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  ‘Stop fighting me,’ I say again. ‘Don’t fight me any more.’

  ‘You hit me.’

  ‘You hit me first.’

  ‘Whatever.’

  ‘Wait, if I let you punch me in the face, can I go? Or I’ll lie down and you can kick me. I don’t care. You choose.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What do you mean, no?’ I lie down on the pavement and curl into a ball. I look into the nighttime I’ve made inside of my elbows. I’m safe. I’m lying in Mum’s womb as she reclines on the sofa, watching Escape to the Sun and being brought cups of ginger tea. ‘Kick me. It doesn’t matter. Beckham.’

  ‘I’m not going to kick you. Get up.’

  ‘No. You’ll just punch me. Kick me now. Wherever you want.’

  ‘Get up, you twat.’

  ‘Kick me in the head. Go on.’

  ‘Stop being a prick.’

  ‘Kick me. Beckham. Fuck me in. Bum me. Do whatever.’

  ‘I’m not going to bum you. Stop saying that.’

  ‘Break my spine. Sit on me. Jump on me. Bite off my ear.’

  ‘Just get up. Jesus.’

  ‘Will you punch me if I get up?’

  ‘Stand up and give me the ten quid.’

  ‘Okay.’

  I stand up and give him the ten pounds. He looks me in the eyes. I look him in the eyes too. His face isn’t scary like Aaron Mathews’. Maybe because I’m not imagining it nuzzling Alice’s vagina. What if they had a threesome? A Manson family drugs orgy. Joking. His face isn’t scary because it looks like Simba.

  ‘You can have it back,’ he says. ‘I don’t want it.’

  I don’t take it. I turn around and walk back towards home. I walk slowly and count my steps, making sure not to stand on sets of three drains because Aslam says that’s bad luck and I don’t want more of that or I do or it doesn’t matter.

  PART 2

  Wet

  13

  I came home from school, made tea and sat with Mum while she watched the news. The news said that young people were stabbing each other. In the gut and in the face and in the heart. They were dying. It showed pictures of their knives. All of the knives were bigger than mine. Some flicked out of their handles. Some were the length of babies. One was a samurai sword. One was a machete. I buried the butter knife by the dead apple tree in our garden and took a bread knife instead.

  They found the second weapon at school one day when Ellen Kane’s christening necklace went missing. She had taken it off for art. Mrs Layton wouldn’t let anyone leave the room until someone owned up and gave it back. No one owned up and gave it back. Mrs Layton told us to put our bags on the table. She came to us one by one and performed thorough and invasive searches. My hands were dripping. I asked if I could go to the toilet. Mrs Layton said to wait. I said I really needed to go. She said I really needed to wait. I said, ‘I’m literally going to shit myself’ and she gave me a detention. When she got to my bag, my knees were bouncing like basketballs and I was trying not to cry.

  ‘Get away,’ I said. ‘I know my rights. You need a warrant for that.’

  I had been listening to a lot of Jay-Z.

  She shouted. She made me stand in a corner.

  Then the bread knife appeared in her hand.

  Then I was sitting in the headmaster’s office, next to Mum, holding toilet paper against my eyes, promising that I was not planning to do a murder.

  ‘But why do you have it?’ Mr Keating said. He was rubbing his chin. ‘That’s what I want to know.’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘What are you scared of?’

  ‘Just scared.’

  Three days later, a policeman came to our house. He smelled of chewing gum, hair gel and too much deodorant. His hands were tiny and hardly moved. I talked at them, not at his face.

  ‘You’re not in trouble,’ he said. ‘But we need you to understand how serious this is.’ He blinked. ‘It’s very serious.’ (Later, I found out that school had suspected Dad of fingering me while I slept.)

  He asked me what I was planning to do with the knife. I said I was planning to defend myself. He told me that adults were there to protect me, and that no one can hurt me in school. I asked if he’d ever heard of Colombine. He said that sort of thing only happens in America and he told me not to do it again and he went away.

  ‘There’s nothing to be afraid of,’ Mum said. ‘You know you can talk to me about anything, darling.’ I turned the TV onto BBC1 because I thought it would be the news, but it wasn’t, it was a programme about antiques. I locked myself in the bathroom and lay in the empty bathtub for two hours, picturing myself alone in a spaceship, surrounded by slowly spinning purple galaxies.

  Mum reacted by saying that I could do martial arts. Ben Wheelan said there were kung-fu monks who can kill you without even touching you. That sounded like something I wanted to do. I went through the phone book and found a place run by a woman. I trusted women more. They can’t do rapes and their hands are smoother. I stopped going after two sessions because none of the moves seemed like they could beat a knife or a gun.

  Dad reacted by giving me a used copy of a book called The Worst Case Scenario Survival Handbook. It was supposed to make me less anxious. I memorised everything in it. It didn’t make me less anxious. It brought to my attention the almost endless amount of potentially dangerous situations I had to be anxious about. It said about how to deliver babies and cope with parachutes that won’t open. It talked about how to act while on the roof of a moving train.

  Junior school ended on a day without clouds and I stopped seeing Ben Wheelan. I got into a secondary school with an entrance exam. He got into a secondary school for people who sometimes hit other people.

  I spent the summer collecting slugs in plastic takeaway cartons, reading The Worst Case Scenario Survival Handbook, and stealing Dad’s beers.

  14

  At home, I watch my face in the bathroom mirror. It looks red and a little confused. There are no bruises yet. There will be. I’m Natasha Bedingfield. It will be okay. Mum will believe me when I tell her it’s from walking into a lamppost. Dad will think it’s from fighting and he won’t say anything but he’ll secretly be imagining the triumphant victory of his only son. A victory in which I break bones and spit blood between punches.

  I splash myself with water and go to watch television on the sofa with Amundsen. I fill a pint glass with cider. There’s a film on where Daniel Craig and Billy Elliot do Polish accents and captain a group of Jews who are hiding from the Nazis in a deep forest. They build huts and steal food and argue. There’s a lot of arguing. There are a lot of guns being fired and hungry people with mud-speckled faces. Normally, I only like films where nothing bad happens. Where you know that no one will die or get severely maimed or starve. Films like Love, Actually and Bridget Jones’ Diary. There’s no way that Bridget Jones would ever be raped and left for dead, so I didn’t feel anxious during it. I felt calm with alternating periods of amusement and sadness.

  I like the film about the Jews, though. I start to pretend that I’m one of them. I’m taking lookout duty late at night. I’m breaking into the ghetto to let the others know they can join us. I’m shooting Nazis in their cars and celebrating afterwards. It’s tough, but it’s what we have to do to survive.

  Eat.

  Hide.

  Kill Nazis.

  When it ends, I’m alone with a sleeping Amundsen, very drunk, and increasingly aware that I’m not the leader of any kind of uprising.

  Macy’s online.

  I carry the computer upstairs and climb into bed with it. I lock Amundsen out. I pull off my trousers and one sock, and bring the duvet up to my chin.

  ‘Hi,’ I say. ‘How are you?’

  ‘Hi. Did you get caught in the office?’

  ‘Almost. It was close. My boss was talking to me and my dick was out.’

  ‘That’s hot.’

  ‘Yeah. And dangerous. I could have lost my job, which I need to support
myself and so on.’

  ‘It was fun.’

  ‘I wish you were here. I wish someone was here. Or I was somewhere else.’

  ‘Bad day?’

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘Yes.’ I got punched in the face and mugged, quietly, like an elderly person giving out their credit card details over the phone. ‘Sometimes I think about finding a small, dark space and climbing in, and never coming out. Not for food or water or people or anything. And I die in the space, but it’s okay, because it’s just in the space.’ I’m drunk. I shouldn’t have said that.

  ‘I think about that too, but then I think about angry hands reaching in to pull me out, and it seems worse than never going in.’

  ‘I wish people would let other people hide.’

  ‘I’ve got kids, hon. I know.’ I try to imagine being permanently tied to two miniature humans who require constant amusement and affection. I picture myself lightly holding a roll of yellow tape, walking between trees, testing the strengths of various low branches.

  ‘That’s horrible.’

  ‘Haha.’

  ‘That you always have to be responsible, I mean.’

  ‘It’s like everything’s narrowed down to right now, and you can’t do what you want. It’s like there’s this point where doing what you want starts being selfish.’ ‘What do you want to do?’

  ‘Anything. I don’t know. Go somewhere hot and exotic, where I don’t know anyone. Somewhere with palm trees and cocktails. Learn the language. Get a bar job. Sleep whenever I want.’

  ‘That sounds nice. We should do that.’

  ‘I wish.’

  ‘Your kids will be fine. Kids grow up quickly now. When you leave, they’ll invent a new kind of social networking and become billionaires.’

  ‘Haha.’

  I don’t know what to say.

  ‘Where are they?’

  ‘Bed.’

  ‘That’s great.’

  ‘I think we should do a voicechat,’ she says.

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘Would be hot.’

  ‘I think my mic is broken. Or I don’t have one. I don’t know.’

  ‘Let’s try.’

  ‘Maybe later.’

  Macy is calling you. Oh God. She’ll be able to tell. She’ll realise that I’m a child masquerading as someone worth talking to and she’ll call the police. I’m shaking. I’m drunk. I press accept. A female voice comes into my room. It’s gentle and perfect, like the voiceover on a tourism advert for a country where people take afternoon naps and eat outdoors.

  I’m scared. The voice says my name. It says, ‘Are you there?’

  ‘My mic isn’t working,’ I type. ‘I am shouting into it.’ ‘Yes, it is,’ the voice says. ‘I can hear you typing.’ ‘Oh,’ I say out loud. ‘Sorry. I was scared. I haven’t ever done this.’

  ‘Your accent is sexy.’

  ‘Yours is nice.’

  ‘Don’t be scared. I won’t bite.’ She laughs. I try to laugh with her but it sounds quiet and stuttered. ‘You’re nervous. Relax.’

  ‘I’m trying.’

  ‘Big scary yacht thieves have nothing to be afraid of.’

  I laugh.

  ‘They get scared of extremely attractive Scottish women.’

  ‘I’ll protect you from any if I see them.’

  ‘Ahoy! You’s a one.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Um. Nothing.’

  ‘Will you describe where you are again?’

  ‘Okay, wait. I’m going to carry you downstairs. I need to get another drink.’

  ‘I’ll get one too.’

  I pick up the laptop and push open my door. Amundsen’s waiting outside. He rears up and presses his paws into my belly. I try to bat him away without making any sound. It doesn’t work. I whisper his name and flick his ears.

  ‘Who are you talking to, hon?’

  ‘No one.’

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘It’s my dog. Say hi, Amundsen.’ I let him lick my hand next to the computer.

  ‘Aw. Cute. Okay, getting a drink too.’

  I put the laptop on the living-room table and look through the alcohol cabinet. I’m bored of White Ace. Dad’s Famous Grouse is almost gone. There are two more bottles of red wine, half a bottle of Baileys, something lumpy and made of coconut, something called ‘grenadine’, sloe gin, sloe vodka, sloe tequila (all made by Dad for Christmas), and port. I decide I want red wine. People like red wine. One of the bottles has a church on it, the other has autumn leaves. I choose leaves, because churches are for people who are dying or dead.

  ‘Have you got one?’

  I jump. I forgot there was a woman here.

  ‘I’ve got one. Have you?’

  ‘Yes. Some good Shiraz.’

  I look at the label on mine.

  ‘I’ve got some great Cabernet Sauvignon.’

  She laughs. ‘You mean Cabernet Sauvignon, hon.’ She says it like Cah-bern-ey Soh-vin-yon. I said it like Cab-er-net Soh-vig-non. I said it correctly, I feel.

  ‘It’s how we say it down here. Aren’t cultural differences so interesting?’

  She laughs again. ‘Cute,’ she says.

  ‘Um.’

  ‘Tell me what it’s like now. You aren’t in your study?’

  I hold the bottle between my legs and uncork it. I take a deep swig. ‘I’m lying on the sofa in my living room. My living room is bare wooden floorboards, a Persian rug, a large television, and some erotic statues and other sexy things. The sofa is huge. It’s a seven-person sofa.’ That sounds too big. It sounds creepy. ‘A seven-children sofa,’ I say. ‘That’s a joke I like to make. I don’t actually have seven children. I don’t have any children.’ I think, slow down. Relax. Nothing bad is going to happen.

  ‘Haha. Okay. It sounds pretty.’

  ‘Your turn.’

  ‘Okay, well, I’m lying in bed with my black lace bra and panties on. I can see a few stars outside and what I think is a gibbous moon.’

  I have a boner already. Gibbous moon. That’s so sexy. I want to tell her to make sex noises but she is a fully grown woman so I have to be slow and seductive like in films. I have to make her feel special. I want to. I feel somehow that she feels like I do and that is how we’ve ended up in the same room.

  ‘That sounds great.’

  ‘What are you wearing?’

  I blink and flex my toes. I’m wearing grey, paint-flecked jogging bottoms and a t-shirt that says Malta over a cartoon palm tree.

  ‘White Y-fronts and a dressing gown.’

  ‘Maybe you should take it off.’

  ‘Okay,’ I say, my voice sliding up. I pull the jogging bottoms down to my ankles and cup my balls. ‘I did it.’

  ‘I wish I could see. Will you send a pic?’

  No.

  ‘Yes. Will you?’

  ‘Of course.’

  I turn on the webcam and step back to look at myself in the screen. I undress to my boxer shorts. My body is pale and lacking in muscle definition. It isn’t short, but my BMI is noticeably below average. When we have to line up in height order for school photos, I fall around the middle.

  By rolling my shoulders forward, tensing my neck and pushing out my jaw, I make my body look more substantial and alluring. It still doesn’t seem particularly alluring. It seems upsetting. I want Gok Wan to appear and tell me how beautiful I am. I want him to introduce me to new ways of thinking which make me shine like the star I am.

  I’m stupid.

  I’m nothing.

  I’m a slashed hovercraft, stuck in marshes, miles from the nearest town.

  Macy’s the nearest town.

  Macy’s Scotland.

  ‘Did you take one?’

  ‘Yes. Did you?’

  ‘Sending.’

  My dick beats. The woman in the picture has large breasts and well-distributed curves. Shafts of toned muscle divide her skin like sand dunes. She must work out on a daily basis. She must be capable of prolonged and rigorous sexual activity
. Once, I had sex with Alice for forty-five minutes. I was extremely drunk and failed to cum.

  ‘You’re so sexy,’ I say. I have never said ‘sexy’ in a serious context before and it makes me choke a little. I’m a person who says ‘sexy’ now. I’m a person who calls other people ‘sexy’. A little more wine, please, sexy. Okay, sexy, here you go. ‘You must work out.’

  ‘Thanks. Yeah. I like to run. Send yours.’

  ‘I look stupid in comparison. I don’t run. I should run. My body is ugly.’

  ‘We all think that sometimes, trust me.’

  ‘Okay.’

  I send it.

  ‘You’re sexy too. I love skinny guys.’

  And children?

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘So, are you going to turn up here any time soon?’

  ‘Um. I don’t think so. Scotland seems far.’

  She laughs.

  ‘Oh, you meant. Yes. I am. I am lying underneath your bed. I am pressing my face against the shape of your body through this mattress.’

  ‘Come up and kiss me.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Are you hard?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m wet already. I can feel it through the lace. I’m wet.’

  ‘I can feel it too. Against my knee.’ What? Against my knee. Jesus. Knees aren’t sexy. Say a different body part. ‘And my thumb.’ Good one.

  ‘Take off my bra.’

  ‘Your nipples are hard. I’m sucking and biting them. I’m squeezing your ass.’ ‘Ass’ is another very difficult word to say. Ass. Ass. Ass. I need to practise that.

  ‘Your balls are in my hand. They feel full.’

  ‘They are full.’

  A bit gross, but fine. Go with it.

  ‘I’ve turned you over and pinned you down.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Taken off my panties and climbed onto your face.’

  ‘Your pussy is in my face now.’

  I give up.

  ‘It’s so wet.’

  ‘My tongue is inside of you. It is flicking against that bean at the top.’ I can hear a wet slapping sound coming from Macy. The same sound is also coming from me.