My conservatory is cooling off now. I put my beer down and try to concentrate. I don't know why I take so much time as she'll probably never read them. But I do. I write Mum first, like I always do, then scribble it out. Write her name, like she's asked me to.
Anna.
I take a sip of beer, scribble that out. I don't want to sound needy. I want to sound self-sufficient and strong. I want to make her laugh.
So. Anna. It's been a while. What is this trouble you speak of? It sounds intriguing. Where are you based these days? I don't want to come and chase after you or anything, I'm just interested.
Life's pretty hectic for me too. I have a boyfriend.
I cross the last word out.
I've been spending some time with a guy. He's pretty cool. Calls me Bambi. Has good bone structure.
I scribble the whole thing out. It's exhausting. Maybe I should just get drunk and then try again.
I put the beers in my satchel and walk out the drive. It's windy and seagulls are floating above the town like tiny zeppelins. Down on the ground people like me stand, open mouthed and alone, looking up, taking in the vast blue sky show. After a while my neck aches and I move off, realising I don't even know where to go when I want to get out the house. I open a beer on next door's wall, banging my palm against the lid and yanking the bottle down. It took me ages to learn how to do that. I wish someone was here to see. The beer's cold and a soft haziness falls upon me as I walk up the hill. I realise I'm heading for school.
I turn up at the skip, not sure what it is I'm after. Maybe somewhere inside I'm thinking that if I just saw Kurt then everything would be better. That seeing someone who might smile at me would make the day mean something.
A herring gull scrabbles around in a bag of rubbish that's fallen off the skip, tearing out microwaveable containers and cartons of juice, banging them against the tarmac with its hooked beak. It stares at me with pale blue eyes and I stare back, wondering what he is thinking, if he's thinking anything at all. Further away, a brown spattered baby gull cries, paces up and down, making short sharp, shrill noises, like he's panicked. The blue eyed gull carries on just bashing its beak into empty containers.
I sit down in Kurt's chair and neck the last of my beer. I throw it over my shoulder without looking back. Another wasted gesture. The light is starting to fade and I think of all those people in the garden, full of too much food, talking and talking about things they probably won't remember. I imagine Mum among them, restless and buzzing, twisting and turning round them, always slipping out of reach. I imagine her somewhere else, in America, protesting animal rights or in Malaga swimming round the coast. Wherever she is, I know she's active, involved. I shrink into my hoodie, lean back against the skip, watch the clouds trailing dreamily across the darkening sky.
“Boo.”
“Fuck! What?” A skinny, tanned girl is standing on the window ledge of the gymnasium. “What you doing?”
“What you doing?” she says back. She speaks in the deep south voice of a genu-ine yokel. A red neck. In Cornwall.
“Just sitting down.”
“Huh.” She grabs the seat Kurt pulled out the skip for me and plonks it down. She stands on it and put her hands on the side of the tip. Her jeans pouch out around her bony arse, weird, stonewashed jeans from the Eighties that go right up to her waist.
“I put something in here and I need to find it.”
I keep drinking my beer. She doesn't look trustworthy, this girl, she looks like she can run fast and has done so often, like she could disappear in a second.
“I wouldn't hide things in there if I were you, it's where the bad kids hang out. They're always climbing up on there.”
“Maybe. But the fact is, I already put something in here, so why don't you just help me look?”
I put my beer down. “What is it you're looking for?”
“Just a box, about this big.”
The girl holds her hands aparts a little. She has a piece of pale blue string wrapped around one of her wrists. It stands out against the oaky brown of her skin.
I climb up on my seat and begin sifting through the wreckage. Table legs and compasses, sandwich wrappers and chewing gum. And then, finally, she finds it, the box.
“Thank the lord,” she says, exaggerating her twang.
“Allelujah,” I say, doing the same.
She steps down, puts her hands on her hips and says, “you coming then or what?”
