Kate Pullinger - Landing Gear

Ruby. After that McDonald boy had died at his own party, it transpired that Ruby’s older brother was a drug dealer and that he’d been selling weed to Jack, and that they’d been passing around the drugs at school. Frank was expelled, Jack narrowly missing out on expulsion himself, and the name Ruby had become a kind of parental shorthand for “bad news.” “Will Ruby be there?” “Is Ruby going?” What these questions really meant was: will my baby son or tiny sweet daughter be smoking spliff at this party?

But Ruby. Harriet had always loved Ruby, despite all this. How could you not love Ruby? She was gorgeous, and she was very sweet. She made you want to take care of her, with those dark rings under her eyes.

Harriet poked around Ruby’s page for a while. She had already uploaded a few photos from the party. None of Jack. Mostly endless shots of groups of girls hugging each other and smiling into the camera, beers aloft. The dark mass of Dukes Meadows behind them, the sky getting a little blacker with each shot. Harriet was keen on the facial recognition software Facebook had implemented a while back; it helped her keep tabs on who was who in Jack’s wide circle. A photo appeared of a girl, her bright red hair luminous in the flash, a photo of someone who was photographing the photographer. She looked a bit older, and a bit familiar. Harriet stared at the image. Then the software kicked in and the name appeared on the screen, hovering next to the young woman’s face.

It took Harriet a full minute to process this information. Emily. Emily was at the party.

“I’m going to the supermarket,” she said to Michael.

“It’s ten-thirty,” Michael said, looking up from the television screen.

“It’s open all night on Saturday.” Harriet grabbed her bag and went to the drawer where the car keys were kept. “Shit.”

“What?”

“I won’t be long,” she said. “Don’t wait up for me.” She hoped he’d forgotten about the car. Going out at this time of night without a car would make him think she was having some kind of breakdown. She thought of the moment earlier in the day when she’d kissed him.

Michael let out a dissatisfied sigh as she went through the front door.

The taxi dropped her off on the main road; the lane that runs down one side of Dukes Meadows was blocked with cars, which was not a good sign. It was a mild, bright night for early spring, and although the cars were packed tight, there was no music, which Harriet found disconcerting. As she made her way toward the meadow, a plane passed overhead.

The sound of the crowd rose up on the night air as Harriet walked down the lane, weaving between the cars. And there it was: in the darkness, a large mass of people stretching all the way to the river, lit only by the screens of their phones, talking and shouting and drinking, at least half of them lost and trying to find each other, phoning, texting, messaging: “Whr r u? Whr r u? Come find me. Find me.” The whole of West London youth, gathered together in one place.

She moved forward along the edge of the crowd and thought for a moment that the ground was covered with stardust, but it was beer cans and bottles, thousands of them, carpeting the edges of the field, crumpled and shiny, smashed and glittering, a sound like dull cowbells as they were kicked around. And still no music.

She tried to phone Jack but it went straight to voicemail. She wasn’t sure where to go, how to find him, how to find Emily, or even whether she was here to find Emily or to stop Jack from finding Emily—to stop these two lives from colliding.

Jack tried to get the girl with the blood-red hair to go away but she wouldn’t. He hoped Yacub had understood the international hand signal for “run away.” The girl kept filming Jack and asking questions.

“Was that the falling man?”

“He’s been known to fall from time to time, if that’s what you mean.”

“What’s your name?”

“What’s yours?”

“You’re Jack, aren’t you?”

“If you know so much already, why are you asking so many questions?” Jack was a bit drunk and thought he’d try being clever, but he was also sober enough to know he wasn’t really clever at all.

“You live at home with your mum, Harriet.”

She made it sound like Jack was a thirty-year-old who couldn’t be bothered to move out because he didn’t want to have to do his own laundry. “I’m sixteen!” he said. And now he felt like a total idiot, because this red-haired girl was definitely older, most definitely considerably older, and she’d think a sixteen-year-old was basically some kind of little kid.

“What’s Harriet doing these days?”

“Why are you so interested in my mum?”

When Harriet and Jack had their “events,” the press had taken an interest. Photographers lurked across the street for a week or so and the tabloids got hold of Jack’s phone number and started ringing him. His mum had anticipated this happening, so she’d prepared Jack and he wasn’t taken in. Harriet was convinced their phones were hacked as well, so they got new phones and let the old ones sit there on the kitchen counter. They’d ring from time to time and Harriet would shout “Not on your nelly!” and they’d laugh and let the damned things go to voicemail. Jack listened to the messages every once in a while; after a few days the callers started offering money if he’d call them back, but he wasn’t tempted. And then, after not too long, the interest in them went away. Harriet was old news. This far down the road Jack thought he would probably have to pay to get a journalist’s attention. So why was this girl behaving like she was filming him for some kind of fresh tabloid scoop?

“That’s enough,” Jack said.

To his surprise, she lowered the camera and smiled. “All right,” she said. She held out her hand. “I’m Emily,” but she didn’t say it in the way most people say their names when they meet somebody. She said it in this overemphatic special way that meant she expected Jack to slap himself on the forehead and shout, “Oh! You’re Emily!” as if he’d been waiting his entire life to finally meet her and he was a moron for not recognizing her straight away. He felt a flash of annoyance and was about to tell her to go fuck herself or, more likely, something much lamer, when he felt an arm slide around his waist.

It was Ruby.

“Bye, Emily,” he said, “nice to meet you.” He leaned down and gave Ruby a kiss on her lips, and to his astonishment she kissed him back.

“Let’s go down to the river,” said Ruby.

Jack could tell she had taken something: her eyes were very wide and she was speaking in a breathless way as though her heart was pounding and everything and everyone was tremendously exciting. She was doing this thing that she did back in the day when they used to hang out at Dukes and smoke her brother’s draw—she’d fold and thread her fingers together over and over again, as if she was going to say a prayer but decided against it but then changed her mind yet again. And when she walked she held her hands parallel to the ground, moving them from side to side, as though she was about to tap dance or something.

Jack could see that she was heading away from the river—they needed to go toward the big trees, not away from them. The crowd had begun to thin a little, as the thirteen- and fourteen-year-olds finished trashing their young brains before being picked up by daddy at the arranged time and place. In another hour an older crowd would arrive and things would get scary. Jack took Ruby by the hand and turned her in the right direction. They picked up the pace; moments later she stopped short.

“Hey, Jack,” she said, reaching into her pocket, “take this.” She unfolded a small piece of foil, licked her finger and stuck a little pill onto one end. She gave him one of her Ruby smiles and said, “Open wide.” He hesitated. David McDonald. All the bad things. But then he looked down at Ruby’s face. He opened his mouth and stuck out his tongue. Then he closed his lips around her finger. She looked up at him, smiling.