Game Girls (6 page)

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.

* * *

A
LIX 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.

'Use both oars equally.' She cups her hands
around her mouth, calling to them across the
water.

She's heard Dad shout that at guests a
thousand times, but rowing is harder than it
looks, especially when the tide is really
running. Beginners usually give up and come
back in again, full of exclamations about the
pull of the undertow.

Dad used to row guests himself on a Sunday –
he even took Alix and her mum when they stayed
– but he couldn't do it now. Every step 'outside' is
a giant effort, her and Mum holding him up, all
of them drained – and somehow more defeated –
when it's over. Dad was ill before he was ill, the
disease already eating into him before the
symptoms showed. Fern thinks about how bad
things can be pulling at you, even when you don't
know they're there. The undertow of life.

They have a small shingle beach just to the
right of the slipway. Amongst the beiges and
browns, the sun catches now on a glint of glass.
It glitters up at Fern, bottle-green starlight
amongst the mud and stones.

She jumps down onto the beach, lifting the
glass and wiping the dirt away with her thumb. It
is smooth, hazy, beaten soft. When she was small
she used to pretend things like this were jewels
washed in from an underwater castle. She made
the castle once, all sequins and tinfoil, placing the
glass treasure in a magic circle round the outside.
She was the mermaid princess, the glittering
turrets her home. She can picture that Princess
now, diving deep into the silent depths, her long
hair streamed like reeds. She'd loved the silence of
this underwater fantasy. Loved the freedom as
she moved through it. In her real life, even now,
she cannot swim.

Pushing her hand in her jacket pocket she
checks her mobile for about the millionth time.

No messages.

No missed calls.

Loosening her mind to a fresher fantasy, she
lets herself imagine him coming to find her,
jumping down from the slipway, his trainers
crunching on the stones as he lands. She won't
turn round. It's more romantic for her to be
gazing out across the water. He'll stand behind
her and put his hands over her eyes just like
someone in a film. '
Guess who,'
he'll say.

'
I guess you,'
she'll reply. Her voice, as she
says this, will be dreamy and soft. And she'll
turn round and he'll be standing there,
probably smiling, arms stretched out to pull
her close.

And then she hears a car scrunch in round
the corner, and her loosened-up mind seizes
tight with panic. What if it's
really
him?
She squints in the direction of the sound. A
door slams. Footsteps.

'Hi.'

It isn't Aaron – it's Alix.

'Hi.'

'Thought I'd drive over and check that you
survived last night. Are you hung over?'

'I didn't drink much.' What did Aaron tell
her? Maybe it's him who really wants to
know how she is?

'I felt like death when I woke up. I'm never
touching alcohol again.' Alix wrinkles her nose
as she jumps down onto the shingle and stands
beside Fern. 'It's a foul stink today, isn't it? The
river, I mean.'

'The tide's coming in. It doesn't smell once
the mud gets covered over.' Fern fingers the
glass treasure and then spins it out towards the
slinking water. It falls short, vanishing beneath
the liquid mud. 'That glass will keep sinking
and sinking and sinking. All the way to the
middle of the earth.' She pictures the glass
sliding down, gathering slime.

'The middle of the earth?'

'Well – a long way anyway. I watched a dog
get sucked down there once. Its body was never
found. Gone forever. It's terrible to think
about, isn't it?'

'Terrible,' says Alix.

'Aaron . . . ' Fern turns to Alix, fumbling
through questions in her mind. Is it all right to ask
about him? Is it all right to look 'too keen' to
someone's sister? '. . . is – is he still at your place?'

Alix sounds bored. 'He went early. They all
did. They had a match.'

'Oh. Right.' Fern gets a dropping down
feeling. Sinking and sinking and sinking.

'I came to ask you something.' Alix seems to
switch back into a brighter mood.

Fern feels a fresh rush of heat. Has he sent
Alix with a message?

'I got some vouchers. Virgin Records. I
wondered if you fancied a drive into town so I
can spend them?'

Fern turns back towards the river. The yellow jacket
guests are under way now, already some
distance off. The sun splashes down onto the
water, sparking it with silver. Close by two swans
glide, one behind the other. Even a day ago this
would have been brilliant – the whole thing of
Alix driving over to ask if she'd go shopping.
Today it feels flat. A 'nothing' thing to do.

'Fern – did you hear me?'

Fern looks round at her slowly. She doesn't
want to go shopping. Not today. She wants to
lie in her room with the curtains closed and to
try not to think. The dinghy has stopped
moving, the guests dropping the anchor over
the sides. They'll be all right now. She doesn't
need to keep a check on them anymore.