“That is true,” Miranda said, for want of any other comment. She was the something wrong. It was she who had fallen asleep and lost Lily’s life. Now sleep wouldn’t come anymore. Sade’s talisman was a thing worked against her.
•
During one English lesson Martin sat next to her. She was surprised; they hadn’t spoken properly since he’d asked her to the cinema months before and she’d said, rashly and unconvincingly, that she didn’t like films because they hurt her eyes. When put on the spot she became terrible.
At the end of the lesson, he put his arm around the back of her chair.
“It’s Friday!” he said.
“Yes,” said Miranda. “It is.”
She wondered when it was coming, the stupid thing she was going to say to him.
“Coming to the pub tonight?” he asked. “We haven’t seen you for ages.”
He kicked the back of Emma’s chair and Emma turned around. “Yeah, come,” she said.
“We’re underage,” Miranda said. Ah, there it was, the stupid thing. Luckily they laughed.
“She doesn’t want to come,” Eliot called from across the room.
“Yes I do,” she said, because she hadn’t been asked before.
She had no idea what people wore to the pub. She had better wear what she always wore. Later she hopped in and out of the shower, sent a hot iron skating over her black linen dress with the pouch pockets, brushed her wet hair and painted her lips with a bright red dot in the centre that grew outwards and dulled as it did. She threw rose attar over herself in a hasty splash, as if it were a liquid jacket. Then she stood, shivered, and sneezed. She would drink the juice of grapes, she told herself. From a glass. And be comfortable, and be liked, like Eliot.
Their group sat at a corner table, the girls all strawberry lip gloss, halter-neck tops and bare legs, the boys wearing so much gel that their hair didn’t move when blown on at close quarters (Miranda experimented surreptitiously when they had their heads turned). Everyone was touching each other, heads on shoulders, arms around waists, and all she could smell was skin and smoke. She could hardly see — the world was fogged over.
Emma was kind, asking her neutral questions about music and TV from her precarious position on the lap of a boy called Josh. But it soon became clear that Miranda didn’t watch TV, and had no opinion on any record released after 1969. Eliot sighed, got up and added a song to the jukebox selection, then went to play snooker. A few of the others got up and followed him about like ducklings. Martin stayed and spoke to her and she thought, Help, I will die, and struggled out of the corner, asking if anyone wanted anything from the bar. It was as if she hadn’t spoken. Finally: “You’re alright,” Emma said. Josh kissed her shoulder, and she squirmed and giggled.
Miranda went and sat down at the bar. She asked for peanuts and made a circle with them in an ashtray. A vaguely familiar boy turned to her and said: “Miranda. How are you doing?”
It took her a moment to place him. Jalil. They had had once done a presentation to their class on Lamia. She had liked the air of fey tragedy about him, his wide eyes and artfully mussed hair. Once she knew who he was, she smiled at him.
“I’m fine,” she said.
“You’re feeling better now, yeah?”
“Weren’t you in my English class?”
“I dropped English. For economics.” He groaned and stared into his pint. “So neekish to be talking about this. Change the subject.”
“What is your opinion on curses?”
“What?”
“For example, do they really persist unto the third generation?”
As if watching a slide show, she saw a series of gashes on arms and faces. They emerged so naturally and normally that she wasn’t sure whether she was seeing them in conjunction with her view of the smoky room, or whether the gashes were all she could see. They were of different shapes and sizes. They were healing over, the new skin shuddering over the blood like intricate lace. She was fascinated. She was falling asleep. To wake herself up, she reached for the circle of flesh beneath Lily’s wristwatch and pinched it.
Unexpectedly, he smiled. “Can I buy you a drink?”
She shook her head. He offered to show her a strange thing he could do instead. With an expression of the utmost gravity, he planted his hand on the table and swivelled his wrist 360 degrees without changing the position of his hand. All this without audible sign, as if his bones were oiled. Miranda squeaked obligingly. He relaxed, looked pleased and sat back on his stool. She noticed his jacket was hooded.
“Pull your hood up,” she said.
He looked around the room. “Why?
“I just want to see.”
Half smiling, waiting for the joke to catch up with him, he pulled his hood up. Its shape around his head was lumpen. It was obviously the first time he’d ever pulled this hood up over his head. He looked at her and said, “Anything else?”
Would he let her? She kissed him, gently, tentatively at first, her hand cupping his face, her fingers inside the heavy cotton of his hood. When he opened his mouth for her tongue, she drew him up and closer to her, pushing his hood back and using his hair like a leash until she could bring him no closer. Someone in the group she had left shouted, “Get a room, will you?”
She took Jalil’s hand and held it, pretending, for a minute, to be in love. She looked attentively at him. Open pores grained his skin, and the shade of its brown varied from forehead to neck. He didn’t know what to make of her staring and stirred uncomfortably. She was holding the hand he’d have used to lift his pint. When she said she was going home, he offered to walk her back.
“It’s fine,” she said, and got off her stool.
“But it’s dark,” Jalil protested.
“It’s fine,” Miranda said again. She was already walking away. Jalil wrapped an arm around her waist and tried, awkwardly, to kiss her goodbye, but she stepped away politely. She didn’t want to anymore.
•
I’d written to lots of media training schemes and independent film companies trying to get a placement for the summer, for the majority of my year out, if possible. I didn’t particularly want to travel; there was nowhere I wanted to go. But I couldn’t stay. So I’d applied to things in as many different places as possible and hoped that ultimately wherever I had to go, it would be because of work. As long as English was spoken there, wherever it was, I’d go. One morning a couple of weeks into the new year I got lots of letters back and sat on the staircase, shuffling through them, looking for something encouraging. Most of them were “no”s.
Emma texted me: Jean de Bergieres — they searched for her in the oven(!) and found her in the attic…
I texted back: And what did they do when they found her?
Her: Raped her — seven of them.
Me: O no!
Her: Breathe. This was in 14thC France. Church had outlawed brothels and locals were desperate.
Me: Actually just about to commit a couple of v brutal crimes. Wld be helpful to see them put into historical context first.
Her: I miss you. Also miss my hair. Can we forget drunk pre-Christmas stupidness (mine)?
One of the houseguests wandered out of the dining room and said to me, “Something’s burning…?”
As soon as she said it, I smelt it. In fact I’d been sitting in a cloud of smoke; ridges of it drifted around my head as I moved, like a blurred fingerprint.