Duck, Son and Pinker

Unexplained

The first time, no one says a word.

It’s a shudder. A wave passing through the air. As if somewhere far beneath them, tectonic plates are shifting. Her sister’s knuckles go white. The water in her glass moves, like that scene in Jurassic Park, the one where the dinosaurs are coming, except there aren’t any dinosaurs. The spilt sugar forms in patterns on the tabletop.

Silence fills the room.

Her mum stands up and takes the plates, food half eaten, as if there’s been an argument, drops them in the sink so as they threaten to smash. She bows her head and puts her fingers to her temples; that way she has when she’s getting one of her migraines.  Outside, the sky swells with thunder.

Robin pushes back her chair and runs down the hall. In her bedroom, she climbs into the wardrobe and presses herself against the back wall, as far from the others as it is possible to get. The clothes fall down around her, muffling the sounds that start to rise in the building. She buries her face in the fabric and lets the smell of the laundry powder remind her of something else. She waits for the lights to go out.

After that, things begin to happen round the flat.

The umbrellas are removed from the stand and hidden. Her sister’s picture, the one in the silver frame, shatters, and for weeks shards of glass turn up where they shouldn’t, in people’s beds, in the cutlery drawer. Her mum’s windows are left wide open in the middle of winter, her expensive perfume bottles found in pieces on the concrete far below.

When Robin first sees it she thinks she’s imagined it. She blinks, and it disappears. But with time a dark shape starts to harden on the edge of her sightline. It lingers just outside the circle of light from her desk lamp when she’s trying to do her schoolwork, makes it hard to concentrate, makes her eyes go blurry.

She looks it up on Google: ‘Paranormal Phenomena’. A poltergeist, she learns, is ‘the manifestation of an imperceptible entity’. She reads reports of inanimate objects being picked up and thrown, noises such as knocking, scratching or even human voices. Poltergeist activity is often believed to be the work of malicious ghosts. She is transfixed by photographs of people being thrown from their beds six feet into the air, mysterious shadows, ectoplasm. The phenomenon is particularly prevalent in the homes of teenage girls. Someone has written on one of the sites that it’s because they are the spirits of paedophiles. Even in the afterlife, they can’t resist.

But it’s strange because this one doesn’t seem that way to her at all. Not predatory, more frightened, or hurt. And it is a girl, she’s sure of that. She catches fleeting glimpses of Her in the mirror as she applies her mascara. As she dresses she’s somehow aware of the weight of Her nearby, somehow wants Her approval, trying out colours and patterns, digging out things she hasn’t worn in months. She forgives the clumsiness, she can understand it, and the broken things so rarely belong to her.

Still, no one mentions it. At nights when the tower block is quiet like a huge forgotten tombstone, she lies awake and imagines what it would be like, to be a ghost. Fading in and out of walls, coming and going as you pleased, being young forever. That if someone touched you, their hand would go right through, and what would they be left holding but thin air? She imagines the ghost sitting in the dark and smiling. She falls asleep and dreams about Her.

Then, her mum’s purse goes missing. Robin is in the living room, curled up with the Reader’s Digest Tales of the Unexplained, and she feels her mum’s anger pour into the room in front of her, making her skin bristle.

Robin, her mum says, and she says it quietly, like her voice is coming from somewhere far away, from somewhere very deep inside of her. Robin. My purse.

She’s not used to hearing her mum say her name, so it takes her a moment to reply.

A ghost, she says.

There’s a long time when her mum’s face is that word: inscrutable. Robin almost gets to think that she’s not going to say anything at all.

Why would a ghost haunt a tenth storey flat?

Perhaps, she says, it is that She’s scared, or sad. Maybe something bad happened to Her. That’s what happens with ghosts. They get stuck here, until things get sorted out.

There were gangs in the past, weren’t there, in this part of the city? She could have got involved with one of those. Something violent happened to Her. Something She could never tell anyone. She would have lost Her friends. She wouldn’t know who to trust. She’d have felt very alone.

Her mum doesn’t like her talking about gangs. She rolls her eyes and almost looks like she’s going to cry. She thinks that Robin is part of the trouble she’s read about. She never asks what Robin does when she goes out: perhaps it’s easier to make her own mind up. The truth is she’s mostly just kicks about, loiters in museum exhibitions, rides shopping centre elevators up and down. She can waste hours in bookshops without buying a single thing. She’s learnt how to go unnoticed.

Her mum crosses the living room in three long steps, stretching out her arms towards her, as if to hug her, or as if to grab her and shake her, but then when she gets very close she stops and her hands drop. Robin can hear her teeth grinding together inside her head. I don’t believe you, her mum says. I don’t believe you. She rushes from the room, slams the door, and the flat is still again.

Belief. This is the thing. And people do believe in the strangest things: God, love, aeroplanes. Financial systems that no one understands. What is belief, anyway? Having faith in something you cannot see. Her mum does not believe her. Perhaps there’s no space for things like that in a home this small.

Robin goes to the French window, opens it, and steps out on to the cold balcony. The ghost is in the corner, so black and patient She might be her own shadow.  She moves away and gazes out over the city, to the place in the distance where the light from all the streets and buildings fades, imagines herself in that empty place. Perhaps she’s going mad. She wonders if she turns around and looks at the ghost straight on, She’ll disappear forever.

At last there comes a feeling clutching up from inside of her, something grabbing at her windpipe, and she spins around, growing big with her rage. The ghost cowers as if She wants to get away but there’s nowhere for Her to go and suddenly Robin understands it, how it feels to be stronger than someone, to make them scared, how it can make your heart beat.

Then she’s actually reaching out, opening her fingers like she will take hold of Her. She throws herself towards Her, intending to tip Her over the edge, to topple Her. The ghost catches Robin’s eye, opens Her mouth as if to ask for help, but the words are snatched away in a gasp.

When finally they make contact the surprising thing is that She’s solid to the touch. Robin can feel the pulse beneath the skin, the blood, the warmth of it. Robin grasps at Her, and instead of shoving Her away, she finds herself pulling towards Her, their limbs tangling, a mess of human forms when they come close. Robin places her head on Her shoulder. She rests all of her weight against Her, something even more than that. There’s a small cracking sound in her ribs and all of the air goes out of her, as if it were her last breath. She is letting herself be held. She holds her.

Say Cheese

Here’s the full text of the story that’s up on Annexe Magazine:

SAY CHEESE

When she opens her eyes it’s like she sees everything for the very first time. Winter sun streams in and coats things with dust: the overcrowded bookshelf, the piles of CDs, the profusion of bottles and pots and ribbons and brushes, and the clothes, scattered like the aftermath of a disaster. The bedroom belongs to a stranger – someone young and chaotic. Strung above the mirror is a collection of Polaroids: people wearing wigs and smoking roll ups, making the peace sign. There’s a poster on the wall for a film from the 1920s. This is the kind of person that lives here.

She goes and stands underneath the shower for a long time, her heart pounding. The piping hot water runs through her eyelashes, fills her mouth. She spits. She takes her flatmate’s razor blade, shaves her bikini line.

When he wakes first of all he catches her reflected in the mirror. She’s on tiptoes, has her arms lifted above her head and her long red hair caught between her fingers so it’s all fragments of light. Her hip swells in the kind of way you feel you have to touch. The word is Rubenesque.

She knows this because people have said it of her before. Always the arty boys, the bookish ones. It is a generous word for girls who are a bit on the curvy side. She tried several angles in the mirror before she looked at herself and thought: ‘Rubenesque’, then switched the hairdryer on full whack.

He keeps watching her. Her stomach fills with butterflies, because there’s something almost frightening, letting herself be looked at like this. She doesn’t catch his eye. She lets the warm air lift the glowing strands, flying out about her in a halo. It will be a mess. She doesn’t care. He places a pillow behind him, folds his arms behind his head. The sheet falls away from his chest, and it’s partly that he’s so, so beautiful, that she feels so very ordinary.

She turns off the hairdryer, and quiet floods in. She grabs her camera from where it sits on the mantelpiece. ‘Say cheese’, she says. Her voice is too loud. She giggles: ‘Yeah, baby, yeah!’, holding it in front of her face.

He puts his hand out like a celebrity getting papped and dives beneath the covers.

“Not one photo?”

The lump in the bed is silent.

Instead, she turns the lens on herself and pulls a porn star pout, shoots. It isn’t her best angle, and the sun is making her squint. She tries again, bounces on to the bed beside him, finds what she thinks is his arm and shakes it, shows him the screen.

“This one is for you.”

“Very nice”

“I’m going to print it out and put it in a heart-shaped frame for you. You can keep it on your desk.”

He rolls his eyes and then he smiles, pulls her on to his shoulder. They gaze at the image on the screen.

“One day it won’t be enough, you know.” She says “You’ll be able to conjure me in 3D at the flick of a switch, airbrushed and with a less annoying laugh, exactly how you want me to be.”

“How about less difficult questions?”

“Whatever you want.”

He lies back and looks up at the ceiling.

“I don’t think I’d like that” he says

“Yes but I’ll give you blow jobs and cups of tea whenever you like” she says

“Still.” He says

She points the camera at him again and he bats it from her hands, grabs her, turns her over and does that thing to the back of her knees.

No one could say he isn’t handsome. He’s got this George Clooney thing about him, a silver fox, tanned skin wrinkled in laughter lines around his eyes, combined with a kind of self-aware academic geekiness, dark rimmed glasses, even a jacket with elbow patches. But most of all it’s the respect he commands, without even trying, he speaks with such clarity and passion, even those who don’t like him have to admit he knows his stuff. So, of course, there must have been others. So many girls in his classes, and many prettier ones than her, naturally. She tells herself this, of course.

Later when he’s dozing she has another go, slipping out from beneath the duvet and trying to snap him while he sleeps.

“There are cultures, you know, where people refuse to have their photos taken. They believe that it will capture their soul. Are you trying to capture my soul?” he asks, with his eyes closed.

She shrugs and smiles, looks down, self-conscious again, standing there, naked, the camera dangling from a black strap between her breasts. He says something about photography being the opposite of life. It’s the kind of thing that makes some of the others think he’s a bit of a knob. But her notebooks are strewn with quotes like this, in red pen, surrounded by stars.

“But… it’s just a photograph.”

“Why does it matter so much? I’m here, aren’t I?”

It is difficult to explain so she just nods, yes, he’s here, he’s here.

“You just have to let some moments be. Not everything has to be recorded. That’s missing the point. You’ll become like a butterfly collector: with a glorious display of dead corpses for company, and a total lack of understanding of what makes butterflies beautiful.”

She thinks about how just a few hours ago she watched him in the slice of street light, searching his face for signs that he was dreaming. In the darkness she held her breath and felt that everything was possible.

“Besides,” he says, “my wife.”

The room is small. She moves to the window, presses her head against the glass. Outside, the day is already getting old, people hurrying about their business. Everyone always has to act like they are in such a rush to get the day out of the way, walking so quickly, keeping their heads down, never stopping to look around them. Sometimes she wonders if it is possible that they are actually making time go faster. She wills someone to look up at her, to see her standing here as naked as the day she was born, to catch her eye.

She turns around and looks at him.

“Just one. Please. I will never ask you again, I promise.”

He sighs and shakes his head.

“Just one,” he says. He lifts his face and bares his teeth at her. “Cheese” he says. The camera clicks.

'Say Cheese' on Annexe Magazine

The Word That Rhymes With Orange

Her gift to the poet was a new word: 

SORANGE.

“Definition: the word that rhymes with orange,” she said. 

He smiled. Tried it on for size.

He’d learnt to love most 

The Things Without Purpose.

The Audience Member

This one has come down for a bit of a spruce up- sorry! Watch this space.

An Angel Passes

He’s out fishing, again. Fat greasy river, going nowhere quick. He looks at the point where the line meets the water. Alone, with his thoughts, but thinking nothing. Or maybe thinking about the dirt beneath his nails, where it came from. Running his finger round the hard edge of the scab on his knee, picking at it, slightly, until a stream of hot red blood dribbles out.

He knows this spot on the towpath well- likes it, never anyone around.  Good to get away from it all. There’s the things that have been fly tipped by people who have missed the opening hours of the dump across the way, the torn posters on the shutters of the closed down supermarket, the bobbing swarm of mosquitoes over the water.  Tatty cat in an empty car park, staring up at a crow in a leafless tree.

“Here cat, catch you a fish for your tea” His voice echoes, but he doesn’t mind: there’s no one to hear. “Puss puss pussy cat!”.

Cat just keeps on looking up at that bird. He leaves his rod and steps towards it; startled thing darts off, tail high, jumps on a rattling dustbin lid, on the fence, away, across the tip, into the forest.

“Not very nice now, just wanted to be friends!” Smiles to himself. Puts his hands in his pocket for a moment, touches through the fabric, closes his eyes, the last of the day’s sun on his face. The little cells collide under his lids, technicolour.

Then, all of a sudden, feels like he’s being watched. On the edge of the forest, there’s something there, in the shadows, can’t quite make it out in the gloom.

“Hey there? Hello?”

Slowly, low to the ground it comes out, stooped over, two legs but almost like you’d imagine they walked millions of years ago. A creature. Female. Tangled hair and body dark with sun and dirt. Just steps a little into the worn out light and stops. Looking straight at him.

Few seconds pass and he realises he’s not breathing. Pinches the fleshy skin on his palm. Bird crows on that skinny black branch and shuffles off, lazily flapping its wings in the airless sky. So quiet here now, just the buzz of the motorway overpass where it crosses the river further down. People just coming back from work probably, heading home to their wives and kids and that. Not knowing that he’s standing here, like this, and she’s looking at him. And he’s letting her get her fill.

She lifts herself up a little, spreads her arms- he’s far enough away that he can’t make out the details but the shadows from the trees are making this pattern on her body like contours. There’s a dark fuzz under her arms and between her legs. She takes another little step towards him, as if- he thinks with a swift glance about him- as if she’s presenting herself to him.

Maybe ought to go home. But he’s curious now, and not scared, not at all scared.  He’s not scared of girls. Still sees them, sometimes, the ones from his class, when he’s come off his nightshift and walking back through town. He’ll spot one falling out of some club or bar, drunk on cheap cocktails with stupid names like ‘SEX ON THE BEACH’, this fat necked Dwayne or Trevor hanging off her arm, hands all over her. Always wearing the tiniest dress, even in winter, shimmering like a thousand pearls in a tropical sea. Mostly they don’t notice him- he keeps his hood up and his head down, gets home as quick as he can. But once one of the girls, Gemma Higgins, she spotted him and said: ‘Hey, you’re that kid from our school aren’t you, what’s your name again?’ and she got the others to come over and pose for a photo with him, all pouting lips and girl band v signs. Gemma said she’d email him the pics when she got home but how could she have done when she never even had his email address? Stupid, stupid.

But this one’s not like that at all. So, seems ok, clenching his hands into fists at his side, he starts moving, slowly, slowly towards her, away from the choked up river. The whole time he never stops looking at her. All around them fridges pile up like towers of Babel or something, dead TVs chopped off at their coppery holes reflecting the pair of them on blank screens. The sun is setting and eventually he’s so close he can see his shadow there, burnt on the backs of her eyeballs.

He splays his hand out to her like a dog, for some reason, feels like he ought to give her his scent. She bends towards it, her nostrils twitch, glances, up at him, and then rubs her face against his fingers so suddenly he gasps. Then smiles, runs his fingers across her lips, up into her matted hair. She rises up again, allows him to look at her, standing there, completely naked, right there in front of him. As if she doesn’t mind. And he’s not feeling awkward, not in the slightest, he runs his touch over the surface of her with a frank curiosity it’s almost like she’s asked for.  How bony she is, all elbows and protruding ribs, and he thinks maybe she’s hungry, he takes her wrist and she resists at first, but then she lets him lead her, walking with a funny kind of waddle, back towards the river. She seems a bit surprised by her reflection, but he plunges his hand right through it, sending little ripples out, pulls a silvery fish from his net. She grabs it and gobbles it down, all blood and teeth and muscles and translucent scales.  She gets close to him, rubbing the gory remnants of her meal on his shirt, using her senses of him. Rips at the buttons and a tuft of strawberry blond chest hair pops out. Makes him feel manly. She pushes her tongue in his mouth.

But he doesn’t like having her out here, all naked, where anyone might come along and see. He starts to pull her along with him quite quickly, but she stumbles and trips, so he finds an old piece of blanket to wrap her up in. It’s itchy, probably, and there’s a bit of an odd smell about it, but he clasps it around her firmly, lifts her.  Her struggling makes him think of those great long legged spiders that he keeps rescuing from his bathtub, weightless, almost, but something about the feel of them as they wriggle in his hollow grasp sends a bolt down his spine, like he’s carrying something from another world. Stupid spiders, he’s only trying to help, stop them getting drowned. They don’t ever seem to appreciate it.

Flat’s not far away, pretty close to his old school, actually, he used to pass his block every day. Funny to think now he’d never really considered he might end up here. He can still see the kids from his window, the lads laughing and shoving each other, kicking a battered old ball about on the patch of grass outside. Not tonight though. It’s got late. The street lamps have come on and the moon’s like a big electric beam.

No risk of anyone round here stopping him to enquire what he’s been up to, or where he’s going, or what he might be carrying that manky bundle of old blanket for. Not really ones for talking much, people keep themselves to themselves, and that’s how he likes it. Lift’s broken again so he carries her up the stairs to the third floor, bent under her weight. Someone’s pissed right by his door, but he doesn’t notice today, he fumbles with his keys, impatient to get her in, wondering why he’s always got to lock it three times.

Inside, he looks at his flat properly for the first time in ages. Seems he has a lot of stuff. Pin boards covered with maps, old articles from history magazines, passport photos he’s picked up in the street. Abandoned filing systems puking up their contents on neglected shelves. Dust. A couple of old towels on the floor. All over the walls biro sketches of strange rare animals and extinct animals and animals that don’t exist with super powers: blue prints for evolution.

He crosses quickly to the window and pulls the heavy curtains. There’s this faint, sweaty tang when he moves them, and he disturbs a drowsy moth that has settled in a fold. It flutters like it’s really pissed off, crashes itself into the walls, then throws itself headlong at the bare light, keeps banging into it over and over and over again. She’s on the floor, cowering in that bit of blanket, watching it, not moving, looking pretty frightened actually. Eventually the poor thing dies, spirals down and lands on the carpet next to her. Then she’s up on her feet, scrabbling at the door they came in through, but she doesn’t really get how door handles work and ends up sort of flapping at it.

He goes to her, places his hand on her shoulder, smiles. She smiles back. He really, really likes her smile. She gives it to him so easily. At first her body’s all tight but when he touches her she relaxes straight away. She starts pulling at his shirt again, and he takes it off, his shoes, his trousers too, his boxers. She looks at him standing there, naked as the day he was born, and she beams.

On his mantelpiece he finds a comb and she rests against him as he pulls it into her hair, where it jams in all the knots. He chuckles and she copies him, copies him as he walks, first of all his manliest swagger, and then he minces for her as a joke, an impression of how she’ll be. Together they prance into the bathroom and in warm water he peels the filth off her surface, amazing her with her pink, pink skin, so clean and soft when he’s done she looks like a new born baby. He shows her her reflection in the mirror, and she searches for herself in the vacant air behind.

Amazing how he just touches her, as if it was the most natural thing in the world. He’d always imagined that when (if!) it happened it would be awkward, he’d have no idea what to do. Seemed like girls’ bodies weren’t for him, they belonged to the stronger boys, the funnier ones. ‘Gash’, that was their word for it, and that had made him imagine it being a bit like a wound. But it was more like- a precious ruby, or a pomegranate splitting its skin with juicy, gleaming seeds. And now, because he’s thought that, he puts his mouth to it, instinctively, and she flexes beneath his tongue, bucking like a fish out of water.

‘Go slow’, he tells himself, but she’s slippery and he can’t resist any longer, he slides into her easily. This is happening to him, and now all he knows is that he believes in the existence of angels, not angels dressed in white and shimmering like a thousand pearls, but ones that rise up from the ground, moss in their hair, skin all red with dust. Her head’s thrown back, her mouth wide open, and in the little gaps between her teeth he imagines he can see flames, like she’s bitten off a chunk of the middle of the earth. He penetrates her hard and deep, finds more fire in the heart of her. He explodes. When they awake, hours later, he’s still inside her.

He’s never been much of a one for a lie in, but they end up staying in bed all the next day, together in the tossed sheets. ‘Hello’ he teaches her. It’s a greeting. You say it when someone walks into your life who you’ve been missing. Or who you should have been missing. Or who you reckon you might miss, one day.

‘Hello.’

He’s always been a bit suspicious of happiness. Seems to him somehow untrue, or like if you were too happy you’d be missing out on real life. But now it seems like happiness is a stowaway in life’s pockets, arriving in the shape of a damp bottom lip pressed in the small of his back, or the flutter of lashes on his cheek waking him in the morning. Hard to believe but he lives in harmony with happiness now, yes, the spotty kid, the ginge. It creeps up on him from the deepest corners of her, even whilst he crushing her as hard as he can, and she’s begging him to crush her even harder, like his happiness is too much for her to bear.

He confuses her with ‘hey’. It’s the same, but for people you share more with. It’s softer. He says it to her when he pushes the door open, arms heavy with bags of pizza and beer and ice cream. He shifts her weight from where she’s wrapped herself round the last place she’s seen him. He’s been trying to get her to wear one of his shirts, a big baggy white one like he saw someone do in some film, but she’s got herself naked again, and he lifts her goose bumped body onto the bed, nearly drops her.  He wonders if she misses him when he’s gone: she’s still not talking, even though he’s taught her loads of words, it’s almost like she doesn’t trust them. But she finds other uses for her tongue, makes him understand.

The rent won’t pay itself and soon he has to return to work, leaving her alone for long dark hours. So she starts fucking him like a drowning thing gasping for her last breath, all wide eyes and gritty muscles: an ecstasy he’s never imagined.

There’s a part of him that starts to resent the happy moments. They make him feel nervous, waiting for their departure. Even when they’re happening they feel like he’s remembering something that took place long ago. Unless he can buy them and package them and keep them on his shelf, he’d rather not bother.

And if angels can fly, well, she just seems to be ruled by gravity these days. His fault really, all that junk food he’s been giving her- she’s getting heavier and heavier, and the weight begins to get too much for him, it seems like she’s sinking, like the earth might swallow her up. He starts having nightmares and he flails around in his sleep, getting the sheets wet. He wakes up and finds her curled up on the floor, as if the mattress gives her vertigo.

One day he comes home and finds her squatting down in the corner, spittle on her chin, and then he sees her fingers are jammed into the wall socket, electricity running through her back to earth. Her hair’s all static and just for a moment he feels quite afraid of her. He swallows and his throat makes a weird gravelly sound.

How are you supposed to live with someone who sticks their fingers in electrical sockets? And more to the point, can you love them? Here’s one word he’s somehow never got round to teaching her. Because what if she gets it wrong? She’s got this way of taking phrases and twisting them around, torturing them into weird meanings: ‘howareyouhowareyouowahhhhoooo’ she’s screamed at him, with strands of her own hair tangled in her palms, him balled up like a coward by the fridge.

Doesn’t seem that long ago but it’s actually been months since he was sitting there, by the river, minding his own business, and everything changed. There’s a bit of him that misses his solitude. She helps herself to whatever she fancies from the fridge, throws his papers around all over the place, douses herself in his deodorant. Sometimes he’ll lock himself in the bathroom for hours just to get a bit of peace and quiet, tries to slip out to work without her noticing, but more often than not she comes flying at him, howling like a banshee, grabs at his legs, and there’s been times he’s arrived for his shift with torn and bloody trousers.

So it’s a bit of a blessing in disguise when she starts sleeping more. She lies quietly whilst he does his thing. Stops eating so much- he’s switched her to salad now, and of course she’s not as keen on that. She’s got a bit of a rattle in her chest when she breathes, but its fine, nothing a good dose of Benylin won’t sort out. Probably ought to take her to the doctor, but he’s not really sure what he’d say.

One night, it takes him longer than usual to get home. There’s been riots in the high street, kids smashing up the J D Sports and nicking stuff from Dixons. On his way in one of them caught his eye and without hesitation just picked up this piece of loosened brickwork and hurled it at him. So he takes the scenic route back, down one of the dark back streets where the shops are long since emptied and boarded up, not much chance of running into them there.

Opens the door and she doesn’t even lift her head to greet him. Well, she never does anymore. He goes over and sits beside her. She looks so peaceful when she’s still, like someone totally untouched by the world. He picks up the comb from the side and lifts her head so it rests on his knee, gently starts working the matted strands. It takes him a long time- hours, who knows- but he finds it calming, focussing on the task in hand.

Later he stands up, moves her on the bed, lays her with her hair spread across the pillow, her hands down by her sides. He crosses to the window and pulls back the curtain. He disturbs a drowsy moth that has settled in a fold, and it flails about drunkenly, comes to rest in some unseen corner. Out in the street someone’s set the corner store on fire, and the kids are gathered round it, swigging from bottles and smashing them into the flames. Somewhere in the distance there’s the wail of a siren and the flashing blue. But he knows he’s safe up here, standing in the darkness, listening to the quiet rise and falling of her breath.

Beneath the Paving Stones

At an empty crossroads, the traffic lights are changing colour.

A hoarding moves slowly through its advertisements. There’s the presenter of a TV show in which celebrities must complete extreme challenges to win prizes. Several sports personalities promote the cutting edge technology of the latest razor on the market. The last image has been torn so all that remains is a pair of six-foot high lips and perfect white teeth, across which someone has hurriedly scrawled the words: ‘HAVE MERCY’.

Where these buildings stand, there was once a forest. The school, the shopping mall, the coffee bars, the factories, that hospital, over there: it all used to be just green. Things were removed to make way for the roads and the houses. There were trees standing on this very spot that had memories longer than any of the people that moved in.

A bird loops down through the technicolour sky, clasping a bundle of electric cable in its tiny, tiny beak, comes to rest on top of a surveillance camera. It is building a nest.

All is quiet. The smoke from the burning of man-made objects has at last subsided. And the ringing- the ringing of alarms and mobile phones and the wail of the sirens- it is over.

Beneath the paving stones, the grass begins to grow.

The Tipping Point

She’s standing on the very edge of the swimming pool, her toes curled around the rim. She’s been standing like that for quite a while.

Everything is still with the special kind of afternoon sleepiness you only get on holidays. Her dad would probably tell her to breathe it all in, that she’s got to store moments like this in her memory, so on a miserable rainy February morning she can call them up and savour them.  He’s fond of saying things like that.  You’ve got to enjoy life. You won’t be dead for a million years, you’ll be dead forever. A lizard moves quickly in a shadow. She closes her eyes, tries to keep her balance.

All around the pool, the rest of the family snoozes on sun loungers: Auntie June swollen as a beached whale in her slippery swimsuit, and Auntie Sarah, her comic double, bronzen, sinewy body lying prone and oiled in a neon bikini. Baby gurgles to itself under a tree. Everyone is happy. Somewhere in the valley below her dad’s challenging the big boys, Ben and Luke, at table tennis. Best of three. Then five. He did ask her to join them but she decided to stay here, in spite of the boys’ energetic promises to annihilate her. They always get so competitive, her dad has to remind them it’s only a game. Their shouts are lost in the warm air that hovers overhead.  Even the water seems like it can only just about be bothered to lap at the edge, as if it’s ready for its siesta too. The sun blinks on the surface.

Any moment now, she’ll jump. She’ll extend her arms over her head, she’ll crouch, she’ll start to tip, at just the right moment she’ll spring, forward, upwards, sail through the air like a superhero, Gemma, champion of the world. And then she’ll cut into her reflection like a knife, so silently she won’t wake her uncle, who is obviously dreaming because his hand is doing this funny twitching thing. The rumbling of his snores lifts and dips the Daily Mail that’s come to rest across his face. Or she might make the smallest splash as she disappears beneath the surface, the tiniest trail of bubbles in her wake, a vanishing merperson. Any moment.

But for now she’s contemplating the water. It’s really deep. It’s impossible to see the bottom, it just goes murky blue. In fact one year she came running, shouting that she’d seen something down there, something big, definitely seen it, cried when no one believed her. But she’s too old for that kind of nonsense anymore. She sighs. Flexes her toes around the rim.  

She’s at her most gorgeous when she’s lost in thought. Propped up with a book in the window seat at home. Or glimpsed through the patio door, balancing her way along the garden wall on tiptoes, sucking a loose strand of hair. If she could just stay standing there like that. Puberty has come on suddenly, unannounced, swelling her hips and around her nipples. But she has her tummy sticking out in front of her, that way that kids have.  Her dark curls are wild with sun and chlorine, a mess, Stig of the Dump.

Her dad has been teaching her how it works, how you have to think about transferring all of your weight into your head, and then you start to tip. There will come a point where gravity takes over and it’s not up to you whether you want to fall or not, you just do. But before that comes a split second decision: to let go. And that’s the bit she’s been struggling with.  You can do it if you really want! He likes to sing to her, out of tune and not caring. She doesn’t even get embarrassed.

(This will pass, this magical way they have of absorbing the hours with passions shared by just the two of them. They have created their own universe, long bike rides down the old railway track, afternoons in the potting shed making things grow, late night episodes of Match of the Day. It would be easy to be jealous of it, how natural they are with each other. They never behave as if the time is fleeting.)

She begins to stretch her arms over her head, hands pointed into an upturned heart. The muscles move beneath her skin; the fabric of her costume touches her ribs, amber light catches in her lashes. She is breathtaking.  

 If she could have any gift it would be this. To always bear her beauty so lightly. There’s a time to come of Wonderbras and Spanx, shoes that give blisters, anxiety about carbohydrates, alcohol drunk to still inhibitions. They are coiled in her future. But for now she’s just so, so perfect. To always carry her beauty like a child.  And if the beholder could have just one gift it would be to keep her here. Already there’s a struggle beginning for freedoms that are not easily given up. It’s always left to the mother to put her foot down, to be the baddie. But the world has changed in ways that are frightening, and a parent has to be on guard. Her dad is right: moments like this are to be savoured.   

Trundling up the hill come the big boys. They smash the dome of quiet that has formed over the pool. How nasty boys can be, how brutish. What a blessing to have a daughter.

“Hey, look at you, fatty, are you pregnant or something?” The first one shouts, waking everyone up. He points his finger at her accusingly; “Are you having a baby?”

She looks puzzled, but Luke sticks his stomach out, digs his thumbs into his coccyx, starts waddling around the pool. Ben, unnoticed, has moved behind her, and, whilst she stands transfixed and confused by Luke’s performance, he comes running up behind her, a spiteful grin frozen on his face.  

The way the shove comes- when she’s standing with her centre of gravity at her middle, when she isn’t ready- it’s clear that this will be a belly flop; a painful one. Her limbs flail out around her, she grabs at the thin air. A wave passes across the water’s surface and her reflection looms, distorted. She looks up with an expression full of terror, from which she cannot possibly be saved. She reaches the tipping point. She falls.

The smell of rain

The man arrives back in his room just before the rain begins. He sits in his open doorway and watches it. Rain is different here. The skies grow big bellied with it. Night comes early. The locals walk more quickly, holding papers or bags over their heads. There is a distant growl of thunder. A few, hesitant, heavy drops, at first, then tremendously, the clouds exhale, the waters break. The earth awakens. Close lightening in the mauve sky over the city.

It feels ok, to be silent, in all of this deafening weather. The electricity has failed. His torch has been stolen. For a few moments, he is a captive. No one in the world knows where he is. There’s been people he’s met along the way, but they are gone now, pursuing their own courses, finding or escaping themselves. He is alone.

The rain where you are is gentle. Like: cucumber sandwiches with their crusts cut off. The email told of your weight, and in the darkness he tries to imagine what that would feel like, holding you in his arms. He cups the air where your head would be; picks things up that he thinks must weigh the same. But you- you’re flesh, and blood, and breath, and life. So he just closes his eyes, guesses you.

It occurs to him that the world is very, very big. And he feels full of joy and envy that you clasp it all in the palm of your hand. It belongs to no one, right now, more than you.

Soon it will be time to decide about coming back. But he’s not ready to yet. For now, he thinks about the rain. Once upon a time someone taught the man the word for this: petrichor. It means the smell of rain. For the first time he feels he understands it. He will give this word to you. He will bring you here. He will be the one that teaches you its meaning.