Page 34

33

Kier

Devon, July 2018

‘Kier.’

I flinch. Zeph’s voice is like a sharp scratch down my spine.

‘Kier, I—’ The rest of his words merge with the muted thuds of music from the club as I stumble out onto the street. This back alley hasn’t changed since I was a teenager. Oily smells and oily smiles. Neon lights bleeding into petrol rainbows.

‘Kier, please.’ This time his hand finds the back of my top.

‘Please, Zeph, leave it.’ I shrug his hand away. ‘This is Penn and Mila’s night, don’t ruin it. I’ll head home and you go back in, make my excuses; say I’m not feeling well.’

‘But I don’t get why you’re leaving.’ His eyes, unfocused, travel from me to the ground and then back again, in slow motion.

‘What you said to me in there, Zeph, how you said it.’ My voice cracks.

‘Kier, I’m drunk, I don’t know what I was saying. I saw you with him and I reacted.’ He steps towards me. I feel his breath on my face, inhale the bitter smell of beer.

‘But being jealous because I’m dancing with someone, that’s— ’

He clumsily tips my chin, so he can see into my eyes. ‘I was being a jealous prick.’

‘Well, don’t be.’

‘Come on, Kier, give me a break. It doesn’t mean anything.’ He reaches out again.

I shuffle a few feet back.

‘Jesus,’ he mutters. ‘You’re acting just like she used to.’

My head snaps up. ‘Acting like who?’

Zeph flushes. ‘Forget it.’

‘You’re talking about Romy, aren’t you?’

Romy. Romy. Romy.

As I say it in my head, I hear her name not just in my voice, but in his.

How he shouts it at night. Splitting the word, emphasis on the last syllable. Ro- my.

‘Kier …’ Zeph starts talking but I can’t hear him. The lurid neon in the window blurs, and with it, Zeph’s face. His mouth is moving and his hands, too, and as he’s talking, his features morph.

It’s not his face I see, but my father’s. I see his beard and his eyes that could turn from warm to stone in a flash. A chill is forming inside me again. Growing and swelling, freezing every part it touches.

Zeph circles me in his arms, pushing me back hard against the wall. His mouth is near mine, the bare skin across my shoulder blades scraping against the rough of the brick, and he’s still talking, his hands all over me, but I can’t hear him, I can’t hear any of it.

I push him, hard in the chest, harder than I mean to, the force enough to reverberate back through my arm, shoulders.

Zeph goes backwards, stumbling, breath pushed out of him in a funny, ugly gasp.

I don’t reach out to help because I still see him.

My father, with his questions and his calm voice that preceded everything dark. The napkin he’d use to wipe his mouth over lunch after saying the ugliest of things.

Zeph is picking himself off the ground, dusting off his palms, trousers. As he gets to standing, a sob chokes his throat. ‘Fuck, Kier, I don’t know who you are any more.’

I blink.

‘Don’t ever, ever, do that to me again.’ Zeph steps backwards, then again, watching me, before he turns, slowly walks back towards the club.

I stare after him, having to bite my tongue to stop me from bursting into tears.

All at once, I feel lightheaded, an odd, disorientating sensation, as if my brain is lagging two steps behind my head. Bending, I put my head between my knees.

It’s a few minutes before it passes. I take a breath, then straighten, standing for a few moments before I stumble towards the lights of the taxi rank at the end of the street.

I’ve only taken a few steps when I glimpse a familiar face: the woman who runs past the van in the mornings. She’s in workout gear, jogging, but slows to a walk as she crosses the road towards me.

My cheeks burn. What had she seen? What must I look like?

When she stops in front of me, her blonde hair is damp with sweat, tendrils curling around her temples. ‘Everything okay?’ Her voice is soft and kind, and it makes me want to cry.

‘Yeah, just an argument with my boyfriend.’ The sentence comes out all high and weird.

‘I saw.’ Her expression is unreadable. ‘You’re staying at the beach, aren’t you? In the van? I saw you the other day with your partner, when I was running.’ A pause. Like she wants to say something but can’t find the words. ‘I’m Elin. Detective Elin Warner.’ She gestures down the road. ‘Are you getting a taxi home?’

I nod.

‘Let me walk you over. We can talk on the way.’