Luca told us his plan for Skegness. We’d find a nice B&B and book in straight away to make sure we didn’t end up in some scummy dive. Then we’d do some of the tourist things, try to blend in a bit. When it all quietened down we’d start the search. Jules didn’t ask what we were searching for. I don’t think she was listening.
I could tell we were close when I saw the line of turquoise across the horizon. It was sparkling like the gems across the rim of a bracelet. It made me bubble inside just looking at it. You don’t have sea in Nottingham, just concrete, canal and the odd patch of grass. You forget how blue the water looks, the shape of the waves. Canal water is black and green, narrow and bodiless, while the sea is alive: pulling you into its motion.
We circled the streets as Luca looked for a parking spot. The tourist shops were full of buckets and spades, comedy hats and spinning windmills made of brightly coloured foil. They rattled and glinted in the wind like milk-bottle caps in a magpie’s nest. Jules pointed her finger out of the window as we passed a discount store.
‘I am getting that hat,’ she said.
When we parked she was out of the car, heading straight for the stalls. Luca looked at me, distressed: we were going off plan.
‘All part of the adventure,’ I said.
Luca went to get his trumpet case out of the boot, me still clinging to the pillbox in my hand. He added a strap and wore it across his body.
‘Shouldn’t you leave that here?’ I said. ‘You know, keep it safe.’
Luca shook his head. He leant in and whispered, ‘We need it for the mission.’
I nodded as though I knew exactly what he meant but to be honest I’d kind of forgotten about the mission. I knew it was important to Luca but just being in Skegness was enough for me. Breathing in the salty air, seeing the turquoise horizon, knowing what this place meant.
I wasn’t supposed to know where they had sent Izzy but the social worker had left the adoption file open in our last meeting. By the time she saw my eyes scanning the sheets it was too late. I remember how she carried on talking as though nothing had happened, shuffling forward on her seat before carefully folding the file shut.
I slid the pillbox into the front pocket of my jacket, picked up Boy from the back seat of the car and followed Luca down the street. We found Jules outside a gift shop by a hat stand, a baseball cap with panda eyes and ears rammed on her head. I don’t know how she made it look so good, standing there puffing away on her fag, but somehow it worked. She nudged me in the ribs.
‘Now, distract the shopkeeper so I can do a runner,’ she said.
When I looked over at the counter Luca was handing a credit card to the man behind the till.
‘Get yourself one too, Molly,’ he called.
I got a purple hippo cap with two white teeth hanging down from the visor. I think it was meant for children but it fit my head just fine.
Jules wasn’t too impressed with Luca when he got back. You could tell she’d been all geared up for the run.
‘Dipping into the bank of Mum and Dad again?’ she said, straightening out the ears on her panda hat.
Luca looked down the street as though Jules hadn’t said a word. There were amusement arcades lining the road, big spangled signs over the doors, machines flashing and blinking with lights. There were ice cream and doughnut stalls, and about twenty different fish and chip shops. Luca held his face to the sun for a second. He must have forgotten his plan and the B&B because suddenly he was turning away from the town and facing the sea.
‘Beach,’ he said.
The only time I ever saw Donna was when I accompanied Jules to meet her in the Company Inn, a Wetherspoon’s in the red-brick British Waterways building by the canal. Jules wanted me there for moral support so I sat on one of the high stools near the bar as she perched on the edge of a leather sofa, bobbing her shoulders up and down and then flexing her head from side to side. She’d brushed her hair out that morning and had even gone to the perfume counter in Boots. I thought that she was going to be on her best behaviour, but when Donna finally came and sat down next to her I was still petrified.
I’d been expecting a larger-than-life character: dyed pink hair, tattoos, body-piercings, the works. Instead, this woman was tall and pear-shaped, long blonde hair matching her flowing dress. She wore large amber beads that shone against her skin. I’d never had piano lessons but, I thought, if there was a picture of a piano teacher in the dictionary it would probably look something like her.
The tension dropped from Jules’s body as Donna leant forward and hugged her. When she was released, Jules sank sideways into the squashy sofa. I could hear Donna’s voice rolling and dipping in a soft, Liverpool accent, hypnotizing Jules like a snake charmer’s music hypnotizes a cobra. Soon I got distracted by the food coming out for the lunch crowd – steaks and lasagne, chicken wings and battered cod. I imagined sinking my teeth into a burger, feeling the juices spill into my mouth, when suddenly Jules bolted upright from the sofa. Her face was poppy red.
‘WEll YoU caN FUck riGhT oFF!’ she bellowed.
She’d stormed off out of the pub as I scrabbled around on the floor for my rucksack. By the time I’d caught up she was halfway down the canal, ranting at pigeons and cyclists about how love was a pile of horseshit and you could stick it where the sun don’t shine. And marriage? That was the biggest pile of horseshit and you wouldn’t see her committing to it, not in a million years.
Then she stopped and had a think.
‘Except to myself,’ she said. ‘I’d marry me-bleeding-self if I could. That would show her, LiVerPooL SLaG!’
We walked so far down the canal that we left the city. There were only trees lining the paths, and the odd disused factory and canal boat. I knew one of the factories well: the broken panelled windows, weeds wrapping themselves over the frames. I’d bunked there when I was getting clean off the methadone. I spent a whole week hiding out with nothing but a meagre stock of food, water, vodka and painkillers to keep me company. They say the only substance that can kill you if you go cold turkey is alcohol. I tried to remember that as I lay in the foetal position, sweating, shaking and sobbing through the agony: the pains in my body, the pains in my head. Whenever I wanted to give up, to ring someone for a hit, I’d think of Robin Hood. About taking my head out of the gutter and doing some good in the world.
The birds were singing, the smell of manure was in the air, and although it was cold the sun was bright, shining down on us as Jules stubbed out her fourth roll-up on the top of a bin. We sat down on a metal bench by a big willow tree and I asked her what had happened.
She was reluctant at first, but she couldn’t keep it in.
‘Only asked me to go to her bloody wedding, didn’t she? Cheeky sod. I thought she wanted to … Well, it doesn’t matter what I thought.’
She didn’t look at me, just finished rolling her fifth cigarette and lit up. She blew a funnel of smoke up into the tree.
‘Why does everyone else get a happy ending, Molly?’ she asked.
I looked out across the canal; the sun was setting, turning the water burnt orange. The thing about endings is there aren’t really any, except the last one. But I wasn’t going to say that to Jules, not in the mood she was in. So I thought of something else.
‘If you write your own story, you can always have a happy ending,’ I said.
Jules bit her bottom lip, chewing away at it as she deliberated my words. When I looked into her broken eye I saw the universe wasn’t spinning, it was sitting there calmly in the middle of her pupil. She nodded, then stood up and held her arm out at a jaunty angle.
‘Let’s go write ourselves a story, doll,’ she said.
I smiled, taking her arm.
The beach was full: old-age pensioners shuffling around in twos, families with their little kids, flying kites and riding the donkeys. My mother had a picture of me sitting on a white donkey. I don’t remember the day it was taken but I remember the picture because it sat on the mant
elpiece above the fire. I remember how I didn’t like looking at that picture because he was in it, hovering in the background, ice-cream cone in his hand. You couldn’t even see his face properly but it ruined everything.
Boy ran off and played with the kids running up and down the beach. There was a large group of children with four Asian women wearing bright saris with cardigans. They sat on deckchairs, hems fluttering in the breeze as the children dug holes in the sand. There was a toddler waddling around in a nappy, trying to dig like the other children and nearly falling into their holes. She was the most gorgeous thing: big chocolate eyes, chubby cheeks and a protruding belly that stuck out round and proud. I could have eaten her up.
I breathed in the smell of the seawater. It must be great to bring up kids here. I wanted to say this to Jules but I knew she’d look at me all disapproving and tell me not to get sentimental.
We sat down and took off our shoes and socks. This took Luca a while because of all the layers. He stuck his legs out straight and placed each sock across his jeans so as not to get sand on them, until his jeans were covered in patches of sock. Jules was watching him eagle-eyed until eventually his pale toes emerged.
‘What’s with the socks, Posh Boy?’ she asked.
‘I keep them on rotation,’ he said, making a little circular movement with his finger. ‘It’s the only way I can make sure they don’t stink. I can’t stand smelly socks.’
Jules sat up straight and nodded.
‘No excuse not to be neat,’ she said.
Seeing as we were getting on so well I suggested we go for a dip in the water.
‘I don’t like the sea,’ Luca said.
Jules looked at him as though he’d said he didn’t like breathing.
‘What you talking about?’
He gestured out ahead.
‘Look at it.’
We looked out at the water. The gentle lapping of the waves, the sparkling ripples, the slow turn of wind turbines along the horizon. Luca shuddered.
‘It’s so big and wide and endless. Just going on and on and on. I can’t deal with it.’
He shook his head then looked at us.
‘You two go though. I’m fine here.’
So me and Jules paddled in the water wearing our animal baseball caps. The water was icy and tickled our feet, then our ankles, then our calves. The wind was brushing against our faces, the smell of sea salt so strong you could taste it.
‘So, what did the hospital find?’ I said, keeping my voice casual as I ran my fingers through the water.
Jules sighed.
‘It’s just a lump.’ She patted the side of her left breast. ‘Probably just a cyst or something.’
The water pushed me back and forth.
‘My aunt had cancer,’ Jules said. ‘You know, the fruit-loop one.’
Her panda ears flapped in the wind.
‘So you came here to talk to her?’ I said.
Jules kicked the water and shrugged.
‘Nah,’ she said. ‘It wasn’t that.’
She looked down, trying to hide her expression, and then I knew why Jules had hijacked the mission. Not because she wanted to speak to her auntie or escape her mum, not even to check I was OK – she knew I’d be fine. It was because she didn’t want to be alone.
‘You won’t tell Posh Boy, will you?’ she said.
I pulled my finger across my mouth like a zip.
She went back to kicking the water. I looked out at the open sea. I could see what Luca meant; it stretched on endlessly. It was like one of those ladies’ saris, covered in sequins, unwound and rolling into eternity. But I liked being there, a small dot on a big sheet of blue. We were all just dots really, if you looked from high enough. Just one part of the pattern, one sequin in the fabric.
I must have been staring for a while because next thing I knew, Jules was sitting back with Luca on the beach. They seemed to be having an intense conversation that mainly involved her talking and him listening. He’d put his socks back on and had his map in his hand, turning it away from Jules as she spoke even though she didn’t seem the slightest bit interested in it. I stood in the water for a bit longer then waded back to join them. The sand was gritty between my toes.
Luca shielded his eyes from the sun.
‘You look like a mermaid,’ he said.
My cheeks flushed. Jules looked all sharp.
‘Have you been listening to a word I’ve said?’
I sat down beside them and Luca pulled his trumpet case on to his lap. He clicked the lid open to create a tiny crack and slid the map back inside.
‘There’s no point searching now,’ he said. ‘It’s too busy. We’ll have to come back at night.’
I looked at Jules’s scrunched-up face. She glanced at his trumpet case.
‘I need a bevvy,’ she said.
We got a pack of strong cider from the town centre and strolled up to the Pleasure Beach. There was a huge Ferris wheel and carousels, comedy sunglasses and pink candyfloss hanging from stalls. The techno music was pumping and Jules was all set for a party but we couldn’t start drinking because of all the kids so we got a packet of hot doughnuts instead. Luca bought a long tube shaped like a sword that was filled with jellied sweets. We found a nice bench just by the main gates where you could still hear the music.
Me and Jules ate the doughnuts and played the game where you let the sugar build up on your lips, waiting to see who licks first. Jules was chattering away, sugar showering her camo jacket. She told us the story of how she’d been attacked by a herd of cows the day before (‘Cows are the most stupid animals of all. Stupider than dolphins!’). She was about to tell us how she’d ended up in the back of the BMW when she got sidetracked, reminiscing about her time as a car mechanic. I knew this was one of her false memories. Jules did a free taster course at the college once but that was it.
‘Let’s go,’ Luca said.
He was looking up at the rollercoaster. It stretched so high I had to drop my head back to see the top. The tracks were shaped into crazy loops and zigzags.
‘Yeah. Right,’ I said, licking the sugar off my lips. He’d been scared by the sea, for crying out loud.
‘No, really,’ he said. ‘It’s stupid being here and not going on a ride.’
He looked over at Jules.
‘Are you in?’
She shook her head, sugar powdered across her lips.
‘No way, Posh Boy,’ she said. ‘Them things make me heave. Not a pretty sight for anyone, believe me. I’ll stay down here with Boy and take care of the bevvies.’
She patted the four-pack as though it was her new bessie mate.
Me and Luca stood in the queue for the rollercoaster behind a group of lads in tracksuits and baseball caps. One of them looked at me suspiciously. He was older than the others and kind of familiar. Or maybe he just looked like every dodgy man in a tracksuit that I’d ever met.
He turned to Luca.
‘Are you an Arab?’ he said.
Luca glanced at the man and then up and down the queue before realizing the man was talking to him.
‘Are you a salami?’ he said.
The man’s face knotted into a scowl.
‘What?’ he said.
‘I’m as much an Arab as you are a salami.’ Luca pointed at his hair. ‘The Afro is a bit of a giveaway.’
The man looked at Luca’s hair.
‘Ah, good. Don’t mind blacks,’ he said. ‘Just Arabs and Muslims. Can’t stand Muslims.’
Luca raised his brows.
‘That’s a shame,’ he said. ‘I hear they’re big fans of you.’
I snorted and the man looked at me, squinting as though trying to place me. But then it was his turn and his friends were telling him to hurry up. We managed to get a seat at the front as he went to the back. As soon as the safety bar came down Luca became twitchy.
‘Have you been on one of these before?’ he asked.
‘Of course,’ I said.
Then I realized he’d asked because he hadn’t. It was funny really because there he was, privileged type brought up in a posh house with all that art on the walls and pony lessons and music lessons no doubt, and yet his parents had never taken him on a rollercoaster.
‘You’ll be fine!’ I said.
The train jolted forward and Luca yelped as though he’d been bitten on the arse. The noise of the carriage creaking up the tracks didn’t help matters. Our seats dropped back as we made the climb. You could see the whole of the beach, people scurrying along like miniature figures. The sea stretched out for miles in that rolled-out-sari way. Luca’s eyes were fixed on it. I put my hand out.
‘Hold on!’ I shouted over the noise.
Luca grabbed it just before we plunged. Everyone was screaming, the wheels clattering against the tracks as we hurtled down. I clung on tight as the air blasted my hair back, making my mouth flap, my stomach rising up in my body as if ready to pop out. It wasn’t until we began to loop that I heard Luca. He was screaming like he was being attacked by bees, gasping and shrieking, gasping and shrieking. Our hands kept banging against the safety bar but he wouldn’t let go and then I was shrieking too. The train slowed but I knew we weren’t at the end because I could see the drop of the track below us. Luca loosened his grip.
‘Thank God for—’
‘Eeeiiii!’
I squealed so loud that Luca nearly crushed the bones in my hand. I looked over at him laughing hysterically and he looked back, whites circling his pupils, before laughing through the screams. We carried on doing this – laughing-screaming, laughing-screaming – right until the ride stopped.
When we got off Luca could barely walk straight. He was hiccuping with giggles and when he stumbled into me I wrapped my arm around him and giggled too until we looked like a pair of drunks stumbling out of a nightclub.
The lad from the queue walked past.
‘I lied!’ Luca screamed. ‘I’m an Arab! And a Muslim! I’m an Arab bloody Muslim!’
The man glanced back at us then carried on walking.
‘And I’m a salami!’ I cried after him. ‘An Arab, Muslim salami!’
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