David Mitchell - The Bone Clocks

A voice inside answers, “Mrs. Harty?”

“I’ve brought you a roommate.”

Inside, the Welsh dungaree-wearing smirker is sitting cross-legged on her bed, writing in a diary or something. Steam’s rising from a flask on the floor, and smoke from a cigarette balanced on a bottle. Gwyn looks at me and gestures at the bed, like, It’s all yours . “Welcome to my humble abode. Which is now our humble abode.”

“Well, I’ll leave you two girls to it,” says Mrs. Harty, and goes, and Gwyn gets back to her diary. Well, that’s bloody nice, that is. F’Chrissakes, she could try to make a bit of small talk. Scratty scrat-scrat goes her Biro. Probably writing ’bout me right now, and probably in Welsh, so I can’t read it. Well, if she’s not talking to me, I’m not talking to her. I dump my duffel bag on the bed, ignoring a Stella Yearwood — sounding voice saying that Holly Sykes’s great bid for freedom has ended in a total shit-hole. I lie next to my duffel bag ’cause I’ve got nowhere else to go and no energy. My feet feel well and truly Black & Deckered. I don’t have a sleeping bag, either.

MY GOALIE WHACKS the ball clean down the table and, slam! , straight into Gary the student’s goal and the impressed onlookers cheer. Brendan calls that shot my Peter Shilton Special, and used to whinge ’bout my left-handed goalie’s unfair advantage. Five-nil to me, my fifth victory in a row, and we’re playing winner stays on. “She bloody demolished me, what can I say?” says Gary, his face fiery and speech slurred after a few Heinekens. “Holly, you’re a progeny, no, a progidy, thassit, a prodigy, a bona fide bar-football prodigy — and there’s no dishonor in losing to … one of them.” Gary does a pantomime bow and reaches over the table with his can of Heineken so that I have to clink mine against his. “How d’you get to be so good?” asks this girl who’s easy to remember ’cause she’s Debby from Derby. I just shrug and say I always used to play at my cousin’s. But I remember Brendan saying, “I cannot believe I’ve been beaten by a girl,” which I’ve only just realized he said to make my victory sweeter.

I’ve had enough bar football for now, so I go out for a smoke. The common room’s the old stables and it still whiffs a bit of horse poo, but it’s livelier than the Captain Marlow on a Sunday night. Must be twenty-five pickers sat round the tables yacking, snacking, smoking, drinking, flirting, and playing cards, and although there’s no telly someone’s got a paint-spattered ghetto blaster and a Siouxsie and the Banshees tape. Outside, the fields of Black Elm Farm slope down to the sea, and lights dot-to-dot the coast past Faversham, past Whitstable, and further. You’d never believe it’s a world where people get murdered or mugged or kicked out by their mothers.

It’s nine P.M.; Mam’ll be saying “Lights out and God bless” to Jacko and Sharon, then pouring herself a glass of wine and watching Bergerac on the telly. Or maybe tonight she’ll go downstairs to bitch about me to one of her supergrasses: “I don’t know where I went wrong with that one, so help me, God, I don’t.” Dad’ll be telling Nipper the plumber and TJ the sparky and old Mr. Sharkey, “It’ll all come out in the wash,” or something else that sounds wise but means nothing.

I get my box of Rothmans out of my shirt pocket — eight gone, twelve left — but before I can light up Gary appears in his REALITY IS AN ILLUSION CAUSED BY A LACK OF ALCOHOL T-shirt and offers me one of his Silk Cut, saying, “This one’s on me, Holly.” I thank him and he says, “You won it fair and square,” and his eyes flicker up and down my chest, like Vinny’s do. Did. Gary’s ’bout to say something else but one of his mates calls him over, and Gary says, “I’ll see you later,” and goes. Not if I see you first , I think. I’ve had it with boys.

Three-quarters of the pickers are students at college or uni or waiting to go this September, and I’m the youngest by a couple of years, even counting my age as sixteen, not fifteen. I’m trying not to act all shy, ’cause that might give my age away, but they aren’t going to be plumbers or hairdressers or bin collectors: They’ll be computer programmers or teachers or solicitors, and it shows. It’s in how they speak. They use precise words, like they own them, like Jacko does, in fact, but not like any kid in my year at school’d dare to. Ed Brubeck’ll be one of them in two years. I look over at Gary and just at that moment he sort of senses me and gives me a fancy-meeting-you-here look, and I glance away before he gets the wrong idea.

The pickers who aren’t students sort of stand out. Gwyn’s one. She’s playing draughts with Marion and Linda and, apart from a “Hi” and a fake smile when I came in, she’s ignored me. Cheers very much, Gwyn. Marion’s a bit simple and her sister Linda fusses all mummishly and finishes her sentences for her. Picking fruit at Black Elm Farm’s their annual holiday, sort of. There’s a couple, Stuart and Gina, who have their own tent, tucked away in a dip. They’re late twenties, look like folk singers, with earrings, and hair in pony-tails, and actually they are amateur folk singers, and busk in market towns. Gina’s taking me and Debby food shopping to the Spar at Eastchurch after I’ve been paid. They act as go-betweens to the other pickers and Mr. Harty, Debby told me. Last, there’s a kid called Alan Wall, who sleeps in a tiny caravan parked round the side of the farmhouse. I saw him hanging out washing to dry when I was having a look around. He can’t be more than a year or two older than me, but his scrawny body’s tough as cables and he’s tanned like tea. Debby told me he’s a gypsy, or a traveler, as you’re s’posed to say these days, and that Mr. Harty hires someone from his family every year, but Debby didn’t know if it’s a tradition or debt or superstition, or what.

COMING BACK FROM the toilet, I see a narrow canyon between the farmhouse and a shed. Someone’s waiting. A match strikes. “Fancy meeting you here,” says Gary. “Care for another smoke?”

Yes, Gary’s good-looking, but he’s at least a bit drunk, and I’ve known him all of two hours. “I’ll get back to the common room, thanks.”

“Nah, you’ll share a smoke with me. Go on, Hol, everyone’s got to die of something.” He’s already stuck his box of Silk Cuts in my face with one stuck out for me to take with my lips. I can’t refuse without making it into a big issue so I use my fingers and say, “Thanks.”

“Here’s a light … So tell me. Your boyfriend in Southend must be missing you something rotten.”

I think of Vinny and heave out a “Christ, no,” think, You idiot, Sykes , and add, “Kind of, yeah, he is, actually.”

“Glad that’s sorted.” In the glow of his fag, Gary grins dead slinkily. “Let’s go for a stroll and see the stars. Tell me about Mr. Christ-no-sort-of-yeah.”

I really don’t want Gary’s fingers inside my bra or anywhere else, but how do I tell him to piss off without bruising his pride?

“Shyness is cute,” says Gary, “but it stops you living. C’mon, I’ve got alcohol, nicotine … anything else you might need.”

Christ, if guys could be girls being hit on by guys, just for one night, lines as cheesy as that’d go extinct. “Look, Gary, now’s not a good time.” I try to walk around him to get back to the farmyard.

“You’ve been eyeing me up.” His arm comes down like a carpark barrier, pressing against my stomach. I smell his aftershave, his beer, and his horniness, sort of. “All night. Now’s your chance.”

If I tell him to feck right off, he’ll probably turn all the pickers against me. If I go nuclear and call for help it’ll be his version against the Hysterical New Girl’s, and how old is she again, and do her parents really know she’s here anyway?