinks, and wonders how you pronounce it, jim-crack or the way it looks? Dad’s said more than once, the whole thing would go up like paper in a fire, wouldn’t pass regs these days, and it’s not that she hasn’t thought about it, thought that with one match, one of the ones in the box in the kitchen, she could end the whole thing. Light the curtains, which came from Gran’s house when she moved and are so old they actually have holes in them which Mum says don’t show but they do and they definitely pre-date fire-retardant, and it would all be over in a few minutes. Flames creeping and munching up the blue flowers, smoke smearing the damp-stained ceiling. The boiler’s just along the wall and there’s one gas cylinder attached outside and the spare in the outdoor cupboard against her and Alex’s bedroom wall. Light that and your problems would soon be over.
Her face is getting hot. She rolls over. There’s damp on the ceiling in here too, spilling in from the outside wall, and from her bed she can see rain on the window, a bit of next door’s kitchen window and a corner of dark grey sky. She’s been looking at this view all her life, every single summer. She remembers when they used to make her go to bed and it was still broad daylight and she could hear other kids playing on the shore. You need your sleep, Mum used to say, I’m not responsible for other people’s children, but she kind of knew then and certainly knows now that they just wanted to get rid of her so they could – what, drink herbal tea, probably. Do crossword puzzles. The family renting next door have turned on the lights, which Mum would say is wasteful. All these long summer days, she says, even when it’s cloudy the light lasts for ever, why would you want to blind yourself with the electric, don’t we have enough artificial light all winter? Only so you can see, Becky thinks, only maybe if you find it fucking depressing fumbling round in the dark in a tiny wet cabin miles from anywhere when you could just as well be at home with normal-sized rooms and a downstairs loo as well as the bathroom so you don’t have to be always smelling your brother’s poo and normal internet access or at least data so you don’t feel as if you’ve died. She wants to pick up her phone, even just to look at the photos, but there’s no point.
I want to be dead.
They would be sorry, probably, though maybe Dad would just say she was stupid and crazy because he certainly wasn’t sorry when she banged her head on the wall. She’s tried cutting her wrists before, all the girls do, and it makes you feel better for a bit but you don’t bleed anything like enough to die. Jamila took an overdose last year but then she had stomach pains and got scared and told her mum and they took her to hospital where everyone was angry with her and they pumped her stomach without giving her any sedatives or anaesthetic or whatever and made her drink this awful black gritty stuff and Jamila didn’t even know if it was just a punishment or meant to make her better somehow. All I’m saying, she said, when Becky and Bridget were eventually allowed to see her afterwards, all I’m saying is next time I’ll know not to tell anyone, either don’t do it or follow through. And one of these days, Becky thinks, there’s bleach under the sink, isn’t there, knives in the drawer, though honestly based on past experience it would be pretty difficult to sever your own artery unless you were on drugs or something, high enough not to feel all the pain but not so high you couldn’t actually do it. She’s even got enough paracetamol in her handbag, for period pain she told Mum and she does sometimes take one for that but mostly it’s just nice to know they’re there, that if she feels like it she wouldn’t even have to go to the shops where they won’t sell you two packets at once in case you’re suicidally organised enough to buy tablets but not so much it occurs to you to go to another shop for a second pack. Maybe if you were in some tiny village somewhere with only one shop and not even a petrol station it might work, but you’d probably have left or killed yourself years ago anyway.
Right. Fuck this. Becky wipes her nose on the back of her hand and sits up. Lipstick. No point in anything else, it’d be all over her face by the time she even gets to the tent, but she rubs some serum through her hair and brushes it smooth, likes the smell. Her coat’s by the front door so she takes Alex’s hoody he’s left lying on his bed, puts on her trainers, climbs over his bed – shoe print on the sheet, his own fault he didn’t m
ake it this morning – opens the window and drops out. The ledge hurts her thigh and her ankles jar; it’s a much bigger drop outside than in but she doesn’t specially want her parents to think that she’s doing what they said and joining Alex at the pub after all and she’s certainly not going to tell them where she is going.
It’s still light, of course, as if this day will never bloody end, and still raining. She goes round the back of their cabin and picks her way over the grass behind next door, not that there’s probably anyone watching, exactly, not that there’s any reason she shouldn’t be out, but that Englishwoman with the baby has already tried to talk to her once, all patronising like a teacher. How are you finding your holidays, isn’t the weather a pain, at least with the little ones we can play in the puddles but this can’t be much fun for you. S’all right, Becky said, we’re local, see, used to it. Fuck off back to England, then, if you don’t like it here, she didn’t say. Oh, I live here too, said the woman, well, Edinburgh, but I doubt the weather’s much different, are you from Glasgow then? Aye, Becky said, frae Glesga, right enough hen. There’s a tile come off their roof and the rain running into the gap.
She’d better go round the back of the Ukrainians’ lodge too, in case Mum’s still looking out, though she’d like to see what’s going on in there, the only people having any fun between Glasgow and fucking Iceland. She was lying awake listening all night, thinking she and Alex should just put their clothes back on and go round there, sounded like an excellent party and it’s not as if anyone was getting any sleep anyway. Becky talked to the mum a bit, the first day they were here she went past and saw the woman was washing up with the kitchen window open talking to the little girl who was playing outside. It sounded a bit like Polish so Becky said ͵dzien´ dobryʹ just to see if it worked. She’d learnt it at school when they had to make a big poster and say hello in the home language of everyone in her year and it turned out to be the same in basically every Eastern European country but it’s not as if she’s ever likely to have the chance to try it in any of them. The little girl stopped and stared at her and the mum was really surprised and put down her brush and leant so far out of the window her top went in the washing-up water, but of course Becky couldn’t say anything else so the woman, Alina, had to speak English after all. Turned out she’s Ukrainian, not Polish, and the first thing she said was she’s been here twenty years and pays her taxes, as if Becky would care. She didn’t invite Becky round. There are no lights on now, anyway, and Becky hasn’t seen the little girl for a couple of days, she’s maybe gone back to Glasgow with some of the visitors because it can’t be any fun for her here. Well, it’s no fun for anyone, is it? She pulls up her hood before all the serum washes out of her hair. Nothing’s changing. The clouds aren’t moving, it’s not even getting dark, and there’s no one else out. How would they know if there’s some mass-extinction event in progress, how’s that supposed to work with no phones?