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Adam Thorpe
38
cold.
‘Spell that.’
‘Sake,’ she scoffed. ‘Stop
pissing me over. And what
are you? Fire?’
‘I’m exactly what I am,’ he
sighed, showing her the
drawing.
Which was brilliant, very
soft and flowing it was,
her hair like ripples of red
weed, as if she’d drowned
and he was remembering
her alreadydead. Intertidal
silt. A patch of red moss for
her pubes. Mr Buckland
for geography, the class
watching for shrike with
notepads in a freezing
wind off the Wash. That
one time they saw the
bittern. Two of the girls
shrieking and scaring it off.
Suzie is startled out of her
thoughts by her mobile’s
hip-hop ringtone – she
even reaches into her bag,
before she realises.
It is the girl’s in front. But
Suzie’s hip-hop ringtone is
ironic. She doesn’t even
like straight hiphop. In fact,
the phone is a Christmas
present from her mum,
who chose the ringtone
herself – the first few bars
of that big hit ‘So What’
by Field Mob and just-so-
stunning Ciara from way
back. Jasper’s phone rings
like an old-fashioned dial
telephone,
something
out of a 1950s black-and-
white film. He’s so fucking
hipster and it’s not ironic.
Her best mate in the
world looks up from his
battered BlackBerry with
its deliberately starred
screen, as if a bullet’s hit
it, blinking and staring
around him. No, he must
have dozed off. They went
to bed about four, Friday
night, after the party. Her
mum didn’t wait up for