JAN GOT OFF THE bus with him at Longsight – with her white shorts wet, the skies red, her fingers and feet swollen with lust and good weather. Mad weather for a March Sunday of ’84. This was after an afternoon she and Alice had spent traipsing round town, mithering sun-drunk lads in Piccadilly Gardens to buy them freezepops for a kiss.

He was off the bus second and had her wait while he patted his purple shell jacket – after his cigs, she guessed. Black and beautiful and making the world fork round him until he was ready for her. In red daylight fade she saw him: plenty taller than her but not that tall for a lad. Standing on the crowded pavement she could only watch him through the corner of her eye, blinded by his beauty, while the people went by and the bus went home, with Alice. Up the street a breeze as hot as breath skimmed a topless bin, overflowing. Jan felt lighter than the litter. She was already dizzy. If she flew off would he notice? He counted his cigs, ignoring her, and put them back without taking one. Jan was numb with concentration: trying hard not to care or do or speak, even though she had nowt to say as there was nowt to say and the only thing to do was to somehow outmatch his cruelty because she couldn’t outmatch his beauty. But she was fourteen and off the bus in Longsight on a Sunday evening, and he was hers and she would have him.

The air hadn’t cooled since town; Jan plucked at the damp frayed hems of her white shorts, then stopped when his arm touched her as electricity on her shoulder. Her legs walked fine without her. But she had to stop concentrating on not concentrating to hear what he said.

‘Cav a drag?’ When she realised he had taken a cig and was smoking.

‘Ee-ah.’ As they passed a bookies he lit hers with the one in his gob.

She tried to spit into the next bin but the breeze sent it to the pavement. ‘Why’d you smoke menthols? Taste rank.’

He just laughed.

The shops were shut, the awnings rolled up, but some places glowed for evening trade and since the road ran straight the furthest places shone like desert cities in a film. They passed a huge pebbledash pub with pinned-open doors, its entrance bright and shouting. Old restaurants and businesses. All stepped entrances and pigeon-shat granite.

He hooked his arm around her and swung her across the road into crawling traffic – more buses coming from town. Outside a jewelled takeaway with offers written in the window, he smoked at the menu while Jan pretended to read it.

‘What you having?’ she said, mad to be blushing as his arm left her neck to wax and wane her spine. Then he dropped his cig on the step and went in without her – ordering for them from a Pakistani girl who was older than her and prettier; her ponytail netted and plaited; someone who could work a fryer today and still be less oily than Jan. He leaned on the opposite end of the counter but the bitch came to him, familiar.

Inside Jan benched herself against the window, adjacent to the drinks fridge: kicking it until she broke the seal and the door stayed open, letting out ice fog.

‘Fuck’s she doing?’ the bitch said.

He looked at her too as she ground the stones of her ankles together – the fridge chilling her sweat.

Benched Jan could only see the bitch from the chest up: the bare brown shoulders, the twisted green apron, white bra straps, ponytail; the frown she wore for her that went away for him. Jan saw him make her promises across the counter. Then a white lad appeared in the back and made the fryers hiss. The three spoke about things Jan couldn’t catch. The bitch though. Jan separated her, never blinking. She was chatting as he took 7UPs out of the fridge and shut it. Put one beside Jan on the bench and drank the other stood again at the counter, relaxed, with his back to her. The bench was upholstered in red vinyl like a barber chair and the cold can rolled into the impression of Jan’s weight where it burned against her leg. She opened the fridge and put the 7UP back and picked a Dandelion & Burdock.

‘Shut it this time,’ the bitch said. Then to him: ‘Tell her.’

With her drink Jan approached the counter to salt her chicken and refuse hot pepper sauce –

but then behind her the door jangled and lads’ voices came in from the street. He turned instead of touching her. Jan left her food and ran through them – more shell-suited black boys, pleased to tangle her in the doorway, until she shrieked GET FUCKED and then they let her pass and she was running until one of them caught her elbow when she was halfway to the bus stop. People shuttled along the pavement nosy and useless, the red sky going. She fought him. She spat on his purple shell jacket.

He put her against the nearest shop window and kissed her, completely, her toes just touching the street. He was a bad kisser and breathless from running and his menthol and chicken mouth seemed untrainable but quickly there was pressure –

a body to hers.

She picked the net of his string vest under his jacket, aware:

No matter what was done or discovered or accomplished of a Sunday, it was never enough; the day would feel like a waste. By teatime, Monday looming, Jan was restless and aggrieved. But this, this was new country. And even if he pulled away now and laughed in her face, she would think:

Right. Good Enough.

 

By the main drag midway down a skinny crooked passage overgrown. This thoroughfare abandoned to lovers and muggers and ghostlit each end but not from above. Ripe with wild flowers and burst bin bags. It was here she gasped when she saw a fox watching them and she hushed him with the pad of her thumb on his lip, but he kept rustling her against the bricks. Weeds sprouting from the cement tickled her calves. She dodged his bad kisses to give a lovebite.

Footsteps came, then a shadow: an old timer on his way home. Jan spied a button-shirted belly round enough to be carting twins. He was ancient and bald; she yelled as he passed them: ‘Can you tell we’ve not had our tea?’

The old timer hurried.

Then the lad let her be and stepped away to see all of her; and he was shaking his head, half-laughing.

Jan stayed to the wall, nervous without him, not knowing what to expect after making him laugh this far in. She was suddenly, cruelly empty, and wished she’d said nowt. Lads only liked their own jokes. Not birds with smart gobs. So, Jan’s hung open, stupid, wanting –

him against her again. To get all of himself inside her, two’d up together, wearing her like a coat.

‘. . .’

‘What?’ This came out louder than intended.

He turned to the other wall. ‘Nowt. Just need a piss.’

She looked over his shoulder. He was down to half-mast. Jan reached round and aimed him down the path:

He went like the moon-ray water gun that Nana Dodds had got Kell the Christmas before she moved in. When Kell was too old for toys. Jan being almost seven when she began going cornershop on her own with a list she couldn’t read, but could give the shopkeepers; and always Jan skimmed the change and split it with Kell. He was fourteen then and had started pissing the bed. Before the crash. But Jan didn’t mind taking the rap. She loved Kell that much she got giddy waiting for him to come home from school and if she’d drunk too much milk by the time she heard his key she’d wet herself, her bladder in concord with his. Their mam would slap her face when she got in from work, but Jan would run sobbing to Kell who’d make a fuss. If Nana Dodds was at Mass or hosting Father Culler it was Kell who fed her, bathed her, brushed her hair, taught her rude songs and only smacked her if she crayoned his record sleeves. But she knew neither of them would ever grass. Back then Kell read her stories before bed; he’d read one about ghosts that Christmas Eve before they heard about Dad and Granddad. Kell pissed his bed warm for her that night, when their mam got the call from the police station.

Kell had kept away the dead. . .

Now the piss lashed off the bricks.

The lad nudged her away. Jan nudged him back harder but he swivelled and watered her hands.

Screeching and giggling, she dragged her palms down his shell jacket till they dried: ‘Dirty bastard. Dirty black bastard.’

Then she had him against the wall, thinking –

finally

the real thing

thinking afterwards

her calves itching from the wild flowers, the waistband of Alice’s shorts cutting behind her knees, an elbow grazed on the bricks – her nerves good as gone. And she told him: ‘Shagging is the most fun you can have with your clothes on. Alice’s mam says that. She’s filthy.’

He watched now, searching her for shame. ‘Who’s Alice?’

‘That was her on the bus. Me mate.’

‘Got tissue?’ he said.

Jan pulled up her shorts then cleaned him, stuffing him away half-mast. ‘There y’are,’ she said.

‘Fucking hell.’ He turned from her to rearrange.

‘Where’d you live then? Best not be far; me bloody feet are dead.’

He turned tall, put his forehead to hers and backed her against the bricks.

But Jan was laughing and he laughed along.

 

The big light went on with its antique shade like summat from her nana’s old house. Cream tassels gone grey and thick as pipe cleaners from cobwebs and dust. This was his bedsit above a launderette. He drew a curtain – a spare bedsheet draped over the rail – but left it part way. Then he switched off the overhead to put on the lamp. An unpainted unpapered room. Smooth clay-red plaster: rusting the light. A kitchenette, water closet, a boombox long as a train carriage, a slot telly with Betamax, a folding bed.

Jan went: ‘Who makes your bed?’

He fed the boombox a tape from a stack by the skirting board, then stood her in the middle of the room. Down on one knee, peeling her to Terri Wells’ ‘I’ll Be Around’.

Jan talked along, pointing her foot like a prima ballerina so he could skin her damp sock. ‘Told you. They’re throbbing, me feets. Look.’

He kissed her toes. He felt his way up and then she sprang onto his hips and he carried her about, spinning while she raked up his string vest and sang: ‘. . .Baayy-beee. . . Oi, get your kit off now. . . Off! Off!’ She wrapped her legs higher, hooped her arms around his neck, while he undid his pants standing, and shot inside her right away. Jan felt it and told him. The Kingdom of Heaven above a Longsight launderette. He floated them clean off the floorboards. Higher and higher until Jan had to brace the ceiling to stop them going through it. Jan pushed off and they changed course, gliding and turning like astronauts. For a space helmet Jan wore the dust-choked lampshade. She tried sneezing but couldn’t sneeze with him inside her, not without him bursting her heart –

it having gone untouched by those poor Wythenshawe lads, like Tony Kinsella from Crossacres, who’d once tried it on with her and failed, by no fault of her own, a fortnight ago in cold February, behind the Golden Garter, with Tony’s cousin Cid and his Perry Boys watching the initiation. But now. . .

Above the launderette, levitating. They did it until they were both sore and stupid – hovering drenched on their backs holding hands until they landed like an autumn leaf on his broken sofa bed a pond of sweat round her navel. She was so proud of this bird bath she wouldn’t shift, even to lie on him when he asked. So he cooked rice for her nude while she sang along to Hi-Tension’s ‘You Make Me Happy’, which she knew, thanks to Kell. They did it again and they took their time. Had the rice cold. They shared a joint, the strongest Jan had ever tried. It was raining by then. She smelled it through the walls even with the joint lit. It fell so hard against the window he got up to boost the volume for ‘Juicy Fruit’.

He said: ‘They play this twice a night at Caribbean Club.’

‘Never been.’

‘Lying cow. On the bus you was giving it all that.’

‘Me brother Kell’s mad on this stuff. Plays it before he goes town at weekend.’

‘Where’s he go?’

‘Umm. . . The Man Alive, is it? The Reno. All over.’

‘Bet I know him.’

‘He loves it. Well, he says he does. But it’s only cos of the birds. Always goes for coloured birds, our Kell.’ Jan toked for too long; he was happy hearing her cough. ‘. . .Plays this one over and over. You know like when you try convincing yourself summat’s dead good but it’s not, it’s shit. Not that this is shit. It’s alright, this. It’s dead good.’

He studied her.

She stared back, insistent.

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Yeah.’

‘Oi, what’s your favourite animal?’

‘Fuck knows. What’s yours?’

‘Walrus.’

‘What’s a walrus?’

‘Give over,’ Jan said. ‘A walrus, right, is one of them great big bloody dock-off seals with whiskers right and teeth.’

‘You’re lying to us.’

‘You’re bloody thick, you are. No wonder you’re not working.’

‘What d’you wanna be? A zookeeper?’ He pinched her, flipped her over. They wrestled. His dark throat she’d marked. ‘It’s not real,’ he said.

‘Yerrit is.’

‘Chatting shit. First the Caribbean Club. Now this.’

‘God. Listen to that.’

‘It’s Cheryl Lynn.’

‘No. Out there.’

They listened to it like it was a song. Together: naked at the draughty window. Rain flooding the tiny carpark behind the launderette. A warm syrup darkness. Speckled and growing.

‘Little dancing men. What me nana calls rain bad as this. Little dancing men.’

He rifled through kitchen drawers, then returned. ‘Walrus,’ he said, handing her a green felt-tip. She sniffed it first, till the walls began to ripple. He pointed at the moving red plaster, miming a big circle by the window. ‘Draw us a fucking walrus.’

 

When the rain stopped she caught the first bus home. She beat the late dawn with his seed planted and the rest of him seeping away slow enough to always be leaving her, always there. And whenever Jan used a comb (usually one of Kelly’s) she would find its teeth afterwards clogged with lampshade dust. All her life folk would tell her she had dandruff when she never.

The dawn raid began minutes after Jan got home. She had seen no unusual cars, no uniforms there in the warm lush silence of the street after rain with its green trees dripping fresh and full of birds scared to sing and its cloud-scrubbed gates and garden walls and house fronts. Curtains too tightly drawn. Jan knew it was all wrong, that it was about to kick off. She went inside and bolted the backdoor and crawled upstairs and into bed without waking anyone and fell into a strange sleep. So tired at having made it home, having been so loved, that the sleep was like a spell. A sleep shallow but unbreakable. It was the only place safe in which to sew back up her heart. The needle told her what it knew:

That Jan would never see him again.

From the winged vantage of dream she watched the pigs break in. Banging, barging, huffing. She saw one open her bedroom door before her mam leapt to shut it again: ‘You can’t be coming in here where my children sleep. Give us that. Give it here.’ Jan just listened to the pigs slap her mam quiet. Re-enter her room, searching for what wasn’t there. They ordered Jan up and dressed; but tough; she was hard asleep. Nana Dodds fainted reciting verse; Kelly resisting. They crushed him into a scrum on the landing and began reading him his rights. His smushed face, halved in the carpet, right outside her room. His smushed face, telling her to stay asleep. They couldn’t spit more than a few words at him without him thrashing free. Their mam floor-sat dribbling blood that she cupped in one hand; Kell called to her through the forest of legs: ‘Mam? Mam? Mam?’ and she said I’m alright – her voice black, steady, unamazed, as the pigs piled on top of Kell and he couldn’t talk again. Jan saw all from above. They looked heavy enough to sink the house. Taking turns to catch their breath they battered poor Kell until he was dreaming too and then carried him downstairs. The pig who had slapped their mam now had a fallen quiff and bright rashed cheeks. His nostril whistled. He sucked on his skinned knuckles. More blood spotted the rug between her bed and door. Jan woke at dinnertime and saw it there, carried from a dream.

Everybody had been on the landing, booted and uniformed or dressing-gowned, grunting or wailing.

Next thing, they weren’t –

and the whole house was crystal silent. But peaceless, unordinary. It stayed strung. Only the faraway hush of Monday planes and cars had kept Jan dreaming after her mam and nana had followed Kell to the station –

leaving Jan to skive off school forgotten, to be woken when Alice came round on her dinnerhour to hear about the coloured lad from Longsight, who was gorgeous enough to get off the bus for.

She heard a frail shout: ‘Jan. . .? S’me.’

Alice came into her room, spotting rain.

‘Jan.’

She rubbed her eyesockets, yawned into a cough, then felt him leaking.

‘Your front door’s broke.’

She flipped the pillow.

Alice dropped her satchel on the rug and climbed the bed. Her denim jacket rain-kinked. Droplets bobbled the stubs of her clippered hair. ‘I can’t kip with a bra on, me.’

Jan saw out the window: slate cloud, carrot roofs, sagging trees. ‘Get yourself a towel out of there.’

‘You’re like an oven in this bed. Am getting toasty from here.’ Wet rinds of her Kicker soles were caked in grit, soaking the duvet. Jan stared at the dirt expressionless. Alice absorbed the silence until finally she clocked the dirt, and that she’d tramped muddy rain through the house. ‘Your mam’ll go mad, won’t she?’

‘Can just blame it on the pigs.’

‘Y’what?’ Alice unlaced her feet in the air – flicking her shoes over her head. ‘Pigs?’ They bounced on the rug.

Jan slunk to the wall and faced away.

‘How was it?’ Alice said.

‘Best I’ve had in me young life.’ Jan sat up again. ‘Bet you was diddling yourself last night thinking of me and him, wasn’t you? Don’t lie. Seen your face?’

‘Your mam never rang us.’

‘Told you. She can’t be doing with me.’

‘. . .Was he nice?’ Alice whispered.

‘Nice? He liked me not you. Never even looked at you.’

Alice listened to her cry, then hugged her. ‘Where’s everybody?’

‘Doesn’t matter.’

***

Now Thursday morning, May ’85, next door’s little Joey Harvey opened her bedroom door dancing, hopping, squeaking: ‘Nana Nedra said tell her Get up, you lazybones, if you want breakfast or not!’

Jan sat up quick and dropped the sheet. She shook her tits at Joey who staggered, clutching his eyes with fright, then raced downstairs. Jan stretched, beaming. She remembered she had Mr Somerville for English first lesson. She’d go in after all.

Joey had left her door open. There began a wailing; her mam, with it, shushing it, going There there. . .

Jan picked somewhere soft and unbruised on her body and pinched. Hard. Until everything was water. Though she could still see Kell, face down in her bed. He reeked of lager and farts. Her big brother, not a day out of Strangeways and already he’d tried to strangle her in her sleep.

Jan took the sheet and exposed his peaceful shape and without blinking stared at him long enough to air-dry her sight. Touching his scalp without knowing why, she wanted to cut off a lock of his hair and not keep it but bury it, somewhere only she knew about, but she couldn’t decide on the place.

She got up and cat-washed at the sink. Dressed for school, whisper-singing as she dabbed her bruises with tutty. Kell was still dead to the world when she blew him a ta-ra kiss. Then she went straight out, even with the kitchen lively and breakfast-smelling – without even snatching a fistful of Sugar Puffs or her coat from her chair – having already nabbed some spends from her nana’s handbag which was hooked on the end of the stair rail.

Jan could’ve emptied her purse and still eaten her toast in the kitchen and looked her dead in the eye. But Jan wanted her first taste of the day to be Mr Somerville.