Everyone looks around and opens their mouths as if to speak. No one does and ten awkward seconds pass before I sigh in exasperation and, avoiding her eye but also with confidence ’cause I’m very good at lying (I damn well am), say dismissively, ‘Nothing, Miss P.’
‘Firstly, Mr Flicker, it is Miss Preston, secondly, it’s a Sunday, and thirdly you’re all wearing identical dark sunglasses!’
Admittedly we probably shouldn’t have stopped to buy them – looking round I can see now how it makes us more conspicuous.
‘And you’ – she points at Kyle and Danny – ‘don’t even go to school here!’ They look at each other and shift their feet. ‘Well, go on! Move!’ She flaps at us and we sheepishly scatter and half-run across the concrete ’til we’re all out the gate and we rejoin laughing.
Kyle lets out a ‘mwa-HAA!’ and following it, ‘That was fucking funny.’
‘So fucking Clyde,’ I inject. ‘We try to do a drug deal and we’re stopped by a Geography teacher!’ We all stand there, bent over, pissing ourselves for the next couple of minutes. We’re laughing too wildly and our eyes are too bright. I get the feeling that it’s something like desperation, like a breath held that finally comes out in an unsteady swoop, or choking on a joke at a funeral. We eventually stop and end up staring out to sea, out at the boats queuing up to dock in the harbour. They can be there for two days sometimes. When I was little our nan used to take me and Tommo and Teagan out to sit on a bench just in front of the beach and we’d watch them come in. We’d make a game of it. Whoever’s boat got in first won. Only because they took days sometimes the game didn’t work. And then we’d count cars. I’d be blue, Tommo’d be white, Teagan’d be red and Nan would be black. Sometimes we’d mix it up. The first one to get to ten won. Nan always won, no matter what colour she had. And she’d giggle wickedly and tell us better luck next time. She was funny, our nan. And she had so much grace. I miss her sometimes.
‘So,’ says Dildo quietly. ‘Where are we gonna go now?’
Danny and Kyle share a look. Danny speaks. ‘There’s only one other guy round ’ere I know who’ll take it but …’
‘It’ll be all right, mate,’ Kyle smiles at him.
‘Why?’ says Danny, defensively. ‘Have you dealt to him before?’
‘Nah, mate. But they all started like us.’ Kyle’s face takes on that glazed film star look that is starting to bother me. He steps round Danny, lightly hugging his shoulder with the palm of his hand, and starts to walk down the road towards Langrick. ‘Don’t worry about it.’ We watch his back, dithering, looking at the waves. ‘Come on!’
Troy, Danny and Dildo look at me. ‘Fuck it,’ I sigh. ‘Let’s go.’
6
Riding in Cars with Boys
We head into the town centre, warily watching Kyle for sudden movements. We need a base to make plans, but like all things that happen in Clyde, it has to have that certain up-north pretty-crap make-do feel, so we opt for Danny’s kitchen. Unfortunately we walk right in to where Davo, a twenty-eight-ish-year-old policeman, is sitting chatting up Danny’s sister. The police here are part of the community – some square, some, off-duty, as corrupt as Fez. The best are somewhere in between. Since Kyle is in his film-star mode he decides to make something cinematic out of this chance meeting and nearly fucks things up for all of us. But first, we all pile in the kitchen, and freeze at the sight of Davo, with obligatory donut.
‘Hello, lads,’ he says. ‘How do?’
We all look at each other.
‘All right thanks, Davo,’ we chime suspiciously. The atmosphere is tense. Davo and Danny’s sister exchange looks and burst out laughing.
‘You do look like twats in them glasses,’ says Danny’s sister.
‘Oh, thanks a lot,’ Danny flips her off and Kyle drags us all out and marches back round the front of the house.
‘We have to get away now,’ he hisses.
‘What?’ I look scornfully at him. I’ve perfected scorn. If Kyle’s going to make a fucking film out of this, I’ll be the hot, scornful one, I think.
‘If Davo knows where we are, the moment he hears something is going down he’ll be on us.’ Kyle takes Danny’s keys from his hands, opens the passenger door of his Citroën, and deftly throws the keys back to him. ‘Danny – get in, we’re driving.’
The rest of us exchange glances. ‘Bloody hell,’ Dildo grumbles.
We pile in, and Kyle actually says, ‘Go, go, go.’
Jesus H. Christ.
Riding in cars with boys is not as fun as Drew Barrymore would have you believe. Riding in the back of Danny’s car is terrifying, because I have no control. In this kind of situation you have to let go, and you do. You Let Go. Your life does not belong to you. You have entrusted it to the car itself, a runaround patch-up knocked together from quite a few other cars, half green and half purple, the brakes dodgy and the tyres cheap, and the driver an eighteen-year-old stoner who’s pretending he’s in Snatch. And as you realise this you wonder if you will ever get any again before you die, or if you’re dead already and it’s all just a blurry, beautiful dream. Snatch, I mean.
Halfway along the road from Osford to Langrick Danny’s phone plays the tune from Star Wars. He picks it up, reads it and laughs. ‘Oh, fuck.’
‘What now?’ I ask.
‘I’ve just got a text from Davo. “I don’t know what you’re up to you with that tosspot Kyle, but if you come home now I’ll let you off. Davo. PS. Your sister’s fit.”
Danny grins at us ruefully, one hand on the wheel, one showing us the text. ‘Maybe we better do this tomorrow.’
This is England.
7
Manchester or London or New Zealand
I’m doing exams at school Monday to Wednesday and Dildo has an STD check-up on Thursday, so we agree to meet on Friday night, when everyone is out on the town and we won’t be so conspicuous. After arranging this, Dildo and I walk together from Langrick up to Osford while Kyle and Danny go for a pint, and I rant about life.
‘I’m getting out. This is shit. I’m leaving and I’ll have a long-distance thing with Rainbow, then I’ll move to wherever she goes to uni. And win her back if everything is really fucked up. We had a fight about dealing. You want to get the fuck out of Dodge too, don’t you?’
Dildo hesitates. ‘Yeah.’
‘You could come live with me, Dildo.’ I cock my head to the side and look at him, grinning. ‘We could start up a business. You can make loads of money on the internet right now. Or you could do an animation course and we’ll start a cartoon series. We’ll move to Manchester. Or London. Or New Zealand.’
There is a companionable silence as we walk. I can tell by the look on Dildo’s face that he’s dreaming.
‘That would be cool.’ Dildo gives me a hopeful smile. ‘But I’ve got me mam to take care of. Her disabled benefits don’t cover it all. And then there’s my sister. Bex. Someone’s got to be here to make sure she doesn’t become a complete slapper.’
‘True …’ I laugh. ‘Bit late, but true.’
‘Yeah.’ Dildo grins.
‘We could do it,’ I say, and we walk on a bit and reflect. We pass an old couple, out for a walk in shorts and hiking boots. I pet their dog and we call out hello then walk on.
‘But Flick …’ Dildo starts, then trails off.
‘What?’
‘Well …’ He frowns. ‘How?’
I turned my head towards him. ‘How?’
‘Yeah,’ Dildo trudges on, watching his feet eat up the ground beneath them. ‘Just seems to me … easier said than done.’ He shrugs. ‘I mean, how does anyone get out of here?’
Dildo’s an oracle. Behind him the waves crash on the beach. He walks along, oblivious, kicking an empty Carling can. I look ahead to Osford, my home for fifteen years, me mam and dad’s home for forty more, my grandparents’ home before that. There is a silence.
I frown. ‘Fucked if I know how.’
There’s more silence. Dildo
looks over at me. ‘I’m sorry about Rainbow, Flick. I really liked her.’
I smile at him then watch the waves crash on the sand. ‘Yeah … me too.’
I don’t make it home. I get to my door, turn around and walk straight to Rainbow’s.
I tell her I love her and that I’m sorry and that I don’t want to talk about anything tonight, but could I just hold her? We kiss and we hug each other and she says she’s sorry too. We don’t talk about the argument or the deal, but we make dinner together and we watch reruns of Friends and curl up playing happy families, dreaming we’re far away from reality and, with me cuddling her close, we go to sleep. Compared to Rainbow, getting out is just a consolation prize. But why can’t we have both?
8
Hubris Part II
In the morning, Rainbow goes to college. Lucy drives her over there after giving us eggs on toast and I stay in her bedroom and nap for a bit longer after they’ve gone. I have an exam in the afternoon, so fuck whatever the school says, I’m not coming in ’til one.
I have a weird dream that makes me feel sick and angry when I wake up. Fez was fucking Rainbow. I get these dreams sometimes. Rainbow’s had a lot of boyfriends. I haven’t slept with anyone but Rainbow. And I’ve been feeling generally sick inside with all this shit going on, so maybe that’s bred negativity inside my skull. My brain wanders back to our fight and I wonder again what she was talking about. Animals. Was the fight just a one-off? Or could she be going off me? Or am I just being a paranoid stoner?
I flick through her DVDs and watch three episodes of Family Guy back to back before the battery runs out on her laptop. Then I notice two packs of photos on top of her telly. I’m suddenly gripped by jealousy. Now, I don’t know how this happens, how someone fairly logical can suddenly turn into a raving loony of mental patient proportions, but I just feel a switch flick over in me, and I look at the photos and I suddenly think, ‘they’ll be of her exes. There will be exes in them, and they will be naked and fucking.’
I walk over to the TV. I pick up the envelopes and I go through the photos expecting to find her exes, Daniel, Raphael (her first), Jake, or Rainbow, naked, a cock in her mouth. Why do I do this to myself, I think as a pigtailed four-year-old Rainbow smiles excitedly back at me, all gappy-teeth and rosy cheeks, a proper family album photo. I find nothing, and start to feel a little guilty.
Ah well, it’s only photos, she wouldn’t mind me looking, says the little fucking persuasive devil on my shoulder.
I’m perusing the piles of paper on her desk. It’s not a betrayal. I pull open the top drawer of a chest. A pack of cards, random crap, a note … I frown and unfold it … from … me. Sigh of relief. I pull open the second drawer. KY Jelly, condoms, an egg-shaped vibrator. Cream, pills, multivitamins, echinacea tablets. The bottom drawer of the three is electrical equipment, a mass of black wires with crumpled instructions in the middle. Nothing. Nothing at all. I am a sickly, masochistic detective, fervent in my quest to find the knowledge I seek.
I hear someone cross the landing and hope they didn’t catch the noise of the drawers and think I was snooping. But of course they wouldn’t. I’m above that. We are – me and Rainbow. She trusts me in her room – otherwise she wouldn’t have left me here.
But then I notice a small file cabinet in the corner, covered in cushions and teddy bears. Rainbow calls me her teddy bear. There’s a school bag and a stack of papers in front of it, which I carefully remove. I don’t want to be doing this. My mind is slightly repulsed, but also a blank. My hands wander compulsively. My face in the mirror, my movements, remind me of Rainbow when she picks my spots. My face gets redder and redder and she apologises and draws back but her eyes lock on to another blocked pore and her fingers dive back in to squeeze out the puss. That’s what I’m doing now. Squeezing out the puss.
There’s a thick white envelope at the very back of all the files, crammed halfway down with other scraps of paper, birthday cards etc. There’s a note from Jake that says ‘Sorry! I’m a twat Friends?’ on a picture of a cat. What a gay. Then there’s a thick white envelope folded in four and ripped open. Inside is black writing on A4 lined notepaper. I reckon it at ten pages. It’s twelve – helpfully and twattishly numbered. It starts ‘Dear Rainbow’. I check the last page: ‘Love Rafa’. I start to read it. ‘We argued and teased each other, but we kissed that night on the beach and I felt you pressed against me and then we text later and you said you wanted to get to know me more.’
I shut the letter, put it back in the envelope, shove it in the cabinet and sit on the windowsill, sweating. It’s exactly like she told me. Exactly. The voice of the better me in my head speaks: ‘You have to trust her.’ I look at her unmade bed and say aloud: ‘I don’t deserve you.’ I’m on the windowsill for about ten minutes, thinking. Thinking it was a stupid thing to do and she doesn’t need to know ANOTHER stupid thing I did. One of these times, something will change. She’ll realise I’m weak and not good enough for her and that I don’t respect her privacy like I should. It’s ridiculous. I’m ridiculous. I only read a page and everything is just like she said so I’ll stop. I’ll stop with the letter and I’ll stop with the whole subject of her exes. I’ve got het up about it before. I questioned her. I don’t know why because it only fucks things up and makes her upset. The present Rainbow, my one, loves only me and that’s all I need to know. Her past is really none of my business. My past isn’t exactly without shadiness. If I read it, it will be exactly as she told me.
I wonder when he sent it. After the first time? Or the second, or the third? I jump off the windowsill, open the drawer and dive my hand back in like an addict reaching for a needle. I open it … ‘I know after xmas you’ll be in England …’ Okay. After the second time. I let out a huge breath. All right, that’s all I need to know. I flip back a few pages and start reading. ‘I think about you all the time and want you to know that, if you want it to go on, I want it to go on. But I understand that you don’t want this right now. I know you don’t love me in quite the same way I love you.’ Good … then I idly read the middle and my throat clogs up and my pits sweat so much I can feel it through my T-shirt. ‘I know you were shy about admitting it but after that convo til four a.m. when we admitted how we felt we talked every night and I was so happy and so in love with you.’ I put the letter down. My stomach knots up. She never told me that. Did she ever tell me that? She said it was never emotional on her part. I feel sick. Not with Rainbow, with myself. I’m so weak, I’m so shit, she is way too good for me. If she knew what I was really like she’d leave. I should walk out now, put a note on her bed telling her. She deserves someone better than me, stronger. A man. I am a fucking animal, with no self-control. I put my head in my hands and let out a sob. So fucking weak and stupid. I’m sitting thinking about it. Why am I reacting like this? There have been plenty of girls I’ve been like that with. She loves me. She’d tell me if she thought it mattered but to her it doesn’t. She doesn’t get jealous.
I wonder if Raphael’s dick is bigger than mine. I wonder if Jake went down on her better than I do. I wonder why I never believe Rainbow when we talk about this shit. I need to re-read it. I’ve just read it quickly and I’m probably over-reacting. I screw up my face, take a deep breath and look at the letter, lying accusingly on the bed. It can’t get any worse. I reread it, this time scanning the whole way through. It happens pretty much as Rainbow says, with extra emotion and horniness, though I suppose that could be in the interpretation of the writer. There are also some spelling mistakes that I’m sadistically pleased about. He, Raphael (fucking stupid name), says some things that make me think he doesn’t know Rainbow as well as I do. Some obvious things that are really more surface-Rainbow, Rafa cites as Rainbow ‘opening up’. The Rainbow in this dead reality eats from a McDonald’s. My Rainbow would NEVER eat from a McDonald’s. It’s weird getting a stolen glimpse of a previous Rainbow. The things that bother me are:
1. Rafa says ‘if you’re ever in Madrid or you become
a painter and can live here, we’ll meet again’. Which makes me worry that she wanted to live with Rafa, ’cause that’s a pretty big step, but also ’cause it’s something we’ve talked about. So does Rainbow say this to everyone? Am I just one on the list?
2. The talking ‘every night’, I read forlornly. She hasn’t told me about this. I imagine phone sex and feel shit.
I’m reading it to the end. The letter follows on from these conversations. It cites that Rafa knows it has to end and knows Rainbow doesn’t love him, probably never will. I’m calming in relief. Only minimal shaking and sweating betray me now. The letter ends with much well wishing and love. I start to feel sorry for Rafa. He was probably a nice enough guy. And he loved my Rainbow, which I can definitely identify with. I’m the lucky one – Rafa would know that. And I’m risking it all for the sick self-indulgent pleasure of torturing myself. I fold the letter away quietly.
Rainbow, I think. I can’t tell her right now because I can’t lose her. I know I’m betraying her by keeping her when someone better could have her, but I love her. I love her and I’m so fucking ashamed of myself. I’m sorry Rainbow. I’m so sorry.
9
Doomsday
Friday night, pre-deal, I’m at Ash’s place. I blasted through my exams – I couldn’t say if I did well or not, but they’re done – and stayed at Rainbow’s again on the Thursday. She went to college early again, and I made sure I slept until she got back for lunch, after her morning classes, not running the risk of being conscious, knowing now how easily I can give in to temptation, knowing what a weak little shit I am. I may trust Rainbow. I don’t trust myself.
So, it’s Friday night, the arranged evening of the deal, and after a truly disturbing phone call from Kyle I’m already getting the sweats. Apparently we’re going to some really weird, really serious crack house. Great. Kyle also said, ‘Oh, yeah, and don’t be seen doing anything crazy ’cause we could get banged up for years for this’, which wasn’t very helpful on the whole staying-calm front. Meanwhile I’m starting to think maybe we should just sell it off in parts so we’re not dealing with anyone properly mental, and this conundrum has left me at a loss for what to do – whether to meet the boys tonight, or to bunk off and convince them to do it another time, in smaller cuts. Ash has filled in the others on my situation after a particularly long phone call in which I explained to her every which way I am fucked (vis à vis the deal – I don’t tell anyone about my OCD at Rainbow’s). She flicked through a magazine (I could hear the pages turning) and every so often gave an infuriating, ‘yeah’, so I’m still impatiently awaiting advice. From anyone. When I get there I brief Mike on it as we go up the stairs, but inside the attention is firmly on other matters so I wait for my turn to rant. I pace the flat with a fixed frown and chain-smoke maniacally. Daisy and Trix are there, and the girls are looking at Trix’s portfolio of modelling shots she had done last week at Sandford shopping centre that her pervy old boyfriend paid for. This is entertainment (and that was deadpan sarcasm). They chat about girly shit and I can feel the clock ticking on the mantelpiece.
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