Boy Parts(78)

‘He was in the wrong place at the wrong time. We both were. And he was covered in scars,’ I say. ‘And I put his skull underneath this tree, but now it’s gone. And it’s like… There were no missing reports, or anything, so did it even happen? You know, like? Did it even happen?’

He laughs again, slapping his hand on the table.

‘I love dark, northern humour, I really do. Do you like The League of Gentlemen?’

I do. So he talks about how he knows Mark Gatiss – did I know Mark Gatiss is from County Durham? He was in an excellent show recently. Do I like theatre?

‘Didn’t you hear me?’ I ask. ‘Didn’t you hear what I did?’ He laughs some more, and ignores me, and talks about theatre. I’m starting to feel a little frantic. I squeeze the champagne flute in my hand so hard that it shatters. My palm is filled with glass, and my hands are sticky with blood and bubbles.

I sit there, with my bloody hand, as he talks. I catch my reflection in my dinner plate, and there is glass in my eye, which I further inspect in the back of my spoon.

‘Your lipstick is fine,’ he tells me.

I lift my fingers to my eye. Nothing. I feel nothing. My hand is dry. My glass is intact. I stare at the glass, and my uninjured hand, and I blink. Uncle Stephen’s face twists, and melts – he’s his nephew, he is Eddie from Tesco, then he’s my boy, lunging at me. I flinch. I crush the champagne flute into the side of his head, and a blood-curdling scream fills the restaurant.

They’re all looking at me again. Uncle Stephen is Uncle Stephen again, and he is bleeding. My hand is bleeding. The waiters rush over, and they are so busy tending to him, they don’t notice when I slip out of the booth. They whisper as I walk by, but nobody stops me, nobody wants to stop me. I even hear a man saying, ‘Maybe they’ll comp us,’ and the blissfully unaware host hands me my coat, with a smile, when I tell him I’m going out for a cigarette.

I walk. I take off my shoes and walk barefoot on the cold, damp street. I hear a bell, jingling behind me. I walk till I can’t feel my feet anymore, till it feels like I’m walking on a pair of fleshy sponges. I walk through Chelsea, down through Battersea Park. I wonder if anything will happen this time.

I pull out my phone and tap out a text to Flo.

Like 80% sure i just glassed my date





And then:

Lol.



I send her a line of shrugging emojis.

I spot a man on a park bench.

He is small and large. He is wearing an expensive wool coat, a ratty T-shirt and a polo neck. He is skinny and fat. He has his head in his hands. He’s sniffing. He wipes his nose on his sleeve and rubs his eyes. I wave at him. I ask if I can sit down. I look at my feet. They’re bleeding.

‘Rough night?’ I ask.

‘Yeah,’ he says.

I pick up my feet and inspect them. They are peppered with gravel and blood, and pieces of glass which I pluck out, one by one, with my fingernails.

‘What’s up?’ I ask. He tells me a story I don’t listen to. His lips are dusty pink in the moonlight, the streetlight. His skin is freckled, and brown and white and red and wet. His hair is dark and curly, and blond and straight. I run my bloody knuckles down his cheek, which is soft and peachy. I tell him he’s going to be okay. I tell him not to worry.

I explain to him that nothing matters, and nothing lasts. Everyone forgets, and everything disappears. The things you do, the things you are; it’s all nothing. Would anyone miss you, if you went away? Would anyone look for you? Would anyone listen, or even care, if I hurt you? If I put my hands around your neck and crushed your windpipe and chopped you up, would anyone find you? And if it’s a no to any of these, did you even exist in the first place?

The man gets up, and tries to walk away, but I trip him. I sit on his stomach. I look into his face, and watch it melt from my boy, to Eddie from Tesco, to Will, to Lesley, to Remy, all with glass embedded in their eyes, all blood-spattered and knotted together. A rat king of boys in the face of this stranger, who is struggling and frightened.

‘Have you ever modelled?’ I ask him. He doesn’t respond. ‘Have you ever modelled?’

I take a business card out from the cup of my dress and put it in his mouth. I get up and walk away. I pass a homeless man with the boy’s face, but I don’t stop to look when he calls out to me. Am I okay? Do I need help? Where are my shoes?

I walk deeper into the park and arrive at the pond. I take off my coat and my dress, and get in. I expect to feel cleansed – to drop into the cold water and re-emerge with clean skin, filling my lungs with fresh air. But I’m just cold. I can feel a beer can by my elbow, and something soft under my feet. When I look down into the black water, I see the milky-eyed face of my boy, his head bobbing to the surface. I pick it up by the hair and find a knot of plastic bags and pond weed in my hand.

It isn’t him. It never is.





ACKNOWLEDGMENTS




I have enormous gratitude for the staff at New Writing North. Without their generous Young Writers’ Talent Fund it is highly unlikely this book would have been written. In particular I would like to thank Matt Wesolowski who served as my mentor, and whose expert assistance and encouragement helped take Boy Parts from a bloated short story to a fully-fledged novel.

I would also like to thank the staff at Mslexia magazine, where I was employed during the majority of the writing of this book, and which served as an excellent crash course in the world of UK publishing. It is perhaps worth noting that this novel was impulsively pitched by one of my ‘Sock Puppet’ accounts to Influx Press at a Mslexia Max pitching event I had organised, and was moderating. A testament to the adage that ‘shy bairns get nowt’.