In the morning, before you woke up, I went into the other bedroom. There was a jewellery box I’d hidden in a cupboard, wrapped in jumpers and some bedsheets. My hand pushed in slowly. The sudden fear that somehow someone had taken it, then the relief of finding it hard under my fingers.
I had promised I’d never touch it. But it was either that or JD’s money box, so I pulled it out. Wood like tiger’s eye. Swirling, golden. A padlock. I used a heavy stone bowl from the mantelpiece to smash it open. I had never broken anything in that house before and I said sorry out loud even though no one could hear.
There were four little trays inside. One full of silver, one full of gold, one for things. Notes folded up, a pen, a pin, a stone, a photo. That was folded, too, a crease line between two faces. The necklaces were knotted. All of it felt heavy and cool, like it’d been kept in a fridge, and I took everything that was gold, rings mostly, and slipped it in my pocket.
‘Oi,’ I said, standing over you and nudging you awake with my feet. ‘So tell me then. What’s this research that you need?’
I remember watching you wake up, your eyes adjusting to the light, adjusting to seeing me. And I remember wondering if you were scared of me, if you liked me really, if I would ever see you again, if you loved me maybe, a million ifs crowded into a split second.
‘You don’t have to look so worried,’ I said after that. ‘I’m just saying, if you like, we could go on a little school trip.’
After you agreed, kissed me, left, I went straight to Davey’s warehouse. I hadn’t seen him since the day at the pub.
‘You,’ he said, in this mixed way, when I knocked on the open door. The tide was low now, but he had piles of rags and plastic sheeting ready by the door to keep the water out. I stepped over it, wiped my feet, and he continued hammering something. ‘What you saying?’
‘Saying hello? Why you being strange?’
‘No, it’s just. Where you been? Like ships in the night. Chips in the nightclub. I keep on looking for you but you’re nowhere. I thought they might be taking girls at the sites suddenly. Might have been worried,’ he said. ‘Might not have been.’ He had a petrol-stained cloth around his neck and he used it to wipe some little drops of sweat off his temple. He’d shaved his head. Not clean to the bone, but a three all over. He kept on running his hands over it, which made him look nervous. He saw me looking, smiled then. ‘Touch it,’ he said. ‘Weirdest thing.’
‘Very kind, but…’
‘You’ll like it!’
‘I’ve touched heads before.’
‘Mad, though. How your own body can shock you.’
I knew that feeling – it made me think of you. His new haircut made his head look smaller. He was trying to grow a beard but the hairs had a wiriness to them. Little antennas, almost, reaching out in different directions. I told him he looked good. Then, before he could ask why I was saying something nice, I told him I needed a bike.
I could see in his eyes that he wanted to ask me why. His smoky eyes, his happy-sad smile. Instead he said, ‘What kind?’
‘Fast.’
‘Do you even know how to ride?’
‘JD had one,’ I said. Which was true, though he’d never let me ride it. I’d only been allowed to sit on the back. I’d never liked it. JD would make the engine roar whenever he passed a girl he liked, which was every girl. ‘I’ll bring it back. It’s just for the day. I wouldn’t want it for free. I know that.’
I passed him one of the rings I had in my pocket. It looked smaller in his hand. He slipped it onto the tip of his little finger.
‘Look nice with my hair, won’t it,’ he said. He handed the ring back to me. ‘Don’t be dumb with your ring. I don’t need that. Come out back and have a look.’
I always loved the repair shop as a kid. There were so many places to hide. Panels and scraps of plywood propped against the walls, the window frames we’d jump in and out of when we were little. Trevor’s old certificates for hygiene at the pub, a wall of them, the latest one back in 2012.
Davey took me into the next room and pulled back a blue tarp. He had a couple of pedal bikes, one for a kid, pink, with tangled tassels coming out of the handlebars, and then he had three motorbikes with proper engines. He told me he was halfway through fixing the smallest one, so I’d have to take the middle. He helped me onto it and my feet barely touched the floor.
‘I feel like I’m on a horse,’ I said.
‘Well we’re fucked then, woman. Because you were always shit on those.’
It was the first time he’d ever called me woman. He didn’t mean it in a bad way, but I noticed it. I got off so Davey could get the motor going. He blew dust off the seat. He told me it was a nice one. He kept on touching his hair still. I said thank you a lot of times – so many that he probably didn’t think they counted for much.
I was halfway out the shop when he called me again. I turned around and he’d taken off his leather jacket. He threw it at me, said, ‘It’s hot but – safer,’ and I caught it, put it on. The shoulders fell halfway down my arms. I pushed up the sleeves so I could see my fingers.
‘I like that jacket,’ he said. ‘Bring it back in one piece.’
Riding a motorbike is easier than you’d think, if you go fast enough. I went in starts, and stops. The weight of it, the rattle, the beat. I pulled back on the throttle, then let it spin out of my grip completely, wished it wasn’t so loud. You were waiting on the corner where I told you to.
‘Where’s your helmet?’ you said. ‘More to the point, where’s mine?’
‘You’ll have to put your hands up over your head, won’t you? Make a barrier.’
‘Is this even yours?’ You touched the matte leather of the seat, the bit Davey had blown clean.
‘I’m on it, aren’t I?’
A smile grew in your cheeks. Your leg swung round behind me.
‘Just don’t lean out to look,’ I said.
Your arm slid around my waist. ‘Why?’
‘Just not right now.’
‘Why?’
‘Because this is my first time.’
And then I just drove. You sat so close to me, it almost felt like we had the same body. I could feel you against my tailbone, your legs as wide as they could go. Just before we got to the edge of Dreamland, I realised I hadn’t asked Davey about petrol. But I just kept on going. I didn’t care. Your arms were wrapped around me. I didn’t care. We sped down roads I hadn’t been on in years.
My palms stung a little from gripping the handlebars so tightly. Your hands found their way under my T-shirt. Then you let go, and I could see from our shadow that you had put your arms out, flying.
I made up the names of places I didn’t know. On some stretches of road, the ‘For Sale’ signs on the buildings were rained into curls. Doors were open, low windows were broken. It looked like if you wanted the house you could just take it.
‘Do people live here?’ you said. You made your chin tense and used it to massage a bit of my shoulder. ‘Sometimes I just think fuck it all – I’d like to.’
‘Live here?’ I nearly turned around to look back at you. ‘Madder than me.’
‘I don’t know. Something about windows. Any window.’
But face forward, I was smiling. I felt it too – that I could live here with you. That I would live anywhere with you.
You nudged me again with your chin. ‘You can go, you know.’
I’d stopped at a traffic light before we realised it was just broken, and the red was only paint put on top. You had a scarf wrapped round your shoulders so you wouldn’t burn. Either side of us, the cabbage and cauliflower fields were burned dark on either side. When I went faster, you held me tighter. I went as fast as I could.
At an old phone tower, we tipped the bike on its side and decided to climb up. All around it, seagulls were making nests along the length of the old cables, these stretched-out stick cities. I started the climb up, two rungs at a time. We went higher, then higher still, until we could see the sea round the coast like a knife-thin stretch of silver.
I took you to Ramsgate because I’d always loved it. I hadn’t been for years. All the grass around the bandstand on Wellington Crescent was burned yellow. The salt in the rain had knocked little holes into all the white paint of the houses. Half of the pillars holding up second-floor terraces had given way, which made the crescent look like a ship capsizing. Outdoor tables had slid off and stayed where they’d fallen. A lot of the palm trees were massive now. Some had melted into huge dead octopuses, but others must not have minded the heat. All along the front, these enormous high flowers, furry leaves, Ma used to call them bee towers, reaching for I don’t know what.
I tried to work out if people were still living in the houses facing the sea. We whipped round the curve of the Albion Hotel. There were MDF boards over half the windows. After that, the road dipped through a fake quarry – boxy boulders, a little waterfall – until it came out onto Harbour Parade. It was low tide. The topsy-turvy masts of one or two submerged yachts grew like plants out of the water. On the right, there was a row of red-brick marina arches, a curve of them, like decoration round a cake. The sun washed over all of it.
‘It’s beautiful,’ you said.
‘Of course! It’s one of the five royal ports. Cinque Ports, in French,’ I said. ‘Sank ports now.’ I looked out. ‘Still, though. Pretty fucking glorious.’
The harbour stretched out like a hug – two road-thick piers pushing out into the sea and wrapping round like arms. The bike felt good between my legs, but it was stupid to do it. The path along the pier was slick with algae, and the morning’s tide. And the water was already coming back up. I could see it hitting the walls and champagne-ing up white at the end of the harbour arm, where the old restaurant was.
‘Fuck it,’ I said. ‘Let’s go. Love a little race against tide, don’t you?’
The wheels of the bike slipped and skidded along the wet stone of the pier. It felt like we were driving straight into the sea. All the street lamps along the edge were bent inland, smacked down into a bow by the waves. The wheels crunched over crab shells; I wove round rugs of seaweed.
When we got to the restaurant, I kicked down the stand of the motorbike and turned around in my seat so I could face you. The smiles of our knees were touching.
‘There’re still dining tables in here!’ you said, looking over my shoulder, making your voice loud enough to rise above the whipped wind bouncing off the waves from the sea. ‘It’s so cool,’ you said.
‘Cool is one word,’ I said back. ‘One word I wouldn’t use for you.’ I used your arm to point at the red-brick arches back behind us on the mainland. ‘See all the way along at the end – that’s the Sailors’ Church.’
I told you about the summer some boat people had taken asylum there. ‘Or whatever it is when you hide in a church.’
‘Sanctuary.’
‘There were loads of them. Big boat. Caleb made us come over here. Me, Davey and some other kid from after-school. We came down to the church and slept there with all them so the police couldn’t kick them out.’
‘Was it scary?’ you said.
‘Why scary?’ I said back. ‘Don’t put that in your notes. No, they were the scared ones. A lot of them wouldn’t stop shaking. Wasn’t so fun for anyone, actually. Apart from Davey. He loved it. Tried to teach them words of English. Rude words, of course. He was quiet about it when we got back. I know he was being an idiot when you met him but he’s always been like that…’
‘Like what?’
‘Nice, I mean. Even if it’s the dumbest timing, or there’s no point in it, he’s always liked to help people. It’s like a disease. He can’t stop himself.’
Above us, the sky had split exactly in two. Behind the painted seafront houses, the sky was orange; over the water, gunmetal clouds made their way towards us. It was starting to get dark. Apart from a few curtain twitches, and some kids messing with sticks by the car park, we’d barely seen anyone about. As we pulled out of Ramsgate, the sun from one side burned into windows that weren’t broken and turned them the colour of a lit match.