The house was old and maybe once was grander but Mae did not allow herself to remember before.
Inside, her grandmother followed her through to the tired kitchen. She wore a dressing gown pinched at her skeletal waist, close to gaunt, skin painted her bones like any flesh between would be wasteful. A sky watcher, all day, every day. Mae remembered a time when she was soft, red-cheeked from working her allotment, her kitchen filled with the homely smell of minted lamb and apple pie.
‘Mrs Abbott called to say she saw you come out of the police station. What did you do now? Were you on the beach with a boy?’
Mae said nothing.
‘You know there’s a name for girls that do things like that.’ Every cabinet door was opened and slammed. She carried a note pad and pen and kept track of each can and packet, her hand shaking, the writing illegible. ‘Think of your sister.’
‘I do.’
‘This town. You get a name and it sticks, Margaret.’
Mae hadn’t always hated her given name, but right then it reminded her of her mother, the memory so sharp it hurt.
‘My granddaughter, the slut.’
‘I didn’t do –’
Mae wasn’t ready for the slap. It caught her so hard she dropped to her knees, her hair falling over her face.
She closed her eyes, counted, that’s what she did when she couldn’t take it any more. She counted, and each number brought her nearer to the end.
‘Who used a plaster? We had thirteen mediums.’
‘Stella grazed her knee,’ Mae said, the sting in her cheek brought tears to her eyes.
‘She fell?’
Mae nodded.
‘You have to take her arm.’
‘She hates that.’
‘Why are you on the floor?’
Mae took a deep breath. ‘I slipped.’
‘A girl died. Is that right? Mrs Abbott said it was Abi Manton. It couldn’t be, she came by here just last night.’
Mae felt her pulse quicken as she followed her grandmother towards the stairs. A dozen leaflets sat piled by the front door. A hundred more were plastered across the doctor’s surgery. Some nights Mae scanned TV channels, the high numbers rolled live every hour of the day with meditation techniques, deep-breathing exercises and mindfulness.
‘She said sorry.’
Mae looked into her eyes, trying to read her. ‘Abi said sorry?’
‘Yes. I asked her to come in. I wanted to make her a hot milk. That always worked when you had a nightmare.’
‘A nightmare?’
‘Poor girl looked scared to death.’
Mae stood there beside the peeling paint, her feet on the bare floorboards.
She cracked the door to her sister’s bedroom, took in the dark walls, the starred ceiling, the papier-mâché planets that hung from wire that criss-crossed the room.
‘Did you feel it, Mae? The earth shook again.’
‘Yeah, I felt it.’
They climbed from Stella’s window and lay on the flat roof of the kitchen.
‘You know there’s bunkers,’ Stella said.
‘I know.’
‘If you’ve got enough money, they’ll let you in. Or if you’re clever enough, or beautiful enough.’
‘That’s bullshit.’
‘Teddy Lawson said I’m not pretty enough. And his mum laughed at my clothes. They think I don’t know, because I can’t see. And he said Daisy wouldn’t get in because her daddy has a boyfriend. And he said –’
‘One, Teddy Lawson’s mother is a toxic dirtbag. And two, the way you look … your sexuality, your gender, they’re the least interesting things about you.’
‘The Prince family are building one,’ Stella said, excitement reaching her words. ‘Missy Wright lives next door and she says they dig all night long. You know his mother has gone.’
The leavers. Those who said their goodbyes or those that simply tired of the wait and disappeared in search of more. Sometimes Mae wondered what more looked like. Maybe it was a sailing boat in the South Pacific, maybe it was drinking yourself to death in a Vegas hotel room. Whatever it was, it had to be more than sitting in a classroom listening to a weary teacher preach ethics when they’d never mattered less.
‘Is it true there’s a dead girl?’ She was eight, too small to speak those words.
‘Yes.’
Mae glanced over at the flat roof next to theirs. She used to lie there across from Abi. They’d try and touch hands but the gap was too vast.
Do you think we’ll ever stop watching the sky?
Even if they stop her, we’ll still wish on stars.
‘Was it Abi Manton?’
‘Yes.’
Mae placed an arm around her sister. Small for her age. Stella wore dark glasses to hide eyes that had never seen, hair cut by Mae, a smile too big for their world. She chose her own clothes, the brightest she could find, a technicolour dream to Mae’s eternal dark.
‘Paint the sky for me.’
‘The sky is white tonight. The brightest white I’ve ever seen. And the stars are black, like pepper on mashed potato. And the moon … the moon is green like it’s grown grass.’
‘Green.’ Stella smiled.
The silhouette of her, too small, too breakable.
‘Sometimes people in class talk about the future,’ Stella said.
‘It’s like they don’t know. Does anyone not know?’
‘Some kids have parents that lie to them. Would you rather I lied to you?’
‘I think maybe Miss Hart has parents like that. She’s getting married in autumn and she tells us about her wedding plans.’
Mae thought of Stella’s teacher, her smile so fragile, like the coming days would shatter it. ‘It’s a directive. We choose to live. To go on like it isn’t happening, like Morales will save us. That works to a point, and then it stops.’
‘And then what happens?’
‘I think we’re starting to find out.’
‘Those men in the butcher’s. They fought over that piece of steak. Sometimes words are so hard I can feel their edges, their points and their sharpness.’
Punches had been thrown. It might be the last fillet I ever eat.
‘Will you go to the Final?’ Stella said.
‘No.’
‘Felix can teach you to dance.’
‘Felix is an idiot.’
‘He’s teaching me, for the play. I have to waltz with Prince Charming but Felix keeps making us listen to Barry White.’
‘You don’t need a boy to dance with.’
‘But it’s in the –’
‘Boys make everything worse, Stella. Never forget that.’
Stella nodded.
‘Cinderella, huh? They must think you’re pretty special if you got the lead.’
‘A blind Cinderella – they’ll sell more tickets.’ Stella reached out and touched Mae’s face. ‘Your cheek is hot. Did Grandma hit you again?’
‘No.’
She traced her small thumb across the tattoo on Mae’s wrist. ‘Can I be a Forever?’
‘It doesn’t mean anything, Stell.’
They climbed back through and lay on Stella’s bed.
‘Did you find Abi?’
‘Yes.’
‘Paint her for me.’
‘She was wearing white. Her brown hair fanned out. And she had this look on her face … like she was sleeping. But more than that, like she’d found peace. Her lips were curved into the slightest smile. She was the Abi you remember.’
‘Did her eyes look empty like mine?’
‘Your eyes are full of life.’
‘Was there a time … before?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Was it everything?’
Mae felt her sister’s small hand find her own. She wanted to tell her yes, it was everything.
Mae slipped into black jeans and a dark zip-top. She hid her necklace under a scarf, tied up her hair and buried it beneath a baseball cap.
Streetlights glowed as West slept. The zigzag of bats skimming trees, the distant wave of beach fire.
Mae walked down the middle of the road like the town belonged only to her.
Ocean Drive, the road winding above the town, each house punctuated by the water behind, so black it might as well be the edge of her universe.
The white house was the grandest on a street where grandiose was an art form. Each night she’d stop outside, lose her nerve and choose less intimidating prey.
The house had long been the subject of rumours. Three summers to build it, kids rode their bikes to the fence and looked on as fully grown trees were craned in. Stella said it belonged to a family of vampires, immortalists who thought nothing of burning millions of pounds before the place was decimated.
She found footholds in the stone wall, her arms strong, the muscles lean and tight.
Mae dropped down into another world.
Lanterns hung from trees that snaked up a twisting driveway.
She stayed in shadowed borders, rare flowers sweetened the air.
She passed marble statues of winged children.
A large fountain erupted in the centre of a sweeping carriage driveway.
The house could be glimpsed from the water, if you swam out to the second buoy, but here, up close, it felt as if the owners had dared to build something so beautiful it couldn’t possibly be destroyed, like the crime was too great.
A downstairs window was open to balmy night air.
She didn’t like to go in when people were there, but time weighed her down now, the press of each minute so acute sometimes she could not breathe.
Mae crossed fast and kept low, each step carefully measured. She pulled her scarf up over her nose, only her eyes on show as she climbed through the window and found herself in a home office.
Everything was so crisp and so startlingly white, from the walls to the carpets, for a moment she just stared.
Mae opened each drawer in a large white desk, found stacks of papers so moved on to the bookshelves. She carried a small bag and shoved in a laptop, stalled by a drinks cabinet, and then she saw it. On the bookshelf, the copy pristine, the half-naked lady on the cover, ‘D.H. Lawrence’ scrawled on the spine.
She lay unconscious of the wild little cries …
Mae remembered sitting at the back of the library, reading those scenes with Abi, both of them laughing so hard the old librarian shot them the death stare.
The memory was so vivid she didn’t hear the door open.
And then she turned.
And paused.
Frozen.
The boy stood there, tall and slim, full lips, eyes so dark she almost looked away.
She felt her heartbeat in the tips of her fingers.
I don’t want to be here.
I don’t want to be anywhere.
He wore a dark suit, white shirt and black tie, like he’d come straight from saying a final goodbye.
She heard noise outside and her breath caught.
He looked at her bag and saw the laptop poking from the top. There was a moment when he seemed to weigh things. He looked at her with such sadness she almost broke in two, then he’d see it, that she had nothing inside, no good or bad, just nothing at all.
She willed herself to disappear.
And then he opened his mouth to call out.
Mae moved fast and slammed into him, her scarf falling to the floor.
They fell back against the wall, her lips on his. She pushed her tongue into his mouth and grabbed a fistful of his shirt collar.
Hard and frantic.
As they broke she stood breathless.
A voice right outside. ‘Jack, are you in there?’
She tasted vodka on her lips.
Flecks of orange lit his eyes, like fire on the darkest night.
He reached up and gently took off her baseball cap.
Her hair tumbled down.
‘Jack?’
She heard the tick of the white clock on the wall beside them as she pressed a hand to his chest and felt the beat of his heart.
‘Are you in there, Jack? I heard a noise.’
He moved the hair from her eyes. ‘Yeah. Just looking for something.’
She breathed again, her lips inches from him, her breath warm on his.
Footsteps faded.
Mae backed away, towards the window.
‘You can’t take that,’ he said.
‘Watch me.’
She picked up the bag, climbed out and met with the shadows.