‘Must be a grubby one,’ says Toe-rag.
‘Swimming in the quim,’ says John, opening the last beer. ‘They’ll wear the beach out,’ offers fat Colin.
‘Children,’ Caz’s friend says.
And they behave as if I wasn’t there, as if it’s not my sister who’s bonking the balls off their compañero. I drift in and out, flames flickering in my eyes, blankness, a sort of half-words, half-picture image of Jessie and Nick as a humpbacked whale – two whales, I suppose – humping on the beach, the pebbles rolling up and down noisily, knocking against one another, grinding in the wash of their sex – not that I know what it’s like. It’s hot, I know that. It’s sore, something is very sore, like my cock when I play with it too much. They’re burning up, Nick and Jessie. It hurts, I can feel the hurt, sharp and well-defined, small and far away. My feet are burning. That’s it, my feet are burning. I can smell the rubber of my sneakers smoldering. That bastard John has put my feet in the fire! I must be half asleep because it takes an eternity to move them out. It’s an effort of will – move, legs, move. Then they hurt more! I want to cry out, but that’s just going to give him what he’s looking for, so I grit my teeth and kick the shoes off. John watches me, laughing as I rub my toes, while Caz talks about the most disgusting thing she can think of to eat.
‘A shit sandwich,’ butts in Toe-rag.
‘Too obvious,’ reckons her friend.
‘Food,’ says John, his intellectual prowess clearly boosted by the pain he’s inflicted on me. ‘That’s pretty disgusting.’
‘Your prick,’ Caz says, looking at him, but perhaps I misheard, it’s not the sort of thing she would say.
And Jessie and Nick come back. I’m rubbing the soles of my feet, wondering whether the ocean would make them feel better or worse and not wanting to seem like a cry-baby when I’m already the kid here, though why should I care? They look the same, Nick and Jessie, except they look as if they’ve taken a drug none of us know about. ‘Give me that,’ whispers Nick, draining the dregs of the beer from John’s bottle. Jessie sits the other side of the fire from him, sliding in comfortably between Caz and her chum.
I feel sick. I’m not part of life, it’s not going to work for me. This is all my continuing punishment – my burnt soles, the fact that my sister hasn’t left me anything at all, she’s using it all up – life, sex, energy, despair.
I feel flat. Nothing. My toes hurt.
11
Five o’clock in the morning and we’re in deep shit.
It’s light, but the mist and heat are spongelike, wrapping around us, clinging to us as we walk the last half mile or so to the cottage, Jessie having thought better of it than to have Nick and the boys drive us to the door on their motorbikes.
‘We’re in deep shit, you know that?’ she says, the two of us united again now in joint defense of our misdeeds, except that I haven’t even enjoyed mine, whatever they were, and how can I trust her when she’s wrecked or is wrecking all our futures, even if the wreckage doesn’t show yet? ‘We’ve just got to stay calm and bluff it out. This is probably major coronary time. What did you tell Dad? How long did you say we’d be?’
‘I said it was just a ride, I didn’t give a time.’ I watch her. She’s not really bothered, she’s just going through the motions. Jessie can get away with anything and she knows it. Mum and Dad are going to be furious, but they’ll get over it and so will Jessica.
‘There’s death,’ she says when she’s reasoning her way through a problem, ‘and there’s being crippled or disfigured, but apart from that there’s nothing much, nothing much they can do to you.’ She doesn’t think in terms of humiliation. ‘Everything else passes. People forget. I do.’
I believe this last bit especially. Jessie forgets. She has a highly selective memory, good at remembering useful information but even then not infallible. She doesn’t care, she really doesn’t care. Even a grudge she might wish to repay, a score to be settled, will be forgotten if something more interesting comes along. She lives for the moment.
And the moment is now. We’re at the front door and Jessie looks wrecked, I hadn’t realized how wrecked until now. Maybe she did do something with Nick other than fuck him! But do they know about drugs down here? This is Palookaville, not London, where even your average council estate kid can tell the difference between smack and crack, between street-grade heroin and something special. Jessie has a thin smile on her lips and pink eyes, but perhaps she’s just tired and well-pleased by Nick’s attentions. Certainly she seems to have put our conversation out of her mind.
‘Look repentant but not too much so,’ she advises. She digs in her jeans for the key. There’s a gash on her mouth where I scratched her. And a series of red gouges decorate the calves of her legs where her jeans finish halfway down, which are nothing to do with me. ‘We just lost track of the time.’
If Jessie looks wrecked, Mum and Dad look worse. Mum looks pale under her tan, still dressed in the clothes she was wearing in the pub last night, any relief she might feel at seeing us totally wiped out by the anger which has kept her going until now. Dad has sharp grey lines in the skin at the corners of his eyes which normally appear only after a night up working or a night out drinking with his partners.
‘You two,’ Dad says as we walk in the doorway and they both materialize from the kitchen, ‘are spoilt little arseholes.’
It’s dark in the hall – the cottage seems darker than it ever does at breakfast time, not that breakfast time is ever this early – but Mum’s and Dad’s faces are clearly visible, their eyes raking over the two of us, checking us for damage, speeding ahead of their mouths in accusation.
‘What the hell did you think you were doing?’ Mum asks, staring at me but addressing Jessie, the older, more responsible one.
‘I’ll tell you this,’ Dad speaks slowly, trying to find the measure of his anger, close to taking us both and shaking us until it hurts either us or him, ‘if any of your motorcycle-riding friends comes around here looking for you, I’m going to take him off his bike and break both his bloody arms.’
‘Where were you?’ Mum has the aggrieved tone I’ve heard her use with her clients when they do a runner, fail to show up in court or for their probation officer. ‘Why did you turn your phones off? Your father’s been out all night, driving around looking for you.’
‘It was our decision,’ Jessie says, answering them both, making a show of strength which she knows will only count in her favor. ‘Well, not a decision really. We had a party on the beach. We just lost track of the time.’
‘It wasn’t much of a party,’ I add, seeing the next question forming on my parents’ lips. ‘We built a bonfire. And went swimming.’
‘Moron,’ Jessie whispers, crushing my burnt toes with her shoe.
‘Swimming?’ my mother echoes, a new look of horror transfiguring her face. ‘Do you have any idea how dangerous it is swimming off the shore here at night? What if one of you had got caught up in the current? Or swept against the rocks! What would you have done then? You couldn’t even see each other.’
‘There was a moon,’ Jessie offers, but she knows we’re just riding this one out.
And we’re still standing in the hall, no one’s moved, the light hasn’t been switched on, we’re locked in this tableau of recrimination, but the gears are changing, the initial anger is running down, we’re bumping toward a new area of judgment and penalty.