Issuu

Prologue

The body in the swimming pool doesn’t move. Dark hair and white silk fan out around it, arms and legs hanging down like a marionette. I stare down into the inky water for a moment longer. The night around me is muted. The noise of crickets and the music and the laughter from inside are muffled, as if I too am submerged.

And then the world snaps back into focus. Rough grooves of stone scrape my feet. Crickets, water, music, laughter. Every sound swells to a crescendo. There is hot blood in my ears. I look around, hoping someone will rescue us. But no one is coming. It’s just the body and me, suspended together.

My clothes are like a second skin around me. I kick off my shoes and strike out towards it. Fists of water clutch at my shirt, pulling me down. I panic as my legs thrash against the drenched linen. I reach the body and try to flip it onto its back like they taught us in swimming lessons. Diving for blocks and waterlogged pyjamas and swimming badges sewn onto bright red towels flash through my mind. The body jerks away from my grasp and turns to face me, taking in hungry gulps of air.

‘I knew you’d save me,’ she says. Then she winks, pitches forwards, and dives into the blackness.

Tuesday

I wake to a sound I know well. Grandma singing tunelessly and the clang of pots and pans. It is the sound of an island I have never visited. My phone tells me it’s 3.36 in the morning. Still over an hour until the first of the five alarms I have set will go off. Part of me wants to go back to sleep but I am too restless, so I wrap a towel around my waist and pad down the narrow corridor to the bathroom. The boiler groans in protest at the early start as I step into the jet of hot water, bowing my head to fit in the cramped shower. Grandma says I’m too big for this house.

My collar is damp and water drips from my hair as I lean against the doorjamb and ask her what she’s doing up. She wants me to eat. She has cooked a huge pot of spiced porridge, the nutmeg and vanilla and cinnamon curling through the house. She places a steaming bowl on the counter, so thick the spoon stands upright. I am too nervous to eat so I push the oats around the bowl.

‘Sweetness,’ she purrs, ‘you haffi eat someting before you go jet-set off. No grandson of mine a guh France pan a hempty stomach. Me nah haf them rich folk think I cyan feed my own grandson.’

Grandma’s accent has always been a defiance. A strong

Jamaican lilt with creeping Manchester vowels. She lost a job because of that accent once. When she arrived in England, she says, the country didn’t seem real. Flying over tiny toy houses, crammed impossibly close, spewing grey columns of smoke into the frigid air. A place further from the lush sprawling hills of St James was difficult to imagine. She initially attempted to blend in. She hotcombed her thick, kinky hair, and her nursing uniform was always immaculately pressed and starched. But she couldn’t keep the waves out of her voice. One morning, she answered back to a white doctor who pretended he couldn’t understand her accent. She told him that she spoke better English than him and he’d better open up his ears. She was fired before midday. She confided in a friend, who had made the crossing a few years earlier, who told her that maybe it would be best if she just kept her head down, tried a bit harder to fit in. She refused. I am proud of her for this, but I have never told her.

I push away the bowl and see the disappointment skim across the clear skies of her face. She fumbles in her purse for a ten-pound note.

‘Grandma, it’s fine. I’m fine. I have to go. I’ll see you soon.’ And then, after a pang of guilt, ‘I love you.’

It’s too early for the train. I drag Grandma’s battered floral suitcase in the opposite direction. The cold of the plastic bench soaks through my jeans. I take out my passport, running my finger along the embossed gold lettering before flicking to the photo page. A slightly younger version of me stares back. There is a question in his eyes,

a hopefulness. I want to reach out and touch his face. The photograph was taken about three years ago when I last left England for the freedom and mayhem of the Magaluf strip with sixteen other boys from school. The trip was a total disaster. Drunken arguments, a broken nose. I started university friendless and bruised.

‘Please. Please, please, please, please, please, please, please. Wait! Hold your head right there, you look wonderful,’ Lily Blake said, poking her head around the large canvas between us, her tongue jutting out of the side of her mouth, mirroring the movement. ‘You’ll love it, everybody loves it. And besides,’ she said cautiously, retreating back behind the canvas, ‘I may have already told Mummy you were coming.’

We were in my room at university, three months earlier. We would often find ourselves here, ensconced within the peeling paint and grubby corkboard. Lily had her paints spread out across the desk and on the floor, tiny pots of blue and violet and yellow carefully placed among my discarded socks and the detritus of a bedsit half packed for the summer holidays.

‘Oh Lil, you didn’t,’ I protested. ‘Now I’m going to look so rude if I turn you down, but I can’t cancel on Jazz. I’m meant to be staying with her family in London in August and looking for flats togeth––’

‘Stay still, you’re the worst subject ever, you know. Come on, you know you deserve the holiday. London and Jasmine and flats will still be there when you get back.’

I could feel the animosity dripping from the name. Jazz, who proudly called herself my ‘only Black friend’, had an instinctive mistrust of Lily and her boarding-school clique. This was met with haughty disdain from Lily, although I privately suspected this was more likely hurt than malice. Sometimes it felt like my two closest friends were pulling me in opposite directions. I let the silence linger.

‘And after you’ve paid for flights it’s basically free because everything is already paid for.’ She spoke so quickly that the words smeared into one another.

I tried to claim it wasn’t about money, but even as I said it, the heat of shame burned the tips of my ears. I still felt a small sting every time she wordlessly paid for our drinks or a meal, when she would slip off to use the toilet and take care of the bill on her way. For Lily, money, like laughter, was something that flowed as freely as water. Her wealth had never taught her to be embarrassed about money, just to never talk about it. Throughout university, people who didn’t think twice about spending money made me uneasy: girls shielding their hair from the rain with expensive laptops, private-school boys with cars and credit cards and cocaine habits. I never really got used to their carelessness.

I shifted uncomfortably on the bed. ‘I can’t come, I’ve got a family thing.’

‘All summer?’ Lily said, raising an eyebrow. ‘Look, you’ll have the best time ever, I promise. And once you get there, I swear you’ll never want to leave! I have so

much to show you and everyone is really looking forward to meeting you. Dot and Felix will be there, and it’s my birthday. I won’t take no for an answer.’

‘I’ll think about it,’ I said, and booked the flights as soon as Lily left my room.

I am jerked awake for the second time today by a sadlooking flight attendant wearing an orange-and-white uniform and bright coral lipstick. The lurch of a midmorning hangover hits me as the plane tilts and curves around to land.

She’s telling me to put on my seatbelt, flashing her white teeth in a humourless smile. I click the belt into place and sit back, wishing I had ordered water. At the time, two pints of lager at six in the morning had seemed like a clever idea. But the nervous knot in my chest, which had loosened slightly with the drinks, is now tight again, mingled with nausea and a headache. I close my eyes against the rumble and lurch of the landing, gripping the armrests tightly. Eventually we emerge into a fierce heat that blazes up from the smooth, hot tarmac.

The airport is small, a single corrugated iron-and-glass building. I lean against a pillar, embracing its coolness against my damp T-shirt. A small boy runs a toy car along the dirty tiles, the soles of his bare feet traced in pale dust. After a few quiet minutes, the battered carousel creaks into life and starts spitting luggage onto the rubber slats. I watch as the rest of the passengers collect their things. Grandma’s old suitcase, which she lugged all the

way from Kingston, is usually unmissable with its garish pink and yellow flowers and purple plastic piping, but it fails to appear. I look around for assistance and, finding none, head over to the kiosk.

‘Excusez-moi, je ne trouve pas ma valise .’ I slaughter the words on their way out, my mouth cutting them down into rough, unusable parts. The woman behind the counter looks up from her magazine with a sigh.

‘Try over there,’ she says in English. I follow the lazy point of her finger and see a small desk I hadn’t noticed before. I try to explain myself in broken French. The man takes down my name, a description of the bag, and the address and phone number of the Chateau – at which he raises his eyebrows, looking me up and down. I make my way to the exit and into the car park, where Lily has told me the ‘handyman’ would be waiting for me.

He’s short and fat and has a round, red nose that looks like it might burst open if it is blown too hard. He’s leaning against the bonnet of a rusted yellow car, smoking a cigarette and holding a sign with my name on it. He fixes me with an odd look before breaking into an insincere smile.

‘Bienvenue,’ he growls. ‘No baggage?’

‘I . . . It got lost. This is all I’ve got.’

The man gives a noncommittal shrug, as if this must be another inexplicable quirk of one of the strange guests of the Blake family. I squeeze into the remaining space in the back of the car, because the front seat, most of the back seats and presumably the whole boot are taken up by neatly stacked, unmarked white boxes.

‘Du vin,’ says the man. He raises a nicotine-stained finger to tap his nose and gives me a conspiratorial wink. He climbs into the front of the car, lights another cigarette, and pulls out of the car park. As we speed through the countryside, I watch field after field of lavender bushes flicker past and imagine fat bumblebees lazily chugging between them in the thick wash of sunshine.

I am about to fall asleep again when the pattern of the window vibrating against my forehead changes and I realise we are slowing down. I blink, readjusting to the light, as the car turns into a long, sweeping drive, flanked on both sides by rows of thin trees. We snake up a small incline to a rusted green double gate in the middle of a high wall that stretches out in both directions. Half of the gate is open and the driver deftly directs the car through the small gap without changing speed. The smooth rumble of tarmac changes into a shifting crackle as we pull on to a courtyard. The house is made of pale yellow stone with dark green shutters that peer inquisitively down at me. Where the garden wall and gate had seemed old and faded, the house itself looks freshly painted. The shutters gleam in the sunlight as if they are wet. There isn’t much to distinguish the Chateau from a very big house. No crenelations, no moat, no tiny windows for archers to shoot from. I’m slightly disappointed and smile to myself at the thought of Lily’s face when I ask where the turrets have gone. I climb out of the car and into the heat and instantly

regret my decision to wear jeans. I look towards the house and Lily is walking across the gravel in a flowing sundress. She leaps towards me, linking her slim arms around my neck and wrapping her legs around my waist. The nervous knot in my stomach loosens a little.

‘Oh, darling! It’s so wonderful that you’re here! You’re just in time for lunch and everyone is so excited to meet you. We thought you’d somehow got lost – Mummy almost sent out a search party and Felix wanted to start eating, but here you are!’ She pauses and looks around the courtyard then down at my small backpack. ‘Is that all you’ve brought with you?’ I explain about the airport and the carousel and the man behind the counter.

‘Oh, how irritating. Don’t worry, I’m sure Felix has something that will fit you. Luc,’ she says, her tone shifting as she addresses the driver and takes my backpack from my hand, ‘would you be a darling and make sure this makes it into the house? Gosh, I’m starving.’

I try to protest but she takes my hand and pulls me across the courtyard, eagerly dragging me like a child wanting to show a parent some discovered treasure at the beach. She leads me down the side of the house. Vines stretch gnarled fingers up the wall and pink flowers pick up shafts of sunlight, marking the way. There is a terrace at the back, where large tables are laid out underneath a wooden arch. There’s a chorus of welcomes and the sound of metal chairs scraping back as the Blake family rise to their feet to greet me. A tall boy in dark sunglasses sits at the far end of the table and does not stand with the others.

There are introductions to be made before we eat. A tall, slender woman of about fifty spreads her brown arms wide in welcome. She has thick hair, dark as oiled mahogany, in a loose plait over one shoulder, and strong features that would have looked stern if she weren’t beaming at me with warm, walnut eyes. This is Mrs Blake – Annie, she insists: Mrs Blake makes her feel old. She pulls me to her chest; she smells of oranges and suncream. Mrs Blake – Annie – releases me from the embrace but keeps hold of my shoulders, leaning back to study me. She tells me I am more handsome than her daughter has let on. I smile awkwardly, the tips of my ears hot. A girl with dark features rolls her eyes and tells her mother not to be so embarrassing. She must be Dot, Lily’s younger sister. Dot’s face is a quiet echo of her mother’s. Where Mrs Blake’s features are long and sharp, Dot’s are somewhat softened. Instead of Annie’s straight Roman nose, Dot’s is small and round and slightly sunburnt, her cheeks flushed and full. She surveys me from under her fringe.

‘Lily says you’re a musician too? Are you going to play something?’

I’ve heard a lot about Dot from Lily. A musical child prodigy, Dot mastered pretty much every instrument the Blakes could think of by the time she was eleven, and scared off countless music tutors in the process. Dot is what Lily referred to once as ‘difficult’, having been expelled from two schools before sitting her GCSEs. She’s seventeen but the roundness of her face and the sparkle in her eyes make her look much younger.

Lily must see the fluster in my eyes because she cuts in. ‘Of course he’s going to play something. Everybody has to, it’s tradition.’

‘Oh, come on, Lil,’ the boy in the sunglasses says from the other end of the table, ‘you’re twenty-one years old. Surely you’re not going to make us do La Fête this year.’

‘Don’t be such a spoilsport, of course we’re doing it, and I know you’ve already been practising because I heard you in your room.’ She sticks her tongue out at the boy, who pulls a face back at her, then flicks up his middle finger and smiles.

‘Every summer we have a talent show on Magpie’s birthday,’ explains Dot.

‘It’s not just for my birthday,’ counters Lily. I smile at the nickname, feeling like I’ve unlocked a new secret about her.

‘Yes, but if it wasn’t your birthday, it wouldn’t be so militantly enforced,’ says the boy.

‘Anyway,’ Dot continues, ‘we have a talent show every year and everyone has to perform something. A song, or a poem, or whatever. One year, one of Daddy’s friends had a full clown costume and tried to make balloon animals.’

‘The less said about that the better,’ says Annie with a smile. ‘Now, you look like you could do with a large glass of wine, darling. Felix, would you do the honours?’

The boy takes off his sunglasses and stands up. He reaches into the centre of the table and plucks a slender bottle from a bucket of ice, pouring a generous glass of pale pink wine. He walks over to me with his empty

hand outstretched. I go to take the wine from him and realise too late that the outstretched hand is meant to be shaken. Clumsily, I cross my arms and take hold of the wine and his hand at the same time. Felix raises an eyebrow and a smirk spreads across his face, pressing a dimple into the corner of his sun-kissed cheek. His face is clear and boyish, handsome in a way that draws a smile from some unsuspecting part of me. His eyes hold no trace of the disdain I sensed from the end of the table. They are bright, inquisitive, the colour of a jar of honey gazed into from above. I feel a little shift inside me, like something important has been discovered.

‘Felix Blake,’ he says. ‘Welcome to the madhouse.’

We sit and start passing around bright bowls of food. As we eat, the family talks about the party that is being thrown at the weekend, who is arriving when, and how much wine is being brought down from the vineyard. I try to smile and laugh along but the combination of the drinks and the heat and the flood of new names and cryptic inside jokes makes it hard to keep up. Instead, I take in the scene around me. A low wall of lemon-coloured stone runs along the edge of the terrace, with a gap in the middle where a few rough stone steps lead down to a sloped lawn and a deep green swimming pool. The surface is as still and smooth as glass. To one side of the stairs, on a small stone plinth, stands a statue of a headless woman. She is draped in a robe, the stone nearly translucent, one of her white breasts exposed. Her hands

are by her sides, palms frozen upwards in supplication. I did not know stone could look so soft in person. Mrs Blake must have followed my gaze as her voice drags me back into the moment.

‘Oh, you’ve seen my Venus.’

‘I’ve never seen a marble statue before,’ I say and immediately regret it.

‘Alabaster,’ Mrs Blake replies. ‘You can tell by the way the light comes through.’

‘Well, it’s beautiful,’ I say.

‘She was, before Felix dashed her head to pieces on the flagstones in a rage.’ She looks at me from under thick eyebrows. ‘A warning not to get in my son’s way.’ She says this with a smile, but it barely hides the threat. Her voice is low and warm, like a summer storm, with an almost imperceptible hint of a well-disguised accent.

‘It took some serious force to do it as well,’ says Felix. He is staring directly at me and I feel a blast of heat wash over my limbs, one that has nothing to do with the summer air. ‘The goddess of love is stronger than she looks.’

‘That’s everyone’s mistake, you see. They think love is about softness and beauty, but really love is about power. The most powerful person in Macbeth isn’t the man himself but—’

‘But his “bloody-handed wife”. Yes, Annie, I know, I know.’

‘I always thought it was the witches,’ says Dot.

‘Well, you would, wouldn’t you, Dorothea?’ replies her

mother. ‘And you really were very good in that performance, Felix, my dear.’

‘Thanks, Annie. I really was,’ says Felix.

When we finish eating, I stand to help clear away the plates. Mrs Blake places a hand gently but firmly on my arm and pulls me back into my seat. She reminds me warmly that I am a guest, but asks if I will please pass the wine. I fill both of our glasses, feeling awkward as Luc clears away the mess from around us. A tiny speckled bird with brown feathers and a sharp black beak pecks at the crumbs in the breadbasket.

‘Aren’t you horribly hot?’ Lily is lying by the pool, lazily stroking her hand across the surface. I’m sitting on the edge of a sun lounger, sweat running down my forehead. Lily breaks the calm of the moment, shouting her brother’s name three times with increasing intensity.

‘I’m fine, honestly,’ I tell her.

‘Don’t be so ridiculous, you must be baking. Felix, darling, would you please lend our guest some swimmers before he collapses from sunstroke?’

‘Sure,’ says her brother, striding down the lawn. He reaches out a hand to help me up. ‘Have you got anything in your pockets?’

‘No,’ I say, confused. I’m about to ask why when Felix swings his weight around, so that we swap places, and launches himself towards me, pushing me hard in the centre of my chest. I stumble backwards and feel a lurch in my stomach as my foot finds air before I crash into

the cold water. Everything is green and black and silver. The water roars around my ears for a moment and then is still. I kick my way to the surface and see Felix bent over with laughter. Lily is laughing too, half of her jet-black hair dripping from the splash.

‘No! Did you get him? That’s so unfair! It was supposed to be my turn!’ says Dot, running down the lawn.

‘Sorry, mate, family tradition,’ Felix says through a grin, out of breath from laughing. ‘But at least now you’re fully initiated.’

He reaches out a hand to help me out of the pool, which I gratefully take hold of and then pull, hard. Felix loses his balance and there is a moment of surprise on his face as he splashes down next to me. He comes up gasping for air, the water collecting on his heavy eyelashes and his dark hair stuck to his neck and face.

‘Well played.’

We climb out of the swimming pool together and lie panting on its edge. Felix strips down to his underwear and flings his clothes off to one side. He has a golden tan and the hairs on his forearms have been bleached white by the sun. I watch the rapid rise and fall of his stomach. There is a shadow of a tattoo, a sun cut in half by the waistband of his boxers.

‘I really wasn’t expecting that,’ he tells me.

After a while, my black jeans begin to steam. Felix notices and says we should go into the house to change, flicking the water from his hair over Lily’s dress as he passes her.

‘Ugh, you utter twat! Would you please bring me a beer? From the fridge, not the cooler, they’re always too warm.’

We make our way up the lawn, Felix leading me to a side door. I’m about to follow him inside, but he turns and stops me, his palm planted firmly in the middle of my chest.

‘You can’t come into the house like that. You’ll drip all over the floor and Annie will be furious. You have to strip.’ I look at him for a moment, waiting to see if he is joking, but he seems completely serious. I start to clumsily peel off my jeans and T-shirt. I am down to my boxers, which have become almost transparent.

‘Everything,’ says Felix, his face expressionless, hidden again behind his sunglasses.

I’m panicking, my heart pounding, and I reluctantly slip my thumbs into my waistband and start to tug it down.

‘Oh God, stop! I was joking! Sorry!’ Felix says with a smile. He whirls into the house, staggering a few steps, turning his face away in mock horror. ‘Christ! Lily said you were odd, but I didn’t realise you were actually mad.’ He bursts out laughing and sets off up the corridor. ‘Just leave your clothes on the bench! And please, please keep your pants on.’

Blood is thundering in my ears and I think I might pass out. I throw my wet clothes onto a scuffed wooden bench. The corridor is narrow and lined with various coats, hats and life jackets hanging from pegs. I head

through the door and into a huge square kitchen with a marble island in the middle. At the far end, above the stone sink, there is a tall stained-glass window. I cross the kitchen and almost trip over Felix. He is crouching down, reaching into a small fridge full of wine bottles, cans of beer and soda water. He hands me two red cans and pops the tab on a third, taking noisy gulps and letting out a long, artificial sigh.

‘Help yourself to anything from the kitchen, by the way,’ he tells me. ‘Just don’t open any bottles of wine with dust on them.’

I laugh but he isn’t joking. He leads the way out into the hall and up the curve of a wide staircase. The walls are made of the same pale yellow stone as outside and the grey slate floor feels cool against the soles of my feet. I follow Felix up the stairs and down a long corridor with doors coming off both sides. He waves at one with thick black studs in the wood.

‘This is you. Don’t lock the door, the key is, like, a million years old.’ I follow him down a long corridor where an arched window watches over us; fields of vines languish in the distance behind the glass. It feels much more like a castle from inside.

Felix leans his weight against one of the many doors. It creaks open a few inches, then, with a sigh, swings wide and he almost stumbles down a short flight of steps. The room is huge, and mostly bare except for the large unmade bed and a gilt-framed mirror leaning against the far wall. The space is nearly the size of Grandma’s house.

Felix gestures towards a battered chest of drawers in the corner and tells me I can help myself to whatever I want. He pulls down his boxers and reaches for a towel on the bed. I try to pretend I’m not looking at the curve of his spine and the line where his golden tan pales and the soft fuzz on his back becomes darker. I think I see him pause for a moment before stepping through into the bathroom. I hear water splash and it is clear he is done with me. I grab a pair of red swimming shorts and head back to the pool with Lily’s drink.

When I was fourteen years old, my dad appeared in my life as if from thin air. I didn’t even know his name. No one ever mentioned him at home. It had been so long since I’d even thought about him, about having a father, that he didn’t look real, standing on the doorstep of Grandma’s home. My home. I remember looking at the tall, balding white man smiling sheepishly down at me. He opened his mouth to speak and suddenly I was pulled backwards into the house. I remember the ensuing argument between them which felt like it lasted for hours. Grandma’s voice got angrier and louder and her accent thicker until I could barely understand her. I could hear the man I understood to be my dad mumble But he’s my son over and over. After he left, the door slamming behind him, the house was so quiet that I thought for a while that Grandma must have gone too. I remember walking into the little lounge and seeing her sitting there, her face like a mask. She was silent for a very long

time before she said, ‘Your father wan fi take you to France.’

It was his first and only attempt to try and have a relationship with me. I remember seeing how much it took for Grandma not to show how much she was hurting. The strain of it was almost physical. But she thought she was doing the right thing. I was never asked what I wanted. So, a few weeks after he’d turned up out of the blue, this strange man arrived to take me out of England for the first time, driving the same battered blue Renault Clio he’s leaning against in the only picture I have of us together. In the photograph, he is smiling, holding me, tiny and swaddled, my little brown face peeping out from a bundle of sky-blue cotton.

The small car was loaded with suitcases and beach towels and I was slotted in among the various detritus on the back seat, leaving the passenger seat conspicuously empty.

‘How are you, son?’ he asked, as if we were chatting at the end of a school day rather than after a lifetime of absence. A wave of shame washed over me every time he called me ‘son’. I had never needed a dad before. I had a grandmother and, for a while at least, had had a mother. I had never before considered myself to have an absent father. I hadn’t considered my father at all. I was fatherless. But now there he was, eyeing me cautiously in the rearview mirror and attempting to gloss over the last thirteen years. We slowly pulled out of the drive and I saw that Grandma had already gone inside and closed the door.

‘Now, son’ – that word again sent a shockwave through

me – ‘there’s someone I’d like you to meet.’ We pulled round the corner – purposefully out of sight of the house, I realised – and my dad slowed the car. ‘This is Julie.’

Julie was a towering contradiction of pale white flesh and tight denim. She had chemically curled yellow hair, shiny fingernails, and was beaming down at me with crooked teeth. Where my dad’s smile had been timid, Julie’s sharp teeth glinted in the sunlight. I immediately hated Julie. I hated her simpering over me and her fawning over my dad. I hated her silly laugh and her glossy magazines. I hated that she dared to refer to me as her stepson to the people we met. And I hated that she was white.

I sat in silence for most of the journey. A long, slow drive, painstakingly counting the streetlights all the way to Dover. The nauseating ferry crossing. When we arrived in Calais, I didn’t even feel like we’d left England, except that the signs were in a different language and my dad kept swearing when we approached a roundabout. In the late afternoon, we settled in a campsite outside Boulognesur-Mer. I had never put up a tent before, and apparently neither had my dad. Julie sat in a blue-and-white deckchair smoking a cigarette and drinking white wine out of a plastic tumbler. By the time the tents were up it was almost dark, cold air blowing in from the sea. I had packed for a summer trip and didn’t have a coat, so I shivered in my jumper. My dad clapped me on the shoulder with a skinny hand and said, ‘Isn’t this nice?’

The next morning, I woke up and felt like I was drowning. The morning sun had turned the cold tent into a

hot, sticky cocoon. I scrambled to unzip the door and let the fresh air in but was greeted by a lungful of plasticky smoke from a disposable barbecue on which my dad was burning some bacon.

‘Morning, son,’ he said. I had a sudden thought that maybe he was calling me ‘son’ because he’d forgotten my actual name. Maybe I was just one of his many forgotten children, scattered and nameless. But the look on his face, both cautious and expectant, dissolved this fantasy.

‘Good morning,’ I replied.

Julie locked both tents with tiny padlocks, as if there were anything inside them worth stealing. We drove down the winding roads into a large town, then out the other side, and eventually arrived at a large and crowded beach. We set off, carrying windbreakers and deckchairs, blown and buffeted by the wind. We eventually came to rest on a small patch of sand between a group of middle-aged topless sunbathers and a sprawling family who seemed to know every person on the beach. I sat in a deckchair and put my earphones in, twisting the white cable around my finger and turning the wheel on my iPod Nano to avoid hearing Julie’s machine-gun laugh.

I remember looking down towards the sea and seeing two swimmers emerge from the waves. The men were tall and golden brown, laughing at some joke I wished I could hear. I paused a song to try and catch what they were saying but their words were swallowed by the crashing of the waves. The taller of the two men tripped slightly and fell to his knees. The other man held out a hand to

help him up and the taller man stood back up, laughing, the sand carving out the definition of his muscular legs. I couldn’t stop watching them as they sauntered down the beach in their briefs-like swimming trunks, laughing and pushing each other. I felt like I was crossing some sort of line, sitting here so close to my dad, enjoying the sight of these two men. His loud voice in my ear made me jump and my heart skipped a beat.

‘Just like your old man, eh?’ he was saying. I panicked, confused, then realised that the path the men had taken had drawn my gaze directly above the topless sunbathing women. I cast around for an excuse but couldn’t think of anything to say. I felt a flush of shame rise up from the depths of my throat.

‘How about a cold beer? A boy’s first beer should always be with his father.’ I was once again struck by his attempts to plaster over his total truancy from fatherhood. I also fought the urge to tell him that I had spent most weekends of the last year drunk in various parks around Manchester with the older goth kids who had taken me under their wing. I just said yes and took the beer from his outstretched hand. It was lukewarm. I sipped it and winced. ‘Ah, you’ll get used to it,’ said this stranger who called himself my dad.

He returned me to Grandma two days later. She never asked me how the trip was, and I didn’t offer up any information. The man who called me his son didn’t show up again.

I pick my way down the stone path and find Lily floating on a lilo in the middle of the pool. I slip into the cool water and wade towards her, offering her the beer. She reaches out for it and looks me up and down.

‘I knew Felix would have something for you,’ she says after a moment. I look away and wonder if the sudden, inexplicable embarrassment I feel is showing.

‘Oh, yeah,’ I offer back weakly, and then, ‘They don’t really fit me, I had to double-knot the string thingy.’ Lily relaxes back onto the lilo.

We spend most of the afternoon in and around the pool, laughing and getting slowly but steadily drunk. I fill Lily in on the end-of-year parties at uni, which she missed to fly out here early. I tell her about how Jenny Carmichael passed out on a table at the Psych Soc ball, and how Tim Hollins hit his head so hard in Flares that he had to go to A&E. I don’t tell her about kissing Sarah Lacey again on the street outside McDonald’s and how I hated myself afterwards. I don’t tell her how much I wished she’d been there so I could have cried to her rather than into my pillow. In turn, Lily fills me in on who’s who and gives me a rundown of the people arriving for the party at the end of the week. An extensive list which includes Blake family friends, boarding-school roommates, politicians and minor celebrities. I try to keep track of it all but everything she tells me seems to melt into the water and drift off into the shimmering air. My head swims with a whirl of new names and information and my headache from earlier starts to return. I dunk my head into the pool.

‘That’s so cool,’ says Lily. ‘The water just rolls right off. Like a duck’s back.’ She glides her hand through my tight curls and I flinch backwards. She withdraws it, the smile fading from her face.

‘Sorry,’ I say, ‘I just . . .’ The thought trails off as I see Felix striding towards us across the grass in white shorts and a navy linen shirt.

‘Annie says you two need to get ready for supper.’ He casts the words out to us as he walks up to a little outhouse and disappears inside. Lily follows my gaze and takes my lingering look as one of curiosity.

‘Ice shed,’ she says nonchalantly and rolls off the lilo with a little splash.

When I get to my room, I find it smaller than Felix’s but still big enough that my damp footsteps on the floor echo around me. Someone has brought my bag up and placed it neatly by the dresser. My wet clothes and trainers are nowhere to be seen and I realise I must have left them downstairs. There is a tidy pile of dry clothes I don’t recognise at the end of the bed. I unfold the crisp white shirt and blue trousers and a folded piece of paper falls to the floor. I pick it up. The note is handwritten in pristine script.

Those shorts looked awful on you. If you’re going to wear my clothes, at least do it well.

I look around for underwear but find none. I’m worried that I’m already late, so I quickly pull on the clothes Felix

has picked for me along with a belt and a pair of loafers I find by the door, which fit perfectly.

The house is cool and quiet. And while the thick walls and tiny windows block out most of the sun, the corridors are imbued with golden light. The whole building hums with quiet grandeur. It’s as intimidating as it is intoxicating. I want to look behind every door but remind myself that I am already late for tea. I descend the staircase, following the sound of voices through various rooms until I emerge onto the terrace.

The Blakes seem involved in a heated discussion, but as I appear the conversation suddenly trails off.

‘And here’s the man of the hour!’ Felix says wryly and I feel my face colour.

‘Stop, Fe, you’re making him blush,’ says Lily, giving me a warm smile.

‘I didn’t know you could blush, darling,’ says Mrs Blake, tossing her dark hair, which has been loosed from its plait to spill casually over her shoulders. I don’t know what to say to this and feel my cheeks flush even more.

‘God, Annie, you can’t say that!’ says Dot, outraged on my behalf. ‘It’s such a microaggression.’

‘Don’t be so silly, Dorothea, I was just making an observation.’ Mrs Blake smiles at me but there is something like a challenge in her eyes. ‘You don’t mind, do you, darling?’

‘Oh,’ I say, caught off-guard. ‘I mean, no, Mrs Blake.’

‘A microaggression. Come on, seriously? Have you ever read a book? Or, like, been on the internet in the last ten years?’ Jasmine shook her head in mock disbelief, her loose curls bobbing around her face. ‘It’s, like, that subtle racism. That little inkling-sprinkling of racism. The one they think they can get away with and then get all upset when you call them out for it.’ She gestured towards me with a brown hand, adorned in silver rings and gold bangles. ‘It’s like when they ask you where you’re from and you say, like, Manchester or whatever—’

‘Bury.’

‘What?’

‘I’m from Bury,’ I corrected her.

‘Whatever. It’s like when they ask you where you’re from and you say Bury, and they’re, like, “No, no, but where are you from?” Like they don’t care where you were born or what part of England you grew up in. That’s not what they’re asking with all that emphasis on the second “from”. They’re asking why you look like you do. They’re asking why you’re not white.’

‘I think that’s a bit unfair, Jazz.’

‘What’s “unfair”, babe, is that you’re too brainwashed to see it. Like, once you notice it, it’s just constant. And the hair thing is just another side of the same politely racist coin.’

We were sitting in the cafe at the students’ union. Jasmine was waiting for a disciplinary meeting after telling one of her lecturers to fuck off during a seminar. I’d met her for a coffee beforehand to offer moral support,

but it seemed she wanted me there to fire her up. Not that Jasmine ever needed firing up. Born in London to Nigerian parents, Jasmine seemed cool and at ease in every way that I did not. Her Blackness was a source of pride and joy and righteous fury. She wore her hair natural and T-shirts that said stuff like does my sassiness offend you? She (affectionately, I think) called me WhiteBoy whenever I didn’t understand yet another Black cultural reference.

‘I’m not backing down this time, it’s fucking ridiculous.’ The incident in question had occurred a few days earlier. They had been discussing African protective hairstyles as an offshoot from a discussion on depictions of ‘non-European’ features in one of her History of Art seminars, when the seminar leader, allegedly trying to make a point about the ‘beauty’ of Black hair, had reached forward to touch Jasmine’s afro. In response to which, according to Lily, who had witnessed the whole thing, Jasmine had gone ‘full Beyoncé’. Jasmine maintained that she’d flinched away, had politely explained why the lecturer absolutely could not touch her hair, and when the tutor had tried to protest, had just as politely told her to fuck off.

‘I refuse to compromise my bodily autonomy just because some kaftan-wearing Becky feels like she has a right to run her dutty nasty fingers through my hair.’

‘I thought her name was Sarah?’ ‘No, like, a Becky. Like “Becky with the good hair”? No? Jesus Christ, WhiteBoy, you’re a nightmare.’

9781529919790

#MERKY BOOKS

part one

Prologue

Tuesday