Luan Goldie - Nightingale Point

The sky appears endless. Unnaturally blue today, almost unworldly, not a blemish on it apart from the single white smear of a plane.

Does she need to run back? Has it already been twenty minutes? She doesn’t care. What does time matter if you’re all alone? What difference does any of it make if you’re about to throw yourself from the top of a tower block? She takes three deep breaths but knows that she doesn’t have the confidence to do it. But the thought alone makes her feel like she has some edge on Dad, something that she can do without his permission.

In front of the estate people are living their lives: a child runs, the drunks drink, some girls sunbathe in pink bras and denim shorts, and a lone large figure in billowing purple crosses the grass at speed. Pamela tries to picture who the bodies are, how they would feel if they witnessed a girl fall from the building, their faces upon discovering her body bashed at the bottom. They would be traumatised, she thinks, for a while at least, and then her death would become another estate anecdote. The tale of the broken-hearted teenager with the strict dad . It would become just another story to get passed around the swing park and across balconies, along with tales of who is screwing who and which flat plays host to the biggest number of squatters.

Pamela wishes she could go for a run. She needs to clear her head. Surely Dad will let her out.

‘Please, one hour out,’ she rehearses. It sounds so feeble out loud, so knowing of a negative answer.

Her running shoes swing by her sides as she pads across the greyness in her socks. She steps over the glossy ripped pages of a magazine; a girl in a peephole leather catsuit stares back at her. The door bounces against its splintered frame as Pamela enters the building. Her world starts to shrink. With each step down to the eleventh floor the brightness of the unending blue sky disappears and the stairwell begins to close in on her. The concrete walls suck the air away until there is only the suffocating stink of other people’s lives.

‘Do you think it will be okay if I went out today? Maybe. Perhaps.’ Her voice echoes eerily; she feels even more alone. ‘I’m thinking of going out today.’ This time with more confidence. But what’s the point? He will say no. He will never trust her again.

She opens the door onto the puke-coloured hallway and the shouts and music of her neighbours. Outside flat forty-one she stops and rests her head on the security gate, takes a few breaths and then pulls it open. She looks down at the letterbox and for a moment feels like she has a choice. She could still go back to the roof. But, as always, the choice is taken away from her as the lock clicks from within and the front door swings open.

Dad fills the doorway; a fag hangs from the corner of his mouth. ‘You’re pushing your luck, girl.’ Patches of psoriasis flame red on his expressionless face. He’s put back on the same sweat-stained yellow T-shirt and army combat trousers from yesterday.

‘I was getting some air.’ She pushes past him into the dim, smoky living room.

He follows her, sits on the sofa and pulls his black boots on. ‘Air?’ He methodically ties up each of the long mustard laces. The woven burgundy throw falls from the back of the sofa to reveal the holes and poverty beneath it. ‘We got a balcony for that. I don’t wanna start locking the gate, Pamela, but if you’re gonna be running off every opportunity—’

‘I didn’t run off. It’s a nice day. I was on the roof.’

‘Well, I’ve heard that before. You can’t blame me for not trusting you.’

She rearranges the throw and stands back. She only wants an hour outside, just enough time to clear her head. So much can change in that time; like the day she first met Malachi. Dad had given her an hour then too, explained how grateful she should be for it. ‘More than enough time to go round the field and straight back home.’ She grabbed that time, and even though he was watching her from the window, she felt free as she ran loops around the frosty field.

The drunks, immune to the freezing temperatures of the morning, watched from their bench as she ran past them several times that hour. ‘You should be running this way, blondie,’ one called, while shaping his hands in a V towards his crotch on her last lap. They all laughed and she ran faster. She could always go faster and with time ticking she needed to get home before Dad came out for her. She cut onto the grass, slipped and fell awkwardly. It hurt straight away. Her ponytail caught the side of her face as she turned to check if the drunks were still laughing at her, but they hadn’t even noticed her fall. The dew began to seep through her leggings and she tried to stand, but buckled immediately with the pain.

‘Hey,’ someone called. ‘You okay?’ A tall man came running towards her and put out a gloved hand. ‘You really went down hard there.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Here, let me help you.’

As he helped her to a bench she tried to concentrate on the hole in his glove to stop herself from blushing.

‘You really do run out here in all weathers, don’t you?’ he asked.

‘Sorry?’

‘I live up in Nightingale Point. I always see you out here.’

He had seen her before. How had she never seen him? She tried not to stare, or lean into his arms too much.

Tristan Roberts came over too. He was from her school, one of those loud, obnoxious boys everyone seemed to know.

‘Oh, shit, did you break your leg?’

‘No, she ain’t broken her leg. This is my brother.’

They looked nothing alike.

‘Ain’t you cold?’ Tristan pulled the drawstrings on his hoodie tighter. ‘Running round out here? That’s long.’

She could see Dad coming across the field now, his face red from fatigue and panic.

‘I’m fine, really. Thanks. I need to get home.’ She tried to rise but the pain shot through and she winced. He grabbed her again; the pain was almost worth it.

‘Get off her. Pam.’ Dad was closer. ‘Pam, Pam.’ He pushed past Tristan and put his hands either side of her face. ‘I knew I should have been watching you. What happened?’

‘She’s all right, man, she just tripped, innit,’ Tristan said.

‘Who are you? Why are you two even near my girl?’

‘Dad, stop it. Tristan goes to my school.’

Tristan looked confused. He obviously didn’t recognise her. It confirmed she had no presence at her new school; she was nobody.

‘I’m Malachi. We live in the same block. We were making sure she was all right. That’s all.’

‘Well, she’s fine ’cause I’m here now, ain’t I?’ Dad snapped. ‘Come on. Let’s get you home.’ His grip on her arm was tighter than it needed to be. She could see Malachi noticed it too.

‘This looks bad, Pam. Don’t think you’ll be running again for a while.’ Dad looked relieved, happy because injuries meant she had no reason to go out.

Even now, with the injury long healed, he still won’t let her out, but then he has other reasons for wanting to keep her inside the flat these days. She pulls the curtains open and the room brightens, but even the sun’s glare is not enough to chase the perpetual gloom out.

Dad inspects his roll-up for life before roughly squeezing it onto a saucer. It’s from her nan’s set, cream with tiny brown corgis around the edge, once used for special occasions but now reduced to holding ash.

‘I’m going to the bookies,’ he says. ‘Will be back for dinner. We’ll heat up that corned beef.’

‘They’re fighting again,’ she says.

‘Who?’

‘Next door. Can’t you hear them?’

They stop for a moment to listen to the searing soap opera from flat forty-two that plays itself out so regularly. It sounds particularly theatrical today. What is the woman shrieking about this time? She always seems to be arguing with her teenage daughter over something. Pamela longs for that kind of relationship, one so freely volatile that you could scream and shout at a parent, rather than stand there and soak up their disappointment.