The Whale Tattoo E-Book

Jon Ransom

• Herausgeber: Muswell Press
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 235

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

'Ransom has written a hypnotic and even more mysterious second novel…This is a lust-drenched, ache-filled gay love triangle of sorts that gnarls into a sly emotional thriller. The Gallopers is a whispered howl of a novel' Guardian Picked by the Guardian as one of the biggest novels to look out for in 2024. When a giant sperm whale washes up on the local beach it tells Joe Gunner that death will follow him wherever he goes. Joe knows that the place he needs to go is back home. Having stormed out two years ago, it won't be easy, nor will returning to the haunted river beside the house where words ripple beneath the surface washing up all sorts of memories. Joe turns to his sister, Birdee, the only person who has ever listened. But she can't help him, she drowned two years ago. Then there's Tim Fysh, local fisherman and long-time lover. But reviving their bond is bound to be trouble. As the water settles and Joe learns the truth about the river, he finds that we all have the capability to hate, and that we can all make the choice not to. Ransom's fractured, distinctive prose highlights the beauty and brutality of his story, his extraordinarily vivid sense of place saturates the reader with the wet of the river, and the salty tang of the sea.

Leseprobe

THE WHALE TATTOO

Jon Ransom

For Mark and Kate

Contents

Title PageDedicationThe Whale Tattoo AcknowledgementsCopyright

1

The Whale Tattoo

Death has followed me here and I can prove it, because whenever something really fucked up is about to happen, my balls ache. Proof is funny like that. I’ve not come far. From there to here is maybe fifteen miles, but here I am watching the fairground lorries bound past, yanked out of town by a cruel wind, trusting my bollocks over the Amazing Esmeralda and her crystal ball. The tail of the convoy is all blue shiny paint and tightly folded metal, looking like the lopsided dead whale. Seems like the whale has followed me here, too. If a gigantic blue beast comes to tell you something terrible, you better pay attention. When it happens twice, believe it.

I’m sucking the smoke from my cigarette, cupping my hand to keep the rain off. What will I tell him? Birdee’d say I should keep my mouth shut, let trouble do what it does best and put my back towards it. But it’s Fysh. I toss the dog-end on the ground.

With Lynn docks behind me, cranes tangled up in rows of black clouds rolling in from the east, I’m nearing the Fisher 2Fleet. Here the mucky water threatens the quay at full tide. The trawlers are coming home from the Outer Roads. Gulls gliding this way and that remind me of paper aeroplanes.

I’ve claimed a spot beneath the brick shelter, wishing I’d found someplace to piss. On my right, the river cuts a mean line through the land. The quay is filling up with rusty trawlers heavy with shellfish. When I spot the Ann Marie, my stomach gets tight. Two years away is a long stretch. And then he’s there, red hair like a hot match. The same stubborn way he stands. I move out from beneath the tin roof onto the quay. ‘Fysh—’ I shout.

Up close, he stinks of tide mud and engine oil. ‘Jesus fucking Christ, mate,’ he says. There’s all kinds of trouble in his eyes. Hypnotising.

‘Alright?’

‘What the hell you doing here?’ Hugging me hard.

Because I don’t know where to begin, I shrug. How’d I tell him I’ve come home to figure out why death chases after me? We stand taking each other in, smoking a shared cigarette.

‘Come on.’ And I follow him until ahead of us there’s nothing but the river steadily pounding the bank.

‘Jesus,’ he says. ‘You wanna come over later?’

‘Alright,’ I say, and it’s like I never left. The last two years just disappears. But there’s more to this than the ache in my underpants. The river speaks to me.

My urgency to piss is everything, bigger than the warm mattress and the redheaded man asleep alongside me. Quietly I get up, walk the floor, look back and listen for 3sleep sounds. In the dim bathroom I piss into the bowl, on top of last night’s urine, and flush. I pull on crunched-up jeans first because I don’t know where my underpants are. My coat is still damp from yesterday’s rain.

The view from the concrete balcony is nothing much to see. Clouds hang like dirty curtains. I suck in cold air, and consider the man whose bed I slept in. Fysh is dangerous. One night gone, and already he’s busted beneath my skin, messing me up. And I want him inside me. Because with Fysh, there’s the in-between place I go. Where there’s no noise, and nothing matters. And I like it. But it’s wrong. Last night, bare-arsed on his bed, I listen to him talk about how right it feels, and I tell him, ‘These things you want can’t ever be right.’

Fysh won’t hear me. Tugs down his green underpants and tells me, ‘You’re wrong, mate.’

A scrawny boy riding a beaten-up-bike pedals by slowly on the pavement beneath. He calls up for a cigarette. I tell him to sod off and flick the dog-end off the balcony. Inside there’s no paper and pen to leave Fysh a note. No use chewing my nails over it. Instead, I write Joe in ketchup on the white kitchen table, so he knows I’m not a ghost. Then I carry Birdee’s pushbike down three flights of concrete steps because the lift is ruined, and ride home to the river.

With sky everywhere, the river chases alongside the track, following the line. I slow down at Black Barn, a dead place at this time of year. Rumour reckons a local buried a man beneath the dirt floor. Fysh spent one summer way back trying to prove it. Found nothing but a fistful of blisters.

4Half a mile further, pushed aside by the river, is the house at the Point. It appears empty. I detour, ride by, but the worn rubber tyres are useless on wet marshland. I abandon the pushbike and finish the distance on foot. The filthy brown river licks the mudflats like a thirsty animal, the wrecked fishing trawler the only proof man has been to this place. I stoop inside, just to be sure. The hull stinks of tidal mud and rot. The half-light gives up torn planks and beaten iron. I stay long enough to run my finger over our initials carved into the wood.

Through the back door, and the radio says I’ve missed breakfast. Birdee is sitting at the kitchen table, rolling her hair around her finger. I peel out of my coat and hang it on the back of the kitchen chair.

‘You’re an idiot,’ she says. ‘You trying to kill yourself?’

Bare-chested, I rub at my pale skin until my fist has made a red circle in between my nipples. I open the washing machine, pull out yesterday’s t-shirt, and slip it on.

‘Where’ve you been?’

‘With Fysh.’ I don’t care if she can smell him on me.

‘Stay away from him—’

‘Alright,’ I say, closing my eyes and letting the silent gap sit there. My sister’s been boiling me about Tim Fysh for ever.

Because I don’t want to wind up Birdee, when Fysh calls later I tell her it was some twat selling something. She knows I’m a liar. Down the telephone his voice is different, words spread apart, like he’s talking in tongues. Makes me anxious.

5He says, ‘Pick you up at eight, mate.’ Then I’m standing in the kitchen with the telephone pressed against my ear, listening to nothing.

There’s nothing much to do. Birdee’s gone out to see the one-armed Soldier. He’s fucked up. She’s left me a bowl in the fridge. Because I’m hungry, I take her effort upstairs to the bathroom, run the taps while I sit on the toilet seat, and eat peach jelly.

In the bath I smoke three cigarettes in a row, listening to the tap drip-dripping. Sometimes it seems like I spend all my time wet. Or chased by the stuff. This water is lobster hot. It’s impossible to tell sweat from bath water. I drop the dog-end into the toilet bowl, weigh up if I have time to make it downstairs to answer the ringing telephone. Fuck. But it could be Fysh. I’m half-hard thinking about him.

‘Hello?’ And I tell her my name. She’s called something I don’t catch, because she’s talking a hundred miles an hour, telling me my old man will be discharged tomorrow morning. ‘I’ll be there,’ I say. There goes my hard-on.

I refuse to look away. The woman has purple hair and dances like a blackbird around an empty goldfish bowl. She could be a remnant of something older, a trick conjured from a fairground tented on the edge of town in another time. Her shadow, dark as wet tar, is lagging behind under Friday-night streetlight. I want her to be an illusion. To disappear. But when she stops dead, I close the distance between us, ask, ‘You alright?’

Bent in half, she lifts the glass bowl off the pavement, cocks her head. ‘Fuck off.’ And she steps over the river of piss Fysh has made.

‘Barking, mate.’ Fysh says. ‘Bollocks.’ He knocks at his forehead with his clenched fist, then goes back the way we came towards the Greenland, where we’d been drinking before Doug turned up. I lean onto the church railing, watching formless faces through fogged glass in the White Hart. A tall lad comes out with his short mate, winks. ‘All right, fella?’

‘Alright’ I say. I don’t recognise him. Even when I dig 8around it’s useless. Whoever tall lad had been, now he’s no one. They clear off down the street, while the cold gets colder.

When Fysh comes back, still knocking away, he says, ‘Stupid—forgot my lighter.’ He loosely hangs his arm around my shoulder. ‘Up for it?’ His breath is thick with beer, cigarettes and trouble.

I tell him I have to pick up my old man from the hospital in the morning. He pushes his hand down the front of my trousers. Licks my cheek like a thirsty dog.

‘Fuck off, already,’ I say. He doesn’t care about my old man. Mostly nobody does. Worn, I take Fysh home and leave him face down on the mattress. I don’t even pull off his trainers. He mumbles, and it sounds like he’s wounded, a soldier forgotten in a ditch. I want to lie down alongside and watch him for a time. That’s fucked up.

Outside, the night sucks me in. Pavement wet and empty. At the Jewish cemetery I stop. White-knuckling the bars on the door, I take a look inside. These dirty-red brick walls guard sixteen broken headstones, chiselled with writing nobody can read.

I am younger than I am now when the showman from the Mart takes me to sin. Saw him first on the waltzers with Birdee. We pay our money and climb into the worn carriage. Leather seat hot from the lads before us. He lowers the steel bar, winks. Says his name is Jimmy Bugg, same as on the rounding boards above the ride. Then he spins us. Fast. Birdee screaming, ‘I’m gonna throw up.’

I’m still grinning when the ride ends, mesmerised by the 9light. The way it slides like water when I hold out my hand, dripping through my fingers, soaking me with colour. We don’t go far. Birdee is complaining about the rows of dirty glass bowls, half-filled and yellowed. ‘It’s not right.’

I don’t care about the fish that are more orange than gold.

‘I’m going home,’ she says.

‘Alright.’ It doesn’t matter because I’m watching Jimmy Bugg go around and around. He’s like Jesus walking on wooden water. The planks rise and fall madly, unable to topple him. He keeps hungry eyes on me, worrying the hard-on in my underpants. Until I get back in the waltzer for another go. When he leans in to lock the bar down, his free hand reaches around the back of my head, grazing my hair with mean fingertips. He has a tattoo of the Virgin Mary on his neck. The ink is close enough to taste. Then everything gets blurred.

After the ride slows to a stop, he tells his mate to take over for a time. Lighting a joint, he weaves through the rowdy fair, every so often turning back to see if I’m still trailing him. The noise gets left behind.

I’m agitated. The kind of restlessness that reminds me I am fifteen years old. Makes me hop from one trainer to the other, looking like I’m getting ready to run. In the Jewish cemetery he is lit by the lamp post leaning over the wall, staining his skin yellow. ‘This what you want?’ Jimmy Bugg asks. His rough, red-knuckled hands work worn trouser buttons undone. I’m nodding. A ladder of dark tangled hair appears, then disappears beneath the waistband of his underpants. He tugs them down to his knees, his big pale dick jutting out. Then I’m hunched over. Vomit shooting 10out of my mouth, covering his stomach and dick. Fuck. And I leg it.

He shrieks, ‘You’re a fucking dead cunt.’

The Virgin Mary makes me think about what it means to want.

The rain comes harder now. I cross town onto John Kennedy Road, over train tracks, iron bars made redundant years before. On the other side the Pilot cinema is boarded up. Makes me think about Mum. Birdee and me sat either side, watching the big screen, our tongues numb from strawberry ice cream.

With dock lights behind, I near the river. Black rain makes it hard to find the line between water and bank. There’s a voice beneath the tide that moves dangerously close. My bollocks are throbbing. I hum the nursery rhyme she taught me. But the water gets louder—

The river speaks to me. It sounds like a box of wasps. Swooshing, stirring, spinning lies until I can’t stand it. And I know it’s not telling me the truth. The river is a lying cunt.

It says to me, How’d you know I’m lying?

Because I do, I say.

Water laughing makes the same noise as shaking a tin of nails.

Tim’s trouble, it says.

There, I say, I haven’t ever called Fysh “Tim”. You’re a liar—

Liquid murmurs, I tell the truth.

Go on then.

Hushed at first. Then the wet is gathering, sliding closer, readying itself.

You believe Fysh wants you. And you want him too, it says. But he doesn’t. And you’re forgetting what the whale told you.

What do you know about that?

12The wet whispers, Everything—I know all about the whale.

Water is rushing into my ears. I shout, That’s none of your fucking business. But it sounds more like a whisper.

It is my business. Who will you come crying to when he’s gone?

Where’s Fysh going? I ask.

Under, the water says.

It’s all coming into view. I know what the river’s getting at. It’s not true, I say.

Wrong, it says swirling around, everywhere at once.

And I see that the water flows wherever it wants. Banks don’t mean shit.

I say, Get the fuck out of my ears.

The water roars, taunting me. It sings, Row, row, row your boat—

Ditching my muddy trainers at the back door, laces still tied, I leave the trouble outside, where it can stay. Inside are the night noises I am familiar with. They’re the same boyhood sounds, but angrier. Mostly it’s the weather busting in from the Outer Roads, chipping away at the house bit by bit. It gets beneath the crumbling mortar, rattles the bricks some. Eventually the whole house will fall apart. But not today.

The refrigerator drones, door swung open, while I drink from the milk carton. Beneath my grubby white socks liquid pools. Rain, sweat and river. Splashed in fridge light, I get naked. Stuff clothes into the washing machine and dry the floor with a tea towel before I go upstairs. A crack of light under Birdee’s door slows me on the landing, but nothing is spoken. She’s mad at me. Not the yell-at-me-kind that makes my neck red and itchy. It’s disappointment. She’s fed up because I’m being stupid. Stupid comes easy to me.

This room makes me feel miserable. My back against the 14wall, I watch Mum’s hard green suitcase jammed between the gap made by the wardrobe and chest of drawers. She bought it from the catalogue. Waited a fortnight for it to arrive. Every day looking down the track that runs the length of the river, waiting. I hate that fucking suitcase. Even though the pull to take it is enormous. Go back where I came from. Run away like a chicken-shit.

Birdee is older than me. Taller by two lines marked on the wall beside the back door. We’re here watching Mum through the kitchen window, flung open to let the stink out. Breakfast ruined, she’s standing out on the track, smoking her packet of cigarettes. One after another. Smoke metallic in the morning light, harassing her. Behind, the river is carrying fishing trawlers to open water, their masts propping up the heavy sky.

‘Told you,’ Birdee says.

‘What’s she doing?’ I say.

‘Waiting—’

‘For what?’

‘Don’t know.’

Birdee bangs the cupboard closed and I’m rinsing out a rag in the sink, squeezing the last drops of dirt until they whirl away down the drain.

‘Leave that—’ Mum says, closing the door with her bare foot. Places the big brown parcel she’s been waiting for on the kitchen table. Peels away the shiny brown tape. Opens up the cardboard box. She lifts out a brand-new suitcase, blue like water where it pools in the shadows of the riverbank. But Mum says it’s called teal, ‘A colour all on its own.’

15I don’t know about that. ‘Looks more blue than green,’ I say.

‘It’s teal—’

‘What’s it for?’ Birdee says.

‘Us—’ Mum says, and tells me to put it beneath my bed, ‘Careful you push it all the way back.’

‘Why?’ Birdee asks.

‘So your father doesn’t see it—’

‘Alright,’ I say.

Later, I don’t know how many days for sure, because time by the river runs differently, Birdee busts into my bedroom, says, ‘Come on.’

‘What’s up?’

Outside, Mum is standing on the riverbank in her underwear, the new suitcase on the ground beside her. Maybe she’s packed her dress inside? I don’t know. Looks like she’s waiting for something. Then without a word, she hurls the case into the river. We come and stand beside her. I take one hand. Birdee holds her other. And we watch the water. Her teal suitcase drifting, meant for all three of us.

‘Would you believe it?’ she says. The tide doesn’t want it either; back the case floats, until it’s pushed up against the bank. ‘Should of filled it with rocks,’ Mum says.

‘I’ll find some,’ Birdee says.

‘Me, too.’ Tugging the suitcase, river rolling off onto thirsty grass.

Mum shakes her head. ‘Doesn’t matter—’ she says.

Blind blackness becomes an angry orange flare. Before I do anything about it, I press my palms against my eye sockets. 16Colours flash on the inside of my eyelids, like traffic lights. Red to green and back again. Shivering and damp, I throw off the blanket, find that I have pissed the bed. Bundling the sheets, I go downstairs, closing the kitchen door tight behind me so I don’t wake up Birdee. I stuff the ruined bedding into the washing machine on top of last night’s wet clothes. Pull off my underpants and include them with the load. Then, because it makes me feel better, I punch the wall. Again, but harder this time. Fucking whale, haunting me.

At the sink I wipe myself down with hot water and the dishcloth. Standing bare, watching the sheets spin around, I listen to the wind testing the windowpanes. What the fuck is happening?

Birdee doesn’t say a word about the washing tangled up on the indoor line, turning the ceiling orange. Like we’re living beneath a circus tent. Just goes on by me, out the back door. This is her way. She collects pieces of wrongdoing until there’s enough to take hold of and make something proper.

When I start the car, she says, ‘You look terrible.’

She’s not wrong. My eyes are red, itchy with grit. ‘Tired is all.’ I’m in no mood for this.

‘You’re in for it—you know?’

‘Huh?’

‘Disappearing like you did,’ she says.

I didn’t just vanish. I told my old man I was leaving. ‘He knew I was going.’ The Mini shakes along the track. It makes my skull ache something terrible. I open the window. Suck in greedy lungs full of river air. Gulls are 17squawking and carrying on. Can hear the docks waking up. Cranes creaking. Lorries loading.

‘It’s been two years,’ Birdee says.

‘I called.’

‘Twice—You called twice.’

‘And?’

‘Close the window,’ Birdee says. ‘You’ll freeze my tits off.’

‘Alright—but you know what?’ I say, winding out the racket. ‘Fysh isn’t what you think.’

‘Doesn’t matter what I think. Besides—who said anything about Fysh?’

‘Forget about it.’

We drive the rest of the way without a word. The fan heater blowing a dull tune because the radio hasn’t worked since the old man punched it. I go across town, taking Gaywood Road past Saint Faith’s. All the while I’m dreading seeing him. Knowing I’m bringing him home to the Point. My stomach rumbles. It’s not because I’m hungry. I say to Birdee, ‘Thanks—for the peach jelly.’

My old man’s not ever been pleased with me. Even when I disappear. He’s hated all of my guts for as long as I can remember.

Fucking hospitals. The blue curtains with sharp edges don’t hide anything. Not death noises, nor the smell of blood and shit. Doesn’t take long to find my old man on the ward. He’s dressed, bag packed, ready. The back of his head makes the shape it’s always been – stubborn. Birdee reckons my head is exactly the same. I’m inclined to believe her.

18There’s little room left over in the front pockets of my jeans, but I stuff my hands inside the best I can. Go over to his bed, making the walk harder than it has to be, all the while breathing through my mouth.

‘Alright,’ I say.

‘You’re here then—’ he says.

Uninterested, he’s staring back out the window. Across the aluminium rooftop there’s a strip of green that taunts me. If only I could lie down in the grass, start counting blades.

‘Nurse said you’d be here an hour ago.’

‘Is that right?’

‘You home to stay?’

‘I am—for now.’

‘Right.’

Behind us the ward is busting with sirens. There’s barking and feet struggling for purchase on polished floors. Hospitals are fucked up.

‘Be a while now,’ he says, ‘Before they take it out.’

I hate the tiny plastic tube stuck in his arm, held with grubby white tape and dotted with blood. It reminds me of the bleached reeds on the marsh at home giving in to the wind.

‘Chairs are over there.’

‘Alright—’

The air, heavy with moisture, turns his red hair to auburn in the half-light. Fysh is wearing baggy black dungarees, messed up with mud and shellfish. I get off Birdee’s pushbike, reluctant to let go of the handlebars. Could turn around and ride back out to the house. Leave Fysh alone with his brother, Doug.

‘You’re late, mate.’

‘Yeah—sorry,’ I say.

‘You all right, or what?’

‘I’m good,’ I lie. I can’t shake the bad feeling I have. What am I doing on the Ann Marie? On this stretch of water? ‘You got a spare cigarette?’

Fysh fumbles around in the front pocket of his dungarees, tosses me a crushed packet, followed by his lighter. ‘Bash on,’ he says. ‘There’s gear for you over there.’ He takes a long look at my wet trainers. Shakes his head. ‘They won’t do, mate.’ Takes his lighter back off me.

The boat smells of hot diesel and sweat. I’ve not been on the Ann Marie since Fysh’s old man died. There’s something 20about the trawler that unsettles me. The way the fishermen talk without opening their mouths. Fysh says it’s because what happens on board, stays on board. Like their stupid superstitions. One time Fysh scolded me for trying to bust open the buttons on his shorts. Told me two men bumming on board’s no different from having a woman wreck the trip. I don’t know about that. I put on the dungarees, boots and coat he’s set aside for me.

Doug asks, ‘How’s things?’ That same uneasy stare.

I blow blue smoke into the air over his head. ‘Not bad. You?’

He nods. ‘Been better,’ he says, glancing at Fysh. ‘That right, fella?’

‘Nah,’ Fysh says. ‘We’re good.’

Doug is nothing like Fysh. Since we were boys, Doug has circled around me like I’m infectious. Or stink of dog shit. Fysh says it’s all in my head. I don’t know why brothers pretend things are different from how they really are. It’s not like that with Birdee.

The fishing trawler moves to purpose. I hang back, leaning against the winch, watching the backs of the brothers’ heads. The engine settles on a dull grind, cutting an easy path through the muddy river, before heading into open water towards Blackguard Sand on the Outer Roads. Here, sea and sky are the same filthy grey, tidewater whirling. The sound of seabirds, great wingbeats, thunder overhead. Seals surface, then dip beneath the wet.

This is the way of shell fishing. The journey out, manoeuvring through a secret place I’m blind to, until we arrive at a patch of water that looks no different from the 21water on the horizon. But the air here crackles like static on the television. Agitating me.

We’re anchored above what Fysh promises is a shedload of catch. I consider how deep it runs. Room enough for a gigantic whale?

‘You’ll see,’ Fysh says. Proud, like a pirate. When he gets excited his cheeks flush. They’re the same shade of red they get when he fucks me, just before he cums on my belly.

I sit on a heap of blue coiled rope, knees tucked under my chin. Doug and Fysh have a sawn-down half-barrel a piece, with a plastic up-turned crate for a table. Fysh drinks a can of beer. Doug, tea from a worn yellow plastic flask. I don’t want either. We all eat cheese and ketchup sandwiches Doug’s missus made the night before. Bread stale and sauce congealed. Fit for the birds circling overhead. I chew, listen to them talk hurriedly about quotas, then in more hushed voices about where the shellfish and shrimp are good. Like I care.

Doug says, ‘Heard your old man died.’ And now my bollocks start to properly ache.

‘Jesus—’ Fysh says.

‘Not yet,’ I say.

I think Doug looks amused, but it’s hard to see the line of his mouth beneath his beard. He gets up, goes to the wheel and guns the engine. He manoeuvres the boat in a big circle. Makes one hell of a racket, sending seagulls skywards. The prop churns up the muddy seabed. Engine cuts out and the silence is bigger than the space around us.

‘Won’t be long,’ Doug says. Tosses a rake over. I barely 22catch it in time. We’re waiting for the Ann Marie to ground on the mudbank with the ebbing tide in the estuary.

Sat beside Birdee at the lido, I’m waiting for Fysh to turn up. She’s found a piece of concrete livid with sunshine to put our towels against. ‘Boiling,’ I say, using my t-shirt to collect the sweat hounding my forehead.

‘Go in the water then,’ she says.

‘Nah.’ I’m agitated. Haven’t seen Fysh since we broke up from school three days before. What’ll happen now we don’t ever have to go back?

From here the pool looks wild. Doug and his trawler mates are messing about. Taking turns trying to drown each other. Even though they’re twats, I like looking at them, slinging shiny globs of water all over the place. Once in a while I catch Fysh’s brother eyeing us up. ‘I reckon Doug fancies you.’

Birdee doesn’t even open her eyes. ‘He’s a cunt,’ she says.

‘I’m going in—’

‘You should.’

The river water washes the heat away. I have my elbows hooked against the edge of the pool, hanging there. Doug backs away from his mate, comes close enough to hear me.

‘Alright?’ I say.

He looks over his shoulder.

‘Fysh coming?’

‘No, mate,’ he says. ‘He’s working.’

‘Working?’

‘That’s what I said—you’ll have to find someone else to play with,’ then he disappears beneath the surface.

23I hope he fucking drowns, and I climb out of the water. Lie back down on my towel.

‘And—’ Birdee says.

‘It’s nothing.’

‘Doesn’t look like nothing.’

‘You’re right,’ I say. ‘Doug’s a cunt.’