Saltwater Read online

  34

  My mother started disappearing. She pressed a wad of five-pound notes into my palm, ‘For lunches and anything you might need. No sweets, mind.’

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘To a wedding with your Auntie Marie. Your dad’ll be here. Look after Josh. You can call me any time, day or night.’

  ‘Even the middle of the night?’

  ‘Even the middle of the night. But you should be asleep by then.’ She pulled me close to her and I gulped down the smell of her Elizabeth Arden make-up.

  When my mother was away the rules were relaxed. I could wear whatever I wanted and we were allowed to eat chocolate for breakfast. My father picked me up from school with his sunglasses on, blasting the Beautiful South from the wound-down windows. The other kids watched jealously as I flung my lunch box onto his back seat.

  One night as we sat down to eat our tea, my father solemnly served himself my brother’s hamster onto his plate. He picked up his knife and fork and made as though to cut off its head. Josh began to scream.

  ‘Lucy!’ he shouted. ‘Lucy! Make him stop!’ I rolled my eyes at them but inside I was uneasy. My dad snorted.

  ‘Hamster is a delicacy in loads of countries, you know.’ He held the quivering ball of fur in his palm. Josh’s wails made my brain pulse behind my eyes.

  ‘That’s not really funny, Dad,’ I said, lowering my eyes. I took the hamster from him and held it close to my chest. I felt its frantic heart thudding against my own. I returned the hamster to its cage haughtily and signed to Josh that it was all a joke. That tiny heartbeat settled in my bones for the rest of the evening, making me dizzy.

  I woke in the middle of the night to go to the toilet and found my father passed out on the sitting room floor in front of the fire, a can of Carlsberg leaking into the carpet. I picked it up and quietly stood it on the fireplace, leaving the spillage to seep into the rug.

  35

  I am becoming a person who does her own things. Things that no one else knows. Roller-skating down hills on one foot like a pink flamingo, daring my bones to shatter. Hiding in other people’s gardens, peeking in at the yellow fuzz of their teatimes through half-closed curtains. Scribbled stick-men on skirting boards and earrings stolen and tucked under pillows. I do things alone now, without you. I want to be close and I want to be distant. I push my fingers so far into the soil in the garden that the fleshy webs between them ache. I am seeing how far I can go.

  36

  When I go into a shop or garage to pick up firelighters or matches, people realise that I am a stranger. They zip up their raincoats and rattle their car keys. They look at me with interest and ask, ‘Who do you belong to, then?’

  Ancestry is very important here. It is something to do with the landscape. Sometimes the wind is so strong that it is a struggle just to walk up the road. The trees and grasses are fat and rubbery. It is impossible to snap their stems with your hands. They have evolved to be tough in order to survive. If people didn’t anchor themselves to something it would be easy to get lost in the scope of the sky and the sea. The links between families are lights strung through the trees in the dark.

  Most people I know in London are preoccupied with reinventing themselves. It is difficult to do that in a place where everyone can see your lineage. Are ownership and belonging inextricably bound? Can I belong without being owned? Do I have to own the things that belong to me?

  37

  I called my mother from the house phone the night she was due back.

  ‘When will you be home?’ I asked her. I could hear the thrum of music and glasses clinking in the background. Strange laughter leaked silkily into my ear as I strained for the sound of her voice.

  ‘Mam?’

  ‘It’ll be late tonight, Lucy baby. Tuck yourself into bed and I’ll be there in the morning. I love you. See you soon.’

  ‘Love you, too,’ I mumbled to the dialling tone.

  I burrowed into the centre of my bed and watched patterns bloom across the surface of my eyes as I strained to see in the purple-dark. I could hear my father crashing around, opening and closing cupboards. It made me uneasy. He usually spent his evenings smoking quietly in front of the fire and taking gadgets apart then putting them back together, listening to the Specials with the telly on mute.

  I got up.

  ‘Dad?’ I started, hovering around the kitchen door in my nightie.

  ‘What is it, Luce?’ he asked, rustling bin bags.

  ‘I can’t sleep.’

  ‘Go back to bed and give it a try, eh? Your mam’ll be back soon.’ A lit cigarette dangled from his lips. My mother never let him smoke in the house. There were coat hangers splayed in the hallway at awkward angles.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Just having a bit of a clear-up before your mam gets back.’

  I lingered.

  ‘Off you go, Luce.’ There was an unnerving brightness in his eyes. I felt something settling in the air.

  I woke to my mother’s hand on my cheek, cold and smelling of aeroplanes.

  ‘Lucy?’ she whispered, stroking my nose. I untangled myself from my sheets and turned to look at her. Her face was creased. ‘Where’s your dad?’ she asked. I shook dreams from my hair and squinted in the dark.

  ‘What do you mean? He was in the kitchen. I don’t know. I’ve been asleep.’

  ‘He’s not here, love,’ she breathed. ‘What time did you go to bed?’ I threw off my duvet and gave her a hug.

  ‘I can’t remember.’ My mother sighed and left my bedroom. I followed her, hankering after her softness.

  The hallway was bright after the dark in my room. The front door was open and the night crept into our house and filled it. I went to close the door and my mother came after me.

  ‘I’ll get it, Lucy—’ she started, but I was already at the handle. I looked out at the street. My father’s car was gone. In its place in front of our house was a pile of bin liners, dark and heavy in the moonlight. I looked at my mother. She seemed older than I remembered.

  ‘Come on, then,’ she whispered, taking my hand in hers. ‘Help me get them in, eh?’ I padded after her into the street in my bare feet, enjoying the tingle of the pavement between my toes. As we got closer to the bin liners I saw that some of them were split open. Her lacy knickers were in the gutter with the moss and the crisp packets.

  ‘Your clothes!’ I gasped. She nodded, sadly.

  ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘All my things.’

  I squeezed her hand. ‘They look so sad.’

  ‘Don’t be silly.’ She picked up her knickers and stuffed them into her pocket. ‘Clothes can’t be sad. It’s only stuff, you know.’ I helped her carry the bin liners into the house and hung her flowery dresses and turtleneck jumpers back in the wardrobe where they belonged.

  38

  I started secondary school, self-conscious in my too-long skirt with my too-smooth ponytail. I watched my reflection in the dining hall window as hundreds of kids shouted and pinched limp chips from plastic trays.

  Having a school bag was uncool. You were supposed to fold your exercise books in half so that they would fit in your blazer pocket, leaving your hands free to unwrap cherry drops or smoke cigarettes behind the science block. Rockport boots were for kicking people in the ankles as you passed them in the corridors, or if you wanted to be subversive you could wear a backpack with the straps lengthened to capacity so it banged against the backs of your knees. Charver or Sweaty, Griebo or Goth, Spice Boy or Skater. You had to choose your tribe and stick with it.

  Rosie and I lurked around the hippy shop in the shopping centre after school and bought a smattering of star-shaped studs to press into our tote bags to declare our side. They wouldn’t fasten into the fabric properly and they caught our skin, tearing fresh wounds in our hands whenever we reached down to get our Maths books.

  The PE changing rooms required a different language altogether. Shy of each other’s bodies, we kept our eyes on the ceiling,
not wanting to be accused of staring at another person, even though we were all dying to. Girls with soft bellies pranced flagrantly in neon bras while others with cautious mothers changed in and out of sports tops. Some girls took their clothes into the toilet cubicles and changed in there, while others rolled their eyes and whispered about them.

  Our PE lessons were comprised of shivering on the netball court, fingertips throbbing when the ball inevitably bounced off them or traipsing around the park at the back of the school wearing pedometers to record our progress. We quickly figured out that you could increase the step count by shaking them, so instead we sat on the benches in the cold, munching Discos and pinching tokes from each other’s tabs. I got into the habit of conveniently forgetting my kit every week so that I could sit in a warm classroom and dash out my punishment essay in ten minutes and spend the rest of the hour doodling flowers and surreptitiously reading my Kerrang! magazine, hoping that one of the boys in the year above would walk past the window and notice.

  39

  So many bodies. Bulges and lumps in places I didn’t even know about. My body is prickly and we are finding new ways to define ourselves. We cut our hair and roll up our skirts. We paint our nails and play with clear mascara, all eyelash curlers and lip gloss in the toilets. There are so many things we can and cannot do. You take me bra shopping and I pull off my top for the lady. My nipples are round and soft. I am measured by cold hands and we choose little blue bras to match my school blouse. No underwire for I am too new. You tell me no one ever did this for you, so you want to do it for me. Afterwards we share Thorntons toffees. We suck all the chocolate off in the car, our hands touching in the bag by the gearstick. You always let me have the biggest piece.

  40

  My friend Alex calls me from London. He swings his legs over the windowsill of his single room and smokes as he talks to me. I can hear traffic hurtling by on the road beneath him and his neighbours laughing and calling to each other. I sit in my garden so I can get a signal. It is so cold I am wearing three jumpers. London seems artificial and trivial when juxtaposed against the gnarled trees and the heavy, unmoving rocks. The sounds from Alex’s world set my nerves on edge, like a television left on somewhere, just out of reach. Alex tells me about his latest romantic endeavours, and I try to tell him about mine, but I feel strangely guarded. My world here is my own and I don’t want anything to shatter it.

  41

  At Easter we went back to Ireland. Josh and I watched cartoons from the carpet as Patrick glowered in his armchair, a nicotine stink coating his hair and settling in the lines on his face. Everything in his house was brown. The carpets were patterned in rotten flowers and the curtains hung heavy and tired at the windows. His furniture was made from cheap stained wood and crucifixes hung askew on the yellowing walls. I tensed my muscles under a scratchy blanket at night as their bed creaked and damp seeped through the walls. I read Jacqueline Wilson books under the covers until my eyes ached, painstakingly copying the illustrations into my fluffy notebook.

  During the day, Patrick sulked in front of the telly nursing cans of Guinness while my mother took Josh and me for long walks on the beach, zipping our coats against the wind and determinedly lighting a disposable barbecue in the drizzle. We sat in the boot with our legs dangling into the car park, eating sausages wrapped in sugary buns, our ankles prickling with goosepimples. We stayed out as long as we could and then crept into the brown house, clamouring for bubble baths to wash the cold away.

  42

  Things can break inside of me without me knowing. There is pain in places I have never felt before. I am brown and earthy and we are back in that deep, dark space together. You hand me sanitary towels, soft and strange, and tuck me up gently and explain about bodies. I am hot and sore all over. People treat me differently, in shops and pubs and post offices. They can smell the bitter redness in my knickers.

  43

  My friend Alex says that when he is romantically involved with a person, he gives them small pieces of himself to keep. He says he gives away too much of himself to others but I think that perhaps I do not give enough. I do not have a surplus of self. I cannot afford to give parts away.

  44

  One night Josh got carried away with his plastic boat and let the taps run for too long. The water spilled over the sides of the bath and pooled on the bathroom floor. It seeped through the floorboards and dripped guiltily into the sitting room where Patrick and my mother sat on the settee. My mother rushed upstairs and tried the bathroom door. It was locked and Josh couldn’t wear his cochlear implant in the bath, so he didn’t hear her. She rattled the handle, tensing at the sound of Patrick behind her on the stairs.

  ‘That’s fucking enough!’ he shouted, ramming the door with his shoulder. It burst open and Josh looked up at them from beneath wet curls, his pink mouth puckered in surprise. Patrick yanked him out of the bath by his arm and marched him into his bedroom. His slippery body slithered out of Patrick’s grasp.

  ‘Patrick!’ gasped my mother. Josh started to scream. Patrick slapped his bottom and the sting of it filled the whole house. He banged Josh’s bedroom door and turned the key in the lock, leaving Josh in there alone. My mother flew down the stairs after him.

  ‘How dare you!’ she shouted. The front door slammed and Patrick was gone.

  We packed up the car and left the next morning. When we were seatbelted in and ready to go, my mother handed me a small blue jewellery box. ‘Pop that through the letterbox, will you, love?’ she asked me.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Never you mind.’

  I did as I was told then buckled myself in, my stack of books for the journey heavy in my lap. My mother was thin-lipped. I knew better than to ask questions. I swallowed and opened my notebook as the pubs and bogs blurred into mountains.

  45

  I walk past the house I stayed in as a child, when I came on holiday with my mother to visit Patrick. It is empty now. There are broken Christmas lights hanging from the gutters and the garage door swings in the wind. Grimy lace curtains are heaped on the windowsills. I walk up the driveway and around the corner into the back garden. When I was small, there were wild kittens living in the turf shed and I balanced saucers of milk in my hands as brambles tore my pedal-pushers. The garden looks exactly the same. There are mouldy ropes lurking in the grass like snakes and a mildewed tea towel caught in the bushes, swollen with rainwater.

  46

  What is this little flower? White and creamy. Hard and guilty. Into the swimming pool where the sunlight dances, caught between schooldays and weekends. Caught between me and someone new. Surplus skin spills from the tops of school trousers. Little muffin tops. I didn’t know bodies were important until now. In the spaces where you and me used to be there is a new language. I watch you flick your hair and I push out my chest and you stand me straight against the kitchen wall to improve my posture. You explain ladies’ sizes and teach me how to hide things in layers. My nipples prickle inside of my T-shirt, pink with possibility.

  47

  I carefully noted my mother’s movements, storing them safely inside of me. I sensed that I would need them somewhere in the future. I watched the downward slope of her eyebrows as she checked her reflection in the rear-view mirror and the nonchalant arch of her hand in her hair as the guards at the ferry port checked our car for stowaways. I memorised the curves of her calf muscles and the Coral Kisses on her fingertips, chipped and bordered by hangnails. There was a wildness in her that scared me. I envied it. I breathed in her skin as she reached over me to grab her bottle of Diet Coke, flat and sour from too long in the car.

  48

  I try to remember what we were like here. My mother younger and full of fire and Josh with his angel curls. I think of Patrick in his lighter days, chasing me around the garden with a cigarette in his mouth, skinny and funny and spluttering expletives. I look for the remnants of my younger self through the window, curled up on a bed scribbling in a notebook or turnin
g cartwheels through the grass in a pair of denim shorts. I cannot find her.

  49

  When we arrived home, my mother couldn’t fit her key in the lock on our front door.

  ‘What the …?’ She jiggled it around, but it was no use. ‘I don’t believe it.’ We munched Skips in the car until the locksmith came. Josh and I squabbled on the back seat.

  ‘Christ,’ said the locksmith when he finally turned up. He looked my mother up and down. ‘Some bastard’s gone and filled it with superglue.’

  50

  I walk along the beach and watch the waves drift forwards and backwards then backwards and forwards. I don’t have a job. I don’t have a partner. I don’t have anything to anchor me anywhere. I make my decisions based on chemical impulses. I feel the pull of particular places in the lining of my stomach.

  Sometimes I ache to watch the afternoon leak onto a particular street or crave the sticky smell of a specific corner of a certain pub in a particular city. Sometimes, places I have never visited before take hold of me and I imagine I can see the light on the paving stones and taste the water from the taps. There is a lot of freedom in not having anchors, but sometimes I think it would be nice to have a reason to be somewhere.

  51

  I came home from school one day with something bubbling beneath my blouse. I twirled my hair in the steamy kitchen as I pushed my lips into shapes, trying to figure out how to frame the words that would give me the answer I wanted. In the end I just blurted it out.