by Jenni Fagan
—Sorry!
—Do you know what fucking time it is? he muffles.
—Fucking sue me, she says.
Stella hurries back to her caravan and clicks the door shut. Leans against it. For a fraction of a heartbeat she gets the creepiest feeling that old pickly lady was Gunn. The air feels like glue. Like it is too thick. Like breathing is something she has to consciously invest her time and effort to do. By the kitchen are her mother’s latest stacks of tins and rice and soy sauce for their apocalypse cupboard. There are four whole crates of wine. Stella picks up the box that Alistair left and she takes it into the living room and places it on the table and then, on an urge, she decides to hide it. She places it to the side of the sofa. It isn’t quite hidden enough, so she drags it behind the sofa and chucks a wool throw over it. She tidies her mum’s records away.
—Mum, how many times have you played Neil Young this week?
—At least thirty.
—He’s depressing.
—He’s a genius.
—So, what’s he so fucking depressed for, then?
Stella’s fingers are numb, it is too, too cold. It’s the kind of biting nip that gets into your bones and the only way to get warm again is to lie in a hot bath, and they don’t have one of those.
—Stella, who was at the door earlier?
—Nobody. I was looking to see how much stuff was over on the green for Bonfire Night.
Lies come so easily. Like her tongue is built for untruths. She would be a lethal spy. Stella snaps open the back air vent on the wood stove, just enough so the paper and kindling will catch. The trick is to snap it shut before the backdraft and smoor make her throat raw. She peels newspaper pages off and wrings each into a long twisted snake, lines up ten twists and ties each one into a doughnut shape and throws them on the bottom of the grate, then she builds kindling around them in a teepee shape. As the match strikes there is a flare and the smell of sulfur as paper catches. She closes the grate, her fingers black with soot. The faded old bullet caravan next door sags. Behind Dylan’s caravan there is the car park and garages and Blackfoot Burn with its sinking sand, then fields rise up toward forests and steely crags on the mountains. Winter stretches out ahead of them, a straight road with only ice and snow and one man walking along it and no other people, just that one person. It is something she saw in a horror film in a tent in the back of the white trash kids’ caravan, where there were about eleven of them in one tiny skinny caravan. They made her smoke a cigarette when she was six. They all sat in this tent watching horror movies and she was so frightened she couldn’t move. One came on where a girl slept in her bedroom and there were thousands and thousands of dolls in there and she put down her cigarette and it all went on fire and the dolls were alive, each and every one of them watching her as flames licked up around the room. Then they played a movie where a man walked along on an endless road. The trees were bare and the sky was white and birds were circling. He walked like that for about an hour. It was terrifying. Stella gets this horrible feeling when winter is coming in. Clachan Fells gets the deepest snow of anywhere in the region but it’s not even that. Dark is following them. It’s coming to cloak everything. Each day it will eat a little more light until they will wake up one morning to find the sun won’t rise again. Stella feels like she is standing on the beginning of that long road and everybody is gone. The whole world frozen and nobody left but her and birds circling above her. What then? Stella looks up at the seven sisters. The tallest one has the best views. From up there you can see the whole world. Except of course you can’t. But it feels like you could. On the mountain that everyone calls the fifth sister there is a long procession of willow trees, they look like Victorian women with wide bustles all setting off on a long journey.
—Go back to bed for a little while, Stella, we can leave in half an hour.
—I’m just sitting here.
—Doing what?
—Thinking.
Her mother doesn’t say anything, the fire catches, it pops and crackles into flame.
There is a message. It blinks in the bottom of the screen. Stella sits at the table with her fingers in a steeple. Wind whistles around and—even though the cavity under their caravan is weighted with scree and pebbles from the shore and its haunches are set in blocks of concrete—it feels like they will whirl away. Snowfall has been steady for twenty minutes. She clicks onto the message. Who would have thought he’d e-mail back. There is just a row of emojis: a smiley face, clapping hands, a heart.
It would be easier to be with a boy like him.
He understands.
On the lower part of the e-mail she had told him she’d be true to who she is, but she still won’t be able to go to high school without being bullied. Stella glances over to the photograph of her mum with a little baby and even there she didn’t look like a boy. Sometimes she catches Constance looking at her as if she’s scanning her face for a sign of him. Cael Fairbairn has ceased to exist. Thirteen months ago the girl that wore his body got up and told everyone to quit calling her by the wrong pronoun. She ditched her old wardrobe in a wheelie bin. Her mother faltered for a day, then got on board. They changed Stella’s name on everything and when she goes to high school people that didn’t know her before would not be able to tell, except this is Clachan Fells where everybody knows what is going on with everyone else. Stella turns the photograph away because looking at it makes her feel uneasy. If she gets bullied at school and can’t stop them, she’ll drop out. She is not killing herself to sit a few exams in four years’ time. Constance is cleverer than most of the teachers anyway. Stella could probably do her exams a year early and go straight to university and work so hard that one of those big old farmhouses up on the mountain, the old ones in ruins, one of those will be hers and she won’t even tell her mum she bought it; she’ll get it all done up and just give her the keys for Christmas because while everyone else in the world is odder than an odd thing, her mum is, in all truth, the coolest person she knows. Stella types back to the guy in Italy. Clicks Send. The temperature gauge on the wall now reads minus four. It is warmer than earlier. The man from no. 6 (who tells everyone his name is Alan when they all know it is Tim) walks past with a huge bag of salt for his path and marches up to his alien caravan. Ida told her that he is building a spaceship in the bay window, complete with controls and knobs, and he reckons he’s going to fly right up there when the aliens come. It is one of those mornings when time elongates. One minute is an eon all on its own. The fire crackles. A clock ticks. In the bathroom Constance brushes her teeth, spits, turns off the tap, she comes through and pours coffee. Her face is clean and bare. She never wanted a daughter, what she wanted was a son. Alistair told Stella that, the last time she spoke to him. Her mother drinks the coffee down straight and black. She wears thick fisherman’s socks and tight jeans and a blue polo neck with two long-sleeved thermal tops underneath. Wind keens down the chimney and the wood burner glows. Stella pulls on two pairs of socks and laces her boots, and her mother soaks the porridge bowls and gets her coat on and they are both out the door without a word.
Their feet crunch on the gravel path.
—So the new guy in number seven is from London as well?
—Yup, exactly like Vivienne that was his mum; he used to live with her and his gran in a cinema called Babylon.
—Really? Maybe he’s going to clean the caravan up a bit while he’s here.
Constance glances at the trampled-down thistles at no. 7 as they walk by. At the end of the path there is a man bent over into a C shape, as if he carries the whole world on his back, as if he is Atlas and he has been conned and doesn’t know that if he just bends a knee and walks away the world will stay up all on its own.
—Good morning, Barnacle.
—Morning, Constance, this winter is going to be the death of us all! he says.
—We’ve got a new neighbor, Stella says.
—An Incomer?
—Yup.
—Is he staying?
—Looks like it.
As they walk past, Barnacle turns his head sideways to look up at Stella.
—Mum?
—Why are you whispering, Stella?
—I was wondering why Barnacle lost all his land—like what is he doing here?
—He spent all the money, he doesn’t have anything now.
—On what?
—Prostitutes and drugs, that’s what Ida told me.
Stella turns around and looks back at the man shuffling up his steps. Her mum is walking quickly as ever and she has to hurry to keep up. They walk away across to the garages and along a frozen path, over the burn and onto the farm road. Stella claps her hands together in her gloves and looks out over fields.
—Mum, have you noticed?
—What?
—Nobody’s out, not even a dog walker.
The farm road is empty and the motorway hums nearby.
The whole place feels so bare and stark for a minute it gives Stella the creeps.
Clachan Fells mountains are gold but the sunlight is already fading to gray—fields are furrowed for winter with frozen ridges of soil and a ten-foot-tall scarecrow throws his stick arms out against the vastness. He is dressed in a bubble jacket, with furry lapels and a pair of goggles. Up on the hills there are tall sticks with fluorescent-painted footballs on top, rags fluttering. Those are rows of poor scarecrow cousins—not like this guy! Stella shivers, the cold already in her bones.
—
At the school gates Constance gives her the absence note. Down in the playground four mums are chatting outside the gym. One of them looks at Stella, then turns quickly away. I have a friend in Italy. Stella says this to herself while trying not to pay attention to the flutter of fear she feels when they look at her. It is only one year since they thought she was a boy, and nobody has got used to it yet. All their robot children like their knobs and buttons shiny and silver and none of them understand what a real robot has to withstand, if they are to have so much rust but still be able to run as fast as the others on sports day or sing as loud at Christmas. The carols! “Little Donkey,” the verse about Mary carrying the heavy load, it always makes her cry.
—Do you want me to take the note in? Constance asks.
—No, Mum, it is fine.
—Okay, I’m only asking! Are any of those mums the parents of the boys who…you know?
—Who battered me at Ellie’s Hole?
Her mum winces.
There are tears in the corner of her eyes.
Constance Fairbairn never cries and there is nothing worse than seeing tears in your mother’s eyes and knowing you have caused them. She has to tell her something quickly to fix it right now.
—I have a new friend anyway.
—Who?
—Just this guy from Italy, I met him on the trans-teen website, he sends me golden hand claps—and no, that isn’t something rude.
Stella strides toward school with the note held lightly in her hand. She tries to walk like her mother. A tall walk. Easy. Assured. Those mothers are looking at her already and they give even worse looks to her mum, because she had two lovers for decades and everybody judged her for that and now she has a daughter when she used to have a son. Some of the villagers think being a Fairbairn is the devil’s work. Stella is going to walk past them in a minute so she must keep her breathing steady. She won’t tell Constance that every one of those mothers has a son who was at Ellie’s Hole that day. The mothers know and she has to let it go because she is partly an angel but vengeance is not her job. That must be why she likes Dylan so much already. He’s a smelly, tired, broken, tattooed angel who looks like his heart has ruptured with loss, but that smile—if she were her mother, she’d not go back to Alistair, she’d introduce herself to the Nephilim’s offspring with his tired eyes, and there’s no point in thinking this because Constance always sleeps with Stella’s father again. It makes her skin crawl. She remembers reading a book about a woman who had so much love to give the whole world, enough for everyone, bundles and bundles of it wrapped in brown paper with string and enough for the mean spirits and the sorrowful and cruel. All that love. All of it to give out into a world with people like those hard, horrible women with their shitty fucked-up sons! It is not love that Stella would deliver to them in brown paper parcels tied with string.
A haar-frost mist seeps along the playground.
The women walk up toward her and their feet and legs disappear into the mist, so they appear to begin at the knees. She walks past them and through an entrance with GIRLS written above it in stone. Everyone is filing into the last assembly for this year but it feels like they might never have one again, with the news and the Internet scares, and she watched an airport scene on the telly earlier where everybody was trying to get out to somewhere warmer and they all looked frantic. Stella runs along a corridor to the left (away from the teachers) to post her note into the ABSENCES box. She walks back up through the mist and Constance is looking after the other mums with her head held up high. Her mother takes her scarf off and wraps it around Stella’s neck and tucks it in and strokes her cheek with her thumb (only once).
—Are you sure you want to help me get furniture today, Stella?
—I don’t want to sit in assembly with my class.
—Okay, just this once.
They march with their heads down toward Clachan Fells Tearoom.
—We need to find as much as we can today—it might be the last trip for a little while if this weather is going to get worse? Are you okay? Did someone say something to you?
—No, Mum, can you stop worrying?
They walk past a small greasy spoon with big red star signs in the window listing a full breakfast with fourteen items. Three truckers turn their heads to look at Constance as she walks by. Their trucks are outside, stacked with long tree trunks. It takes Stella all her focus not to take down her jeans and wee on the glass, just to stop them looking at her mother. Constance opens the tearoom door and lets Stella walk through first. Heat makes their skin prickle and the windows steam up. It smells of tea and cake. Four old women sit in front of a wide flatscreen.
—I don’t eat butter, I still like to keep my waist, the eldest says.
She pats her lumps and bumps and smiles at Stella, who is pointy of chin and lithe as a dancer. The oldest woman wears a cardigan and a vest top and no bra and her breasts droop down to her belly. Emblazoned on the vest top is the slogan BEAUTY IS ONLY SKIN DEEP. Stella grins at her and the old woman gives a toothy smirk back. The telly drones on and Constance goes up to the counter.
—It’s snowing in Israel.
A tired woman at a table in the corner says this, shakes her head.
—What?
—Look, it’s snowing in Israel.
—There’s an iceberg coming from Norway. Bloody Ice Age, that’s what it’s going to be, another says.
They all stare at the television.
—Big bloody iceberg, bigger than the Wishbone Hotel.
—It’s not an iceberg, you idiot, it’s sea ice. It’s not coming from Norway either, it’s coming from the Atlantic, Toothy says.
—It’s a bloody iceberg.
—It’s sea ice from the ATLANTIC.
—What do you know about the Atlantic?
—I know it’s not fucking Norway, Toothy responds.
—Well, what’s the ocean around Norway, then?
—It’s the Norwegian Sea. I was a good sailor. Toothy adjusts her pink top.
—I don’t think lying on your back constitutes sailing, the tired woman says.
—It’s polar caps melting, it’s cooling all the air over the sea. The Gulf Stream can’t warm up anymore, Stella says.
—Oh, it’s not that nonsense, sweetheart, Toothy says.
—What is it, then?
—It’s old Mother Frost. She wants her wolves back.
Constance looks across at her and then back up at the telly.
—Fry
me up two eggs, will you, Morag? I don’t want to have to go across the road to the stinky café! Toothy says.
The tearoom owner sighs, cracks two eggs into an orange pan and they sizzle away. She wipes fat off her fingers onto her apron, spreads butter onto white bread and drops teabags into mismatched mugs.
—It’s going to arrive here, this iceberg, at Clachan Fells? Constance asks.
Stella gets butterflies listening to her mother’s tone and the news—like this is real, not just something else that is awful that they see on the news, or every time she turns on her laptop and it is all so ridiculous, it makes her teeth ache.
—That iceberg will arrive down the coast in a few weeks.
—What’s to stop it crashing into land? That’s what I want to know, the owner says as she places mugs down.
Stella picks through a bowl of wooden Christmas-tree decorations and little clay hearts. She turns them over and they have CLACHAN FELLS POTTERY stamped on one side. Alistair made them. He is useless. Not one thing in there that makes up a father at all. If he wants a boy so badly, he can make one. He probably doesn’t even have that in him, now he’s so old. All he’s good for is embalming roadkill and baking clay fucking hearts. She puts the little heart back down and leans against her mother and just then Lewis walks by the window.
—Mum, can we go outside?
—Wait a minute.
—I’d write to my MSP but her office is closed, the smallest woman says.
—Can we go?
She tugs at her mother’s sleeve.
—Wait a minute, Stella.
The oldest woman spreads butter on her scone and then jam and takes a large bite.
—What can I get you, love?
—Two teas, milk and one sugar.
—You’re a nice girl, you’ll be fine, mark my words, Toothy says.
Stella does not know what to say, so she nods and tries not to blush. She wants to walk outside and see Lewis and ask him why, when the other boys turned up to Ellie’s Hole that night and left her with a scar on her head, he stayed at home. They are his friends and once they were her friends, but it was always her and Lewis kicking about when they were kids, they were always together. Now he goes everywhere that they do. He kissed her! Now when he sees her he tenses up and then laughs a bit louder and he always ignores her in class, even if she is paired up with him. It is highly irritating that he is possibly the most beautiful boy on earth, even with his big chin and his skinny legs. She wouldn’t say that to him. She’d tell him he was the best gamer on the planet. They’d hold hands in a cinema and her heart would beat right through her chest like one of those pottery monstrosities. Two years ago they played football together and wore the same school strip and kicked about over at the dump, and now he doesn’t know what to think when he looks at her. When he leaned in and kissed her two months ago, he pushed his whole body against her and she could feel it through his trousers. He likes her just like this. Constance looks at the blueberry muffins and then into her purse and shakes her head and simply pays for the tea. Stella is hungry. It feels like ages until lunch. They wait for the owner to put their tea into Styrofoam cups, while traffic outside the windows moves along, all smudged colors and a dull, muted hum.