I woke up when it was already morning. I’d slept on a bench.
The sun was shining hard at itself in the sea. The clouds looked cleaner than usual. No wind. Everything felt so still, but in a way that felt wrong, like someone had pressed pause on all of it. I wondered if I’d died.
I ran my hands over my body, to check my clothes were there, and feel if any of me was hurt when I touched it. I sat up. Eyes wake up quickly when you don’t know where you are, but behind it, my head felt shaken up. My feet found the floor. Cold. I looked down. Water.
Water everywhere. Enough to surround the soles of my shoes. A crisp packet floated away from me. My eyes flicked right away to our building, then moved up to the thin line of our flat. What had I slept through? Why the fuck had I slept on a bench? Fuck, I said out loud, fuck.
As soon as I spoke, it felt like acid poured into my head. Or like I had water in my brain, and that an electric cable was being dipped into it, each time my heart beat. I had to get home. I started walking. Everything was shut. Even the shops that were sometimes still open were shut. No one else on the street. I started to walk faster.
I took the high roads, ran back to the building with cold feet sloshing in my shoes. I was out of breath when I arrived. Then I walked up the stairs slowly, this stir starting in my stomach. It’s the stairs until around the tenth floor, then it’s our stairs. The first had pools of water, smelled strongly of the sea; three was graffiti and boxes; eight has families on. Had. I got closer and closer.
At first, when I got to our door, it was worse than I thought. The door was open. Not all the way but enough. One of Ma’s shoes was outside. An image of them flashed into my head. Face down on the ground, pools of blood for pillows. I imagine this a lot. I can always see it.
When I went through the door, I half expected to feel something heavy break through my shoulder blades. I kept flinching. Then, ‘Is that you, Cha? Fucking hell.’ Ma’s voice. It sounded like she was talking through bread. ‘Go check it’s her.’
The sound of heavy feet landing on the floor. Kole opened the door to the bedroom in boxers, an old towel as a kind of shawl.
‘It’s her!’ he called back behind him. ‘Where you been you little shit-show? You worried your mum, Cha. Shouldn’t do that.’
He pointed through the doorway, to where she was in bed. Her hair was all messy; she flattened it with her hands.
‘Where’s Blue, though?’ I said.
Kole reached forward for my head. His fingers went over my parting and caught me from behind. ‘Always so fucking aggy. What goes on in that little head?’
‘Where is he?’
‘Don’t be a little bitch.’
‘Stop calling me little.’
‘Come see.’
They had all been in her bed, and even though it didn’t have any sheets on – the sheets were on a pile to the left; I’d washed them for her weeks ago – it was a picture. It was a picture. Because they were not dead. None of them were dead.
‘The sheets, Ma,’ I said.
‘Shut up about the sheets. Where you been?’
‘Did you see the fucking wave, Cha – ride it!’ Kole did this weird, shaky-kneed surfer thing.
‘Where were you?’ Ma said again.
‘Out shagging,’ Kole said. He reached for my head again. I shrugged away and made my hand a quick fist, and Ma put out a finger for me to stop that.
‘It’s been ages, babe, is all.’ She only ever called me babe when Kole was around. ‘We were worried. The high tide and everything.’
‘You weren’t worried. You’re not even up.’
She flattened down her hair again. I still had her shoe in my hand.
‘Is it true, then?’ Ma turned to me. ‘Have you been shagging?’ She looked quite happy about it.
‘Go on,’ Kole said. ‘Tell us, then. Boy or girl?’ He’d always ask that. ‘Look at this,’ he’d once said, his zipper taut to the side. ‘Packed tight in there, look! You still got it, kid.’ I couldn’t even be bothered to tell him he was disgusting.
‘You’re gross. Both of you. When did you get back? What happened? I wasn’t shagging. Who says shagging, anyway? You’re supposed to be an adult.’ I looked at them. Why were these my adults? Kole was actually rolling on the bed laughing. He had two types of hangover. Laugh, laugh, but this mad laugh, or anger waiting just behind his eyes, getting closer to his pupils each time he blinked. ‘What happened,’ I said again, ‘to you lot? After the party. At the party. We got separated.’
‘Give a shit. Everyone was fucked.’
‘I was just wondering what time the water came. If it was last night or…’
‘Jesus, you must have really been driving down on the fella,’ Kole laughed again. ‘Anyway, it was mental. No wonder Meyer’s knocking on our door.’
‘But what is it, exactly?’ Ma said. ‘His LandSave thing? I couldn’t hear from where I was.’
‘Couldn’t hear? You couldn’t fucking see. You pounded into those beers, you daft old…’ Kole wandered over and started doing pull-ups on a bar he’d put in the bedroom door frame. ‘Getting jobs back. Making things work around here again. Turning the dimmer-switch down on the sun. All the flag things at the party.’ He spat with his p. I saw it.
‘Thought you said the posters were dumb,’ I said.
‘Whatever. So they done a bit of branding, made it look nice. Why’s that wrong? Could be good what they’re offering.’ He let go of the metal and went back to standing.
‘Which is what, though?’ I said.
‘All these fucking questions. Making it better round here, that’s what they said.’
‘’Cos they’ve been pretty good at doing that, haven’t they?’ I said. ‘Pretty reliable.’
‘Fuck’s sake,’ he said, ‘if there was ever anyone to piss on people’s chips, it’s you, Chance.’ He reached for the pull-up bar again. ‘Such an endless shit-blanket.’
Blue had been counting his fingers and making explosions on the surface of the duvet. It was only then I noticed a little patch of rust under his nose.
‘His nose has been bleeding,’ Ma said.
‘I can see that.’
I looked at Kole for a second too long.
‘Don’t you fucking dare. I’ll blow a nut, I swear, Cha. I swear it.’
Blue put his hands over his ears. Not even his hands, his whole arms. I hated that it was something he knew to do.
‘He didn’t do a thing,’ Ma said. ‘It’s bleeding for no reason. Some of the other kids in the building too. Di came over for tissues. It’s the air pressure, she reckons.’
‘Not a fucking finger,’ Kole said. ‘I didn’t lay a finger on the boy.’
‘We’re high up. It’s the pressure.’
‘We’re hardly on a mountain.’
‘And even if I did, who the fuck are you?’ Kole said. ‘You’re not a policeman. Stick around if you care, don’t just run off, fucking who-knows-who wherever you were.’
I walked over and kneeled next to the bed. ‘You okay then, little bean?’
He nodded. He had a heat rash on his arms. I kissed it, tried to think what we might have in the cupboard for that.
‘It was nice with you gone,’ Kole went on. ‘Always coming here with your problems.’
‘I live here.’
‘Well, be nice. This is a family. If you don’t like it, you can run back off to lover boy.’
‘Why are you still talking?’ I said. I got in the bed next to Blue.
‘This is how we used to sleep.’ That was Ma. Her voice had softened again. Kole had moved to a chair now, his big boots up on the windowsill. I watched the big muscles in his arms relax. ‘When – yeah,’ she said, and I could see in her eyes she was thinking about JD rather than Kole. ‘All of us in a bed. Like a raft.’
Her eyes closed and I could almost see her take the picture of JD and put him to one side.
Blue crawled onto my chest and belly. I took deep breaths so he moved up and down. It made him laugh when I did that. He grabbed at my earlobes.
This raft, I thought. How long can it stay floating?
When the tide was low again, I went downstairs and left the building. Thought just a little bit of kem might lift away the worst of the headache. A freak tide like that always leaves everything messy. I picked a path through seaweed, fishing net, a pair of underwear, a washed-up face-mask, worn thin as a leaf. I was licking my teeth, wondering how many days of life were on them, when I saw you. The back of you.
You were kind of peeking round a corner, stepping tentatively. I felt this smile cut through my cheeks. I straightened it out.
‘They can smell it, you know,’ I said. ‘The fear.’
You looked up, then smiled. ‘Who exactly?’ you said.
‘Whoever you’re scared of. Local hoodlums.’
‘I smell kinda good, actually.’ You tilted your head so you could smell your own arm.
‘Don’t tell me you’ve got hot – running – water?’ I said those three words like I was doing the voiceover of an ad – luxury, chocolate, cake.
‘Well, it’s, like, warm. Think it’s the sun more than anything.’
‘Do I not get an invite?’
‘But we’re so close to yours.’
‘You’re not going up there for love nor money.’
‘Well then, the Chinese House?’
‘China House.’ I looked at you. ‘I’m not sure. I can’t give you want you want today.’
‘And what’s that?’
‘I don’t know. Sex, probably. I’m just so tired.’
You started laughing.
‘Honestly I can’t do it any more, I’ll have to retire,’ I said.
‘Do what? Sex?’
‘Party.’
‘Oh, is that right?’
‘Yeah, last night.’
‘Well, thanks a lot for the invite. Anyway, I only wanted a kiss, but no worries, I’ll find someone else.’
‘Sure.’
‘I’m very open-minded.’ You folded your arms and my eyes fell down your body.
‘Oh, really?’ I said. ‘Okay, just one kiss maybe.’
‘Don’t worry, I’m busy now,’ you said, walking away.
‘I’ve changed my mind—’
I followed you round a corner, to where it was cool, dark. Standing in front of you, I watched your pupils dilate. I felt my whole body do the same. Then you walked back slowly until your shoulders were against a wall. ‘Just one,’ I said again. Your mouth felt hungry and I wanted that hunger. Your mouth on mine, and the mess of it, and even if it was just for a minute, how all through my body, it felt like doors were being opened.
Blue’s nose bled again that evening, then the next morning too. Not a lot, but enough to turn a tissue red, and it was still bleeding when Davey came over.
‘Noooo, kiddo,’ he said, seeing Blue. He grabbed him under the arms and spun him round, before he realised that that was a bad idea, and then he laid him back gentle as anything, like something ironed he didn’t want to crease.
‘He started early,’ Davey said.
‘What?’
Davey did a quick double sniff. ‘On the old drugs.’
‘You’re an idiot,’ I said. ‘Come, though,’ and we wandered upstairs to the landing above so we could talk. We’d sat like that for years. Backs to different walls, feet meeting in the middle, kicking at each other sometimes.
‘Weird party,’ he said. ‘Weird all of it. Kinda fun. By the time I got in there it was proper carnage. Full-grown men on the floor, kids dancing, crying. Hell’s after-party in there. Got some though. Found a girl who looked a bit lost and not too—’ he used his hand to mess up his face ‘—ugly. Not like pretty-pretty, but not ugly-ugly either.’
‘And they say romance is dead.’
His details of the party weren’t the sharpest, either. Blurry at the edges, blurry in the middle. I remember him calling patches in memories burn holes once. Me saying they were more like bruises. Never in perfect shape, never the worst pain, but they hurt if you touched them.
‘LandSave,’ he said. ‘What kind of shitpie name is that anyway?’
‘Could have done with a bit more land to be fair, when the sea was sloshing round my ankles this morning.’
‘Yeah, well, it always goes back down, dunnit. We don’t need them. It saves itself.’
After that, Davey did what he always did – listed everything he’d seen and done. Not in his whole life, though it felt like it. Just in the past few days, but no difference in intonation for if the thing was big or small. He could tell me about a pin that got stuck in his shoe and make it last an hour. It was still true that somehow he never bored me, but that day, I found my thoughts wandering elsewhere. You know how normally, if someone asks where the middle of you is, it’s your chest. Your heart. Somewhere up there.
But that day, ever since I kissed you, I felt like I was right between my legs. I couldn’t stop zooming in on little bits of you, a flick book of skin. Every time I thought of a new thing, the front wall of my stomach would go like a xylophone. A stick ran down it.
‘Why you being weird for? Oi.’ Davey pushed me. ‘Being quiet and weird. You been fucking too?’
‘No.’
‘I know that look. Chancey, you put your fingers up to your mouth!’ He laughed. ‘Out of control.’
‘I haven’t.’
‘You know I don’t care,’ he said. ‘It’s just when you don’t tell me.’
‘David…’
‘Don’t David me. Why are you my favourite person and you’re also the worst?’ he said. ‘You’re a total ding. The absolute biggest.’