Lock Me In

Not waiting to be asked, I brought over the only other chair, a faded green, moulded plastic thing, and perched on its edge, leaning towards him with as much warmth as I could muster. ‘I know he liked the chats he had with you,’ I lied. ‘I was just hoping he might have said something about a trip somewhere. Anything about being away from the boat?’

He blew his cheeks out. ‘Love, listen. Sometimes us blokes have got to blow off a bit of steam.’

‘He hasn’t fallen out with anyone here or anything?’ I said, knowing Matt would have told me if that was the case. ‘Or got behind on his rent or anything?’

He leaned back importantly. ‘That’s confidential.’

‘Please, Mr Jupp.’ Genuine desperation cracked my voice. ‘I don’t know who else to ask.’

He let out a big sigh. ‘Look, leave your number, sweetheart,’ he said, handing me an opened, empty envelope. ‘Anything occurs to me, or he misses the payment, I’ll be sure to let you know. Now if you don’t mind, my missus is waiting for me, so I’m going home for my tea.’

I wrote my name and number on the envelope, with PLEASE CALL IF YOU HEAR ANYTHING underlined beneath. ‘Anything at all,’ I told him, handing it over and getting up to leave.

‘Oh, while you’re here, get rid of that lot, will you?’ he said, indicating the moorers’ postboxes on the wall, a grid of open-fronted pigeonholes. ‘He got a parcel the other day and I had nowhere to stick it.’

I pulled out the stack from Matt’s box and flipped through it. Bills, circulars. Everything machine-franked.

‘Can I have the parcel?’

‘Fuck knows where it is right now,’ he said. ‘I’ll drop it over if I find it.’

I thanked him, shoved the post into one of Matt’s huge coat pockets, and went back down to the boat. I shook the hoody off and used the chemical toilet. On the inside of the bathroom door was a full-length mirror. I stood in front of it, remembering.

Once, months ago, when Mum was on a night shift and I didn’t have to be home until almost dawn, Matt and I spent hours in front of this mirror. He took my clothes off slowly like he was peeling an exotic fruit. I stood there now, in the dark, the reflection of my body lit just by the moon. Matt had made me look. The fine hairs on my arms bristled with the memory of his fingertips, stroking down my naked sides, kissing each one of the constellation of tiny puckered scars across my shoulder and down my back, from the accident when I was small.

I let my eyes flutter shut, recalled the way Matt raked the backs of his nails softly up my sides, then reached around to hold my breasts, tucking his hands underneath them. How he brushed his thumbs across my nipples, not letting me look away. The light had been just like this, an identical blueish monochrome. He had placed my hands high on the mirror so I was bent forwards, and took me like that. Slowly. Telling me to look myself in the eye, saying it again and again because I wouldn’t, until his insistence took hold and he wasn’t laughing, he meant it. He really meant it. When I eventually looked, he slid his hand around and pressed his fingers against me, making me gasp.

‘Look at who you are,’ he whispered as I came, shuddering hard against his hand. His breath hot and low and liquid against my neck. ‘You are beautiful.’

I blinked the memory away, avoiding my eye in the mirror, and went along to his bedroom at the far end. I lifted the duvet and got into his bed, wriggling down with the covers over my head. I’d been in this bed dozens of times, but never to sleep. Closed my eyes and inhaled deeply.

Damp and woodsmoke and sex.

I slipped my good hand inside my jeans. I held the sense of him, built him up from the smell of his skin, his hair. I started to move, small circles, conjuring his mouth on my mouth. His fingertips on my breasts. I imagined the feel of his chest under my hands, my fingers moving along his shoulders, sliding across to his throat. Glimmers of his face, darts of memory, coming faster.

But then

the skin on his neck, glistening gathering and twisting, pink then white against the pressure of my fingers,

and

his face suddenly panicked tight, and his hands on mine, grabbing,

and

his eyes starting to bulge, looking at me, not understanding,

and

a creaking sound from his open mouth, no air going in or coming out,

and

his hand, coming up to my face, his eyes still locked onto mine. Stones in the ground under my knees digging in to me as I kneel over him. Sticks and leaves the same as when Mum found Jodie and something sharp against my shin. The smell of the wet leaves and the roar of a jet engine descending, low, and his eyes wild with horror, knowing now that I am not going to stop.

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