turn and shut my eyes as hard as I can. I want them to stitch themselves shut. I try to walk back to Aslam with my eyes still closed. Laughing happens behind me. Someone shouts at me to fuck off. I think, fuck off telling me to fuck off. I think, where do I fuck off to? My body is as heavy as one hundred bodies. I feel like a magician who has accidentally sawed his assistant in half. I want to disappear.
‘What the fuck happened?’ Aslam says.
‘He says she forced herself on him. I’m going to go.’
‘Fuck that,’ he says. ‘He wouldn’t admit to raping her. It’s not cool any more. Go back and punch him.’
‘I think I’m going home.’
‘Fucking go back to him.’ He stands up and pulls me up and pushes me forward. I hold my sleeve against my eyes. I look behind me. Aslam’s leaning on the mantelpiece with his arms crossed, nodding wildly. I step forward. I have no idea what I’m doing. I’m a suicide bomber. I don’t believe in anything.
I walk back to the stairs and stare at Aaron Mathews and lift up my hand. It has become extremely heavy. It doesn’t feel or look like my hand. Is it my hand? Probably, yes. I wonder where I should put my hand on his face. In films, people punch other people in their eyes. I don’t want him to go blind, though. That would be terrible. He would sue me and I would have to give him all of the money I got after Nan died. I should punch him in the forehead. I should say something intimidating and then knock him out.
‘You better get ready,’ I say. ‘Because at three o’clock today, I’m going to rape you.’
I blink.
Aaron Mathews punches me in the face.
I can’t tell where exactly, but it is definitely the face. I fall over. Aslam jumps over me and lunges at Aaron Mathews. He grabs Aaron Mathews’ hair. I don’t think pulling hair is a very good fighting move. Jackie Chan never pulled anyone’s hair. I start to stand up and The Tiger knees me in the chest. That is a good fighting move. It hurts. Fireworks explode inside my ribcage. I lie on the floor and roll to the side and look upwards. The Aubergine is going through Aslam’s pockets. The Tiger tries to put his hands into mine. I grab hold of his collar and throw my head against his nose. It isn’t my head any more. It isn’t anything. I take Aslam’s arm and pull him towards the door and we fall through the door and we run up the hill, looking backwards. Nobody follows. Hard air collects inside me and burns. I imagine my legs falling off and my arms falling off and my dismembered head floating slowly up into the sky like a hot air balloon, clouds gripping the sides of my head, flashing planes reflecting in my eyes.
We collapse onto the grass at the park and lie on our backs, panting.
When our breaths are smaller, I say, ‘Thanks for trying.’
‘Are you okay?’
‘No,’ I say.
‘You made the purple one’s nose bleed.’
‘Oh.’
‘What was that rape thing from?’
‘Welcome to the Dollhouse.’
‘You have to stop doing that.’
‘People say things better in films.’
He leans back on his elbows and tips his head. ‘I think he was lying.’
‘I don’t know.’
‘What will you do?’
‘I don’t know.’ I tug handfuls of grass out of the earth. In the film version of right now, I would sprint back to the house, hoist Aaron Mathews up by his Adam’s apple and shake him violently until he confessed to lying. Then I would helicopter to Antigua and kiss Alice on the nose. ‘I’m sleepy.’
3
When I was eight, Mum and I climbed onto a train, fidgeted and napped for six hours, then climbed off again in a place with sky the colour of huskies and a long edge of sea. It was Scotland. Mum said that I had to stay with Nan for the summer. I was too young for clear memories of her before this one. Before this one she only existed as a collection of smells and feelings. Piss, tea, sugar. Presents, hard hugs, boredom.
‘Someone’s grown,’ Nan said, holding open the door of her cottage. I smiled. ‘Fat.’ She frowned at Mum.
‘Mum,’ Mum said.
‘Nan,’ I said. She pulled my face into the itchy valley between her tits. Her chest smelled of tea and old biscuits.
‘Ahoy,’ a man said, appearing at the end of the hallway.
Nan had married a Polish man, who was twenty years younger than her and wore only England rugby shirts. I was supposed to call him Uncle Sawicka. When I shook his hand, he barely squeezed, like he was scared I’d break.
‘Someone looks hungry,’ Nan said. ‘Has Mummy been eating all your food?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Mum,’ Mum said.
‘Nan,’ I said.
Uncle Sawicka bought fish and chips and we ate in front of the TV. Nan discussed the royal family with herself. Mum asked Uncle Sawicka about Poland. Are they pagan? Do they like chocolate? Do they have gays? I chewed my toenails until I fell asleep, balled like a foetus in the armchair. In the morning, Mum woke me up, told me to be good, and went away.
*
Nan’s cottage wasn’t really a cottage, it was only called that because of how it was surrounded by grass and if you pulled the corners of your eyes upwards you could kind of see the sea. There was a caravan park above it and a university across the river. I mostly stayed inside with Nan. Even when the sun visited, grey wind scared away all the warm. We pieced together jigsaws of Scottish cottages and watched Murder, She Wrote and drank tea that tasted different from the tea at home. Nan took me down to the sea on bright days, but she got tired quickly and we spent most of our time recovering on the rocks (‘on the rocks’ also meant when Nan wanted ice in her gin and tonic, which mostly she didn’t. It gave her severe brain freeze).
Uncle Sawicka didn’t spend a lot of time in the house. Sometimes, when we met in the hallway, we’d pause and try to talk.
‘Heavy weather,’ he’d say, looking through the glass in the front door.
‘Yeah,’ I’d say.
‘Rain,’ he’d say.
‘Yeah,’ I’d say.
‘Hungry,’ he’d say, patting my shoulder and going through to the kitchen. It’s hard not to think that people who don’t speak your language are morons, even when you’re eight.
After two weeks, we’d established a quiet routine. Uncle Sawicka and Nan woke up early, ate together, and he left for work. I woke up at ten, came downstairs, and ate whatever Nan had made (scrambled eggs, toast, cornflakes, or hot Weetabix). Nan read and I watched TV until lunchtime, then we visited the shop or the beach, then
