ELLEN
The sun played golden games across the school grounds. Fluttered on the leaves of the gnarled, old oak. On the neat, lush summer grass, the tidy, clipped tennis courts and the flat hockey pitch beyond. On the rolling fields beyond the perimeter, dipping and rising. Ellen stood by the tree, looking out over all this. The scattered buildings around her, some wooden, with peeling paint, others modern, low and bland, seemed to be taking on a life of their own, sprouting, like grass between slabs, uncontrollable. The sight of them, glinting, ugly under the burning sun, filled Ellen with anger. She thought of her imminent meeting with the Headmistress and let her anger swell, tasting its delicious tang. She let a smile spread fully before turning her back on the knobbly old tree and hop-scotch sunbeams and stepping into school.
A sudden light rain fell. Silvery droplets, light like snow, sparkled, dancing in the rainbow arc of the lush-lawn sprinklers hissing in the garden outside the window. Inside, a barrage of harsh words, black and dense, were being hurled. They re-bounded off Ellen and her distant gaze and bounced away, bumpety-plonk, losing momentum and power as they rolled. Casually Ellen glanced down and saw the ugly words that had been spat at her gathering around the Headmistress’s spiked, yellow shoes, a growing pile, encroaching now up her stout, nylon legs. With mild disinterest Ellen slowly raised her eyes. Beyond the Head’s contorted face, the gardens swam, peacefully awash with colour, flashing enticingly behind the halo of perm and perfume. An ebony grand piano stood flaming in the rain. Through the privet stepped a woman, advancing across the grass on soft bare feet, long red curls and soft white cloth moving about her body. She looked serene. Ellen stared. At the piano, the lacy folds of the woman’s dress gathered in tumbles on the ground, her soapstone fingers ran as spiders. And the sound flooded in, pushing the cheap scented air, ploughing through the stream of anger, the airborne black of vicious language, sending it hurtling to fall heavily, scattered. The sound flooded in, beautiful and pure. And the woman squatted, eyes closed, her shoulders rocking, rising and rolling, as flames licked high, burning up the air, lighting her hair as tumbling fire. A ring encrusted, manicured hand slammed down hard on mahogany. The perm surged forward. The piano vanished as the outside world was eclipsed by a raging face.
Ellen ached again. A familiar feeling, the ache with no name came in waves that seized her heart and squeezed, producing, every time, a loneliness, like an afterthought. She left the dark, angry room and stumbled along the dim corridors until, at last, she was outside again, breathing great gasps of rain-refreshed air. Why were people forever telling her that she wasn’t good enough? Not polite enough, obedient enough, docile enough. Not trying hard enough. Not being someone else enough. Ellen saw an evil inside herself, a serpent coiled deep in her belly ready to lunge upwards, controlling the sounds she made as tart, stinging tongue lashes. But it wasn’t only others that felt its venom; her parents, that awful woman at school, the fools that walked beside her, staring. She too felt the dripping, razor tongue inside her mouth, swallowing hard and fast, retching on the sourness, gagging as it slithered jaggedly back down.
February 1995
Ellen picked at her chipped nail polish. Such adornment was forbidden at school, as were Walkmans and cigarettes but she boldly chose to flout the rules and carried these things with her at all times. Once, as she had been rummaging for a pen in her bag, she had accidently knocked her Walkman on and a sudden, tinny burst of music had exploded out of the earphones, startling her and turning heads in the otherwise quiet classroom. Thankfully the disturbance had gone unnoticed by the teacher and another day of music filled rebellion had been saved. The journey to and from school would be unthinkable without it. Without music she wouldn’t be able to shut out the dread and nausea and suffocating sadness that increased with every mile westwards. Sometimes, instead of gazing out of the window, she would watch the other girls, all identical in their uniforms, talking and laughing, some whispering, some desperately trying to win attention and approval, others wielding power, snubbing such pathetic behaviours. All of it made Ellen sad. Ill. The hierarchies and games and the bitchy little gangs. She hated them all; the conformers, the daddy’s girls, the money flaunters. And worst of all, the half-hearted rebels. So, she would adjust her volume to ear-splitting and angrily resume some waking fantasy as the bland, flat, winter countryside crawled by.
Today as she stepped off the bus and onto the gravel drive outside school, she was thinking of Sean and a party. But that was tonight, an elastic stretch of interminable hours away. Now, at her desk, she tasted the juicy knowledge that while all the others would be spending their Friday night doing homework or grooming their horses or babysitting, she would be catching the train to another dimension entirely. And she smiled at the thought, absently playing with a loose thread on her cuff. The others were all desperate for people to think they had boyfriends, that they were normal, not repressed, sheltered public schoolgirls after all. But none of them did. All they had was an awful lot of compulsive lies borne out of desperation and a whole heap of elaborate fantasies. None of them knew about Sean. And Ellen loved letting them think that she had no friends, that she was the sad, lonely misfit. What did they know?
Later that day, Ellen left her house and stepped out into the crisp, lonely dusk of a winter evening. Even the orange glow of the streetlight felt cold as she approached it. The night was full of empty silence. A car passed and its engine noise was swallowed up further down the road, leaving a more deafening quietness than before. Ellen kept her head low and her feet fast as she tried to ignore the cosy, log fire picture of domestic bliss in the pink cottage on the corner, whose open curtains always drew her eye. The pub on the opposite corner had already attracted a couple of lonely drinkers and, as she passed, and the door was swinging closed, Ellen caught sight of them, their backs to her, on bar stools, nursing pints of ale. Turning the corner, she hurried past the bright, neon Chinese restaurant with its steamed windows and enticing aromas. Then the row of sad looking charity shops and a more upmarket second-hand dress shop with a vile display of lurid, dated frocks in the window. Ellen broke into a run and, backpack bumping, dashed up the ramp onto the deserted, damp station platform. Fumbling in her bag as she went down the steps and under the tracks, she emerged on the other side clutching a slightly bent cigarette. With her back to the station Ellen leaned on the wet railings and looked out over the dark shape of the lake. Distant ducks shattered the silence with an outburst of flapping and calling. A private ruckus in the bird world and then quietness again until a buzzing along the tracks alerted Ellen to the approaching train and, throwing her glowing cigarette end into the night, she turned and waited for it to pull into the station.
Ellen stepped off again, into another dark, empty station. It was pretty, with tubs of winter greens beside each painted bench but, as Ellen stood alone on the deserted platform, it seemed like the loneliest place on earth. Shifting her backpack onto her shoulder she walked with purpose and hurried outside, searching the dark night for Sean’s face. A light, misty rain had begun to fall again. Cars swooshed past, their headlights turning the rain golden momentarily, their windscreen wipers sweeping intermittently. Ellen pulled her jacket closer around her body until, suddenly, there he was, striding, grinning, enveloping her in his arms and his delicious, unique smell. And at that dizzying, soaring moment, Ellen’s mood changed. The deserted station behind her suddenly seemed cosy and quaint. Over Sean’s shoulder, as they hugged, she could see a warm looking, well-lit pub and could hear laughter and voices as the door opened to welcome in another crowd. All of a sudden, she felt part of the world. She pulled away from Sean and smiled broadly, genuinely, crazily, into his face.
The party was already in full swing when they arrived. The street was up-market residential, dark and cold. Family saloons crouched in shrouded, tidy driveways; houses squatted, hidden behind hedges and trees. The music could be heard from halfway down the street, slicing cleaning into the night air. As Ellen and Sean approached the house, they could hear the scuffling of gravel, the stumbles of party-goers that had spilled outside. As they turned in and crunched down the drive, Ellen saw a familiar face, a girl from school, swaying wildly, a bottle of beer in her raised arm. A flicker of anger played at Ellen’s edges. Her classmates annoyed her with their juvenile attempts at drinking, their too-quick drunkenness and loud, sad displays. She rolled her eyes and grabbed Sean’s hand with her mittened one and hurried him through the open front door. People were passing each other on the stairs, stepping around or falling over those who had found them the only place to sit. The hallway was full of bodies, a constant motion. Ellen took a quick inventory of the party and, having ventured no further than the front hall, decided that this had been a giant waste of time. Suddenly Sean’s voice shouted out. ‘Sam. Hey, Sam’. A face spun round in the sea of bodies and grinned.
‘Hey. Sean, man. Good to see you. We’re in here.’
Ellen and Sean pushed through the thronging mass, following the broad form of Sean’s friend. Just as Ellen followed them through a doorway, the drunk girl from the garden pushed past her. ‘Ellen,’ she squealed, as she staggered, clutching at the door frame. But Ellen had turned away, ducking into the room and letting the door close on her before she could speak again. It was dim in the room and, with the door closed, peaceful, the party noise muffled. Elsewhere. The Orb was playing from a stereo in the corner. Ellen looked around, her eyes adjusting to the gloom. Sam and his friends were pulling beer from a plastic bag and flopping down onto beanbags and cushions. It wasn’t until Sean had handed her a drink and they had sat down on the floor together, that she noticed another person in the room, over by the stereo, a girl, rolling a joint. She was wearing jeans and an oddly dated jumper, soft and fluffy, all long strands of pink and grey. Falling over her shoulders were waves and waves of soft, dark hair. Her face was pretty. Part stoned, part bored. Ellen felt her fifteen-year-old anger and her torn cuffs and washed with embarrassment. She stared, flushed and hot, sipping beer and waited for the joint to circulate. Ellen watched as the girl passed it over to Sam, a slow, languid, movement which barely looked like movement at all; apart from the corkscrew of hair that slipped forward and swung into the gap between them. When she dragged her eyes away from the girl, she found the others all crowded round Sam. Laughter erupted, the music got louder. Sean shrugged at her questioning smile. As Ellen watched, the girl got up and, squatting on her heeled boots, licked the tip of her finger before placing it firmly into the paper in Sam’s outstretched palm. She leant forward and kissed him hard on the mouth. Then she stood and began to dance, towering above Ellen, her limbs tentacles, a soft, slow, seductive swaying. Abruptly, her dancing stopped. She looked at Sam who was lounging, legs splayed, on a sofa, smiling to himself. ‘Have a good trip,’ she laughed, before leaving the room. ‘Hey,’ he yelled after her, but she had already been swallowed up by the noise and tide of the hallway, the swell and chaos framed, momentarily, in the doorway. He waved her away with his hand and laid his head back, eyes closed, to resume smiling. Ellen began to feel restless. Her skin was clammy with anxiety. Every now and then she glanced over at Sean, Sam and the others, popping beer cans, their faces animated, stretched into grins, already writhing and rolling with consuming, contracting laughter. Ellen pulled a cigarette out of a box which had been kicked across the floor, flicking a lighter to it. She felt the heat, the organic movement of burning paper, the low, hot crackle and she lay back to breathe it in. The boys were uncontrollable now. Sean would be unreachable for hours now and she felt bored by it. Slowly standing, she made her way through the detritus on the floor, to the door. The assault as it opened was acute. A body fell heavily into the room. Ellen waited as it got itself together enough to stand up and she watched the tide of slow-motion bodies, squashed and squeezed into a throng, inch past her. Taking another drag on her cigarette she stepped into the crowd, pulling the door closed behind her. Her head was spinning as she battled her way to the stairs, no idea where she was going. Halfway up though and someone inching along the down procession on the other side of the stairs leaned into her ear. ‘Great acid, huh?’ Ellen pulled back to look into the face of the girl from the room. ‘I wouldn’t know,’ she mumbled but her words got lost. ‘Follow me,’ the girl said, grabbing Ellen firmly round the wrist and pulling her out of the grounded stair queue and slowly back down to the hall. They stepped stickily through the slow-motion mass, clutched together now by the hand. Ellen could feel every bone under this girl’s skin and yet her hold was tender and reassuring and Ellen stuck close behind her faithfully, trying to ignore a rising wave of loneliness. She was led to the kitchen, another heaving mass of hot bodies, a table cluttered with bottles and wine boxes. They inched through and out of a door at the back. On the other side they stood breathing. Then they both laughed. ‘Christ,’ said the girl, ‘That was hard work. God, I really hate parties. Don’t you? I’m Saira, by the way,’ she added not waiting for an answer. Ellen looked around. They were in a small square porch. On a row of pegs hung a collection of waterproofs. A red one, a yellow one, a blue one. Ellen smiled, wondering at this primary coloured family. Underneath the coats was a row of clean, new looking Wellingtons, stealing Ellen’s eye with their unbelievably shiny plastic. But Saira was walking away and Ellen grabbed her arm, suddenly fearful of losing her in this place. She was opening the back door and framed in its rectangular hole appeared a garden, dark and fresh smelling and quiet. Saira put her finger to her lips. ‘Shhh,’ she said tiptoeing over the threshold and onto the grass. Ellen felt a tremor of excitement clutch at her stomach. She shivered, looking around, confused. How could the party be so quiet here? It was barely possible to hear the music, just a low emitting bass line from far away. Suddenly there was a shout of laughter from the other side of a tall hedge and then quiet again. Ellen wondered how Saira knew this house so well but didn’t ask, just followed her across the grass and towards an impenetrable looking privet hedge at the back of the lawn. Ellen could feel her feet becoming wet as they progressed. At the hedge Saira vanished and Ellen turned, feeling stupid, back towards the house as if she were going to appear there, an apparition. There was a body framed in an upstairs window and Ellen felt in inexplicable shiver of fear creep along her spine. ‘Hey. You coming through or what?’ Ellen spun back round at the sound of Saira’s voice, confused, staring at the dense, black mass of greenery baring her way. An arm suddenly protruded from it, followed by Saira’s smiling face and Ellen, with relief, was led through the gap in the hedge to join her on the other side. They were on a huge, square, empty lawn, enclosed on all sides. In one corner there was a group of tall, imposing trees and to the left, tucked in by the hedge, something big and odd. Saira was walking towards it and again Ellen followed, unsure, her mind morphing this bulky shape from one unlikely object to another. As she got closer though she realised that it was, of course, a large trampoline, squatting spaceship-like, moonlight glinting off the tubular bars, frost glittering across the canvas surface. Saira was already climbing the ladder, a graceful, slow ascent, until she seemed miles above Ellen, left, dwarfed, down on the grass. As she watched, Saira stretched her arms to the stars and slowly began to move, rising and falling in slow motion above her. ‘Come on. Come up,’ she called, extending an arm down to the shrunken Ellen and Ellen obeyed, feeling the frosty bite of the ladder rails burning her fingers as she climbed up, to join this girl in silent, slow, synchronised jumps. Eventually she fell, panting, onto the black and lay there breathing and laughing. And then Saira was beside her, lying along the length of her body and they looked into each other’s faces, porcelain in the moonlight. Ellen was aware that there was a frost around them, the expanse of canvas beyond Saira glistened and sparkled, yet she didn’t feel cold. She felt peaceful. She turned onto her back and looked up at the stars, feeling their crazy presence, their wondrous existence, out there, blazing away above them. She felt Saira wrap her hand in hers, entwining their fingers, raising their arms so their sculptured, marble-like hands floated above them. Ellen turned her head slowly. To look at this girl again, to trace the ruby bow of her lips, the stark, dark hairline above her pale, creaseless face. ‘Who are you?’ she said softly, and the girl smiled, rolling onto her side, stroking Ellen’s hair away from her eyes. ‘Who are you?’ she replied, laughing. ‘Who are that lot in there? Who is anyone?’
The station platform was cold and damp. Although it was nearly midday the sky was still dark and brooding. The air felt harsh. The buildings were dirty and ugly. Ellen sat on a cold bench, her coat pulled defiantly around her. She lay long and low, her legs stretched out across the gum-splattered concrete, crossed at the ankle. A plastic bag blew the length of the opposite platform, tumbling bleakly. Bravely removing one hand from her pocket, she reached up to smooth Sean’s hat tighter onto her cold head and looked down the platform to the crumbling stone shelter where he was sitting, out of the wind. As she watched, she saw him emerge, a hunkered, weary figure. He was pacing, slapping his woollen hands together in flat, muffled claps. Tall, hairy, thin under his long, scraggy coat, his hair unruly, he looked old, Ellen thought. She thought of the phoney perfection at school with revulsion; the fashion-following, the neat hair, the manicures and she sucked in cold air, smiling at her crazy, unkempt boy, enjoying the dissolving sensation of her brain dislocating itself from all that crap.
The train ride was slow and quiet. Sean seemed distracted. Ellen slumped against the window as Van Gogh clouds filled the sky with hangover residue. She thought of going back to her parent’s house, overly tidy and tomb-quiet and could feel the suffocation of the place, palpably, with panic. ‘I’m not going home. Not yet,’ she burst out and Sean startled out of his funk. ‘Huh?’ In a sudden flurry of movement, Ellen reached onto the floor beneath her feet for her backpack and opened the side pocket, pulling out a crumpled piece of paper. As the stuttering train began to slow, Ellen was on her feet, animated now, pulling Sean by the sleeve. ‘I’m not ready to go home yet. Come on, come on,’ she sang, as the train pulled into the next station, until Sean sprang up too and together they fell from the train laughing.
‘Hi. Is that Saira? Hi. It’s Ellen. From the party last night. We were just wondering what you were up to. This afternoon.’ Ellen clutched the heavy, black receiver, trying not to breathe in its peculiar smell, in the vandalised phone box. They walked quietly, their feet hard on the cold path, frozen leaves solid in the gutter beside them. On Saira’s street, deserted hush lay heavily and they walked slowly looking for house numbers. As they approached Saira’s door at last, as they walked the concrete path and up the steps, glancing up at her windows, raising a gloved hand to knock, Ellen felt a surge of relief. Something like excitement or longing. A place of your own. The very idea shone like a beacon in Ellen’s mind. Saira opened the door with fumbling, deliberate movements and stood smiling at them, her hands outstretched and purple. ‘Come in. Come in,’ she said, stepping aside. She laughed as they stared at her hands. ‘I’m just dyeing my hair. Come up if you want.’ And she pushed the cold air back outside, closing the door with her foot and running up the stairs leaving Ellen and Sean standing in the hall, looking at one another. After a few moments Ellen walked, tentatively, through the open door into the living room. Her eye had been caught by the paint covering the walls. Huge sweeps of colour, a vibrant sun bleeding into violent, violet arcs and swirls. Holding her breath, she crept closer to the wall, captivated, until she heard Saira’s voice, calling above the sound of taps running, and she turned away. Sean was in the kitchen, opening and closing cupboard doors. ‘She said I could make tea,’ he said by way of explanation, as Ellen glanced in on her way up the stairs. She found Saira with her head upside down in the sink, spraying it with the shower head, and she stood for a moment watching the inky, purple dye frothing around the sleek, black curls. Eventually, Saira stood up and wrapped her head in a huge towel, already stained with previous dyeing attempts. Talking incessantly now, she walked past Ellen and disappeared into a bedroom, gesturing for her to follow. Ellen wasn’t really sure what to do once she was in there, so she cleared a space and sat on the edge of the bed while Saira talked, re-positioning a full-length mirror, plugging in a hair dryer. Ellen looked idly at the bookcase, at the piles of clothes on every surface. Then she studied the photographs tacked on the wall above the bed, swallowing hard on the bile of envy. There were postcards from all the coolest party destinations and photographs of girls in bikinis arm in arm with tanned, taut men. In the grey gloom of this town these images looked otherworldly, too impossible to be real. There were colourful, decorated letters up there too, full of friendship and love and memories. There was personalised artwork propped up against all the furniture and Ellen watched Saira’s reflection in the grimy mirror, in awe of the friendships she must have. It wasn’t until leaving the room that Ellen noticed, strewn on a small table, a letter from the Environment Agency, a noise pollution notification, a complaint from number seventeen. Underneath this was a disconnection notification from the phone company. Cool. Ellen felt herself smile inside, felt the tickle of excitement again.
They drank tea, listening to Bjork and it slowly got dark outside and with each dimming moment Ellen knew that she was closer and closer to having to go home. She confided these feelings to Saira, who was eating biscuits; her long legs draped over the arm of a chair and who said straight away, ‘Sod school. Stay here tonight. Stay here. It’ll be great.’ But Ellen knew, sadly, that that would never happen, knew that she would go home and would go to school, trussed up, miles away from here, in the morning.
The lawn was white and crisp, the air frigid, stinging. Ellen’s breath came in fierce clouds as her boots cracked the frozen grass beneath her. The wooden sleeper steps were coated in black ice and Ellen climbed them with care, her camera held away from her body, braced for a fall. Why the bloody hell was doing this anyway, she thought as she gingerly proceeded. Why, when she could be cradling another cup of tea before it was time to go, was she out here breathing in fire-ice air, feeling her fingers and toes numbing already. Ellen reached the top sleeper and stepped onto the ridge above the lake, which lay below her, milky and still under a thin layer of mist. Then, turning to the east she breathed in the sight that she had come out here to see. The most perfect winter sunrise splashed in quiet sweeps of colour. Her anger of moments earlier dissolved. She stood quite still, in the still world. Then, bringing her camera to her eye, she framed the sky and clicked the shutter.
A few hours later and Ellen was outside again, reluctantly dressed in the regulation tracksuit. The sky was white, laden and heavy above them, the cawing of a crow echoed emptily, somewhere nearby. They were a troop of identically dressed people, making their way across the hockey pitch, frozen and deserted now of players. When they reached the line of trees at the outermost reaches of the field, as far from school as it was possible to go before stepping back into the real world, they all turned onto the lane and began to jog, slowly at first, their breath mingling before them. After a while the eager ones, the athletes, the ones who cared what place they came in at, began to break away and were soon lost from view as the bends and trees and dips obscured them. But Ellen wasn’t alone in her reluctance to keep up. There was the usual crowd of overweight gaspers and precious preeners, gossiping and eyeing each other enviously, scrutinising thigh circumference, stomach flatness with their eyes while their lips smiled. Ellen looked to the sky and wished to hell that she could be anywhere but here right now, enduring this pointless torture. But suddenly there was someone coming over to her, somebody smiling, coolly, somebody saying, ‘Hey.’ Ellen eyed her suspiciously. ‘Hey,’ she said back, slowly. The girl’s smile stretched further. ‘You were at that party Saturday night.’ Ellen sighed and broke into a jog, leaving her standing there.
The week dragged its heels. Ellen moved between quiet alienation at school and silent disengagement at home. She talked to Sean every evening and they shared slow conversations, sprinkled with knowing laughter and it made her feel more connected to someone and more isolated than ever, knowing that across the frozen, empty miles, across the train lines and endless tail lights, beyond the fields and developments and squat, bleak industrial units, there was another soul, alone, longing for freedom too. Ellen’s drive came from the knowledge that this had to end. That she could rely wholly on time now, unstoppably taking her to the angelic, blinding light of freedom, shining at the gates of adulthood. This is what she thought about nightly, after she had said a reluctant goodnight to Sean, picturing him in his dark house by the river, miles away, listening to the sounds of rigging in the winter wind, shapes bobbing in the darkness, icy water slapping at their sides. And she thought of this girl, who she had just met, who was free. And she felt excited.
By the middle of the week Ellen couldn’t breathe properly in the house, was choking on the non-conversation that enveloped her. On Thursday it panicked her so much that she caught a late bus and stepped off in Saira’s town, breathing again. First, she breathed in the dark air, feeling intoxicated with being outside. Then she breathed in the thrill of adulthood. People moved about her, unrestrained, people for whom there was no longer such a thing as a school night, where every evening could be an event if they wished. Ellen looked into their faces as they passed, searching for comradeship, hoping for shrouded, knowing glances, some kind of mutual understanding. To her relief there were lights on in Saira’s house. As she turned onto the path, the front door swung open releasing a rush of yellow light and laughing voices. An older, blonde girl brushed past Ellen, their coat sleeves kissing. ‘All right?’ said the girl, before turning onto the street and walking away. Ellen looked up the steps and saw Saira framed in the doorway, a halo of lampshade hovering over her head. She greeted Ellen with a hug, nearly squeezing the air out of her. ‘Hi. Hi, hi,’ she said. ‘What a wonderful surprise. It’s so good to see you.’ She closed the front door and they stood in the hall. Suddenly Ellen felt unsure. She glanced around her. ‘How’s things?’ Saira asked, but without waiting for an answer she turned and walked into the living room. There were large sheets of paper strewn across the floor, some pencil sketches on each one. Ellen stood on the shoreline of the drawings, tilting her head to try to make out the marks on them. But Saira strode right across them and the papers bent and crumpled under her bare feet. Ellen’s head snapped back up in surprise but Saira was walking back now, right across her drawings, as though they weren’t there at all. She came close to Ellen, too close, and gripped her upper arms, her long fingers digging painfully into her flesh. She grinned into Ellen’s face. ‘You’ve come at just the right time,’ she said, still holding tightly to Ellen, who wriggled ever so slightly until the grip suddenly released. ‘You are an angel,’ laughed Saira, ‘A fucking guardian angel. That’s what you are. I’ve been going mad with these.’ She swept her arm over the carpet behind her. ‘I’ve been working on them all day. And last night too. And I just cannot get the right lines. You know what I mean? They just won’t do what I want them too. And it was starting to really piss me off.’ Her face had darkened, she seemed agitated and Ellen swallowed hard and felt uncomfortable, an imposter into something that she didn’t yet understand. She thought of the girl she had just seen leaving and fell further into confusion. Saira didn’t even mention that she had just had someone else here. She was thinking of something to say, some kind of response when, suddenly, Saira’s face brightened and she smiled. ‘The pub,’ she said, clapping her hands together. ‘Let’s get out of here. Away from these.’ She indicated to the floor again with a look of disgust. ‘What d’you say. Fancy getting out. Breathe some air. See some stars?’ And she was gone, into the hall, and Ellen heard feet running up the stairs. She stood, heart hammering and looked again around the room, at the mess. There was charcoal crumbled into the carpet and a bowl of cereal, dark and saturated, uneaten. She felt nervous, wrong. For some reason she felt scared. Not liking being left in that room on her own, she slowly followed Saira upstairs. As she approached the bedroom door, she saw Saira inside, in shocking-pink knickers, her legs so long and brown and thin it made Ellen’s stomach lurch. She was rummaging, back to the door, in a pile of clothes. ‘Come in,’ she said, when she caught sight of Ellen leaning in the doorway. Ellen felt her cheeks heating. She felt stupid and girlish standing there, watching someone get dressed. It was embarrassing. At school, a wrong glance would conjure catcalling for days, ‘Lezzo, lezzo,’ being hissed as the worst kind of insult. She moved awkwardly into the room, not knowing where to look, and perched on the bed, the same spot as last time, and when she looked back up Saira was standing before her, her hands on her hips, in short denim shorts and a bra. ‘Have you read that?’ she asked, pointing to a book lying on the floor by the bed. ‘This one?’ said Ellen, reaching to pick it up. Her voice came out dry and raspy. She quietly cleared her throat, turning the volume over in her hands. ‘No, I haven’t. Is it good?’
‘It’s amazing,’ said Saira, who picked a baby blue woollen jumper off a chair and pulled it on, freeing her hair from the neck hole. ‘You can take it if you like. It might just change your life.’ She winked at Ellen. ‘You ready? Shall we go?’ and she walked out of the room and down the stairs. Ellen sat for a few moments. She turned the book over in her hands again, sniffed its pages, looked around the room. Then she too walked downstairs, turning off the bedroom light as she left. In the hall, Saira was standing with the front door open. A freezing draught whipped her hair. Ellen was amazed that she was planning to leave the house in shorts. ‘Let’s go. Let’s go,’ Saira sang, bouncing in the doorway. Ellen picked up her backpack and stuffed the paperback inside it. ‘Ok,’ she said, straightening up. ‘Want me to turn these lights off?’ she asked, indicating the living room. ‘Oh, don’t bother,’ Saira replied, stepping out onto the front steps. Ellen stared at her. ‘Saira?’ she said softly. ‘Don’t you want any shoes?’
The glare of the pub was intense after the dark street. Ellen felt herself harden as she went in. She’d heard of this place, knew its reputation, had walked past many times but had never been inside. Everyone seemed to know Saira. Ellen looked around, cautiously, as Saira chatted to people. It was a depressed looking crowd; dishevelled and drunk and sad. It made Ellen feel uneasy. And very young. She tried out a few tentative smiles which were returned with stares. When they had drinks, Saira flitted about easily and Ellen had no choice but to follow. Most people she introduced Ellen to, but in an off-hand, almost annoyed way, that alarmed her. Her cheerful, hugging, friendliness of earlier seemed to have vanished. Most people would say hello or just nod with blurry, unfocused eyes. One guy though seemed more than interested to talk and kept Ellen trapped in his stream of slurred words, after Saira had moved on. He was big, with long, greasy hair tied in a stringy ponytail. He was wearing the tightest of black jeans and a battered leather jacket. Ellen could smell the thick, musty blend of stale cigarettes, beer and unwashed clothes, coming off him in waves. The skin on his unshaven face was dented with pock marks. She kept glancing over at Saira, waiting for her to realise that she had abandoned her to this creep, but Saira stood laughing, elsewhere, oblivious. Ellen tried to talk back to him, while trying not to stare with too much obvious disgust at his waxy, dented face. She remembered the way that Saira had greeted him, slipping her arm casually around his waist, getting close to that stench without flinching, allowing his cracked, anaemic lips to graze her perfect cheek without recoiling and she wondered why she herself was finding it so distasteful even to stand and talk to the guy. She thought about the idiots from school; the Range Rover brigade that she and Sean ridiculed. Maybe this was where she belonged, amongst these authentic trawlers of life’s underbelly, with grit between their teeth and pain behind their eyes. So why did she feel so uncomfortable? So fearful that any minute she was going to be exposed for the sheltered, public schoolgirl that she really was. Suddenly, and with a surge of relief, she saw Saira heading back over. And there it was again; her slim, woollen arm, sliding effortlessly around the waist of this man, under the hem of his foul jacket, above the waistband of his shine-filthy jeans. Saira smiled into his face like a daisy to the sun and Ellen could almost feel his crotch filling out and she swallowed hard and wanted to vomit, right there, onto his Doc Martens. Ellen began to speak, but her words came out small, too quiet to be heard over the music and the sound of one man’s lust, and they fell back quietly, like snow on wasteland. She looked at the clock behind the bar and quietly cursed. She had just missed a bus and the next would not be for an hour and she was stuck here, in this seedy pub full of hopeless degenerates. Of blank faces and blank lives. And Saira. Who was suddenly speaking to her, rallying her to, unbelievably, come back to this man’s flat for a drink? And Ellen’s protestations went ignored. The fact that she had come to spend time with Saira, she left unsaid. It fell silent, like all her words tonight but, to be honest, Ellen couldn’t be sure what, if anything, she’d actually spoken and what she’d just ranted angrily in her head. As Saira and leather-boy were laughing and meandering towards the door, Ellen frantically thought of what she could do in this town for an hour, at this time of night, on her own and none of the responses thrown up by her panicked mind were all that savoury. She downed her drink in one enormous swallow and hurried after them, following their laughter and breathy shouts across the road, watching the puffs of white escaping from them, like smoke. They cut around the back of another pub and across a deserted car park, edged with industrial bins, monstrous in the crisp moonlight. And then they stopped, and leather-boy was in the shadow of a doorway, fumbling with some keys. Saira stood behind him, rubbing her hands together, shouting, laughing, ‘For God’s sake. Come on. What are you doing?’ and her words erupted, hard and sharp in the silent air. They stumbled through the door and Ellen followed, the wall of stench nearly flooring her. A rancid mix of all things stale; food, clothes, bedding, cigarettes. Leather-boy’s one room was cluttered and cramped but Saira made herself immediately comfortable on the bed, pushing aside, or ignoring the filthy clothes and ashtrays. He took a seat next to the thinly curtained window. Music played, something heavy. They both spoke to Ellen sporadically, she perched on the edge of the bed like a spare part, but her head was full of booze and noise and some nasty, coursing sensation, like low-grade panic and she didn’t much feel like talking back. She smoked though. Constantly. They all did. She sucked on every passing joint. And waited. And Saira talked. On and on and on. About the police mostly; injustice, the establishment, and Ellen felt the contradictions grow in her angrily but was too far gone to speak them, so let Saira rant on, in the periphery of her mind and the dark, stinking room. At last she realised, with relief that she could go. Without even checking the way back to the main road she pulled her hat down hard and said goodbye. All the way down the stairs she could hear Saira’s babbling voice, loud and insistent. Then she pulled open the door and air washed her face with stinging, raw freshness and as she walked away from there, all she could hear was her own frozen boots carrying her towards ho
