It happened again and again on the street. People coming up to ask what the meeting was like. Asking me what I thought of LandSave, wanting to know what I’d heard about relocations.
‘They’re alright,’ I said. ‘Not alright. Good. They’ll be good this time.’
The more I said it, the more I felt it. And when I thought of you, I found myself able to promise.
Soon, no matter how hard I tried, no matter how much I wanted to make myself feel it, the pinching in my stomach settled. The reasons settled too. The reasons to be okay with leaving. You, Blue, the thought of getting him somewhere with schools. It was strange how quickly that part happened. Blue at school – as soon as I’d imagined it, it was all I could think about.
And it wasn’t just me. The okay-ness was everywhere. There were one or two people like Davey, but more than anything, our streets were fine with it. Soonamy, someone had written in pen over the top of loads of the posters, with a drawing of a wave. There were smiley faces over others. Maybe it wasn’t excitement in the air, but it wasn’t far from that. Nervous energy. Delicate, tight.
‘I knew you’d come round,’ Kole said, the first time we crossed paths again at home. ‘Know where your bread’s buttered. Good girl.’
‘I’m not good,’ I said.
‘Bad little bitch, then. Is that better? Anyway. It’s pretty easy maths. It’s called: what do the fuckers have to lose. They’ve shoved ’em round before. They can hack it. Even heard one lad say it was nice to have structure.’
I started to see the sea again. I know that sounds stupid, but I started to see it as a separate creature, rather than it just being there, like furniture or a field. And it wasn’t just me, either. People started looking for big waves. But it was almost like they wanted them to appear. There used to be this line of cloud that sat along the horizon of the sea, a little cushion that padded the sun and stopped the sunset. It felt like, now, almost every evening someone would point and say, there it is, that’s the wave, the big one. And right before we get taken to the promised land as well.
It was the middle of winter, though winter had become the wrong word for it. It was hot as ever in the days. Sometimes even early morning and late at night as well. Hot and dark at the same time. That’s what my mum said was so un-British about it. End of days, she said, but she seemed cheerful about the whole thing. ‘If Kole’s coming,’ she said, a lot of times. ‘If we’re going to go as a family.’
When I wasn’t with you, when I wasn’t working, I started to write lists. Not on paper, but in my head. The things I could bring. I started saying goodbyes in my head. Not to people, but to places, houses. The flaky-pink tiles of the Lido. Dented street names. The walls of the China House. I’d touch things.
The Turner was the place we had to go to sign up for relocation slots. A team of cleaners went in one Friday, and all of the old billboards around the building filled up with signs saying it would open the Monday after that.
‘Slots, though,’ I asked you the night before it opened. ‘What does that mean?’ We were lying on the sofa in the China House. I had my back to you with my head on your chest, your legs wrapped around me. ‘Are they just going to slot us into little, what… slits across the country wherever there’s space?’
‘Yes, exactly. Tiny little holes. Can’t really move your arms…’
‘Like a lovely little grave,’ I said.
‘Exactly,’ you laughed. ‘You should get there early, though.’ You rested your chin on my shoulder.
‘Get the best grave.’ I nudged past you and got onto my knees in front of the wooden liquor cabinet. ‘Shall we?’ I said. ‘To mark this momentous occasion.’ You scooted next to me. ‘Lap-hurra-owa-igg,’ I read, turning a bottle so the label faced us.
‘Laphroaig. That’s a nice one, actually. Bacon-y.’
‘Aged fifteen years. Probably thirty by now. Nice little midlife crisis.’
We used glasses. We sniffed it, tilted. It burned the back of my throat. I felt happy. I lay back against the wide floorboards. I felt the heat of it settle all through my back. You rifled through records in heavy clumps. You put on Aretha Franklin – the crackle of it, the fizz, before the voice – and also things I didn’t recognise. You counted the rings of the record so you could play me one song in particular you loved on Astral Weeks. The strum at the beginning, lifting, lifting. You played it three times in a row, till I was lifted far away. I could have been on a boat. I felt like I could have lain there for ever.
‘What’s a day like there?’ I said. ‘What’s a day like for you there?’
‘London?’
‘Yeah. I mean, personally, I’m going to get my slot not in London, far away from London, but say I was to visit.’
‘Say you were to visit, well…’ You tilted and turned your body so you faced me instead.
‘For real, though,’ I said. ‘Tell me something so I’m not too shocked when I get there. By the future-future. I don’t want to arrive in the big city and not know how to hang with the kids. I want slang, Franky. I need words.’
‘It’s funny, London’s so not the future-future. There’s stuff, but like, people don’t really use it. Like paradises, you mean? All that weird fantasy stuff? They’re dumb. Just like old men go.’
‘My people.’
‘Well, we can try one if you like. Rent a creepy little cubicle.’
‘Or something like that, anyway,’ I said. ‘I could drop some dollars.’ I pictured our money box in my head. I imagined JD’s blessing. ‘Take you out sometime.’
‘Okay, cowboy.’
‘But like on a date, you know.’
‘I’d love a date.’
I remember the other albums we played. Steely Dan, Talking Heads. Everything older than us, like knowing time had existed before was proof that it would be there ahead of us too. I remember the order we played them in. You asked me if I thought you’d kissed me on every inch of my body yet. I said we should make sure. It seems strange to think of it now, but it was – I remember feeling it at the time, and I still feel it now – one of the best evenings I ever had.
You told me you’d never felt like this in your life. Nothing like it, you said. Nothing even close to like it. I found it so hard to get the words out, but they came eventually. Me too, I said. Maybe they are things that everyone says to everyone, but I had never heard them before. I had never said them.