Chapter 26
For the millionth time in the past half hour, I glance at the smudged, blurred biro writing on the back of my hand. I’ve written over it three times, different inks blending into a dark navy blue like a thin, ugly tattoo on my skin. She isn’t replying to my texts. Cheryl isn’t replying to my texts. Last night she insisted on walking me home, and left me at my front door, wondering back alone through thin, dark streets between back-to-back red brick houses. I thought she’d be okay. It was quiet, everyone was asleep. Last night I was on top of the world, bobbing along on cloud nine, but now? I can’t help but worry about her now. Gnawing away inside my chest. I feel slightly sick. We arranged to meet here, in this tiny coffee shop just off the main street in Jesmond. And she scribbled her mam’s address onto the back of my hand. Murmuring something about it being just south of the park and just north the railway lines. Heaton. I’m surprised. I’ve been in Newcastle just long enough to know that it’s a nice address. Neither posh, nor rich. But nice. Thoroughly respectable. And now she’s late. Half an hour late. I wonder if she’s still asleep, curled all alone on her bed in her mam’s house. I check my phone again. No new messages. I run a single finger over the address scrawling across the skin on the back of my hand. Maybe I should wait for her. Or maybe I should go to find her. I glance at the time on my phone. Still no new messages. I get up slowly, pushing my half-drunk and lukewarm coffee away from me. I don’t want it anymore, and I realise it looks like grey, dirty water. I shake my head, stuffing my hands deep into my pockets, bowing my head ready for the blast of cold air as I push open the heavy door. And I step out into the cold, the wind burning against my skin, a huge contest from the sweet, softly coffee-tinted air in the coffee shop. I gulp, my eyes already watering from the blasting wind, whipping my hair around my face. I frown, zipping up my hoodie all the way to my chin. And I walk. No fixed destination. I don’t even really know where she lives. Somewhere near the river in one of the countless, uniform terraced houses that run in narrow rows sloping down towards the quays. My feet beat a quiet, steady rhythm on the slippery slate pavement, slick with rain. It must have started to rain somewhere in the grey hours after I returned home, slipping quietly, fully clothed, into my own single bed. And when I finally closed my eyes, listening to the rain thrashing against my bedroom window, I didn’t just sleep. I dreamt about her. Running through my head, over and over. Her name, her eyes. Until they’re all I know and they’re all I see and they’re all I’ll ever understand. All I’ll ever love.
As I walk, I try to remember my dream, but holding it in my mind is like running thin sand through open fingers. Like rainwater tumbling off my skin. I can remember her eyes filling my semi-conscious mind, until I’m drowning in inky, endless pools. And golden light is flickering through the water around me. Because somehow someone held the moon between their thumb and forefinger, plucking it from the sky and dipping it into a well of hot molten gold. And so the rays of moonlight aren’t slivers of silver cutting through the night, they’re dripping hot gold, liquid, but somehow something far less. Gaseous, because I could feel it lining my lungs like the tar of Cheryl’s cheap cigarettes. And the water in my lungs is solid. So I can’t breathe. But Cheryl is beside me in the water, her body ghostly pale. She looks like a thin, dead thing. All bruised, purple skin and pale lips. Deathly pale lips, but as we twisted together, she kisses me. I try to move away from her, but I can’t, I’m trapped. But I don’t want to feel her dead lips against my own. I try to scream, but I can’t. We’re both somehow one, twisted together until I have no idea whether I’m her or whether I’m me. And it doesn’t even matter anymore. Because we’re one. One being. But our lips crash together. And oh god, she was so alive. So alive it hurt me, cutting through my dream. And it felt like someone had lodged a jack knife just under my heart, and my blood was spilling out into the black water, like rich red wine onto black velvet.
