Going Out

by Scarlett Thomas

  Chapter 27

  There’s a low hum, then the sound of something falling out of the sky. It sounds like a plane about to crash.

  It’s about eight in the morning. The sound of falling gets worse, until the house is vibrating with noise overhead. Julie scrambles out of bed, remembering news reports; eye-witness accounts of people who saw planes falling in their back gardens or the fields opposite; or the stories of the people who came home to find their roof mashed in by a wing or a cockpit saying how the packet of fags they went out for just saved their life. She’s always hated the sound of planes flying overhead – they always sound like they’re falling even when they’re just flying – but this one sounds like it really is falling.

  In the couple of seconds it’s taken her to process these thoughts, Julie has jumped out of bed and run out into the street. She always does this when there’s a loud noise overhead, the logic being that you can’t be crushed to death in your house if you’re not in the house. Also, you get a chance to see what it is and where it’s falling and run in the opposite direction. This is Julie’s flying-object drill: Stay calm, get out of the house. It’s quite simple. Most complex is her storm drill: Stay calm, change into rubber-soled shoes, close all windows, take off all metal jewellery, switch off everything electrical, don’t touch water, don’t go out, sit in a cupboard if possible. Staying calm is the bit she needs to work on in these situations.

  Shaking, she looks up at the sky. It’s not a plane at all. It’s actually a huge, military-style helicopter, almost right above the house, hovering. It’s so loud that if Julie shouted right now she wouldn’t be able to hear herself. It’s making her ears hurt, and she’s tired, and the vibrations are making her dizzy. There’s still a chance it could fall.

  ‘Go away,’ she says softly. ‘I can’t handle this today. Just go away.’

  After about five minutes it moves off over the A12 towards Chelmsford. But Julie can still hear a hum in the air and there’s a chance it could come back, screaming overhead, falling – or at least sounding like it’s falling. She stays where she is, sweating, trying not to think about the palpitations in her chest.

  ‘What are you doing?’ asks Chantel.

  Julie didn’t see her coming. ‘What? Uh, looking for the postman,’ Julie lies.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I’m waiting for a parcel.’

  ‘Oh. Are you OK?’

  ‘Yeah, of course.’

  ‘Is it true you need a camper van?’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘To go to Wales. Charlotte said . . .’

  Julie feels nauseous. ‘Can I talk you to later?’ she says. ‘I’m feeling a bit . . .’ She runs into the house and into the downstairs toilet, gasping for air, begging her body not to be sick. Julie hasn’t been sick for almost ten years. Her diet is supposed to prevent her from vomiting: no food-poisoning, no bacteria, no bugs. Julie starts her sickness drill: Stay calm, think of clean things, breathe properly, run the taps. She thinks of waterfalls, and green meadows, and ice-cubes, and then she switches on the taps in the bathroom. The feeling passes after a few minutes, but Julie’s still sweating, and her heart’s still going at a mad pace, and her breathing still feels jerky and shallow. As far as mornings go, this is about as shit as it gets. And she hardly got any sleep last night because she was worrying about having to go to Wales. She needs a cup of tea.

  Her dad’s in the kitchen, reading the Guardian.

  ‘What’s wrong with you?’ he asks. ‘Why are you running around?’

  ‘I just . . . It doesn’t matter.’

  Julie grips the edge of the kitchen work-surface until she’s breathing properly again. Then she puts the kettle on and tries to avoid looking at her dad.

  ‘You look like one of the girls off the heroin leaflet,’ he says.

  The heroin leaflet is one of a series being produced by the art students at the college, under the supervision of Julie’s dad. Their knowledge of class-B and -C drugs, their substandard mastery of DTP (Julie’s dad objects to computers on the basis that corporations are using them to take over the world) and some warped but enthusiastic airbrushing have combined to produce roughly what you would expect: supposedly anti-drugs leaflets with an unmissable pro-drugs subtext, printed on card just thick enough to use for roaches.

  ‘Thanks, Dad.’

  ‘That’s it! You’re a heroin addict. That would explain everything. Maybe that’s what the helicopter was here for – they must be on to you.’

  ‘Yeah, very funny. It’s eight o’clock in the morning. Heroin addicts don’t get up at eight in the morning. You can put that in your leaflet under “tell-tale signs”.’

  ‘We don’t do tell-tale signs any more. We just tell people how to sterilise needles. Anyway, you probably would get up at eight if the Feds were on to you.’

  ‘I’m still pretty sure we don’t have Feds in this country, Dad.’

  Julie’s dad always says Feds instead of police. He probably thinks it’s funny or ironic. Or, more likely, his green-haired students say it, and they make it sound funny so he copies them. It’s not actually his most irritating habit, but it is up there on the list. His top three most irritating habits include singing along with Slipknot and Limp Bizkit when they’re on Top of the Pops, and taking his packed lunch to work in a Thunderbirds lunchbox because it’s retro and he’s trying to be cool. Actually, now Julie thinks about it, that’s actually more sweet than it is irritating. It just becomes irritating when he does it.

  He ignores her. ‘Or if you were a doctor or something. Did you know that professional people are the biggest heroin users?’

  Julie makes her tea. ‘Is the college still flooded?’ she asks.

  ‘Our site’s not so bad. London Road’s had it. What’s happening at The Edge?’

  ‘It’s OK now, I suppose. We had to have the floor tiles replaced.’

  Julie hears the front door slam, then Dawn walks in wearing a frosted-pink bomber jacket and white leggings.

  ‘Hi, guys,’ she says. ‘You’re up early,’ she adds, to Julie.

  Dawn usually stops for a cup of tea on her way to the industrial estates. ‘That manager from The Edge phoned last night,’ she says. ‘He said he’d un-sack you if you went back before seven, or something.’

  Doug laughs. ‘Sacked?’ he says, looking at Julie. ‘You?’

  ‘I wasn’t sacked,’ Julie says. ‘I walked out.’

  Dawn’s eyes widen. ‘Walked out? Why?’

  ‘Owen was being really crap. A couple of us walked out, actually.’

  ‘So you’re unemployed now?’ Doug asks.

  ‘I’ll get another job.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘I don’t know. Don’t give me that look, Dad. It was the right thing to do. We were being exploited.’

  ‘Exploited?’ Doug says, when he stops laughing. ‘What the hell do you expect, working as a waitress at The fucking Edge? You were the one who always said you liked it. You were the one who always said it was . . .’

  ‘Simple, yes, I know. Stop going on. I just changed my mind.’

  ‘You join a union. You don’t walk out. You get the union to negotiate for you.’

  ‘I’ll get another job.’

  ‘You can’t live here for nothing.’

  ‘I don’t live here for nothing. I pay rent, bills . . .’

  ‘What are you going to pay them with now you’re out of work?’

  ‘Doug,’ Dawn says. ‘Leave it. She’ll get another job. Oh – Cerise at the ceramics place is looking for a packer. Shall I see if I can get you an interview?’

  ‘Thanks, Dawn, but I think I’ll get another waitressing job.’

  Doug gets up. ‘Waitressing. My daughter’s ambition in life is to be a waitress.’

  ‘She’s not hurting anyone,’ Dawn says. ‘If that’s what she wants . . .’

  ‘I fathered a retard,’ says Doug, heading for the door. ‘Bloody hell.’

  When he’s gone, Dawn says: ‘H
e doesn’t mean it.’

  ‘Yes he does,’ Julie replies.

  Later, after lunch, Julie knocks on Chantel’s door. Nicky answers, dressed in tracksuit bottoms and a T-shirt with the words Love is War on the front.

  ‘I’ve got my pilates video on pause,’ she says. ‘Cup of tea later?’

  ‘Yeah, that would be nice. Is, um . . . Is Chantel in?’

  ‘Up the stairs, down the hall, on the end.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  Chantel’s room is a lot smaller than Nicky’s. One whole wall is covered with pictures of elephants. Another has surfing posters – girls with blonde hair and wetsuits in some scenes; in others, androgynous figures riding pure blue waves. By the bed is a picture of a group of people with wet hair sitting by a fire on a sunset beach. Another wall has transparent shelves covered with ornaments. It’s much tidier – and more homely – than Julie’s room, which is more of a tangle of wires for her stereo and laptop and TV and a load of clothes, and bits of paper covered in numbers in a heap on the floor. Everything in here seems to be in the right place. A blue dressing gown with little elephants on it hangs neatly behind the door while ten different pairs of flip-flops are lined up under the bed. About fifty bottles of nail varnish are arranged on the dresser like a colour palette, moving from shades of red to shades of blue, darker colours at the bottom, lighter colours at the top. Around them sit several toy elephants, an electric toothbrush (still in its packaging) and some letters with unfamiliar-looking stamps. In the middle of all this, on the bed, Chantel is arranging photographs in an album. She’s listening to Radio 1 – Julie can hear Mark and Lard making some sort of joke about the weather.

  ‘Hello?’ Julie says, knocking at the open door.

  Chantel looks up uncertainly. ‘Oh – hi, Julie.’ She gets up and turns the radio down, then sits back on her bed with her pile of photographs and albums.

  ‘I’m sorry about before,’ Julie says quickly, walking a few steps into the room. ‘I was having a bad morning. I thought I’d better come round and apologise, or explain or something. I must have seemed really rude, running off like that.’

  ‘When? Oh – in the street. No worries. Do you want to sit down?’

  Julie sits awkwardly on the edge of the bed. There isn’t anywhere else.

  ‘How’s Luke?’ asks Chantel.

  ‘He’s fine. Oh, he’s pretty freaked about going to Wales, though.’

  ‘Has he really never been anywhere?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Charlotte told me about Wales, by the way,’ Chantel says. ‘I mean, that’s how I knew . . . I haven’t told anyone. She told me not to.’

  ‘Thanks. What were you saying about a camper van before?’

  ‘She said you wanted to borrow one. Charlotte did, I mean. I thought you’d know what I was talking about. I mean, I haven’t actually got a camper van yet, but I was telling Charlotte I’d like to get one, to use for going surfing, once I pass my test. She said it’s a shame I didn’t have one I could lend you now, because she said Luke will need more space than you’ve got in your car, when you go to Wales, because he can’t lie down and be covered on the back seat of a Mini.’

  ‘That’s true,’ Julie says. ‘David’s coming as well, now, so there definitely won’t be room.’

  ‘David?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘He’s nice, isn’t he?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ Julie says. ‘Anyway, when were you talking to Charlotte?’

  ‘She was here last night. She came here from Luke’s.’

  ‘Oh.’ For some reason this makes Julie feel weird. ‘Why?’

  Chantel looks confused. Julie realises that this seems like an odd question to ask.

  ‘We were just talking about things, you know?’

  ‘Yeah, of course. I . . .’

  Chantel smiles. ‘She’s nice, isn’t she?’

  ‘Yeah. She is.’

  ‘She was telling me about when she went to Europe and stuff.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Julie wanted to ask Charlotte about that but never found the right moment. Now Chantel knows all about it before she does and she’s known Charlotte what, five minutes? Julie tries to shift slightly to get more comfortable on the bed, although she doesn’t know why she’s still here. Outside, the drizzle turns into full-on rain and a strong wind blows raindrops at Chantel’s window. For a second, it’s like someone has sprayed the side of the house with a huge power-shower nozzle.

  ‘I love rain,’ says Chantel. ‘I bet there are some amazing waves on the coast.’

  Julie thinks of big surfy waves with soapy foam but her mind won’t accept this picture and turns the waves into big walls of water out of control . . . tidal waves, mega-tsunami that could wipe out whole coastal towns. Her heart thumps as the rain gets heavier outside. What if the rain came so strongly out of the sky that everything was suddenly washed away? Julie wants to feel safe. This rain isn’t making her feel safe.

  Chantel’s still organising her photo albums. She picks up a photo of a goat.

  ‘This is Billy,’ she says, handing Julie the picture.

  Then there’s a flash, and a huge bang in the sky. Julie drops the picture.

  ‘Oh, shit,’ she says.

  ‘Julie?’

  Julie’s looking at her shoes. Trainers. That’s OK. Can she ask Chantel to shut the window? Probably not. The radio? How mad will Chantel think she is if she asks her to switch off the radio? She could leave, except she can’t go outside when there’s lightning. She’s got to keep safe, but seem normal. Oh, God.

  ‘Are you OK?’ Chantel asks. ‘Are you afraid of storms?’

  Julie forces a smile. ‘Yeah. Silly, aren’t I? Oh – sorry, I dropped your photo.’ She picks it up from the floor. ‘I was just a bit, you know, startled by that lightning.’

  ‘Yeah, me too. It sounded like it was right overhead.’

  There’s another flash, and another bang. The lights go out for a second. The bed’s right in front of the window, which is still open. Julie’s way too close to the storm. She gets up from the bed and walks over to Chantel’s shelves, pretending to look at all her ornaments. In the space of one day, Chantel’s seen her losing it first over a helicopter and now a storm. This is stupid. She tries to pull herself together, but by the time the next flash comes, she’s almost crying. She just wishes the world would leave her alone, that she could go and live in a hole away from all this crap.

  Chantel looks concerned. ‘Julie?’

  ‘Sorry. I’m . . . Not good with storms.’

  ‘Would you like to sit in a cupboard or something?’

  ‘Is that OK? Would you mind?’

  Chantel laughs. ‘I was sort of joking. Mind you, it is a bit mad out there, maybe it’s a good idea. Come on, we can both fit in here.’ She gets off the bed and opens the doors to the huge built-in wardrobe. There’s another flash and Chantel sort of pushes Julie into the wardrobe, giggling slightly.

  ‘Come on,’ she says. ‘Get in.’ There’s another clap of thunder and she squeals. ‘Quick, come on, before we get fried.’

  It’s dark and warm inside the wardrobe, and Julie instantly feels safe – almost irrationally so, as if she’d still be safe in here even if the house took a direct hit from the lightning and crumbled to the ground. There’s a clean smell of clothes, and a leathery smell of shoes and trainers. For a few seconds, all Julie can hear is her own breathing as she nestles between Chantel and the back of the wardrobe. Then Chantel giggles again.

  ‘What are we like?’ she says.

  Julie laughs too. ‘I’m so pathetic,’ she moans.

  Outside there’s a loud crash and a much dimmer flash of lightning.

  ‘I’m glad we’re in here,’ Chantel says.

  ‘Me too.’

  ‘It’s getting worse from the sound of it.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘My hair feels all staticky.’

  ‘Really? God.’

  ‘I might be imagining
it, though.’ Chantel laughs. ‘What are we like?’ she says again. ‘I’m glad we’re not on a golf course.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘That’s where most people get struck by lightning. Stressed-out accountants with pacemakers and stuff apparently. You know I read somewhere that if you are stuck out in an open place and a storm starts, you should lie on the ground and stick your bum in the air.’

  Julie laughs, but makes a mental note. ‘How does that help, though?’ she asks.

  ‘I can’t remember. Something about being a small target.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Chantel shifts slightly and her leg brushes Julie’s. ‘I thought you hated me, by the way,’ she says.

  ‘No,’ Julie says quickly. ‘Course I don’t. Why would you think that?’

  ‘Because I gave Luke beer and stuff . . . I felt really bad about that.’

  ‘No, it’s not that . . . Oh, God. I’ve given you totally the wrong impression.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Chantel says. ‘I’m oversensitive. That’s probably it. It’s just this morning, out in the street, you couldn’t get away from me quick enough.’

  ‘That’s why I came to apologise,’ Julie says. ‘It wasn’t you at all.’

  ‘Oh. Cool.’ Chantel sounds relieved. ‘No worries, then.’

  Julie sighs. ‘It was . . .’

  ‘You don’t have to tell me.’

  ‘No, it’s all right. Look, you know how I’m scared of storms?’

  ‘Yeah. I am too when they’re like this.’

  ‘Well that helicopter this morning . . . I was scared of that too.’

  ‘Yeah, it was mad, wasn’t it? I came out to look at it as well.’

  Julie frowns. ‘Really?’

  ‘Yeah. It was well scary. Why didn’t you just say that this morning?’

  ‘I didn’t want to seem like a total . . .’

  ‘Muppet?’ suggests Chantel.

  Julie laughs. ‘Yeah. I don’t like admitting when I’m scared.’