39

One day I was tapping my fingers on the radiator like a tin-ribbed xylophone. Its cold metal vibrated, left hanging robotic melodies in the air. Mum was cleaning, rarely rising from the mists of sprayed polish and only to wonder aloud about the whereabouts of Dad, who had only gone to Ellis’s store and should have been home by now with more dusters. The one in her hand splayed wet and limp and matted with swathes of black muck and hair. She barely applied pressure to it, just swept it back and forth along the mantelpiece.

I watched the particles of spray that kicked up into the air have tiny dogfights so intently that when the phone rang it was a firecracker. I answered it.

‘Get your shoes on,’ said Mal. ‘We’re going on holiday.’

Then he hung up and all I could hear was the telephonic purr of a conversation ended, and all I could feel was a rush.

Lou’s old blue car sidled up to the kerb, contoured with great silver scratches that ran in zigzags as though they’d been put there by the thin-tipped sword of a flamboyant matador. Mal was in the passenger seat, his tidy hair now a mess, baring his teeth like an excited chimpanzee. He was wearing Lou’s coat, a grand purple piece of cloth with three chunks of golden buttons at the top. I wished I could hide notes in her pockets. I climbed into the back seat, stuffing my bag into the well by my feet. Lou grinned and kissed me on the cheek. Her hand rested on Mal’s thigh and when he spoke she squeezed it.

‘Where are we going?’ I asked.

‘To the sea,’ he said.

The old car hacked, reluctantly pulling into the road with a spectral smoke path behind it. We drove past Dad at the end of the road. We pressed the horn and waved. I banged on the windows until the glass shook and the rubber around it loosened. But he didn’t notice. His chin almost touching the steering wheel. His thoughts not of the road.

‘Go on then,’ I said to Mal as we gathered speed. ‘What’s going on?’

I could feel all the bumps and jolts of the drive compounded in my buttocks, the springs stacked loose in the seat jabbing pins into the meat of my calf.

‘I’ve been sat in an office answering a telephone all week. A twat selling shit he knows nothing about to idiots who have no idea. Lou’s been counting other people’s money behind the counter in a bank and you’ve no doubt been fingering your way through the insides of a cow.’ Lou grinned. ‘I’m not going to spend the two days off I have a week looking forward to the five that follow, am I? So I thought we’d just get out of it for a while. Be somewhere new. See what we can find. See what there is to discover,’ Mal said.

‘Get drunk on the beach?’ Lou said.

‘Yes. For a start.’

Through the windscreen the sun cooked the soft hairs on our arms. She kept her hand tight on his thigh. He stroked the back of her neck. Even on the motorway and during the high-speed entrances and exits, the noise and the zipping-by.

When we arrived we parked by the ramp that the lifeboats use to enter the water. A large man and his friend were trying to sell cheap watches from the boot of their car, saw us get out and called Lou over. She went, not through intrigue but through politeness, and surveyed the range of tat he had displayed on a small rug. There were dank silvers and golds, like a collection of foils, worthless and gaudy. I followed her; a sensitive barometer for the out-of-place urged me to.

‘Any one you like, love?’ he said. His head was misshapen by bulging veins. All about him but his thin pink lips seemed brutish.

‘No, thank you,’ Lou said.

He held her arm just above her wrist. I was rooted.

‘Come on,’ he said, ‘I’ll give you girlfriend prices.’

His friend behind mooched. He laughed on cues but didn’t realise it, and behind his eyes he was replete. My fingers fidgeted in my hands. I looked to Mal but he’d gone to find a machine to buy a parking ticket from. I looked to Lou and he was still holding her arm. Not how Mal held it. She was brittle with fright, like he might snap her, and her eyes widened to invite me in but I was powerless and it was all so fast.

‘No. Thank you,’ she said.

She pulled her arm towards herself and stared. And he did the same but so much more powerfully. Because he thought he was a man, and because he thought that those not in his image were not. I was not in his image. I would never be in his image. My anger clogged my throat.

‘Come on,’ he said.

His face was up next to hers, his head square, blocky, twice the size of Lou’s. I saw his breath hitting her skin, refracting the day’s heat. I saw the missiles of spittle launched from his mouth, landing on her eyelids clenched shut, tight like bulldog clips.

‘At least give me a smile, beautiful.’

I burned a fury to see her wronged. A fog had befallen me and it was thick. I heard his friend laugh again.

‘Or a kiss.’

He closed his eyes too, and pursed his lips, and I wound up a coil of all the force I could muster, clasped my fingers together and pulled back my arm, ready to unload it.

Then Mal, Lou’s purple coat hung like a cape from his neck, his hair a blackened unruly weave, his shoes odd, stepped out smoothly from the afternoon as though he’d been there all along, part of the car or just of the day. He lifted one leg behind him until he was shaped like a bow, leaned in and kissed this thug full on the mouth in a short, quick burst. And he was the man, he with the least concern for any notion of how he as a man should behave. Before either of them, their heads like knuckles, could do anything about it, Mal grabbed the lip of the rug from the boot of the car and pulled it sharply. A hundred poorly made watches crashed into the cement and shattered in cheap shards.

Mal took Lou and we all ran together towards the beach. They gave chase but we lost them in their confusion. When we were far enough away, we stopped to quickly pull our shoes off and then carried on running, this time even faster, until they were gone. In safe distance, laughter having outfought the fear, Mal dropped the bag he’d been carrying on his shoulder and we sat to catch our breath, amazed and in love.