Jonathan Lee - High Dive

It would be a terrible thing if anyone ever corrected Marina on this humane versus human stuff. It would be a gleam of uniqueness gone. ‘Tell me,’ he said, and closed his eyes to picture the problem.

‘It seems she has been getting herself involved with a man with marital entanglements.’

‘As in?’

‘He’s married,’ Marina said.

‘Right. I see.’

It was quite fun lying here like this. A hint of what therapy might be like?

‘There was punch,’ Marina said.

‘What, like fruit punch?’

‘Like fist punch.’

‘Oh.’

Marina coughed. ‘Y e s. She punched the married man just outside the hotel. Well, outside the Conference Centre.’

‘Not ideal, but it’s probably not our problem, if it wasn’t on our property.’

‘The married man is a guest, though, actually. The one who Karen punched.’

Moose opened his eyes. ‘Fuck.’

‘Y e s. Was a guest. He left now.’

‘That Stephens guy?’

‘How did you know?’

You could always tell. There was something primal in the eyes of certain guests.

‘Anyway,’ Marina said, ‘I am dealing with it, but I know you like to know.’ She uncrossed and recrossed her legs; he looked away.

‘A complaint isn’t what we need right now, Mari.’

‘How would they find out?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘I think they are busy running the country. You look tired these days, Moose.’

‘What?’

‘Tired.’

‘Thanks, Mari.’

‘No problem,’ she said, smiling. ‘Don’t make a habit of staying late, y e s? A man needs balance in his life.’

‘You’re right, I suppose.’

‘It is not healthy to get as stressed as you do.’

‘I don’t get stressed.’

‘Obsessed, I meant.’

‘That’s a worse word. You’re going the wrong way.’

‘Y e s?’

‘Yes.’ He closed his eyes again. ‘You’re a good therapist, Mari.’

‘I learned from my therapist. She is good.’

‘You have one? What could you possibly need one for?’

Marina shrugged. ‘Back home everyone has a person. The men cheat, and the women are beautiful. Anyway, she said — my therapist said — that happiness goes outward, not inward.’

‘Wow,’ Moose said. He sensed there was something profound nestled in this idea, something worth rummaging around for. ‘What do you think she meant?’

‘I think she meant what she said.’

‘Right. Of course.’ There was dust balled up underneath the radiator, fleecy dust that had no business being there. ‘I did a dive today, Mari.’

‘Boys,’ she said, shaking her head.

MORNINGS AT THE beach were often beautiful. No choice but to admit it as true. There was none of the haste of the afternoon. Less of the intrusive arguments between adults. Less gross rubbing of groins. Less mating rituals. Less slapping of bad kids’ bums or spreading grease onto hairy backs. The expanse of pebbles sloping down to the water’s edge was uncluttered. You could pick your spot and make it your own, the way you made your bedroom your own. Not so much with posters and branded duvet covers as with pure familiarity: knowing the shades and textures that filled every bit of your domain; knowing which stain was the beer stain and which was blood and which loose floorboard concealed the cigarettes you’d stolen from your dad. The air glowed. The sea was full of colour. Everything was rich with light and warmth. Even the seagulls seemed relaxed, content to ride the wind with rigid wings or glide down with care for bits of weed, saving their techniques of total intimidation for the lunchtime crowd and their cones of delicious chips.

She was sitting on the beach beside Susie, both of them sipping pulpy orange juice through straws, shivering slightly in the sunlight. Sarah and Tracy had both gone on holiday this week, a break before starting uni. There would be new friends waiting for them at uni, probably. Boy friends, definitely. Colourful anecdotes forming in her absence. But there was still the beach, and she was here, and Susie had been left here too.

‘Four o’clock,’ Susie said, and casting her eyes at that angle Freya re-engaged with a game they often played: imagining themselves into the lives of strangers.

‘A police detective,’ she said. ‘You can tell from the choice of snack.’

‘American,’ Susie said.

‘No, Canadian. If he was American it would be a ring doughnut.’

Susie nodded in acknowledgement of this self-evident truth. Her neck was long and pasty, a length of white icing, and her hair was a mass of fiery orange spirals moving in the wind. A pensive expression bunched the freckles on her face. She was too thin and tall for ordinary clothes, and too ginger-skinned for ordinary make-up. Her limbs had the look of objects recklessly arranged, liable to come apart in the event that they were ever required to coordinate for sport. She liked to wear black T-shirt dresses in natural fabrics with dark green tights underneath.

‘Background?’ Freya said.

‘He used to live and work in Canada, where his mother is from. But he got frustrated with the way the local government aids and abets drug addicts there, by supplying them with needles. But he’s actually totally wrong. Because you’re better off giving them clean ones than letting them spread disease.’ Susie slurped at the last of her juice, the sleeves of her thick cardigan pulled down to her fingertips. An agitated expression came over her. ‘Also,’ she said, staring at the guy in question, ‘he hated the way, in Canada, surveillance of criminals was curtailed by the lawmakers? He loves surveillance. Makes him massively horny.’

Massively horny was one of Susie’s favourite phrases. In Freya’s mind it always conjured a lumbering caveman. They looked out at the West Pier. Surfer John, made so small by distance, was paddling on his board, waiting for a wave. He was another of the hotel employees, a year or two older than both of them. A number of the female staff members took their breaks at times that allowed for a glimpse of him here.

‘Still looks good in a wetsuit,’ Susie said.

Freya agreed this was no mean feat.

Susie clapped her hands. ‘He loves to follow people round. He spends a lot of time finding out who people are linked with, how they manage to afford their cars with apparently no job.’

‘Surfer John?’

‘No! The maybe-detective.’

‘Oh.’

‘He thinks about surveillance while he’s doing the deed.’

‘Yuck.’

‘Don’t judge me, Frey-Hey. It’s him who’s the sicko. He sleeps most days ’til around two in the afternoon. Then he wakes up for another wankathon.’

Freya wiggled her toes between pebbles at this unpleasant thought, then resolved to put her shoes back on. ‘And he’s up early today because …’

‘Because,’ Susie said, ‘he’s become so proficient at surveillance that he can’t shake the sense that he himself is being watched.’

‘Good detail,’ Freya said. She was impressed.

They agreed the maybe-detective was in Brighton on holiday. They agreed he couldn’t shake off the idea that he was being watched. They agreed he couldn’t get any privacy and it was stressing him out. The world was intruding on him at night — noises, nightmares. John fell off his board and they started laughing.

‘In the mornings detective man is all over the place.’

‘In the mornings he can barely walk! Look at him. He blatantly forgot to put his belt on.’

Into the pinpoint world of Freya’s imagination came a detailed image of the absent belt: thick brown leather with a complicated buckle. It was lying on the floor of the man’s hotel room, a place further back from the beachfront. Mini white plastic kettle. Iron that stains your shirts. Brown-and-green carpet in a diamond pattern. Type of place she and her dad stayed for a while when he split from her mum and the year in America ended. Then she started picturing Surfer John in the hotel room instead. This proved to be distracting.