by Chloe Turner
The time Kezia and I had together, I thought it was everything. We were barely apart. Shauna complained that I was always late on shift, or behind with my half of the cleaning. My mother complained that she never saw me, that I’d never find a man holed up day and night (my mother’s always painted out the inconvenient parts of me). Meg never complained, just patted my arm when she saw me yawning at the bar.
This girl, though: Kezia’s hair gleamed black like charred straw, and her eyes were the bluest I’d ever seen. She was a creature of the night, and if we’d barely got a penny between us, she made sure we still went out in style. Right from the start, my wardrobe was her wardrobe; even the Strokes T-shirt Meg had brought me back from NYC. In return, Kezia presented me with the charm from her belt. A five-pointed star in a circle; a gift from some lad she’d got high with at a Full Moon Party. I could have done without the story about what they did on the beach after.
But Shauna had it right: I couldn’t do enough for Kezia. It had only been three months; she had both wardrobe drawers and a front door key. I’d wash her clothes, buy her flowers, run her baths which she lay in until they were cold. I got another tattoo—a Celtic knot—because she liked it. She wouldn’t have one herself, and that did make me wonder: she seemed to own my skin as well as hers. But she was dazzling. She could shuffle cards so they flowed like a stream over sand. We’d drink tequila on the scrap of beach at the ferry port, pretending we were in Barcelona. And then some honeyed African spirit, next to the lion shelter in the zoo. When my grandmother died, we had sex in the rain.
Saturday was my day off, so we’d spend it marching round Topshop, trying on all the new stock, falling out of changing rooms half-dressed and howling, and then out of one bar after another. Sometimes we’d get home and cook, so late we weren’t even sure what meal it was supposed to be. Omelettes usually, because it covered all bases.
‘Witches sail in eggcups,’ Kezia said one time, holding up a broken shell to the light. Then she smiled and put her finger in through the jagged lip, pulling it out to suck.
‘Gross,’ said Shauna, pointing the remote as if she wished she could turn Kezia off. The two of them always bristled; Kezia wasn’t good with straight girls. She wasn’t so good with anyone but me, truth be told. Sometimes, even we fought, and she couldn’t always keep it to words. One time, I caught Meg staring at the finger marks on my upper arm. I couldn’t make out her expression, and I wished I’d worn long sleeves to cover them.
When the split came, it hit me hard. We’d been fighting, about space, and money, and the fact that Kezia’d sold my old clarinet to pay her share of the rent. It wasn’t pretty: there were claw marks beside the bruises on my arms now. Shauna was talking about moving out, and the boys from the flat below came round one night to complain about the noise.
Kezia would stay out late to punish me, then one night she didn’t come home at all. Back the next night, her eyes were glittering. She’d not even shed her coat before she’d crowed about what they’d done together: some girl who’d traded a free tattoo for a night in the sack. Kezia curled up on the couch right beside me, watching my eyes as she bragged. Meg was there for once—unusually, because Kezia had all but frightened her off by then—but that didn’t stop Kezia. This girl’s girlfriend had watched them, she boasted: the tattoo (and then everything after). A serpent, round her nipple, in a dark green ink called Rotten Lust. Kezia spilled words like a pan overflowing, but I was frozen to the cushions, and it was Meg who had to throw her out. I’d strung her charm on a silver chain, and I watched Kezia snatch it up from the kitchen worktop, giggling as she slammed the door behind her.
It was days before I came out of my room. I skipped three shifts, but even Shauna didn’t complain. At one point my mother bustled in and out of the flat, oblivious, muttering about the state of my laundry pile, and Dad’s dodgy hip, and did I remember Paul MacBride, who used to be the Head Scout, and now he’s a marine surveyor in Wicklow? Meg just held my hand until she left; and then on, while my tears soaked a chromatogram of colour across the pillow.
‘I’m so sorry. God, I wish I’d never told you to go near,’ Meg said. ‘The sort of girl who’d batter your heart like a thrush with a snail on a stone.’
But I barely heard her. I just stared out of the window at the robin on next door’s shed roof, punishing myself. Maybe I should have fought harder, I thought, stood up for what we’d had. It seemed to me then that robins had it right: singing out to all who’ll listen about what is theirs. For months after, I saw Kezia’s lips everywhere: TV ads for cosmetics, movie billboards, in the pucker of an anemone on the aquarium glass.
It was exactly two years before I saw Kezia again: Grand National weekend (that tenner I’d won with an each-way on Many Clouds the day of the split had been scant compensation). By then, I’d moved on from Baggot Street, started a textiles course at the National College, but that day I’d gone back to the old bar to watch the race with Meg. Meg loved the horses—brought up on a stud farm in County Kildare—so she’d sent home the kitchen crew and she and I ran the hot dog stand at the back of the bar together, watching the big screen and making up backstories for the runners’ names. I jogged to the bookies with our tenners: her Vieux Lion Rouge to my Blaklion. Neither brought us any luck—One For Arthur snatched the race in the final furlong—but we laughed all afternoon. It’d been ages since we’d spent time together, and I’d forgotten how easy things were between Meg and me.
We were after a late drink when closing time came, but nothing was open, so Meg offered to cook something at mine. Shauna had finally moved out to be with her boyfriend a few months back, so I’d got the place to myself, a luxury I could ill-afford. Meg’s eyebrows flew up when she saw the fridge’s empty white racks.
‘Sorry, I usually have more in.’
‘Is that a corner of cheese at the back? An omelette will do us fine.’
Meg was cracking the shells when Kezia let herself in.
Two years, to not even knock?
‘Witches sail in eggshells,’ I heard Meg say from behind me, and I looked back. She was pounding the shells, hard, with the palm of her hand on the flat of a knife.
Kezia just laughed and flicked one of the pink strands she’d got in her hair now.
‘Christ, she’s not still trying, is she?’ she said, gesturing to Meg. ‘Give up, girl. She’s just not into you.’
I saw Meg’s knuckles whiten on the handle of the glass jug on the counter. Then she started whipping the yolks so hard I thought the whole gloopy mess might fling across the room.
‘What do you want, Kezia?’ I said, turning back.
She’d already dropped her heels and lain herself the length of the couch. Now she laughed and stretched her toes over the arm. Her toenails were painted this vivid teal, like ten scarabs.
‘I guess I missed you.’
The sort of girl who’d turn her heel on a beetle on the path. The sort of girl who’d pose naked for a flaming sambuca. The sort of girl who’d turn up after two years and in minutes have you on your knees, begging to rub her feet. I heard all this. (And then a caricature of my mother, in my other ear: If you’d only find yourself a nice man. That Paul MacBride won’t be single forever, you know. But I am not my mother’s daughter).
Meg didn’t say a thing: just her feet on the lino turning away towards the sink. But I heard her this time. And I was over by the front door before I knew what I was at.
‘Would I mind?’ Kezia said, laughing, after I’d asked her to go. ‘You’ll regret this.’
She’d got the silver charm strung as an earring now, and as it rolled against the white of her neck, I remembered how her skin felt against my lips. How she tasted. How she used to twine that charred straw hair around my fingers, around my neck.
I leant against the back of the door for a long moment after I’d closed it, until I heard Kezia’s heels turn the corner at the end of the hall. The sort of girl who left an echo in a room long after she left. But when
I turned around, it was only Meg I wanted to hold.
Acknowledgements
I’m so grateful for all the support and encouragement I’ve had in my writing journey so far. It began with Dr Lucy Windridge (now of Cardiff Metropolitan University), who ran the first writing course I attended and lent me that first spark of inspiration. Thank you to the various writing groups I’ve been part of since, in Wotton-under-Edge and in Cheltenham, and to the network of writing friends I’ve made (in person and online), who provide such cheer and motivation throughout this writing circus. Thank you especially to John Holland of Stroud Short Stories, for the first opportunity to read my work aloud and all the support since; likewise, the brilliant team at the Bath Short Story Award—Anna, Jane and Jude—who are always so encouraging, and all the various publications who have hosted many of these stories in their pages. Particular thanks to David Borrowdale at Reflex Press for taking the chance on me and bringing this book to life, and to Laura Pashby, talented photographer and my very good friend, whose beautiful shot graces the cover. And to my family, thanks to you lot too (and don’t worry, none of these stories is about you…)
‘Hagstone’ was first published in Fresher Writing Volume 3, Autumn 2017; ‘Piñata’: The Mechanics’ Institute Review Online, April 2018; ‘Inches Apart’: The Mechanics’ Institute Review Online, May 2017; ‘Labour of Love’: For Books’ Sake Weekend Read, February 2016; ‘While the Mynah Bird Watched’: Halo Magazine Issue 1, July 2016; ‘Waiting for the Runners’: TSS Publishing, Autumn 2017; ‘The House with Three Stories That Might Be Five’ (as ‘Las Pozas’): The Woven Tale Press, September 2016; ‘Breaking the Glass Blower’s Heart’: Bath Short Story Award 2017 Anthology (ed.): Brown Dog Books, November 2017; ‘Show Me What You’re Made Of’: Stroud Short Stories Volume Two (2015–18), August 2018; ‘The Wetshod Child’: Kindred Magazine, Anchor & Plume Press, Fall/Winter 2015; ‘The Human Bird’: The Nottingham Review Issue 7, March 2017; ‘Witches Sail in Eggshells’: Bath Short Story Award 2018 Anthology (ed.): Ad Hoc Fiction, December 2018.