Niven Govinden - Graffiti My Soul

Gwyn isn’t so kind. She is hurting more than I can imagine, but that shouldn’t mean that what I had with Moon should be brushed off as insignificant. She talked to me more than she did her family. Man, we were tight. Her parents realise it, so why doesn’t she? How is it that Gwyn can walk past me in town one day without a word?

It’s mid-morning, and there’s next to no one in the mall. I’m in town purely for something to do. Mum’s given me a shopping list and thirty quid. Figures it’s as good a first step as any.

Pushing the trolley is satisfying, and I tell Mum this later. Mentally ticking each item off the list, bagging them up at the till, picking a ripe avocado for Mum as a surprise treat, makes me feel like I’m doing something. First time since …

I’m struggling with the shopping as I walk out of Tesco and spot the bitch sister. Gwyn knows how to play it. She isn’t worried about hiding or sparing anyone’s feelings. There is no diving behind the flower stand, or disappearing into Oasis as soon as she clocks me. Instead, eyes fixed firmly in the distance, probably as far as Starbucks, at the mall’s furthermost entrance, she flicks the volume on her iPod and walks past me.

Only the fact that we’re within touching distance gives it away. Closer than touching distance. The fibres from our coats are virtually frotting. Her tidy pace means nothing. You don’t walk that close to anyone by accident.

It makes me even more confused. Two nights before the funeral we’re crying down the phone at each other. Expressing all kinds of regret that we’ve been unable to spill before our parents. Then, at the wake, when I thought things were getting friendly, we nearly get into a fight. I was going upstairs for a slash, and tried to peek into Moon’s room. She jumped on me like some shemale from WWF. Dropped the lady-like act. Approaching sounds on the stairs cut her short. And now I’m being treated like a ghost. This grief is a funny thing. I don’t know what to think.

I watch her as she bobs past the flower stand and the Body Shop, following as she curves down the final stretch, and losing her at Starbucks where she drowns in a splurge of freshly latte’d pensioners. She looks as immaculate as ever. One of those girls who’ve come straight out of the catalogue. She may be into all things rock, but Gwyn never looked like a teenager in her life. She never saw the point. When Moon dyed her hair red, she was a bitch for days about it. Not even the parents were as bothered.

The moment is so quick as to be unbelievable. It’s only when I see her pace quicken as she reaches the mall doors, a slight skip breaking into a run. Some silly old church-goer dithering with her M&S bags gets in her way and is almost pushed aside. I realise that I didn’t imagine it. This is the silent treatment. She acts like she knows.

All the way home, I’m still shivering from that brief moment of contact. Temperature dropping, like my circulation’s gone haywire. It’s a feeling similar to when Moon used to touch me. Especially on those nights after she disappeared from her boyfriend, when our meetings had to be brief. Those hour-long meetings, sometimes shorter than that, were all about news, and food, and touch. Not sex, nothing like that, more a sense of confirmation. We couldn’t keep our hands or lips off each other. A touch that jump-starts my circuits. A touch that makes me feel. Don’t ask me to explain how a static touch from Gwyn gives me exactly the same feelings. It just does.

Pearson’s face is a picture. Skin the colour of a tomato that’s been kicked down several flights of stairs. Nose flat like a pancake because I’ve almost broken it. Looks like he’s been slapped in the face with a giant fly swatter, or as if he’s the last one squeezed into the tube carriage as the doors slide shut. It’s a result.

In my mind, his looks have been permanently busted. The prettyboy thing he does with those caterpillar eyebrows that gets the girls all wobbly, even the sensible ones, is gone for good. Except, the ladies don’t seem to see it that way. Think his squished-out nose makes him look sexier, more of a bruiser. I couldn’t do anything about messing up the puppy-dog eyes, that was my mistake. Injured boat with eyes like that is always going to win the girls round. Combined with the thick lips, it’s an unbeatable killer combo. Enough to make you sick.

And boy, does he milk it. For the next few days, once the suspension nonsense is over with, he’s with a different girl at every break, giving them the inside story on his physical discomfort. Working the lie that he’s holding back tears, the fucker.

Get a girl on her own, buy her a pizza slice and a drink, get some sob story going, and it’s pretty much in the bag. If me and Jase didn’t have a reputation for being so difficult, we’d probably be acting exactly the same. There are at least three girls that we’ve heard of in the last week that hung out with him in the sports hall changing rooms after school. And ‘hanging out’ figures are like icebergs — we all reckon the real figure is much higher. Way higher.

Pearson’s good fortune nags at me until it becomes torture, and for two reasons. The fact that he’s getting more than he deserves, and the fact that it’s all down to me. I meant to disfigure the bastard, and now it looks like I’ve done him a favour. And while I’m sat home stewing after school, he’s seeing all the tit he can down the sports hall, and all because I gave him a pasting. It sucks.

‘I’m being sued. That’s why I’m late.’

It’s raining, really belting, so I’m forced to take up Casey’s offer of a lift home from training. Mum is on early shift, so won’t see when he drops me door to door.

‘Who would want to sue you? Some geezer offended by your new choice of trackie?’

The Clio smells of kebabs and booze. I inhale like it’s an essential oil or something, unless I want to open the window and get completely soaked.

We’re not even driving anywhere, it’s raining so hard. Sat in the car park, until Casey gets better road vision — he only has one wiper that works. It’s a traditional English still life that some old artist or other forgot to paint: ex-pervert and future athletics star getting cosy in Clio at dawn. They should put it on plates.

Casey is on overdrive with his clearing-the-throat action. If you closed your eyes you’d think he was starting a tractor. Several football pitch areas of forest are cleared before he can get the words out.

‘My favourite family from last year. Claiming emotional damage.’

His tone is all over the shop. Was trying to be flippant, but his voice goes too high. Makes him sound like he’s going to start crying or something.

I can’t deal with this: men showing emotion in public so early in the morning, and then the smell. It’s enough to make me leg it. Better a chest cold than all this blubbing and rank stinkiness.

But I don’t go anywhere. We’ve never spoken about that family before. Never. Unspoken rule number 4578. Drafted via psychic powers during our first meeting at the now-legendary out-of-the-way Starbucks. People will pay pilgrimage to that fucking Starbucks in Walton after I’ve become famous and told Trevor McDonald the secrets of my life.

‘I don’t understand the greed of the these people. I’m an innocent man, but they are not happy until they have stripped every single thing from me.’

‘Tell them to fuck off. You’re the one who had his house burned down and everything.’

Casey laughs the dry, brittle laugh which adults are so good at when they are trying to show you the weight of experience they carry on their broken shoulders.