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  More people arrive and the house shrinks. It gets loud. Someone tells James that there’s nitrous upstairs and he takes Hattie and they go.

  ‘Ready?’ Aslam says. We’ve been watching two people flirt with insults by the TV.

  ‘Yeah.’

  I stand up and fall to one side slightly.

  ‘No,’ I say.

  ‘Yeah,’ he says.

  I right myself. My chest feels wobbly. I dig my fingernails into my hands until it feels like they’re going to go through the skin. It takes twelve steps to reach the staircase. Twelve tiny steps. When I arrive, I panic. I stare at Aaron Mathews’ shoes. They are white-and-blue Nikes. They are big. They are bigger feet than anyone I know has. I should make new friends. I should make new friends with atypically large feet and intimidating physiques.

  ‘Hi there,’ I say. I don’t understand why I said ‘hi there’. I have never said ‘hi there’ before in my life.

  ‘Hi there,’ Aaron Mathews says. He’s smiling. He looks at his friends and his friends look at him and they all do little laughs. I think about my bed and how I don’t understand why I’m not in it.

  ‘Hi there,’ I say again. I have no idea why I’m saying ‘hi there’. He should hit me. I would hit me. ‘Nice shoes,’ I say. ‘Very cool shoes.’ A reason I don’t like talking to strangers is because I find it difficult to simulate casual chat with them. Sometimes I memorise sporting news for use while standing next to men at urinals, checkouts and bus stops. Or quotes from films to fill in silences. But nothing seems relevant to now.

  ‘Are you taking the piss?’

  ‘No way, hoselay.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Um.’

  ‘Is there something you want?’

  ‘Are you Aaron Mathews?’ I say. I look up at his face and his face is scary so I look back at his shoes. His nice shoes. His massive, nice shoes. I wish his face was a pair of nice shoes that I could put my feet into and jump up and down in until he apologised for what he did.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Great,’ I say. ‘That’s great. Do you know Alice Calloway?’

  He laughs. ‘Yeah,’ he says.

  ‘Did you rape her with kisses at all?’

  ‘Did I what?’

  ‘Did you force yourself on her?’

  He laughs more. ‘Forced her off me. Little slut.’ He winks at one of his friends.

  ‘Great,’ I say. ‘Thank you loads.’ I turn and shut my eyes as hard as I can. I want them to stitch themselves shut. I try to walk back to Aslam with my eyes still closed. Laughing happens behind me. Someone shouts at me to fuck off. I think, fuck off telling me to fuck off. I think, where do I fuck off to? My body is as heavy as one hundred bodies. I feel like a magician who has accidentally sawed his assistant in half. I want to disappear.

  ‘What the fuck happened?’ Aslam says.

  ‘He says she forced herself on him. I’m going to go.’

  ‘Fuck that,’ he says. ‘He wouldn’t admit to raping her. It’s not cool any more. Go back and punch him.’

  ‘I think I’m going home.’

  ‘Fucking go back to him.’ He stands up and pulls me up and pushes me forward. I hold my sleeve against my eyes. I look behind me. Aslam’s leaning on the mantelpiece with his arms crossed, nodding wildly. I step forward. I have no idea what I’m doing. I’m a suicide bomber. I don’t believe in anything.

  I walk back to the stairs and stare at Aaron Mathews and lift up my hand. It has become extremely heavy. It doesn’t feel or look like my hand. Is it my hand? Probably, yes. I wonder where I should put my hand on his face. In films, people punch other people in their eyes. I don’t want him to go blind, though. That would be terrible. He would sue me and I would have to give him all of the money I got after Nan died. I should punch him in the forehead. I should say something intimidating and then knock him out.

  ‘You better get ready,’ I say. ‘Because at three o’clock today, I’m going to rape you.’

  I blink.

  Aaron Mathews punches me in the face.

  I can’t tell where exactly, but it is definitely the face. I fall over. Aslam jumps over me and lunges at Aaron Mathews. He grabs Aaron Mathews’ hair. I don’t think pulling hair is a very good fighting move. Jackie Chan never pulled anyone’s hair. I start to stand up and The Tiger knees me in the chest. That is a good fighting move. It hurts. Fireworks explode inside my ribcage. I lie on the floor and roll to the side and look upwards. The Aubergine is going through Aslam’s pockets. The Tiger tries to put his hands into mine. I grab hold of his collar and throw my head against his nose. It isn’t my head any more. It isn’t anything. I take Aslam’s arm and pull him towards the door and we fall through the door and we run up the hill, looking backwards. Nobody follows. Hard air collects inside me and burns. I imagine my legs falling off and my arms falling off and my dismembered head floating slowly up into the sky like a hot air balloon, clouds gripping the sides of my head, flashing planes reflecting in my eyes.

  We collapse onto the grass at the park and lie on our backs, panting.

  When our breaths are smaller, I say, ‘Thanks for trying.’

  ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘No,’ I say.

  ‘You made the purple one’s nose bleed.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘What was that rape thing from?’

  ‘Welcome to the Dollhouse.’

  ‘You have to stop doing that.’

  ‘People say things better in films.’

  He leans back on his elbows and tips his head. ‘I think he was lying.’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘What will you do?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ I tug handfuls of grass out of the earth. In the film version of right now, I would sprint back to the house, hoist Aaron Mathews up by his Adam’s apple and shake him violently until he confessed to lying. Then I would helicopter to Antigua and kiss Alice on the nose. ‘I’m sleepy.’

  3

  When I was eight, Mum and I climbed onto a train, fidgeted and napped for six hours, then climbed off again in a place with sky the colour of huskies and a long edge of sea. It was Scotland. Mum said that I had to stay with Nan for the summer. I was too young for clear memories of her before this one. Before this one she only existed as a collection of smells and feelings. Piss, tea, sugar. Presents, hard hugs, boredom.

  ‘Someone’s grown,’ Nan said, holding open the door of her cottage. I smiled. ‘Fat.’ She frowned at Mum.

  ‘Mum,’ Mum said.

  ‘Nan,’ I said. She pulled my face into the itchy valley between her tits. Her chest smelled of tea and old biscuits.

  ‘Ahoy,’ a man said, appearing at the end of the hallway.

  Nan had married a Polish man, who was twenty years younger than her and wore only England rugby shirts. I was supposed to call him Uncle Sawicka. When I shook his hand, he barely squeezed, like he was scared I’d break.

  ‘Someone looks hungry,’ Nan said. ‘Has Mummy been eating all your food?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘Mum,’ Mum said.

  ‘Nan,’ I said.

  Uncle Sawicka bought fish and chips and we ate in front of the TV. Nan discussed the royal family with herself. Mum asked Uncle Sawicka about Poland. Are they pagan? Do they like chocolate? Do they have gays? I chewed my toenails until I fell asleep, balled like a foetus in the armchair. In the morning, Mum woke me up, told me to be good, and went away.

  *

  Nan’s cottage wasn’t really a cottage, it was only called that because of how it was surrounded by grass and if you pulled the corners of your eyes upwards you could kind of see the sea. There was a caravan park above it and a university across the river. I mostly stayed inside with Nan. Even when the sun visited, grey wind scared away all the warm. We pieced together jigsaws of Scottish cottages and watched Murder, She Wrote and drank tea that tasted different from the tea at home. Nan took me down to the sea on bright days, but she got tired quickly and we spent most
of our time recovering on the rocks (‘on the rocks’ also meant when Nan wanted ice in her gin and tonic, which mostly she didn’t. It gave her severe brain freeze).

  Uncle Sawicka didn’t spend a lot of time in the house. Sometimes, when we met in the hallway, we’d pause and try to talk.

  ‘Heavy weather,’ he’d say, looking through the glass in the front door.

  ‘Yeah,’ I’d say.

  ‘Rain,’ he’d say.

  ‘Yeah,’ I’d say.

  ‘Hungry,’ he’d say, patting my shoulder and going through to the kitchen. It’s hard not to think that people who don’t speak your language are morons, even when you’re eight.

  After two weeks, we’d established a quiet routine. Uncle Sawicka and Nan woke up early, ate together, and he left for work. I woke up at ten, came downstairs, and ate whatever Nan had made (scrambled eggs, toast, cornflakes, or hot Weetabix). Nan read and I watched TV until lunchtime, then we visited the shop or the beach, then we napped, then Scrabble, then dinner, then bed.

  That day we ate without Uncle Sawicka. He was working all night posting computer parts to people who ordered them on the Internet. It was seven. The grey outside had gone black and light rain was prickling the windows. Me and Nan were watching a repeat of Bargain Hunt on channel 409. The electric fire was on and I was sitting close, even though I wasn’t cold. It was never allowed to get cold in the house. If it wasn’t warm enough, Nan could die.

  Blue team won, the programme ended, and Nan pulled herself up using only her arms.

  ‘Nan’s going to have a bath,’ she said. Standing in the centre of the living room, hands on her hips, she looked more solid than any other human I’d met. ‘Give Nan a kiss.’ I stood up and let her smudge pink lipstick into my eyebrows. ‘Another half an hour and you get to bed. Do your teeth downstairs.’

  ‘Okay. Night night.’

  ‘Goodnight.’

  She yawned, adjusted a shoulder pad, and went upstairs. I didn’t want to brush my teeth. I wanted to sleep. I waited a few minutes then followed her up and climbed into bed. Sleep wasn’t hard to find. It happened. In a dream, I was being chased by an army of Redwall animals. Stoats, ferrets, foxes and bears, with thin red eyes and oversized weapons. Along the River Moss, through the Mossflower woods. I could see the Abbey but it wasn’t getting closer.

  They were.

  They were almost here and –

  I woke up with wet hair and a room devoid of angry animals. Wind was nudging the window. My mouth was dusty so I knocked back the duvet and climbed out of bed. I itched my eyes. There was still a bit of scared left in me from the dream.

  ‘Nan?’ I said. She wasn’t awake. Baths make you sleepy, she taught me that. The warm makes your head slow down. ‘Nan?’ My door was open. It was always open. I padded along the hallway, trying to keep my sound small, which was easy with the carpet being teacup-deep. The bathroom door was framed with light. Nan might have fallen asleep in the bath, I thought. Which is dangerous. You drown. ‘Nan?’

  I pushed the door open.

  Nan wasn’t asleep in the bath, she was dead in it, balanced by the taps in a crumpled handstand. She was wearing green underwear and a flesh-tone bra. Her body looked bigger than usual. All the skin was piled up in one mound, sagging down over her tits and face, her grey legs pointed away from each other like TV antennae. They had the texture of kebabs.

  I didn’t run forward and hug her. I didn’t slap her face and ask her to wake up. I didn’t repeatedly say ‘please, no’.

  I knew Nan was dead. I’d already seen enough dead bodies on TV. This was exactly how they looked. There’s no fight left under the skin and everything flops, like a kite kept indoors. Everything goes where gravity wants because it’s waiting to melt back into the ground and come back as dogs and gold and flowers. We learned about it at school. Unless you quickly put electricity into the tits, a dead person is dead.

  Mum kept her voice calm when I called. She could hear the scared in mine. Talking was hard. My cheeks were thick with snot.

  ‘Darling,’ she said. ‘Listen to me. I need you to stay calm. Go and sit downstairs. Wait for Uncle Sawicka. Please, try not to panic. Have a biscuit. I’ll be there as soon as I can.’

  ‘What if. Mum. A murderer.’

  ‘Did you see someone?’

  ‘I don’t know. No. What if he’s hiding? Or invisible?’

  ‘Etgar, no one’s there. Now, please, go and wait for Uncle Sawicka.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Promise me?’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘I love you.’

  ‘Okay.’

  I hung up. I went into the kitchen and took two knives from the block. I turned on every light. I sat outside, to the right of the front door, down in the tall grass and the thistles, seeing bear shapes in the black.

  4

  I push open the door and the smell of shit climbs into my nostrils. Everything’s black. I turn on the lights. Amundsen has done two shits on the living-room carpet. I didn’t leave the conservatory door open. I kick him. He whines. Stupid. I open the drinks cabinet and take down Dad’s bottle of Famous Grouse. He only drinks whisky during sports finals, election nights and Christmastime, and he won’t notice, and if he does it doesn’t matter. I pour some into my mouth and it hurts. I turn on the TV. It’s a quiz programme. A man in a blue suit is looking into the camera and rubbing his hands together like he’s trying to light a tiny fire.

  In which film is it said, ‘Some dreams come true. Some don’t. Keep on dreaming’?

  a) Autumn in New York

  b) Pretty Woman

  c) Basic Instinct

  d) Runaway Bride

  I shout b at the screen. The man says he doesn’t know. I call him a fucking dick idiot. I shout b. I imagine Julia Roberts aggressively hugging me until my sides go numb. Julia Roberts shampooing my hair in the bath. Julia Roberts massaging my back, and purring, and reading out the Wikipedia pages of notorious serial killers to me, so that I can fall gently into a deep and dreamless sleep. I pour more Famous Grouse into my mouth. The man guesses d. I shout b at the screen. The answer is b. Alice and I watched it on a laptop while tenting under her duvet. The man is a fucking moron. The man laughs and shakes his head.

  I have an idea.

  I pour more Famous Grouse into my mouth.

  I go upstairs and turn on my computer. I play Salem.

  Kayleigh Evans just had a wicked night with Mary, Sarah, and Chris at Liquid.

  Miles Drinkwater passed his driving test today.

  Dannie Everton is now employed by the Queen’s Arms.

  Alice has used my computer to log into her Facebook.

  This means that her password might have been saved by autofill. This means I can get into her Facebook. This means I can find out if Aaron Mathews was lying.

  I get into her Facebook.

  Chris Parsons is looking forward to his London trip tomorrow. Time for bed.

  Dear Chris Parsons, fuck you. Nobody cares.

  Alice’s profile picture is her and her dad on the beach in Antigua. I think, where the fuck even is Antigua? I think, fuck you. Marie Denton is online. Marie Denton is Alice’s best friend. Marie Denton is grade seven on the clarinet and was briefly addicted to diazepam.

  ‘Hi,’ I say. ‘Antigua is fun. I am having an amazing time here haha.’ This is an accurate impersonation of Alice. She types that she’s laughing even when she is definitely not laughing.

  ‘Hi,’ Marie says. ‘Cool. You have Internet?’

  ‘Just for a minute. I needed to ask you something.’

  ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘Yes. Just I’ve been feeling bad about the Aaron Mathews thing. I’m not sure if I should tell Etgar the truth.’

  ‘Why?’ she says. ‘You didn’t even properly fuck him and you were drunk.’

  The feeling that happens in my head is the same as when you wake up after sleeping on an arm. A warm, staticky lack of feeling. I’m still for a little then I’m
not. The blood comes back.

  I think, fucking fuck shit fuck.

  I think, am I going to vomit?

  I’m maybe going to vomit.

  I throw my computer off the bed. I’m shaking. My heart is beating fast and my chest feels tight. I think, am I going to have a heart attack? I hope I don’t die of a heart attack. If that happens someone will say something retarded about me dying ‘from a broken heart’.

  I go into the bathroom and take the co-codamol Mum was given for her gout out of the cupboard. Downstairs, I break ten of the tablets in half and put them into a cup. My hands are shaking and everything is hard to do. Everything is heavy and slow. I add water and crush everything with the handle of a screwdriver. I take off my trousers and my boxer shorts and stretch the boxer shorts over a pint glass and pour the mixture through. A pyramid of white powder collects on top of the boxer shorts. Paracetamol. I throw it away. I drink the mixture. I hold my own hands to try and stop them shaking and my whole body starts to shake and I think I’m going to fall over. I go upstairs and lie on top of my duvet. Amundsen lies next to me. I push my face into his fur. A low moaning sound comes out of me and he does a little grunt. I think to myself, see you in the morning.

  5

  I wake up and sit up and shake my head. There are tiger cubs inside of it. Last night’s dream is still hanging around my eyes. Something about a bear and a basement. And Drake. Or Paul Rudd. A river. I don’t remember. For a second, nothing happens. My head is a tomb. And it’s one of the best feelings, next to paying with exact change and narrowly escaping rain. When you wake up and the people in your head sit still.

  Then it starts.

  Everything hurts.

  I want to vomit.

  I imagine never moving. I imagine a camera filming my body as it decomposes and the footage being sped up so that it looks like I’m being eaten by the air. Alice. Alice and Aaron Mathews. Aaron Mathew’s hand inside Alice. Aaron Mathew’s dick inside Alice’s mouth.

  Amundsen’s moved and is asleep at the bottom of my bed. His whole body is expanding and contracting like a slowly beating heart. It’s raining. It’s raining a lot. I push the duvet away and Amundsen flounders, appears momentarily confused, then gets to his feet and jumps onto the carpet. We stand at the window. I groan. I press my nose against the glass. Someone is hurling buckets of water against it, over and over. Amundsen licks my hand. I scratch behind his ear.