I didn’t run after you. I managed not to. I walked home in a kind of daze. My chest felt like it was made of tissue paper, not enough weight in it, the air finding ways to lift it. I brought my hands up to my face.
But all that disappeared, all the lightness of it disappeared, when I got back to our door. I knew before I turned the handle that Kole was back. It’s the way my mum laughs. Like there’s an engine in her. For a moment I thought about turning around, running down the stairs three at a time and finding you again. But then I thought about Blue.
I pushed the door open, and they were sitting on the sofa. I saw them from the back, Kole’s black topknot making him look taller. Ma’s curls all stiff in bits, too much mousse. She touched her head against his with each laugh then bounced away, like she couldn’t trust how much of her leaning he would like.
I walked round without saying anything. Blue was huddled into Kole’s chest. Kole had been blowing a raspberry into his cheek. All three of them smiled when they saw me.
‘Well if it isn’t Miss Chance herself,’ Kole said. He slid his hand free from behind Ma’s back. Rings on his fingers.
I hated that he had my name in his mouth. My lungs felt all stuck together now. ‘What you done to your face?’ I said. There was a long cut up from his lip, and a smudgy green bruise under one of his eyebrows.
‘Be nice,’ Ma said quickly. ‘Don’t be rude. He’s a guest.’
‘Not staying, then?’ I looked at him. Blue was pretending to play the piano on his stubble.
Other times I could have said that and Kole would have stood up, Blue dropping off his chest, and he would have grabbed me round the neck from the side, the hardest part of his thumb pushing into my neck where an Adam’s apple would be. ‘You can kill someone like that in a fucking second,’ was the type of thing he’d say. ‘A fucking second, you crumb.’
But this time he laughed. Then, when she figured it was allowed, my mum laughed too. A second later, you could tell he was copying them, Blue joined in.
‘Cheeky little bitch you’ve got there, Jas,’ he said.
Kole sat, like he always did, his legs wide, his heavy boots making his knees higher than you’d think, the fat knot of his crotch angled towards the television. Which is where I was standing.
‘Come and say hi,’ he said.
‘No chance.’
‘Yes, Chance.’
‘Fuck off.’
‘Cha…’ Ma said. She never said it like the beginning of a dance, nothing cha cha cha about it. She said it long, char, like from a burn. ‘Please. It’s supposed to be a good day.’
‘Why? Because you’ve just about stopped bleeding?’ The last time I’d seen Kole, ten days before, he was pushing her head into a door frame. Her cheek had been bruised black, maybe even broken. ‘Because you can almost smile again? No, you’re right. Let’s get the whole building over and have a party.’
Kole got ready to stand.
‘We’re back together, Cha,’ Ma said. She reached for my hand but couldn’t get far enough.
‘Plane,’ Blue said. ‘Nairoplane.’ His hand pointed at the window.
All three of us turned to look, but we were too late to see it. Blue made his hand a plane and crashed it into Kole’s chest. Kole silenced his fingers with a shrug. There were dents in his cheeks. Dents that looked like matches had been put out in each of his pores.
‘Calm fucking down,’ he said. ‘Sit fucking down, will you? Do whatever you want, but stop all this whining. Can’t you see your mother’s happy?’ His forearm landed heavily on her leg. He tweaked her knee. ‘Your brother.’ He pushed the word at me like he was holding my face against gravel. ‘Happy. Don’t you want that?’
It was the way he thought he could do it each time. Worse than that. How he actually could.
‘What we going to do?’ I said. ‘Sit here like a family, watch the telly? We know you like that.’
The time before, he’d smashed the TV with the bottom of the bottle he’d brought round. The glass got everywhere. I had to spend whole afternoons picking tiny flecks out of Blue’s feet.
‘Never mind all that. I got us a new one, dint I? Just sit, little Chance.’
I looked at Ma and she was smiling still. ‘You look stupid,’ I told her. She didn’t stop. She wove her fingers into Kole’s wide hands. Blue touched his dad’s face like it was a toy, and no one stopped him, and so eventually I sat down, a bit away at first, but as we sat there, because that’s how these things happen, and happen again, the gaps between us got softer.
The truth is, like he’d always been, Kole could be funny. He made Blue laugh by pulling dopey faces. He told Ma and me a story about his mate Nev’s new haircut. He said Nev looked like he’d covered all his hair in jam and offered himself up to rats. He’d convinced the woman at the funeral flower shop to cut his hair. The punchline was, ‘Well she had scissors, didn’t she?’ and Kole was laughing so much as he said it. Kole kept his arm on my mum’s leg, and rubbed his thumb over her knee and I watched the roughness of his skin pull hers around.
‘Do you want your presents now or later?’ he said to her and Blue.
For Blue, there was this toy gorilla thing, with fur that looked already rubbed. For Ma, pulled from behind Kole’s back, like he was some cheap magician, a bottle of green liqueur. Frosted glass, not even full, half the label missing. She hugged him and then kissed him as he used his same fat thumb – his eyes were open throughout the kiss – to take the lid off.
‘We feeling like poshos who need glasses, Chancey? Or are we just gonna make like the old days and swig from the bottle?’ He moved to bring me into their circle. The hard meat of his arms.
‘I’m alright, actually.’ I turned away from them.
‘But Cha, it’s apple,’ Ma said. ‘One of your five a day.’
‘I told you. You look dumb when you grin like that.’
I picked Blue up and took him into the corner where there’s an okay rug and some of his toys. He wouldn’t let go of the gorilla, and kept on saying nairoplane, nairoplane. Ma and Kole came back with mugs and so I left him with them, and shut myself in my room.
It didn’t take long to hear thuds. Ma saying no. I felt my heart start to beat in my neck. Her saying no again. Then the thuds became quicker, and she wasn’t saying no, it was yes, and that grunt of his.
It was coming from the bedroom, not the sofa, but I went to get Blue anyway. He was in the same spot, making the gorilla walk into the wall and then fall over, doing it again and again.
‘What you doing there?’ I told him. ‘Come in with me.’
It was better in our room, with the radio on, though I didn’t put it on full volume just in case the wrong kind of noise did come.
I started to talk to Blue, but he barely looked at me. He scratched his soft little fingernail into a cigarette burn on our carpet. He had a way of doing that. Putting his finger on problems. Cuts in the sofa, chips of paint, rust. Not in a bad way, just because he found them interesting.
‘Did they leave you for long, baby boy?’ I said to him now.
He carried on playing. I talked to him. I talked about getting chips, and the shell I’d seen that came from Africa. ‘Africa’s far,’ I said. ‘Got zebras there.’ I talked slowly and quietly and he didn’t look round once. I moved off the bed and lay next to him on the other side.
‘Can I ask you something?’ He still didn’t say anything. ‘And you won’t tell Ma.’ He didn’t look up but, from his face, I could tell he was listening. ‘If I met someone – would you mind that?’ He looked at me then. His eyelashes were so long. Longer than mine. ‘If they were nice. Like clever and nice and everything?’
I’d just wanted to say it. Blue picked up a toy car with three wheels and started driving it in small circles.
‘Earth to Blue.’ I stopped his car with my hand. ‘What do you think about that?’
Finally he looked up at me, and said, ‘Nairoplane doh?’
I shrugged and Blue shrugged too. And then he put down his toy and nestled into me with his T-shirt half pulled up, the tiny bead necklace of his spine pressed against me.
The next day was a Thursday – the main day we did the houses. We’d picked a corner-plot sandy-brick place on Addington Street, not far from Caleb’s – curved windows, arched doorway. I didn’t even need to climb, it was easy enough to push out a panel in the veranda at the back. I broke the glass badly, because I wasn’t concentrating on it, but no one cared. The boys had been smoking all morning.
I looked at them. Their caps and unwashed hair. Their teapot ears and sores on their hands. They were as young as me, but their frown lines were so deep they looked purple.
I left them in the living room, and padded around the house. Carpet, floorboards. I could always tell the old DFLs in a single look round a room. They were either full seaside – blue and white stripes in bathrooms, seagull ceramics, retro posters with pictures of lighthouses; whacko majacko every colour under the sun; or so minimalist I couldn’t tell if they’d taken their stuff with them or not. That day was a sea one – sea things everywhere, ship ropes instead of handrails on the stairs. I looked in drawers, under the biggest bed, under the pillows, cobwebs like clouds. But that day, I didn’t care about finding anything. I couldn’t make myself. I couldn’t stop thinking about you. Somehow I had this idea in my head that if I left right then and walked to the beach, I’d find you.
I went downstairs and poked my head into the living room. The boys were lying scrunch-backed on one of those nice curved sofas that lots of people can sit round. I told them I was going to go.
They were smoking again. They’d found an old vinyl player. They were pretending to DJ, scratching records. It was a horrible sound.
‘Can’t fucking leave,’ Brick said. He knocked everything off a table so he’d have a smooth surface for a few lines. ‘It’s just starting.’
‘Got you in, didn’t I? Done my bit. Be good.’
It’s weird as hell but sometimes two brains can just do it. Because I did know where you’d be. I saw it in my head before I got there, and it was true. You were back at the Eliot shelter, tucked into the shade in the corner. I crept up slowly. I was about to slide my hand round the back of your neck, but as my hand got close, I felt shy. Or something like shy, anyway. I wasn’t used to that.
‘Are you loitering around my house?’ I said. ‘That’s very sad.’
‘I know,’ you said. ‘It’s tragic.’
‘You know what I was thinking about, by the way,’ I said. I slid onto the bench next to you, but far on the other end, the sunny side. Put my feet up on it. ‘Why were they running after you before?’
‘Sorry?’
‘How did you get those boys to chase you so fast?’
‘Oh. My friends.’
‘Best friends,’ I said. ‘Were you massaging yourself with money?’
‘Believe it or not, I’d just gotten out of a car,’ you said. ‘And they saw me.’
‘The audacity. And it was a nice car, I’m guessing.’
‘It was alright.’ You looked at my lips. ‘I’ve had better.’
‘Well, let’s not do anything as dangerous as that, shall we?’
‘I don’t know,’ you said. ‘It was pretty exciting.’
I asked if you wanted to go for a walk with me, and you said yes, and as we walked, our hands bumped. When no one was around, you reached for one of my fingers, dropped it. I felt these things at the back of my chest.
That must have been the first time I took you to the China House. We headed west past the station, the opposite direction to the harbour, past old hotels, the awnings above each window fluttering like eyelashes in the wind. We pushed on further. This is it, I said, when we turned into a new road and got to the squeaky gate.
I’d loved that house since I was a kid, but it was even better once I’d finally got inside. Red bricks on the side, a creamy milk colour painted over the front. It was one of the first windows I’d climbed through – the peg had scratched a line down the middle of my belly; I lifted my top to show you the little scar – but I’d found a full spare set of keys almost straight away, so I could even lock it up when I came and went.
I checked there was no one on the street, then turned the key in the lock. ‘See that mark?’ I put my finger on the writing on the door. ‘It means this place has been done. So no one else bothers. It’s the shape a seagull’s foot makes on the sand.’ I started to push the door handle. ‘There’s a whole system.’
I had to lean my whole body weight into the door to get it open. I’d put clothes in plastic bags along the inside of the door, in case there was a big storm, or another big wave. Shoes, too, so it’s heavy enough. I’d always leave through a back window.
The hallway was pink and there were green glass lights at metre intervals. You put your hand on the walls. ‘Oh my God, I love it,’ you said. You turned back to me. ‘Whose is it?’
‘I dunno. Sometimes you find names on old letters, or photos, but…’
‘It’s actually so nice.’
‘What do you mean actually?’
You peered into the front living room. ‘And tidy. You don’t… do you clean it?’
‘No, course not,’ I said. You were still looking at me. ‘I mean, I have. Not a lot. Just sometimes.’
‘Why don’t you live here?’
‘I couldn’t,’ I said.
The thought of Kole finding us. Things breaking.
On every wall in the house, there was some kind of collection. The main room had old tea flasks, red, pink and sea-foam with Chinese writing on them and pictures of black-haired women, smiling. ‘Hence the name,’ I said. On the opposite wall there were jars and jars and jars of old spices. I’d always liked the idea of a collection. The idea that you could have more than one of a thing – loads of it, even.
You moved in your wandering way, touching things. A finger over the fat-thin pregnant belly of an ivory statue.A short little trill on the out-of-tune black notes of a piano. You went into a new room and tiptoed to see the highest shelf of an open cabinet.
‘These are super-expensive,’ you said about some plates, turning them over to see the back. Your voice went up a notch or two, then you brought it back down again. ‘Rich people love this stuff.’ You made the word love really roll in your throat. ‘Old stuff like this.’
‘I always found that funny,’ I said. ‘When you’re rich, you want old things. When you’re poor, you want everything new.’
We went back to the kitchen, and you opened the tea containers one by one, inhaling deeply each time. ‘This one, no?’ you said. ‘It still smells good. Of something, anyway.’
In a way, we had afternoon tea. I found jam in a cupboard, a clean pop when it opened, and because we didn’t have bread, we ate it off teaspoons. We sat on the sofa in the living room. Velvet cushions had sucked up the dust from the rest of the air. They made grey clouds as we settled into them, sticky teaspoons on our knees.
I used to think that after the first kiss, all other kisses had already been said yes to. But I felt that new thing as we sat there – I felt nervous. You blew into your cup. It was full enough to blow a wave of it over onto the saucer.
‘Two women lived here, I think,’ I said. I pointed to the photos in frames on the marble mantelpiece.
‘Sisters?’
‘No, like…’
‘Right.’ You smiled. Looked back down at your cup.
I laughed. ‘This is like some Jane Austen shit.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Like, I don’t know. ‘More tea, Richard.’
‘Who’s Richard?’ It was your turn to laugh then. ‘It’s “more tea, vicar.”’
As our tea cooled down, we warmed up I guess. ‘I love that one,’ you said about the photograph above the fireplace. It was of a girl with long red hair sitting up at a Formica counter. A slice of sunlight beaming over her hand, a rolled-up dollar bill in it. ‘Pre-Raphaelite, but in a motel,’ you said.
‘My dad is a photographer,’ I said then. ‘Or, like, he took photos? I don’t know what the difference is really. Never had the chance to ask.’
‘Are you in touch?’ you said, but in this kind of breezy way, like you didn’t want to knock anything over.
‘Nah, he’s back in Sweden now. He had to go back. Actually before my mum knew she was pregnant with me, he left. She sent him a picture of me. He wrote back. Said he was going to come back. But he didn’t have enough money in his bank account. He was like twenty or something. I don’t know.’ The first few were sentences I’d said so many times when I was growing up, that in my head, as I finished one, the next lined up. ‘So maybe more of a kid who took photographs than a photographer?’ I said. ‘He’s good, though. We have one on our wall at home.’
‘Do you know his name?’ Again, your light-touch caution thing. It made my shoulders feel tight.
‘Do I know my own dad’s name? Yeah. Linus. My mum was with him a whole two years. Which is like massive for her. Said he had a nose that won’t quit, and that he put loads of tobacco bags up in his gums. But that he was really nice to her,’ I said. I shrugged. ‘And that’s me out.’
‘That’s a lot cooler than my parents,’ you said.
‘What do yours do?’
‘My mum’s a doctor.’
‘Fancy,’ I said. The knot in my shoulders pulled tighter, I tried to push it back down. ‘Any chance she’s going to visit?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘We could do with a doctor.’
‘More of a desk doctor,’ you said. ‘Academic. Shaky hands.’
‘Sold,’ I said. ‘We’ll take her.’ I told you how Davey’s mum, before she died, had a lump on her leg. ‘Here, just above the knee.’ I showed you on mine. ‘She had to go to some witch doctor thing over in Herne Bay. Like, an actual witch doctor in a wooden shed. He took it out with a fucking spoon.’
‘God…’
‘Some spoon he’d heated up.’
You looked at the spoon on your lap.
‘And it got infected, of course. And there were other things. So yeah, any old desk doctor – sign us up.’
When we took our cups back to the kitchen, I told you I only kept the ones I loved.
‘Girls?’ you said.
‘No, houses. And not keep them. Keep them safe.’ I tried to open a stiff cupboard to look for washing-up liquid, and at that moment, the handle came off in my hand. You started laughing and came up behind me. With one hand first, and then the other, you found the edge of my waist. My hands were still resting on the cupboard. I looked over my shoulder at you. Your lips, your eyes. Your skin. Your veins were close to the surface. A faint blue line on your forehead.
‘I couldn’t not touch you,’ you said. ‘You lifted up your arms and your back was there and it felt like I couldn’t not.’
‘Okay,’ I said.
At first, I didn’t move. Your hands found the space between my jeans and my top, and made it bigger. Your fingers felt like they were writing. Each touch the lightest thing, some kind of map.
When your hands moved away, my back pushed after you. Then your hands landed on top of my own, pinning them against the kitchen top. Your fingers made my hands look dark. I remember hoping you didn’t think they were dirty. We still hadn’t kissed yet.
You touched one side of me, so I’d turn around. I asked if you were sure.
Then, just like that, just like people say it should be, like magnets kept apart and then suddenly let go, we were together. I don’t know if somehow you lifted me up, or I got there myself, but suddenly I was sitting on the kitchen surface and almost a second later, you were on my lap with your legs either side of me, one arm round my neck, the other holding the cupboard for balance.
Bedroom was the only word I heard you say, and I remember following you up the stairs. It was knowing what was going to happen. Seeing you. Never in my life had I wanted someone that much.