The shed door opens easy.
I step over the wooden threshold and into the darkness. Blink. Shapes become clear. A tape player. A small table with a can of shandy on it. A dartboard. And underneath the target, Shane, sitting in a high-backed armchair.
He can’t have heard me call his name, because he doesn’t move from his position in the armchair. He just sits there, toes splayed, head back, eyes closed.
By now, Prince’s ‘Little Red Corvette’ is blasting out.
His body fills the chair, his hands dangling over the stuffed arms, his shoulders squeezed between the velveteen wings of the headrest, his thighs spilling over the seat. His jeans are too short. The knobbles of his ankles stick out.
I can still escape. I can turn around and walk up the path away from the lilac bush and the music and back into the house.
Light struggles through the frilly nets. I stand for a while, chew on a strand of hair, tasting the Elnett. I wait for Shane
to see me.
At the end of the song, he opens his eyes. He looks at every part of me, as if he’s never seen me before. It’s like that every time he looks at me. He examines me with his eyes, starting with the top of my head and ending with my feet. Taking in each hair, each bone, each vein, each blood vessel. I think about the diagrams we have to draw in biology. Close-ups of skin and blood, examined and dissected. Labels like corpuscle and epidermis. Shane looks at me and there’s this light in his eyes. It’s almost like a lamp that helps him see. Like the light the optician uses to go right into your eye. Look up, look down. And look into my light. But you can’t see them, because they’ve turned the ceiling light off and they’re so close to you in the dark, breathing on your nose, making it wet.
‘I like that song,’ I say.
He continues his penetrating stare.
I step forward. ‘You don’t mind if I come in.’
He shrugs.
I look up at the net curtain. ‘You’ve got this place looking – ’ I pause, let him watch me try to think of the right word. ‘Nice.’
He shrugs.
I lick my lips and shrug back. ‘Play me something else, then.’
‘Take your shoes off.’
‘What?’
‘You come in, you take off your shoes.’
I begin to laugh, but Shane just stares.
‘What if I don’t want to?’ I say.
‘Take off your shoes.’
‘These are new shoes.’ I try to think of some other reason, something that will melt his stare. ‘From Dolcis. Don’t you like them?’
‘Off.’
‘Why?’
‘My shed,’ he says. ‘My rules.’
Leaning back in his armchair, he stares at my bare toes. I wiggle them a bit to unstick them.
He presses play.
We stay together in the shed for the rest of the afternoon. We don’t speak much. I sit on the rug and Shane plays his tapes. Sometimes he forward-winds through the ones he doesn’t like, but still I just sit there and listen to the spooling tape. Grandmaster Flash sings, don’t do it! Shane wiggles his toes in time to the music. It starts to rain outside, and as the wind gets up, small gusts of lilac-scent come in under the door.
Then Shane’s mum brings the cake out. She knocks on the shed door once. Later I learn this is to signal she’s left it outside.
Shane cuts into it with a flick knife he keeps in his back pocket. Each slice is even. He hands me a perfect triangle of cake,
balanced on his blade. I bite into it. It’s light and sweet and full of smooth cream. After three slices, I begin to feel
sick. But I eat more, because Shane keeps offering up slices on his shiny knife. Brushing the crumbs from his chest. Licking
the cream from the corners of his mouth. Swallowing huge bites of buttery sponge. Looking at me.
I spend all summer with Shane in his shed.
From then on, my toenails are always perfect. Every Sunday night I remove the week’s colour and apply a new one. Hard Cherry. Frostbite Pink. Orange Daze. Each nail is totally covered, and absolutely even. Sometimes it takes me an hour, locked in the bathroom, Mum knocking at the door as I stroke the brush over, blow, and wait.
I also buy a pink pencil skirt.
Mum calls it a ‘hobble skirt’. So tight you can’t walk, only hobble.
I buy it in the new Top Shop in Oxford. Mum pushes a twenty into my hand while we’re in C&A. ‘If you hate everything I pick, just get something yourself.’
I run straight out of C&A and I’m in Top Shop before she can breathe out.
The skirt’s cerise. The assistant tells me that means bright, shocking pink. ‘Cerise has been our biggest seller,’ she says, and I know I’ll have it.
I cradle it into the changing room. Older girls stand about in their pants and bras, looking at themselves like they’re something. I’m glad I’m wearing my pink knickers with the spaghetti straps at the sides. I like running my finger along the crease the side strap leaves indented on my hip.
The skirt is lined with shiny stuff. It sticks to my thighs in the heat of the changing room spotlights. A little pleat at the back kicks out as my legs move, flashing a slice of white calf. There’s a big pink button on each of the front pockets. I flick them against my hipbones, smile at myself in the mirror.
‘You haven’t got the arse to fill that,’ Mum says when I show her. ‘And I bet you can’t bloody wash it.’
I love it.
I arrive at Shane’s wearing the pencil skirt. A choking smell of creosote comes up from the warm wood of the shed. I think of Shane’s dad painting the walls with it, black treacly stuff dripping down his arms and onto the concrete path. Shane hasn’t seen his dad since the accident, five years ago. Derrick left before Sheila could chuck him out, Mum says. Who could bear to have him in the house after what he did? No one believes he wasn’t drunk.
Shane looks at the skirt. He looks at me in the skirt. I run my hands over the creases where the material’s tight around my thighs. He swallows and wriggles his toes.
‘It’s new,’ I say.
He nods, still staring at the skirt. Taking in every stitch. Every corpuscle of material.
‘Shall I turn around?’
He catches my eye for a moment, then ducks his head.
I turn to face the door. Spend a few moments studying a knot in the wood. Then turn back to face Shane.
He licks his big lips, says nothing.
‘Do you like it?’ I ask.
He keeps his eyes on the hem of the skirt. I wonder if he’s labelling each part in his head. Drawing a straight line and using neat capitals, like we do in Biology. HIPS. LEFT THIGH. RIGHT THIGH. NICE ARSE.
He still doesn’t look up, so I sit at his feet. The skirt’s so tight I have to twist my legs beneath me, like a posh woman riding a horse side saddle in an old film.
I rest my head against his knee.
‘Shall we listen to the new Prince?’ I twist round to face him. He catches my wrist and squeezes, hard.
‘Will you wear it every time you come?’ His voice is low. He’s not looking at my face, even now.
‘Yes,’ I say, ‘if you want.’
He lets go. I rub my wrist, but he takes no notice.
After I while I say, ‘Perhaps you should think about what you could do for me.’
He keeps staring right over my head.