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  He came to the door with her when Mum rang the bell.

  Gave her a hug.

  His lips brushed her hair.

  HIS LIPS BRUSHED HER HAIR.

  There was nothing else. There had been nothing else.

  Mum stood in the rain watching them both, and Fern nodded a hurried goodbye, then followed her down the path to the car.

  'Thanks for your company,' he called, as she climbed inside. 'You've been great.' The words dazzled her. Sparkled her.

  A sudden gust of confidence made her wind down the window, her hand waving into the darkness as they drove off. The rain blew in, peppering the dashboard. Mum glanced sideways. 'Fern!'

  She'd wound up the handle and stared ahead, the windscreen wipers swishing a slow frustrating rhythm. She wished she could have stayed with him longer; afforded a taxi; had the sort of parents who'd let her make her own way home.

  'Who was that anyway?' Mum said. The car hit puddles. Slowed for lights. Tutted its indicators at junctions.

  'Alix's brother. Aaron.'

  'He's older than Alix, isn't he?'

  'Yes.'

  'Is he . . . is he anything like her? In personality, I mean?'

  'I don't know. I don't know him properly.'

  'Alix isn't like you. She's a bit more – worldly. I just wondered if he was like that too.'

  'I don't know. I just told you. I don't know him properly.'

  Mum didn't say anything else but the silence brimmed with warnings unspoken. Don't run down the stairs. Always look both ways before you cross the road. Don't do anything silly.

  Now, still awake, it's 2.15 am. The night spirals on. No night has ever been this long. Where is his university? Sunderland? Surbiton? She did ask him but she's never any good at remembering names of places. She wonders if it's far away. Getting up, she pulls on her dressing gown, the pink fleece all soft and warm. She walks carefully – the night must always be tiptoed through, she should never disturb a guest. Soft-footed as a cat she pads to the window.

  The river is oily black and its skin shivers in the spittling rain. The green marker lights wink on and off and a couple of houseboats are lit by deck lanterns, but mostly everywhere is dark. A gull skims past, headed for the sea, its mewling call like a cry for help.

  Fern remembers the dog.

  She used to dream about it. Usually it was the dream of what happened, but once she dreamed that it came up out of the boggy riverbed. It crawled into the house, slinking up the stairs and into her room, dripping brown ooze and scrags of weed down onto the carpet. She knew it had been trying to find her. And in her dream she might have felt sorry for it except it suddenly broke out through its slimed-mud skin and it wasn't a dog anymore: it was a girl with her head thrown back in a silent scream, tiny slithering eels all splattering from her mouth.

  Fern shivers now and pulls the belt of the soft pink dressing gown tighter. She shouldn't be thinking of things like this. She wants her head just flooded with Aaron. Conjuring up the magic again, the memory of the evening stirs round her. It has been beautiful. Brilliant. Running back through it she makes it properly hers; pinches it into the shapes she wants. He chose to sit with her. There were other girls, but he stayed with her and even when he had chances to go, he stayed. A new mood bubbles up in her. She wants to laugh and sing and run outside in the rain and who even cares about the boggy brown sludge.

  * * *

  When Alix wakes they are both gone. She sits up slowly, remembering. Oh God. Oh no.

  Gripping the corner of the table to steady herself, she pulls herself out of bed and stands, wavering, on the crumpled Fern birthday dress.

  Struggling to keep her balance, she lurches across to the mirror. Oh God. God God God again. Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the most wrecked one of all? The glass answers back with silent disapproval. Her hair is wild, her skin blanched, her eyes hollow and strained.

  Two guys. God God God.

  She gropes for her robe, pulling it from the chair behind, wrapping herself up. The cool silk is comfortless. The embrace of a stranger.

  Heading for the window she draws back one curtain, squinting out at the day. It's dry now, the rain all blown away. On the drive opposite a man in a green jumper is pruning bushes, the shears making a heavy click of sound. Next door a woman pulls up in a black BMW, gets out, fires her automatic key ring at the lock. From across the rooftops church bells chime madly.

  So much noise.

  Too much happening.

  And Tom's four-by-four is gone.

  Alix turns back from the window, the glare of the day too light and too bright. She wants shadows and blankets. Hot chocolate. Dark corners.

  So they went. What did they think of her? What does she think of herself?

  Walking unsteadily out through the bedroom door, she checks the landing. The spare bedroom. The bathroom. No sign of anyone sleeping over. Not even Courtney.

  She used to like the quiet, but today she is unsettled by it.

  Downstairs in the kitchen dirty glasses crowd the worktop. Crumbed plates. A half-chewed pizza. She opens the fridge door and a can of beer rolls out. Someone has covered the chilli with cling film and crammed it in awkwardly, wedging it between a French stick and an unused lettuce. The smell assaults her and she turns away, all the plates and pots shuddering as she slams shut the door. At the sink she runs the tap, rinses a glass and then fills it with water. She drinks thirstily, the cold kicking her awake. She splashes her face, dampens her hair. More water. She needs more water.

  Still clutching the glass she walks slowly through into the front room.

  A window has been opened and a breeze filters in, shivering the blinds. Picking her way across the cushions and the debris of a spilt ashtray, she thinks the room isn't too bad. Considering. Just an empty beer glass on the shelf. Scattered CDs on the floor. The stain of something she decides not to investigate shadowing the far corner. And the presents.

  She knocks back the rest of the water, goes to the hi-fi and turns it on. She wants the company of sound. A band she doesn't know, which is too loud and too brash, bashes out something about shaking free.

  She keeps it on. The too-loud sound shakes the roots of her thoughts. Stops them from growing. She realises she was afraid of herself in the silent house.

  Kneeling by the pile of presents, she picks at them as if they are a meal she is being forced to get through. Love from Patti. Have a great day. Go for it, babe. A perfumed candle. A voucher for Virgin music. A sequinned picture frame. There are others, but the energy for opening them drains from her. She wishes Courtney had stayed over. Or even Fern.

  She keeps kneeling, her head dropped forwards, her hair swinging limply and covering her face. She is trying not to remember other birthdays.

  Mum always bought her birthdays – she paid for convenience; church halls, magicians and clowns, caterers, DJs. Parties were never held at home because Mum never had time to organise them properly. The guests were usually different from year to year – they hardly settled anywhere for long – and sometimes Alix didn't even recognise the smiling face above the proffered gift. But the Grand Opening of Presents was always made special. They got bagged up, packed in the back of whatever car Mum was having lavished on her at the time, and brought home to be opened as a finale to the day. And it was always a ceremony – an oohing and aaahing over endless trinkets and toys that would probably get packed off to charity next time they moved. Mum always said that 'things' nailed you down.

  Alix thinks now of the villa in Tuscany. Christmas will be best. Carlos will send you the fare. She pictures the baby. She gives it sly snake eyes. A too-thin mouth. There will be a string of new birthdays she will never be part of – that she doesn't want to be part of. She wonders if Aaron feels the same way she does but knows, almost as soon as the question rises, that he doesn't. Aaron will love the idea in his carefree, laidback way. He will be the one who visits. He will be the one who brings her news she doesn't want to hear. Photographs
she will scrunch up once he's gone.

  She has the strangest feeling, suddenly, of being cut loose. Spinning away. The feeling is so giddying that she has to put her hands up to her head, pressing her fingers hard into her temples as if this is in some way holding her together.

  The too-loud, too-brash music clicks to a stop and the new silence hums round her. She stands slowly; she has been kneeling too long and her legs have numbed up, pain needling the back of her calves.

  She needs to shower, sort her hair out, and wash this mood away.

  Stretching, she thinks the first thing she'll do is to visit Courtney at Easi Shop – after that she'll go on to Fern. She's got that Virgin Records voucher and she'll get Fern to go with her into Long Cove, to spend it.

  And maybe later they can both come back and help her finish up all the crammed-in contents of her fridge. No alcohol though. Absolutely no alcohol. She's never going to drink again.

  As she limps towards the door, a sound strikes up – a mobile is ringing, tinning out an alien tune. She scans the room, trying to gauge where it's beeping from. She shifts cushions. She pulls out the chair. Down on all fours, she pinpoints the direction of the sound at last. It's somewhere underneath the sofa. Crawling forwards, she slides her hand underneath, brushing away a few stray peanuts. A hair band. Dale's phone.

  She pulls it out.

  The mobile flashes as it rings, an on/off glow of light that makes it seem alive. The name on the screen is Tom. So is Tom ringing Dale, or is Dale ringing her on Tom's phone? Dale and Tom.

  The idea of them curls round in her head. Strangers who come and go and they don't mean anything and they don't want anything more than to fill the moment. Is that really so bad? The ringing stops, and the phone lies waiting in the palm of her hand. She doesn't call the number back. She needs to think.

  Whichever one of them it is that's calling, she needs to decide what it is she wants to say.

  * * *

  ALIX HAS SWUNG IN – sauntered in – to Easi Shop and stands skimming the Sunday papers in the rack next to Courtney's counter. She takes out the Sun and flicks through it. 'Global warming. We're all going to die – apparently.' She yawns, stuffing it back. 'If that's the case, we'd better all have a bit of fun before it's too late.' She pulls out the Sport, shakes it open it at the middle, and scans the centre pages. Then she shrugs her shoulders, stuffing that back in too. 'All rubbish. Who cares about boring people's sordid secrets.' She breezes a smile at Courtney. 'What's the worst thing you've ever done?'

  Courtney glances nervously down through the aisles, checking for Barry Ludd. Pumped-up self-important assistant managers don't take well to people messing up the papers without buying one. 'I slept in the garage last night – in my mum's car. That was pretty bad.' 'Slept' isn't exactly the right word. She'd shivered through the endless hours, her legs crammed up and cramped, her head angled awkwardly against the passenger window. She'd done it before – slept out in Mum's car – but she must have grown quite a bit since the last time. This morning her neck feels as if it is in spasm, the muscles all knotted and locked down one side.

  'Why did you do that? Sleep in the garage?' Alix steps back as an old bloke wheezes up with a tin of beans.

  Courtney's fingers are stiff and clumsy as she hits the till buttons. 'I left my key at yours. My whole bag. I had to beg to borrow a spare overall this morning. It hasn't exactly made me employee of the month.'

  'Poor you. It must've been grim.' Alix watches the old bloke wheeze away out of the door. 'Why did you go home anyway? You were going to stay.'

  Courtney wonders if it'll get back to Alix that she was so offhand with her brother's mate. 'I thought so too, but – I don't know. I was out in your garden and the next thing I knew I was headed home. Probably too gone on vodka to know what the hell I was doing.'

  'I'm with you on that one.' Alix gives a tight smile and studies Courtney for a moment. 'So what about Nathan?'

  'He was OK.'

  'OK? Is that all? Has he taken your number or anything?'

  'I wouldn't have given it. I didn't fancy him enough.'

  'Enough for what?' Alix's smile is coaxing now. Inviting sordid secrets.

  Courtney doesn't want this conversation. Not about Nathan. Not about anyone. She shifts the subject round, steering away from Alix's probing. 'I had a weird thing happen on the way home – sort of sordid. Or at least, a bit of it was.'

  'Go on. Go on.'

  'I got a bit paranoid – thought there was a nutter following me in his car – so I ducked into that phone box just down the road from me.'

  'Don't tell me – it turned out to be a Tardis and you time-travelled to another dimension, and then met a dark handsome alien who had his wicked way with you amidst the swirling gases of a distant land.'

  Courtney remembers the urine stench and the fractured windows. 'Not exactly.'

  'Well, at least you didn't get raped and pillaged and then axed to death, seeing as you're here now. So what did the nutter want?'

  'It turned out to be an old biddy wanting to know about petrol stations. But there was a card in there, tucked at the back of the shelf. Jasmine. For ALL your pleasures.'

  Alix raises her eyebrows. 'ALL of them? What an offer. A prossie then?'

  'They're always in the phone booths down on the seafront – cards like that. My dad had this huge campaign to get them banned once, but the police reckon it's impossible to regulate.'

  'Does it shock you?' Alix has her head on one side, watching Courtney closely, as if she is calculating something.

  Courtney busies herself tidying the counter. Rearranging boxes. Spraying the till buttons with Anti Bact. She has stood in that phone box too often – not recently, but not time-traveller years ago either. She has listened to the soothing 'Hello' of the Help Line voice. She has waited, never strong enough to speak, but praying, praying, that they'll trace the call. Out loud she says, 'It was just unusual. So close to home. And round there people are usually really stuck up – you know – think they're middle class.'

  'The card.' Alix is persistent. 'Did it say anything else?'

  'Just a phone number, and even that was smudged. The glass was all smashed and the rain had got in.'

  'Bet it's not her real name. Jasmine. But it must all work like a code. Secret messages. Guys who want the "service" must check out all the phone boxes. Was it a mobile number?'

  'I don't know. I didn't pay it that much attention. I thought I was about to be raped and pillaged and then axed to death, remember.' Barry Ludd has edged along Aisle Two and is making a show of ticking off stock from the shelf, but his glance keeps sliding round as he shoots suspicious glances at Alix. Courtney knows she'll be in trouble later.

  A man comes up with 'two for one' packets of cheese. Courtney scans them. Puts them in a bag. Agrees with him that it's a wonderful day – amazingly warm after all that rain.

  'You would have to have a second phone.' Alix is frowning. 'Just for business purposes. You wouldn't want anyone you knew to recognise the number.'

  A string-haired woman struggles in, a grizzling toddler hoisted on her hip. 'Twenty B&H,' she says.

  'Choclutt,' wails the toddler, trying to swipe at the rack of sweets next to the newspapers.

  'No. Stop it. Shut it.' The string-haired woman has gritted her teeth, rifling through her pockets, turning sideways to try and move the toddler away. The toddler flails her fists like a miniature boxer, lashing instead at a display of cola lollipops on the other side. The display wobbles, then falls, the lollipops rolling across the floor. The woman slaps the toddler's leg. The toddler screams.

  The woman glares at Courtney. 'You shouldn't put 'em there. It's wrong, tempting kids like that.' She waves a credit card at her as she talks.

  Courtney gets down the cigarettes and scans the code. 'Sorry. I'll talk to my boss.' She forces her voice to sound 'happy to help'. 'The customer knows best'. 'Anything you say'. 'Could you put your card in the machine, and pin in your number?'


  Standing slightly behind the woman, Alix pulls a face at her. Then she gathers up the lollipops, chasing them behind the canned drink stand. The toddler keeps screaming. Alix straightens up, glowing out a smile at her. 'I'll buy one for you.'

  Courtney hands the woman her cigarettes, and pulls the receipt from the till.

  The woman sighs. 'She don't deserve it.' But she takes the lollipop from Alix anyway.

  Barry Ludd sidles up. 'Problems?'

  'What's new?' The woman sighs, unwrapping the sticky red foil and dropping it on the floor. The toddler is making small bleating sounds. There is a bubble of snot on the end of her nose, and the woman wipes it with her sleeve. Courtney shudders.

  As they leave, Barry Ludd picks up the dropped lollipop foil. 'Are you in here to buy?' he says to Alix. 'Because if you're not, I'll have to ask you to leave.'

  Alix rolls her eyes at Courtney, then blows a kiss at Barry Ludd.

  His face burns crimson. He turns back to Courtney. 'Get rid of this.' Pressing the foil down on the counter, he strides away.

  Courtney picks it up carefully, trying to hold it with just the edge of her nails, and drops it in the bin beside her.

  She gets out the Anti Bact and wipes the counter again, and then uses the cloth to wipe her fingers. Will the chemicals eat away at her skin? She doesn't care. The layer underneath will be clean and new. No foul gremlin germs to seep inside her. She hates it in here, every single second of it, but she's got to stick it out. She needs to earn whatever she can, and there aren't any other part-time jobs round here. Not out of season.

  But one day she'll really be something. She'll get a top job doing something important and worthy and she'll drive up here in a flashy black car and she'll stick two fingers up at Barry Ludd.

  * * *

  Fern sits round the side from River's View, on the edge of the concrete slipway. She is watching two guests in matching yellow jackets try to navigate the dinghy out towards the middle of the river. It's warm again, last night's rain already dried away, so they're going off fishing. Dad's told them the best places, but they keep drifting back towards the mud-slugged shore, as if the boat is trying to force them home.