Blue MOON

The wet lawn was already beginning to dry. The kitchen door stood ajar, just as she’d left it. Mia rummaged through the bread bin and cut herself a slice of white bread for toast, spread it with marmite. The phone rang. It would be school, checking up on her. She should’ve phoned in sick as soon as Dad left. She ate her marmite toast slowly, letting the telephone ring. When it finally stopped silence washed back, like water filling the empty rooms. It’s too quiet, Mia thought. She pulled out a chair and sat down at the table. There was a pile of unopened post propped up against the butter dish. Two letters for her older sister, Laura. She’d be coming home the day after tomorrow, before starting university. There was a postcard for the three of them from Kate, the middle sister, with a picture of lavender and sunflowers. Mia turned it over. ‘Going further south, grape picking. Following the sun. See you!’ Kate’s neat handwriting.

The phone rang again. Perhaps it hadn’t been school after all, but something urgent. Dad? Will? She picked it up.

Silence, then a click. The empty line purred. Mia shrugged. Wrong number, probably. But her heart thudded. She snatched the phone up again and dialled one-four-seven-one. ‘You were called today at ten fifty-three hours. The caller withheld their number.’

A wasp banged against the kitchen window. Buzzed and bumped along the smeary glass searching for the way out. Stupid thing. Buzzing and angry, hitting uncomprehendingly against the transparent panes.

‘You should have phoned earlier.’ The secretary’s voice was sharp. ‘Before nine thirty is the rule.’

‘And you’ll need a note from your parents when you come back with reasons for your absence.’

There was shadow over the garden now. The day had lost its shine, its early morning promise. She closed the back door and locked it and went upstairs to run a bath.

She let it fill almost to the top, so that she could lie almost completely under the water. Her sore feet tingled. Gradually her body relaxed. She smoothed her hands down her arms, her breasts. Her skin looked translucent; there were faint blue veins she’d never noticed before. Her hands hovered over her stomach. It dipped, concave, between her hip bones. Too thin, Dad said about her. ‘You girls – obsessed with it, aren’t you? Bodies, diets.’ But she’d seen how he looked at them, her friends, Laura and Kate’s friends when they stayed at the house; the way a sort of gleam came in his eyes when he found them lounging on the sofa in front of the telly. They flirted with him, trying out their new powers, and he couldn’t help loving it, the attention from them. She knew. She saw it all. Especially Ali. It made her pink with shame.

If he were here now. Her hands were his, moving over her body, cherishing the detail. The pink coil of a nipple, the way her belly button curved in, the tiny white scar on her thigh where she had fallen out of the apple tree when she was ten.

Lying in their field above the sea, watching the sun go down and the darkness creep over the field so that they were wrapped together in shadow. Will propped himself on one elbow beside her, his finger curling strands of her dark hair until it was bound so tight it pulled her scalp and she cried out, and then he bent over her, kissed her, so, so tenderly, and she thought she would die with happiness. That was where they had made love, the very first time.

Mia remembered it like a sequence in a film. She played it back, over and over. Sometimes she added bits or skipped the beginning. Maybe she was making it sound a bit more magical than it really was. Will, too much of the perfect, golden boy. She didn’t care; it had felt like that, it really had.

August 4th

They’d started off with the others at the bus shelter, as usual, throwing stones at cans lined up in the main road. Mia sat on the kerb, her legs stretched out into the road. Heat shimmered off the tarmac even at nine in the evening. Occasional cars whizzed too fast along the main road, not slowing for the thirty-mile sign just before the village, and swerving out just in time to avoid the line of cans.

‘Ciggie?’ Liam offered his packet to Mia. She shook her head.

‘Nah. You know I don’t.’

Will didn’t either. She was sitting next to him, his arm touching hers. They’d started going out together after half-term. She still couldn’t quite believe it. Couldn’t quite understand why he liked her.

Becky thought it was because she was so different. ‘You know. You’re a bit wild, and dangerous!’ Becky laughed. ‘And, of course, you look really good together – you so dark and him so fair.’ Will’s hair had bleached even more golden in the sunshine.

‘Let’s hitch a ride to Ashton,’ Matt suggested. ‘Get some cans and stuff.’

They’d been banned from the off-licence in Whitecross after Mia had tried to buy cider with her school lunch money. She’d said she was eighteen, even though it was obvious she wasn’t. She barely looked fifteen. The woman behind the till had recognized her and telephoned Dad. More trouble.

‘Do you want to go?’ Will asked Mia.

She shook her head. ‘No money. Think I’ll just walk back home.’

‘I’ll go with you. We could go back along the beach?’ Will suggested.

Becky and Ali smirked at Mia. She ignored them.

‘All right.’

They crossed over the road together. Behind them, Liam and Matt laughed. Will’s neck flushed. Neither spoke till they got out of sight of the others.

The moon was up already, even though it wasn’t dark. The pebbles on the beach gleamed pearl-white. A man threw sticks for a black Labrador at the Whitecross end of the beach; each time, the dog splashed and then swam out, tail still wagging, found the stick, turned, just its head visible, like the sleek shape of a seal, then plodded back out with the stick, dropped it, shook. Water drops flew off its fur in a perfect circle of fine spray.

They walked further along the strip of beach. The tide was high. No one on the beach now. Will held her hand. Every so often he stopped, cupped her face in his hands, and kissed her. Mia felt a sort of fizzling inside. They didn’t say much. It was usually like this. She couldn’t think what to say. Will didn’t seem to mind.

Will stopped to pick up a handful of stones. He selected a flat one, aimed and skimmed it over the water.

Mia counted. Five jumps. ‘Show off!’

‘You do it then!’

Mia chose her stone. It skipped the surface: five skips. ‘There! You didn’t think I’d do it, did you? Confess!’ She jumped on him, wrestled him down, laughing. He held her really tight and they walked like that all along the shingle, as far as the footpath sign.

‘This is where my path starts,’ Mia said. ‘You coming?’

Will hunched down on the pebbles. ‘Let’s stay on the beach a bit longer.’

She sat beside him.

‘Here. Shut your eyes and hold out your hand.’

He closed her fingers round a small pebble, warm from his hand. ‘Now look. See how beautiful it is? Mottled blue, just like a blackbird’s egg.’

It was beautiful, like he said, if you really looked. A blackbird’s egg. She slipped it into her fleece pocket.

The sun had dropped right down below the hills across the bay. She huddled her knees under her dress, but they kept slipping out again.

Will stared at the sea. ‘I love it here,’ he said.

Mia had walked on this beach a million times. It was just stones, and the sea wasn’t deep enough to swim unless you waded really far out. Along the top of the beach there was a dark line of stinking weed and all the junk left by the tide: plastic bottles, driftwood, bits of net and old shoes and tin cans. A mess. Nothing beautiful.

She tried to see it through his eyes. He hadn’t lived here as long as her. She’d never lived anywhere else, but he’d been all over the place. His family had moved two years ago from the city. He liked how wild it was here, how much sky. The fact that there was no one else but them. ‘And all the different sea birds. Listen.’

Mia heard gulls; other birds she couldn’t name. A flock of black and white birds flew together, piping a high, sad note over the water.

‘Oyster catchers,’ Will said.

Mia watched his face. She’d lived here all her life, but she’d never bothered with the names of things.

‘Look! The moon’s made a path on the sea.’ She spoke without thinking. ‘I used to want to walk on it when I was little. All the way up to the moon –’ She stopped herself. Stupid. He’d think her stupid, saying that. Wished she’d said something clever, only she couldn’t think what.

But he didn’t tease her. He put his arm round her instead. ‘You cold? You’re shivering.’

She shuffled closer. ‘My legs are freezing!’ She rubbed them with her hands. Shouldn’t have worn a dress. Only it had been so hot earlier, and she’d pinched one of Kate’s to wear. Thin, and short and expensive. It made her look older. Will touched her leg lightly and then stroked it gently with the back of his hand.

‘The wind’s blowing in off the sea, that’s why it’s cold. We could go and sit in the field, if you like? It’ll be more sheltered there.’

‘OK. If you want.’

‘It’s too early to go home. Anyway, this is magic. Being here with you.’ They kissed again. This time they took longer.

‘See?’ Will sat back from her. ‘The moon’s on your hair. You look all luminescent. Like those stones which give off their own light. You know?’

‘No, I don’t! You’re weird, Will Moore!’

He shoved her so that she sprawled over, giggling, and then he pulled her up and she fought him back till they were both laughing. Together they clambered over the rocks at the back of the beach, up on to the grassy ridge that turned into the footpath.

There was a gap in the hedge that ran along one side of the path. They climbed through into the field. The hay had been cut some weeks ago; now the grass was short and dry. They sat down close together. Away from the sea, there was no wind at all. Grasshoppers still whirred and swallows dipped and dived for flies in the last of the evening light.

‘See. It’s warmer here.’ Will took off his jacket and spread it on the grass. ‘Let’s lie back and watch for shooting stars.’

But soon they’d forgotten about the stars. And Mia wasn’t cold any more.

She forgot everything. Where she was, what the time was, what she should have been doing. She hadn’t meant it to happen. She hadn’t planned it this way. She didn’t think he had either.

They took off all their clothes. His warm body slid over hers, and all the time they kissed and stroked each other as if they were discovering something no one had ever found before. And then she felt something change in him and it was like something answered back from her, something wild and free. She felt as if she were flying. Free, like the swallows. Dipping and diving and swooping in the dying light. And that feeling changed again, and it was like a dark, greedy hunger for him that took her over completely. That was how they made love.

Afterwards they lay close.

‘Are you all right?’

‘Yes.’ Her voice came out in a whisper. ‘But – I didn’t mean – what if –?’

‘It’ll be OK,’ he said. ‘Nothing’s going to happen.’

She felt cold air rush over her as he moved away. The field was full of deep shadow. She struggled back into her dress. He turned away as he pulled his trousers back on.

‘It was good, wasn’t it?’

‘Yes! Amazing.’ Mia began to laugh.

‘What’s funny?’

‘I don’t know. Nothing. I just felt like laughing.’

Will sat next to her and pulled on his shoes. She bent over and kissed his head. His hair felt soft. Smelled musky and special. ‘But you mustn’t tell anyone what we did. No one. Not Liam or Matt or anyone. Promise?’

‘Promise. You neither.’

‘Right.’

Mia stretched her head back. The sky was dark and huge. ‘I ought to get back home. My dad’ll go mad if I’m late again.’

‘I’ll walk with you to your house, yes? And we can meet here again tomorrow? Or the next day?’

‘OK.’

‘Only if you want to.’

‘I do! But we ought to be careful – you know – if we do that again.’

A shooting star whizzed across the velvet sky.

‘See that?’

‘Amazing, isn’t it? How bright it is, and then gone. All burned up!’

‘You get whole showers of them this time of year,’ Will said. ‘Meteorites, winging their way to earth.’

They watched the sky together, waiting for another. Will smiled at her. ‘Star-crossed. That’s us.’

Mia puzzled over his words afterwards, lying in bed unable to sleep. Then she remembered. It was from the play – ‘Star-cross’d lovers’, from Romeo and Juliet.

Six weeks ago. She’d been full of joy and happiness at being close to Will. And they had done it again, but with condoms after that, so that this was so, so unfair. Just one time. The very first time ever. And then the waiting had begun, and the gnawing worry when her period still hadn’t come. Then the sickness, and the hunger, and the exhaustion. Deep, wrenching misery filled her. Such a tiny amount of happiness, for such a short time. And now nothing could be all right ever again.

The phone rang again, then the answering machine clicked in with her dad’s message. His voice drifted upstairs, calm and reassuring. But he wouldn’t be like that with her. Not when he knew.

The bathwater was getting cold. Kate’s voice drifted into her head. ‘I don’t like it when it’s cold waves!’ Little girl voice. Kate, the middle one, having to share her little sister’s bathwater. Kate was off travelling now, a whole year of it before university, and Laura had stayed on in Bristol most of the summer. After this next short visit, once Laura’s term had started, there would just be her left. Her, and Dad. And this – this thing inside her.

Mia turned on the hot tap. She knocked the soap into the bath by mistake and it slipped like a fish in her hands as she tried to scoop it back up. She lay right back, head under the water so that her hair floated out like seaweed. Toast crumbs floated on the water. She’d stay like this all day if she wanted to. She didn’t care.

Mia remembered the answerphone message after she’d got out of the bath. She went downstairs wrapped in her towel, hair still dripping. Might be Will. Probably not. Or Becky.

She pressed playback. No words came. Just the sound of someone crying. Soft, stifled sobs. Mia replayed the tape. It sounded like a child. Shivering, she switched the machine back on. The sound seemed to follow her upstairs. In the end, she lay on her bed with headphones on and drowned it out.