Kate Tempest - The Bricks that Built the Houses

‘Reece who?’ she said.

‘Reece McKenzie?’ Gloria looked deadly serious as she said his name.

‘Yeah, why?’ she asked.

‘I go out with him. He lives near me,’ Gloria said, matter-of-fact.

‘ I don’t like him.’ Charlotte shook her head. ‘Not one bit.’

‘Did you hear anything about him recently, at school?’ Gloria looked down at her Kickers, swinging.

‘Anything like what?’ Becky said.

‘Someone told me he did something. I want to know if it’s true.’

Becky looked at the floor for a long time. Didn’t know what to say. Charlotte took out two cigarettes from her bag. It was a tiny Nike rucksack about as big as an A5 bit of paper with really long straps. The cigarettes came from the bottom of the bag and were battered and floppy. She straightened them out carefully. Offered one to her new friend.

‘Twos me?’ she said, giving the other to Gloria. Gloria tore half off, put it behind her ear and gave the other half back.

‘You smoke weed?’ she asked Becky. Becky nodded. But she’d only smoked it once before.

Gloria put her hand inside her top and got a little bud of skunk wrapped in a Rizla out of her bra. Becky pretended not to be interested but felt her heart racing. Charlotte gave Becky a lighter and she lit the cigarette and looked out at the shitty little park. She watched a young mother walking past, dragging a screaming son in one hand and carrying six bags of shopping in the other; her son was clutching an ice cream but somewhere along the way the top of it had fallen off, so it was just a dry cone. She watched them until they staggered out of view. She watched a boy on a bike doing wheelies past a group of four girls sitting on a wall who weren’t looking at him. She watched a man in a suit on a bench by the bus stop, leaning down to offer his sandwich to two fat pigeons, while behind him a homeless man was passed out on the floor, next to a sign saying HUNGRY. PLEASE HELP . Everywhere she looked she saw her mother’s photographs.

She thought about Reece McKenzie. He was horrible to her and all the girls in her year. He was always going through girls’ bags and taking tampons out and covering them in ketchup and throwing them at people’s heads.

‘He gave Kirsty in Year Eight an eighth of skunk and then made her give him a blowjob,’ she said solemnly.

‘It’s true then.’ Gloria dried her lips with the back of her hand and held the bud between them softly. She straightened the Rizla out in her palms, stroking the creases out. Shaking her head.

‘Don’t know if it’s true, it’s just what I heard.’ Becky fiddled with the cuff of her school shirt. Picked at the knees of her tights.

‘He’s dirty, Gloria. Forget about him.’ Charlotte spat on the floor.

‘He’s a dickhead.’ Gloria started to crumble the bud. For a moment, nobody moved. ‘So what’s your name then?’ Gloria didn’t look up from the Rizla.

‘Becky.’

‘Becky.’ Gloria considered her. A brief stab of sunlight fell across her knees. ‘Wanna be our friend, Becky?’

Charlotte nodded energetically, leaning forward so far Becky thought she might fall off the bench. She liked these two. She nodded.

‘Yeah. OK.’

They went to under-eighteens garage raves, kissed boys and did pills for the first time. They had a big group of mates that they sat around drinking with, talking shit and committing petty crime. They were best mates and they looked out for each other. The other kids they knew were afraid of them and in love with them and gave them things because they didn’t know what else they were supposed to do with the feelings that they had.

But no matter what else was going on, Becky kept going to her dance class. She went to hip hop and street sessions in the community centre with other girls from the area. She watched Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker on video every night. She learned the steps for every song. Michael and the community-centre dance classes remained her biggest influence well into adulthood. As she grew older and became interested in contemporary dance, she came at it from this perspective, and it grounded her movements, kept everything deep and strong and low; nothing too upright or rigid.

Becky stayed at Gloria’s or Charlotte’s most nights. She couldn’t stand the talk of heaven and forgiveness at home. Her absence just made her mother more intent on cornering her when the house was quiet and begging her to spend some time with her. Becky couldn’t bear the careful worried eyes, followed by the mention of her father.

But then, when Becky turned fifteen, Paula moved away. Driven mad with passion for a God she could believe in. Paula joined a convent that prescribed a born-again programme of growing vegetables and prayer and sobriety and song, a refuge for the saved in the mountains of the American Midwest, and as she waved her goodbye at the airport, Becky breathed out.

Life went on. Ron and Linda took a bigger role in looking after her. Teddy and Becky laughed at the TV and beat each other up and stole each other’s things. They were as close and as distant as any family. Becky had her own room for the first time in years.

At Christmas, on birthdays, or after something momentous had happened, Becky thought about her dad and where he was and what he might be doing. When it happened, she wrote him letters; long, complicated letters that never began or ended, just picked up with whatever it was that she wanted to tell him and went anywhere and everywhere. She wrote similar letters to her mum; occasionally she addressed them to both parents. She kept the letters in a shoebox in her wardrobe, and every few years, once the shoebox was heavy, she would take the letters out and read them to herself, sitting alone on her bedroom floor, allowing herself to cry. And then, after all the tears had come and gone, she’d take the letters up to the park in the night and set them on fire.

In her flat in Deptford, Becky kicks her feet wildly. She moans half-words and turns herself about, twisting her bedcovers up in her fist. After one more shuddering kick her body stills and she enters a more peaceful dream; her brow is beaded with sweat, the blinds are rattling in the breeze.

Eight comes too soon. Pete is ripped into consciousness, suddenly woken from a bad dream. He is on the sofa in the front room, his head is throbbing, his breathing is fast from the nightmare. He moans loudly and digs around down the back of the cushions for his phone. Finds it, checks the time, moans again. Then he gets up, holding his head, runs to the bathroom, splashes his face, brushes his teeth and tries not to retch. He’s got an appointment at the jobcentre, and if he misses it they’ll sanction him, and if they sanction him, he’s fucked.

Becky turns the alarm off, stands up, rubs her face. A climbing tiredness behind her eyelids. Nauseous from booze, her nostril crusted white at the edge, she blows red chunks into a tissue, pushes a couple of painkillers out of their plastic sheet and swallows them calmly, before going to stand in the shower until she feels like a human.

Harry is standing, ghost-faced, at her front door waiting for Leon to find his keys. Smoking fast. Swallowing rapidly, twitching her nose. Clutching a newspaper.

‘I reckon it was an inside job, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. It’s just too convenient, don’t you think? They want us afraid so they can take our freedoms away. That’s what it is, mate. That’s what they’re doing. It’s all about control.’

Leon doesn’t respond, finds his keys at last in the first pocket he looked in. Opens the door. ‘There’s a pack of Valium on the shelf in the bathroom,’ he tells her.