by Matthew Crow
‘You will,’ Donna said, eating the last of her chips. ‘You just haven’t been given a reason to like it yet. It’ll come. Maybe that’s where it started going wrong. Sexual frustration.’
‘It’s a strong possibility.’
‘Maybe you just need a boyfriend,’ she tried.
‘God no!’
‘Or a good seeing-to.’
‘Well…’ I said, slightly more open to her Plan B.
‘I could get drunk and try giving you a hand job?’ she offered.
‘No, thank you.’
‘Prude.’
‘Plus we’d make terrible lesbians.’
‘How dare you!’ she said in mock horror. ‘I’d make an amazing lesbian. As long as there was no mouth stuff. Just me and the ten commandments.’ She flexed her fingers at me like a cat.
‘You’re disgusting,’ I said, as two brown Labradors sprinted ahead of us and gambolled into the sea.
‘Disgusting like a fox. I’d treat it like a craft. Like crocheting. Remember that tote bag I made?’ she asked.
‘That was a good tote bag,’ I conceded.
‘You know it baby. Imma show you a good time,’ she said, digging her hands into my sides, causing me to squirm so hard I nearly fell off the pipe.
I was steadying myself on the pipe with one hand, and trying to push Donna off me with the other, all the while attempting to catch my breath, when above us a shadow loomed and a man cleared his throat.
‘Oh look,’ Donna said, ‘it’s the filth.’
‘Can you move along please girls,’ Adam said.
Adam was Donna’s older brother. He was a community officer and a scourge of underage drinkers the town over. No bottle of ill-gotten cider survived un-poured when he was on patrol. Adam was always sweet to me, which didn’t stop Donna from treating him as her own personal punch bag.
‘Hi Adam,’ I said. ‘You look nice in your uniform.’
‘Claudette,’ said Adam. He smiled at me briefly and then set his jaw to serious, a Man on a Mission once more.
‘Why do we have to move? It’s a public beach,’ she said.
‘Littering,’ Adam said, pointing to the crumpled chip packet on Donna’s knee.
‘I haven’t littered yet, dumb-dumb. It’s still on my person. God, Adam, it’s not the fucking Minority Report. You can’t accuse someone of a crime they’ve yet to commit.’
‘And which bin are you going to put it in exactly?’ he asked, as I stood up.
‘You are literally the worst person of all time. What exactly would you do if we refused to move?’ she replied, as I dragged her to her feet and we tottered carefully along the pipe to the lower promenade.
‘I can arrest you,’ he said.
‘No, you can’t,’ Donna said, holding onto my outstretched hand and making the final leap onto terra firma.
‘I can perform a citizen’s arrest,’ he said, as we climbed to the top promenade and leant against the railings beside him.
‘So can anyone, dummy. It’s our fundamental right as a citizen.’
‘It’s no wonder you’ve only got the one friend,’ he said as he made his way from us.
I shook my head at him and gave the best don’t mind her smile I could muster.
‘Your earpiece is flashing, Adam,’ I said to the blinking light in his Bluetooth headset. ‘Does that mean you’re getting a call?’
‘Is it the whole world ringing to say you look like a tit?’ Donna said, brushing sand from the bottom of her jeans as Adam mumbled under his breath, tapping the gadget like he was trying to rid his ear of a water blockage.
‘Anyway,’ I said. ‘This is all very nice, but I have to be getting home. Bye, Adam.’
‘Bye, Claudette,’ he said. ‘Watch how you go.’
‘Keep it real homegirl,’ Donna said, as she knocked Adam’s hat off his head and made her way towards her block of flats. ‘Don’t be a stranger.’
6
The French Connection
I don’t remember much of my mum.
The parts that I do remember I don’t especially miss: a few notes sung in a voice higher than Dad’s. Two hands softer than his, lifting me up. A patch of time during which all memories seem shrouded in thick, heady, cigarette smoke that makes everything feel like a dream-sequence in a cheap soap opera.
That’s not to say she didn’t occasionally fascinate me.
‘Do you remember your mum?’ I asked Ross as I sat in the café. I’d arrived ten minutes early to meet Donna and, having passed the window and noticed a spare seat and a fresh plate of chips, he had invited himself to join me.
‘Not really,’ he said with a shrug. On the television an advert for fabric softener gave way to the news as Ross tried to eschew conversation in favour of carb loading. ‘I see her around town sometimes.’
‘And you don’t say hello?’ I asked, genuinely curious as to his setup.
‘She never says hello to me,’ he said flatly, stuffing chips into his mouth before changing tack. ‘I don’t even know her that much anyway so it doesn’t matter.’
I wasn’t convinced. In truth there’s no way you can gloss over a missing parent, no matter what you tell yourself. Even if you were lucky, like I was, and had one remaining parent willing to try their hand at both roles, the void is too huge to ignore. I didn’t even have a mum to miss in real terms – more like an idea of a mum who she sometimes merged in my memory with characters from shows I’d watched as a little girl. And yet something about it weighed heavy. It wasn’t so much that I missed her presence. More that I mourned her absence. Like I’d been denied something I’d been promised, or irrevocably short-changed.
‘I remember yours though,’ Ross said with a forced smirk, squeezing a sauce sachet into his mouth.
‘Yeah?’ I asked, genuinely surprised.
‘Yeah,’ he said, his lips red and sweet. ‘Big tits,’ he said, as I rolled my eyes and kicked him under the table. ‘Family tradition, eh?’ he said again and I shook my head.
‘Keep that smart mouth up and Donna will punch you in the throat,’ I warned as Ross widened his eyes in mock horror. ‘And anyway, I know it bothers you,’ I said.
‘And how do you know that then?’ he asked and I shrugged.
‘Because it bothers me,’ I said. ‘How can it not? You can’t have half your roots ripped out and be expected to grow the same way as everyone else. We’re the same, you and me.’
‘Are we fuck,’ he said with a smile and a shake of his head, taking my Coke and washing down his hurried feast, as Donna passed the window and made her way into the café.
‘Bye, Ross,’ she said, coming towards us and clicking her fingers. Ross stood up without question and took the last fistful of chips before leaving.
‘See you, Claudette,’ he said, making his way from the café as Donna sat down and marked his exit with elaborate side-eye.
On the news a reporter stood on the promenade and held up a coat that I recognised all too well.
‘It is believed that this is the coat Sarah Banks was wearing when she was last seen,’ said the reporter, holding up a wool jacket for the camera. Midnight blue, fur collar, belted at the middle. ‘As CCTV images of her last hours have emerged over the weekend…’
‘Didn’t Leah have a coat like that?’ Donna asked, picking at the shards of chips that had escaped Ross’s ravages. ‘A bit warm for this time of year, isn’t it? Though I never saw her in anything even remotely suitable for the season, it has to be said,’ she added, mock haughtily.
‘Sarah was a creature of the night,’ I said. ‘Gets a bit nippy then.’
Donna nodded in agreement and picked up a menu.
They say that drowning is the most peaceful way to die. That if you can resist the temptation to clamber frantically for the surface, life will just leave your body like steam from a pan, until you are sleepy and then asleep and then gone.
Probably they’re right, context permitting.
Clearly they did not mea
n during a Year Eleven water polo match in a comprehensive-school swimming pool.
But this is where it happened to me.
And that was the moment, all those weeks ago, that everything started to fall apart.
The moment I’d been trying not to think about.
The moment I think I understood that Sarah was in danger. And so was I.
Even before the lesson I was feeling weak and out of sorts. Donna had practically had to change me into my swimming costume and my legs had buckled on the steps getting into the water. While the lesson proceeded, I stood terrified against the side of the pool, feeling the world drag farther and farther from me.
Sasha Culk’s leg moved slowly and smoothly through the water, hitting my thigh with a silent thud that both stung and ached. She and Demi McKenzie laughed as they splashed towards Donna, who was wrestling the ball from Charlotte in the middle of the pool. A gang of slick, flailing arms surrounded the ensuing struggle as Miss Clarence blew her whistle – the long, pained shriek bounced off the tiled walls in spears of sound that pierced but did not quite kill the battle of Red Caps versus Blue Caps.
The warmth of the water against my arms was the only pleasant thing in my life at that moment. It was all I ever wanted to feel again; I wanted to sleep, to let the entire sensation engulf my body and never wake up.
‘Enough, girls,’ Miss Clarence yelled. ‘Donna, ENOUGH! It’s water polo not Mexican wrestling,’ she said, as Donna grabbed Charlotte by the waist and bounced her in and out of the water with glee.
Miss Clarence was fresh out of university and took the girls for swimming and the boys for rugby every other week. She was pretty and slight but had an easier time than most newbie teachers at our school. The popular girls liked her because she had a designer handbag and played R&B music quietly during lessons. The boys liked her because she was female and under thirty and occupationally obliged to wear short-shorts and loose fitting T-shirts. She talked about nightclubs and bars in town that most of us knew about but few had ventured into, and one morning was dropped off at the gates by a man in a soft-topped car. The general consensus was Miss Clarence was the type of woman we’d all like to either grow up to be, or grow up to shag. Often both.
Across the pool, the bodies made miniature tsunamis that ebbed against the tiles. The sound of shouting and the shrill whistle clawed at my dull thoughts like a child kicking the back of a bus seat.
I slipped down.
Further and further.
Inch by inch I became surrounded and safe by the water.
It rose up my chest and my throat.
It swallowed my mouth and my nose.
Then, with a rewarding pop, it sealed around the crown of my head.
I exhaled and felt myself sink farther and farther down.
Submerged, and with my eyes closed, I felt my lungs begin to roar but I chose to ignore them. The bodies – all life – were like a retreating army, and the caw of the whistle was camouflaged by the deep until it became a tropical bird calling out for a mate.
I felt a hot urge to escape and clenched my fists tight at my sides, determined not to give in to my demand to push upwards for air. I opened my eyes to see the cool, blue world around me and felt a fleeting moment of pure tranquillity before a vice-like fist clamped at my arm and pulled me to the surface.
I gasped.
‘You’re a bloody liability, Claudette,’ Miss Clarence hissed as she dragged my arms over the side of the pool.
I blinked the sharp chlorine from my eyes and shuddered at the chill of the air. I looked up. Confused faces stared back at me.
‘If you’re not going to join in then there’s no point in you being here. Go on. Get changed. Detention on Wednesday,’ she said.
I hauled myself onto dry land and walked to the changing room. Behind me, Miss Clarence’s whistle cut through the sound of sniggering.
My clothes were in a tangled lump where Donna and I had left them. My bag was upturned and face down on the floor, my underwear soaking up the filthy chill of the wet floor. The prospect of getting changed filled me with dread. Instead, I wrapped my towel around my body and lay down on the low slats of the changing bench, dragging a coat across me for warmth as I closed my eyes and drifted off.
I mustn’t have been asleep for very long. By the time I woke up the lesson was still in progress, though I was not alone in the changing rooms. I lay still and watched as, across the way, Sarah made her way slowly through bags and coat pockets, pilfering the meagre riches of the girls that she hated the most.
Sarah swore as I sat up slowly in my wet towel and my damp coat, and leaned against the changing room wall.
‘Thought I was alone,’ she said.
‘So did I.’
Sarah gave a smile and a shrug and carried on her task.
‘You not cold?’ she asked as she re-zipped a coat pocket. ‘I’m freezing. Everyone’s going on about how summer’s coming and I can’t get warm. Especially at night. Properly Baltic.’
‘I’m fine,’ I said, sitting up, mesmerised and impressed all at once.
‘Leiah Corelli’s brought in her deposit for the Belgium trip. I heard her talking about it in assembly this morning,’ I said, suddenly keen to help Sarah out and to stick the boot into the more deserving of our year group. ‘Her dad’s on the taxis so it’ll be in cash, too, not a cheque,’ I said, pointing to a pink tote bag hung around Leiah’s new French Connection coat – a coat that would later be shown on the news like a memento mori.
Her eyes widened as she found the envelope containing the cash and pocketed the lot into the right hand side of her bra.
‘You want to split it?’ she asked reluctantly and I shook my head.
‘Good,’ she said. ‘I was only saying it to be polite. I’d have done you in if you’d have said yes.’
‘Chelsea Bishop’s taken up smoking too since Maxine Donnelly told her she looked fat. I saw her at the shop by the bus stop. There should be a twenty deck in her pencil case,’ I said, rooting through a bag on the bench next to mine and throwing over a virtually untouched packet of Benson & Hedges. ‘The Year Tens will buy those off you for sure,’ I said as Sarah nodded.
‘You don’t know next week’s lottery numbers do you?’ Sarah asked and I did everything I could to smile. She was many things but a natural humourist was not one of them. That she’d made the effort for my sake seemed special, though I didn’t have it in me to belly laugh the way I think she’d hoped I would. ‘You see everything, don’t you?’ she asked, straightening herself up so that the stolen goods were not as evident upon her silhouette as they had been before.
‘It’s a talent,’ I said.
‘What you doing in here anyway? You gone mad again or something?’ she asked with what almost sounded like concern in her voice.
‘No more than usual. Miss Clarence had to help me out of the pool,’ I said, towelling myself off slowly without standing up.
‘She do that to your arm?’ she asked where a hand-shaped bruise had begun to bloom. ‘You could have her done for that. Make loads of money, too. Sue the school. Get the entire shithole shut down.’
‘I probably deserved it,’ I said, standing up as the bell rang and the sound of a dozen wet feet slapping the tile surface grew louder and louder.
‘Cheers for helping,’ Sarah said. ‘We should team up, we’d make a killing.’
‘Like Bonnie and Clyde,’ I said, as a sea of girls raced towards the changing rooms.
‘Or Thelma and Louise,’ she said.
‘Didn’t end so well for either of them.’
‘I wouldn’t know,’ Sarah said, as some girls made their way to the showers on tiptoes. ‘I’ve never seen it, only read the back of the DVD. Isn’t it about two mates who just drive away together?’ she asked.
‘Yeah, but they can’t outrun what they’re trying to escape, so they end up driving off a cliff.’
Sarah thought on that for a moment and shrugged.
‘Sometimes
it’s a gamble worth taking. Cheers for ruining the ending for me anyway, dickhead,’ she said with a playful smile as her crew made their way into the locker rooms and our acquaintance was put on pause for the sake of the school’s carefully established ecosystem.
‘Were you talking to Sarah Banks?’ Donna whispered as she dried herself off. I shrugged and began pulling my school trousers over my still-damp legs. Next to us Sasha and Demi were laughing together the way girls like that do – sharp, focused laughter that never really connotes joy. Rather it was their warning signals – they wanted you to know that they were the loudest people in the room, and that you were not in on the joke.
‘Um, excuse me!’ Demi said, slapping the back of Tracey Dimple’s head as she attempted to spray herself dry with Impulse. ‘She has asthma,’ Demi said, pointing at Sasha.
‘Yeah you little creep,’ Sasha said, twanging the elastic of Tracey’s swimming cap so it slapped painfully against her skull. ‘Have a little consideration. Maybe if you washed more than once a week you wouldn’t need to spray so much shit on your body to stop you from stinking.’
The two girls laughed as Tracey collected her wares in a soggy bundle and moved to the far edge of the bench.
Once they were happy that they’d won that particular battle, Demi raised her eyebrows at Sasha and nodded towards me.
‘What you looking at, crazy?’ Sasha said, turning on her heels and staring down at me, half dressed and zoned out.
‘Shit tits and cellulite,’ Donna shot back. ‘Fuck off,’ she spat, throwing my wet costume and towel into my bag. ‘Claudette, get ready, now,’ Donna warned as the girls eyed one another up.
‘Was she talking to you? Lezza,’ Demi asked as Sasha grabbed my arm. I went to pull away but it was no use. I was too weak to even begin to try fighting her.
‘Shame about the bruise,’ she said, loud enough for the entire room to hear, ‘makes all those cuts look stupid. Purple and red don’t really go babes,’ she said with mock mindfulness.
‘Touch her again,’ Donna said, removing her hand from my arm, ‘and I’ll show just how well purple and red complement one another.’ The girls laughed, pleased to have gotten a rise though not willing to risk the very real chance of a hiding from Donna.