Lorali Read online

  ‘What? No!’ He shakes his head. Laughing but then confused. ‘He’s just normal Mr Harley. Why?’

  ‘All of these weapons.’ I point around us. Blades. Tridents. Strange forks. Spades. Bottles. Jars. Tins, probably full of potions. I make the boy laugh … I think. I remember his name. Rory. Yes that is it. Rory. I make him laugh. Rory. I like the ‘orrr’ sound of his name.

  ‘These are gardening tools. To keep the garden nice and tidy.’ He smiles. ‘That’s his garden …’ Rory points at the water. ‘Or your own private swimming pool by the looks of things.’ Rory laughs again. Then I begin to laugh at him laughing. I don’t know why but it feels like the right thing to do. Laugh.

  What’s a swimming pool? Opal has never told me that. I smell the cake. It smells of what cloud smells like to me. I look at him. He nods. I am worried that this substance will churn my insides out. But I bite into it just the same. I’ve come this far.

  ‘It’s birthday cake. It’s cream and jam.’ He smiles again. But I have already gone to another place. My eyes widen. Is this some weird drug like the seaweed Mum takes?

  ‘Whoa, are you OK?’ he asks.

  I think about what terrible grimaces I must be pulling to get that reaction. What’s a birthday?

  ‘Good,’ I say. The white stuff is all around my cheeks and all over my hands and in my hair. It is the best thing I have ever tasted. Blood rushing. Head hot.

  ‘Have you never had cake before?’ he asks me.

  I get nervous. Is cake a really human thing? Does everybody eat it? Would it show me up as a stranger if I say no?

  But I don’t need to. Our eyes lock. It feels like all of my life underwater has spiralled down a hole. Gone. And then we hear voices.

  ELVIS

  The girl is wearing my clothes and a BBQ cover sheet wrapped round her shoulders. She is shivering. It is only now that I have a proper chance to look at her: her hair is soaking and off her face.

  She isn’t from round here. No. She has these big sunken eyes that are blue … green with gold and purple flashes … almost petals … like tie-dye splashed through them. And long lashes. You can see the shades of colour on every strand. The same on her eyebrows, which aren’t like plucked or anything, but they don’t look scruffy or rank. They are natural, spread out, and suit her face. Her lips are plump but dry. Not sore. But she looks thirsty. They are red. Swollen. Like they’ve been stung.

  Her skin is even. Equal. Pure. Smooth. Creamy. Like a piece of furniture: a banister you want to slide down. It is no use shouting at her, asking her why she ran off. I don’t want to frighten her. I am still struggling to get the image of her naked out of my head. Her eyes when they watched me watching her.

  ‘Good?’ I ask her, laughing. I’ve never seen anyone enjoy cake like that before. I am sure she must be homeless. Or running away. I feel bad for her.

  ‘Very.’ She licks her lips and looks around the shed. I think she is scared of Mr Harley’s tools.

  ‘These are tools, to keep the garden nice and tidy.’

  ‘Tools,’ she says, nodding, licking her thumb of any remaining icing.

  ‘My mum reckons he uses toenail scissors to trim his grass, so I’m quite happy to see some actual tools, to be honest,’ I joke. She doesn’t laugh. I am terrible with girls.

  ‘Are you the government?’ she asks me suddenly.

  ‘Gover— No!’ I am shocked. ‘What are you on about?’ Keep your cool, Rory. You don’t want to intimidate her. I relax, ‘No. Why?’

  ‘The government don’t like us. That’s why they don’t want me here.’

  She’s crazy, isn’t she? No wonder I’ve not seen her knocking about. No wonder she was bloody naked on the beach. Oh, drop me out. I’ve landed a protestor. Or worse – a hippy.

  Or maybe she is just different, unusual. I drive my eyes into hers, trying to understand her. She is looking back at me, not faltering for even a second. My heart begins to thump. Hard.

  But then I hear a voice. Elvis. It feels like my whole life has suddenly spiralled down the plughole of the kitchen sink.

  How did he get past Mum? Then again, if anybody gets what they want it is bloody Elvis. The girl is looking at me with these eyes, like a child, looking for me to decide what to do next. I am responsible and she is reliant. I don’t want to hide her; I want her to feel safe.

  It also doesn’t seem like the boys are going to leave me alone today, Elvis in particular. Why did I have to be such a dick and send that text?

  ‘Stay here, OK? I’ll be back. I promise.’ I touch her shoulder. It feels right to make contact with her, familiar and exciting at the same time. Crouching, I sneak out of Mr Harley’s shed and slip back through the crack in the fence. Elvis is right there.

  ‘Mate!’ He grins like a TV presenter pretending to be your best friend – well, he is my best mate, so technically he isn’t pretending, so why does it feel so … forced? ‘Mate, I got your text. You’ve been quiet. What is going on?’

  This is the negative side of having people know you inside out. It’s great when you’re having a laugh but a nightmare when you’re sitting on a secret.

  ‘I’m sorry, El. I’ve had a mad day, my mum …’ I’m instantly annoyed at myself for bringing Mum into it; everybody knows that you’re only waking the devil when you lie about people’s health. Doesn’t stop me though, and Elvis needs convincing. ‘She’s not been great. She’s not sleeping, and she’s on these tablets and they are making her proper emotional so, you know, I’ve just been looking after her.’ I hope he buys this. It’s not a complete lie. To nail the coffin in I rub my eyes in exhaustion.

  ‘Ah, mate, on your birthday too?’ Elvis cocks his brow. ‘That’s tough. Well, let’s go out now, eh? Have a few jars?’ I can tell by Elvis’s smile that he doesn’t mean a few of anything. He is looking to get wasted. Like I had been.

  ‘I dunno, El. My mum, she’s –’

  ‘What? Your mum’s the one who bloody rang me!’

  ‘She did?’

  ‘Yeah, she called me to say you were on your way to meet us and that she would put twenty quid behind the bar for us. Isn’t that sweet as?’ Elvis’s eyes flicker as if he is already intoxicated, but that is just him, the wildness in him. ‘Course I was going to just not tell you and then collect the score off her later …’ He winks and elbows me in the ribs cheekily. ‘Then when you didn’t turn up I thought maybe you were up crying in your room. Can picture the scene, lights off, poor Rory, the rain coming down outside. I can see it all now! The plot thickens!’

  ‘Why would I be crying?’

  ‘Joking, mate. What is wrong with you?’ Elvis’s face falls. It is this girl. I was OK before she came along.

  ‘Oh. Sorry. I’m just feeling … I dunno.’

  ‘You’re getting well dry in your old age! How long have you been banging on about turning sixteen? Come on, baby boy, it’s your day!’ Elvis unzips his jacket and flashes me a full bottle of Jack Daniel’s. He looks like a dirty salesman but he does make me smile. ‘Yeah?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t want to leave Mum really.’

  ‘So why you coming out of your neighbour’s shed then, mate?’

  ‘I was … erm … telling Mr Harley to …’

  ‘To?’ Elvis looks at me as though he can’t quite hear me properly and wants the volume turned up.

  ‘To …’

  Elvis sighs, rubbing my arm in a manly way. ‘Is this about your dad? Did he forget again?’

  This makes me feel angry. Not at Elvis but the solid true fact that Dad doesn’t care about me enough to even drop me a card on my birthday. It fills me with rage. I realise there is only one way out of this today.

  ‘One.’ I force a laugh out. ‘I’ll have one.’

  ‘There we go! Bev might even be there!’

  ‘I don’t want to see Bev!’ I don’t want to see anyone.

  We leave for George Street; I pretend I can see the girl inside the shed, watching me leave. I told her to stay
and this time I think – I hope – that she will wait. I have to move forward. The clench of worry has already bitten me. Mum watches us walk past the house, smiling that smile that parents and teachers do, that patronising, I know you better than you know yourself sort of face, when really you know that they think they know that and the circle never ends.

  The moment we begin to walk down the hill I regret leaving the girl in the shed. I’ve already risked losing her once today. At least the rain seems to have stopped. For the moment.

  The guilt goes a little as Elvis brings out the whisky and we take turns to sip and wince as we head for the night, soundtracked to the memories that Elvis is reeling off of other nights like this. When really there has never been a night like this. Ever.

  THE ABLEGARES

  On a sea of carrier bags, used condoms and plastic bottles, Liberty gently rocks up onto the bay, a slush of grey bubbles welcoming her. She has landed. Momo drops her anchor and it hits the pebbles of Hastings with a horrid clunk. The rain has stopped. The clouds tear into scraps.

  This is the coast. This is where the cliff face has fallen. There are clumps of rock here. The big miserable face of land looms over me. The tremors pound. Lorali could be here. The town is hot. Warmer. Warmer. Warmer, boys.

  The boys step off one by one. Liberty waves them off like a proud mum waiting in the car for her sons to go off for a night on the town.

  Oska lights a cigarette; Otto fixes his hair with his ivory comb. The air is tight. Egor has a compass-like heart for instinct; he shakes his head. The seagulls overhead drift purposelessly, scrounging for grey odd ends of forgotten chips that don’t exist. The dreary, tinny nostalgic musical swoons from the arcades, groaning something miserable along the parade, the ripe heavy smell of hot fat frying hangs in the air. Sweet donuts overpower the smell of fresh golden fish. That and the melancholy plastic-pink mist of candyfloss. The boys stretch their young bones and, boots pattering, head to George Street. There will be a pub somewhere.

  THE SERPENT

  In The Serpent our age goes unnoticed by the stoned Australian backpacker of a bartender. His little friendship bracelets and aged festival bands are a greying muddy colour and keep nearly dipping in our pints. Maybe I am jealous. That he was brave enough to just up and leave home and start a life somewhere new. I always wonder how people who live abroad hear about Hastings anyway. Is it even on the map? And her. In the shed. Why did she come here? Of all places. Guilt fills up my throat. I shake her out of my head.

  Flynn enters the moment we text him to say we’ve been served. Flynn gets embarrassed easily and would rather stand round the corner, freezing his arse off and waiting for a text to give him the all-clear, than sit alone in a pub waiting for us or be turned away at the bar. Although it’s fair enough. Everybody knows he is underage – and if they don’t, they would be able to tell by his geekiness and the weird shy little way he carries himself.

  Already tipsy from the whisky, the beer floats on top. I sail. My head bobs about, light and loose. Elvis is budgeting the score that Mum put behind the bar, planning when we should switch to just Coke so we can add the J. D. to it ourselves, and although the girl is like a foghorn in my ear, time hypnotically sails away.

  The doors to The Serpent open. This time it feels as though they really open.

  There are five of them.

  ‘What the hell?’ Elvis widens his mouth but he’s too cool to act shocked, so he pours beer into it instead, like stuffing too many clothes in a drawer, and quickly shuts it.

  I can’t quite work out their age as they bounce past us, because three of them are completely clean-shaven, so they look really young, but they walk with such confidence – it’s as if they’ve rehearsed this entrance a million times. Then there’s this massive black dude hanging towards the back but his face looks youthful too and he has these proper kind eyes like a child, but he’s so big you’d think he was a fully grown dad. But he walks with such swag. The last of the five has a beard. I guess that gives something away. MAN. I would love a beard but I can’t grow one. Every time I try, these weak little hairs squeeze out and it looks like the grass did after the woman across the road found out her wife was having an affair and poured hot bleach on the front garden. As if people weren’t talking about them enough because they were gay. The grass singed. It died. That’s how my ‘beard hairs’ look. Like dead grass.

  It sounds proper mad but I can feel these blokes in the pub. Like, you know, when you get goose pimples and a sudden shudder. The three clean-shaven ones look almost identical – triplets, maybe? But certainly brothers. I’ve never seen triplets before. That’s a rare thing in itself.

  They look sick. Like, you know in those Westerns? Those films when a certain cowboy, the main one, walks into a bar and the saloon doors bash open and everybody stares, gawping, figuring out their next move. Well, it feels like that. The music in The Serpent is still playing but the sound drowns in my drunkenness and the madness of the moment, and my first thought is panic. And then the girl. In the shed.

  ‘I’ve got to go,’ I say and drag myself up from the table.

  Flynn throws me a look like don’t, because I know he doesn’t want to be left alone with El, and I frown because I can’t think what else to do. I’m full from the beer and am swaying.

  Elvis nods at the huddle of newbies standing by the bar. ‘What? You’re not actually interested in watching these nutters?’ He laughs all big as if their presence is a joke to him.

  ‘Don’t draw attention,’ Flynn mumbles into his drink.

  I find myself looking at their clothes for labels or brands to help me figure them out, but I can’t seem to find anything. Not a stitch that would give away who they are. They’ve got these insane haircuts – I mean, we get all kinds in Hastings but seeing them all together like this … it’s like some kind of weird cult. Crisp white shirts and suit jackets thrown over their shoulders with the one finger like a hook. Proper bossy. Dressed in immaculate sharp granddad shirts with starched, pressed suit trousers and braces. The works. Their boots are polished. Proper. I’d never get away with wearing them. I’d look like a right prick. I peer at their shoes again. So dapper. I briefly glance down at my trainers and sink into my chair; I feel young and a fraud. Like a sore thumb. Out of my depth.

  ‘Rory. Rory. Mate? You there?’ Elvis flicks me in the face. ‘You got a crush?’

  I throw his hand out of my face. ‘Shut up, El, what’s your problem?’

  ‘You zoned out there, mate.’ Elvis’s teeth seem to have grown too big for his mouth.

  ‘Huh?’ I blink and hold my head. ‘Did I?’

  ‘Proper. Like a zombie. They your type then?’

  I pull a face. I can’t be arsed with his nonsense.

  ‘You’re in a strange mood today. It’s shit in here anyway,’ Elvis grunts, trying to act like he’s not intimidated by them. I’m not falling for it.

  I watch the five of them; they still haven’t said a word, just quietly going over the wine list uninterrupted, like they understand every posh and confusing word written on it. I would never know what wine to order. The one time I took Bev to a restaurant (she would call it a date) she ordered a BOTTLE (who did she think I was, bloody Jay-Z?) of ‘house white’ and the waiter invited her to taste it and she sipped it like she knew what she was doing, but her taste buds must have been as dead as her conversation because it tasted like rat piss. Eighteen quid that bloody bottle of horseshit cost me. I would have rather had water but I had to drink it otherwise the waiter would have guessed we were underage.

  Flynn is glancing at the last mouthful of beer at the bottom of his glass; he has sunk that one fast. Fast for Flynn. He still hasn’t looked up. It’s like he doesn’t want to be recognised.

  ‘You all right, Flynn?’ I gently kick him under the table. He looks up briefly at me and then points to the wall, trying to distract us.

  ‘Can you see these marks?’ Flynn asks me.

  ‘What?’ Elvis says.


  ‘These marks here?’ Flynn touches a small row of inky marks on the wall next to him.

  ‘How drunk are you, Flynn?’ Elvis rolls his eyes and shakes his head but I can see what Flynn’s on about. Little engravings in the wall: racked up, like the measurements of a kid getting taller and taller.

  ‘Never noticed them before. What are they?’ I ask him. When Flynn notices something that’s it. He’s gone. His head is off doing some mental cosmic brainy shit that I can’t compute.

  ‘These are lines to record the sea, when the tide comes in. This is all the times the pub has flooded – these marks here show how high the water rose.’

  Elvis cackles, half of his head peering over to see what the boys at the bar are doing. He leans back in his chair to look like he doesn’t give a toss. ‘The sea is all the way down there. How’s it going to get up George Street and into The Serpent?’ Elvis tuts. ‘I mean, what does the sea want from in here? Half a pint and a packet of cheese and onion? You’re crackers, mate!’

  ‘Floods. He just said that, Elvis,’ I argue.

  ‘Whatever. Flynn, you’re just pissed. Why don’t you go and hang out with your gypsy chums over there by the bar?’

  Elvis always pushes things too far. Like now.

  Flynn finishes his beer. Stands up, grabs his coat, looks at Elvis and says, ‘They’re not gypsies. They’re pirates.’ And he walks out, leaving his glass rattling on the table.

  HOME

  After all of the rain, the sky is clear but moving, like the inside of a crystal ball. Like smoke drifting out of the end of a cig. Why did I leave her? What is wrong with me? How could I be so dumb as to risk her going missing again? I feel so immature and out of my depth.

  I race up the hill but my legs still feel a bit jelly-ish from the alcohol. What an idiot. I’m so angry with myself.

  I think about the blokes in the pub. What does Flynn know about pirates anyway?

  I sneak under the window. Mum has the TV on and squares of silver and blue are leaping across the patio from the flickers. Next I find the gap in the fence through to Mr Harley’s. The shed can’t be a hiding place forever. Mr Harley is an early riser, so I am sure he’ll be indoors but there are neighbours who love peeking into each other’s gardens from their own windows. And they’ll nosily be taking great pleasure in seeing what damage the storm has done. Wedging my way through, I begin to panic. Taking deep breaths I start to fear what I might find once I reach the shed. Maybe she will be cold and frightened …? Or maybe I was being ambitious … maybe I will find a dead girl … Or maybe she won’t be there at all.