Bright Young Things (17 page)

While she’s reading, she’s half-watching Bryn chop down one of the apple trees with the axe they found in the shed next to the manual. This morning she found her period had finally stopped, which was a relief. Unfortunately, her period always gets heavier just before it stops, and it was awful when she woke up to discover that she’d bled through Emily’s tampon on to the duvets and her normal underwear. All of the bedding is still soaking in soapy (rain)water upstairs, and Thea’s now wearing some of the clothes she found in one of the bedrooms. She quite likes them: a long raw cotton skirt and short-sleeved cotton top, both white. There was a white jumper as well, but it’s too hot for that out here, so she’s wearing it tied around her waist. It feels nice to be wearing clean clothes, and it’s gorgeous out here.

Thea pulls up her skirt to sun her legs. Bryn’s chopping at the base of the tree.

‘Can I help?’ she asks.

‘No,’ he says. ‘Almost there now.’

Bryn’s tied his long blond dreadlocks back with an elastic band, and taken off his shirt. Thea can see that he has a tattoo on his right arm, but she can’t see what it is. Each time he swings the axe at the tree a few leaves flutter off. Eventually the tree falls, scattering apples and leaves everywhere. Bryn walks over and sits next to Thea. He’s sweating.

‘Time for a break,’ he says.

He seems to have caught the sun on his back, and a couple more freckles have come out on his face. He takes a swig from the bottle of lemonade Thea brought out with her, and lights one of her cigarettes. It’s nice not to feel so frightened, she thinks. When they first came outside, all Thea could think about was how to escape if someone came. Now she feels more relaxed.

‘What are you thinking about?’ she asks Bryn.

‘Canvey,’ he says.

‘What?’

‘Canvey Island. It’s nothing like this.’

Thea switches on her imaginary camera. Time to interview Bryn.

‘Do you live there?’ she asks.

‘No,’ he says.

‘Is it near where you live?’

‘Yeah. Don’t you know about Canvey?’

Thea shakes her head. It’s important to speak as little as possible when you’re interviewing a subject, to encourage them to talk independently of you. That way, when you edit the video, it seems like they’re performing a monologue.

‘You can see it from Southend, sitting in the estuary. It’s like Gotham City up there at night, and some sort of toxic dump in the day.’ He pauses. ‘It’s completely beautiful.’

‘Beautiful?’

Bryn looks embarrassed. ‘I don’t want to go on and on about it.’

‘I want you to,’ says Thea.

‘Oh. I’m only interested in it because I’m doing, like, a project . . .’

‘A project?’

He lowers his head. ‘Yeah. It’s a bit stupid.’

‘Yeah, right. I bet it’s not,’ says Thea.

‘It’s no big deal.’

‘So tell me then.’

‘It’s just a photographic thing. Essex Gothic. Stupid name really.’

‘I think it’s a great name,’ says Thea.

‘No, it’s stupid.’

‘So it’s pictures of Canvey Island?’ she asks.

‘Yeah. It’s a bit shit really, so I don’t know why I’m even bothering telling you about it. I was just thinking, you know, that if I’d brought my camera here, it would have been a good, like, contrast.’

‘What sort of camera have you got?’

‘Just a second-hand 35mm,’ he says.

‘Same,’ says Thea.

‘What, you into it as well?’ he asks.

She nods. ‘Yeah. More films now, though.’

‘Films?’ Bryn looks impressed.

She smiles. ‘Yeah. Documentaries. How did you get into photography?’ she asks, zooming out from Bryn’s face.

‘Did a BTEC at South-East Essex College,’ he says.

‘Did you like it?’

‘Oh yeah. It was wicked. Didn’t exactly walk out into a career, though.’

‘Who does?’ says Thea. ‘What did you want to do, ideally?’

‘Music press, tabloids. At least that’s what I wanted when I first started the course. But then I got into, you know, like, the more artistic side of it. But you’ve still got to make a living, and that was the bit that was hard. All the other kids off my course went to university to do art and photography or whatever, but I thought I could make it in the real world. I’m still trying.’

Thea wants to talk more, but Bryn’s got up again and is now chopping the tree into logs. Without meaning to, she wonders what it would be like to kiss him.

She rolls over on to her front to get some sun on the backs of her legs. All of a sudden she feels self-conscious doing this. What if Bryn thinks she’s doing it for his benefit? Showing off her body for him? Yuck. Thea could never be accused of showing off her body to any man. Once she punched someone who made a crack about her nurse’s uniform in the arcade. Everyone left her alone after that. At university she was known for looking like a tomboy. Of course, she got wasted on snakebites in the bar like everyone else, and had her share of pissed-up one night stands with skinny Student Union boys. But wherever she went, the same phrases followed her:
You wouldn’t know she had legs
.
Why don’t you ever wear a skirt? You’d look really nice with more make-up.
Usually this stuff came from girls like Emily, trying to give her advice. But the point about Thea is that she’s strictly a behind-the-camera girl. She wants to see, not be seen. No one’s really ever understood that about her. And for a few moments she fantasises that Bryn might.

‘I’m going for a walk,’ she tells him, sitting up.

‘Whatever,’ he says.

There’s a path in front of the house that leads straight to the cliffs. The path is yellow and sandy, the only genuine desert island feature on this wannabe desert island. Thea walks slowly down this path, heading for the cliffs. Looking out to sea, she notices that there are no boats, no other islands, not even any seagulls. There are some screeching noises, so there must be seabirds out there; Thea just can’t see them. There is a whole world out there, but the sea mist prevents any of it from being seen. Thea’s not sure what scares her more: the thought that their kidnapper is going to turn up here, or the thought that he never will.

The yellow path leads to a headland, with a cliff ledge underneath it. Thea’s fairly sure Jamie didn’t come down this far when he searched the island yesterday. She drops on to the ledge and sees that the way to the left is blocked by some kind of prickly bush which looks like it goes on forever. The other way is blocked by rocks, which are worryingly damp and mossy, giving the impression that the sea sometimes makes it up this far. Trying not to look down, Thea scrambles over the first rock. But on the other side of it, the path is so narrow and overgrown that it’s going to be impossible to pick through it without some kind of scythe. But it
is
possible to get down there. And if you could get down there with a boat . . . Maybe this island isn’t totally inescapable after all.

When Thea gets back to the orchard, Bryn’s just about finished cutting up the small tree for logs. He’s also made a pile of apples.

‘Apple pie,’ he says as Thea approaches. ‘Got a fag?’

They sit and smoke for a few minutes.

‘You know what?’ says Bryn.

‘What?’

He moves closer and touches her face. ‘You’re gorgeous,’ he says.

She smiles. ‘Thanks.’

‘Seriously,’ he says. ‘I’d really love to, you know, when we get out of here . . . I’d love to take some photographs of you.’

Bryn doesn’t know what he’s said wrong, but then he doesn’t know too much about women. In any case, Thea’s done a runner into the house. And she looked well fucked off. He only said he wanted to take pictures of her.

It’s so quiet out here. Bryn’s been trying to work out what it is that’s been disturbing him, and that’s it. There is a constant crash of waves, and the low buzz of late-summer insects, but that’s pretty much it. There are no birds singing, no radios blaring, no cars, no vans, no DSS women screaming at Kylie or Liam to pack it in. Bryn remembers reading something once about the noise that exists in towns, that doesn’t really come from anything, but sort of comes from everything. He likes that idea. He likes the fact that even if everyone shut up in a town, there’d still be all that noise. Stuff you can’t see: the hum from a distant nuclear reactor, the whir from roadworks on the other side of town, the taxis and factories and ten million radios and five million arguments and two million fucks and a thousand nervous coughs and a girl humming in a field somewhere, far away.

And all that noise goes up. Bryn read that somewhere as well, years ago. All the sound made on earth travels up and out into space in shimmering waves. He told some girl about this once and she got really into it, wondering if distant aliens were listening to Elvis, or closer ones were listening to Five Star. The whole thought makes Bryn a bit freaked out, though. Nothing ever goes away. Not sound, or rubbish, or nuclear waste, or beer bottles, or anything liquid or solid or gas. It all just stays around in the universe, pissing you off, when all you ever wanted to do was get rid of it. He wonders if your thoughts actually disappear, or if, when you die, they leak out of your brain into the soil, get eaten by worms and stay in the food chain for ever.

Tired from all the woodcutting, Bryn lies back in the sunshine and drops off.

At the moment, Anne’s in the lead, but Emily could soon close the gap in the ‘Ultimate Snake’ Championship. If only she could take out Paul, she’d be dead set for second place. Jamie’s keeping score, of course, and talking part half-heartedly, having designed the round robin format for the whole contest.

Emily’s wondering if anyone’s missing her yet. She remembers making some joke to Lucy about not coming back if she got the job. And although she still didn’t really mean it, it wouldn’t have been out of character for her to mean it. She’s been depressed recently. Losing the job in the art gallery sucked, and even the dates from the agency fizzled out after David grassed her up to the owner and said she overcharged for sex. Like,
duh
. Didn’t he know that she wasn’t even supposed to offer sex – like, it was supposed to be discreet? This island’s great because none of Emily’s history is here. She’s never going to bump into any ex-shags, or walk past the restaurant in which some guy told her she wasn’t ‘beautiful’ like his normal model girlfriends, or see a Chelsea girl sneer at her, noticing her cellulite (in summer) or her moustache (bleached) or her overplucked eyebrows (the pain is like an addiction). Emily hates girls and what they notice. But in some weird way she hates men more, because they don’t notice, because second-best is always good enough for them, because even when it comes to having their cock sucked any mouth will do.

When Emily was about sixteen, she thought that men chose her because they could see there was something special about her. She fucked guys with whom she shared a love of art, or who were also Blur fans, or liked the same clubs as her and felt part of the ‘scene’. After they’d fucked her, she soon became aware that as far as art-appreciation went, they only liked Pink Floyd album covers, or maybe The Scream; they thought Blur were OK but preferred New Order, and that they only said all this stuff, and went on the club scene in the first place, to get a shag. Emily is painfully aware that she is easy; that she is the stock-in-trade of those ‘uncovered’ programmes set in Ibiza or Greece or wherever, where all the girls go topless for a laugh and take three blokes a night in club toilets.

There seems to have been a recent vogue for American teeny-pop stars to put out drippy tunes about not being ready for sex yet. Their lyrics take the concept of virginity seriously, either urging boyfriends to wait, or thanking them for waiting, or telling them to fuck off if they won’t wait. Emily can’t listen to any of these songs. She switches the radio off whenever they come on. It’s like that stupid
Dawson’s Creek
programme she’s watched a few times. She’s a total Jen, but she wishes she were a Joey.

‘Ha!’ says Anne, having beaten Paul once more.

Bollocks. This means Anne’s definitely going to take first place in the tournament. Emily just has to play Paul now. A score of forty-five or more will give her second place – as long as it’s a winning score – but if she loses or gets less than that, it’s curtains for her ‘Ultimate Snake’ Championship challenge.

‘We could have some away fixtures in the sitting room after this,’ says Jamie. ‘These scores could go on aggregate.’

‘Or we could just start again,’ says Emily, beating Paul to the first piece of food.

‘Fuck,’ says Paul.

Thea comes in through the back door.

‘What’s wrong with you?’ asks Emily.

‘Nothing,’ says Thea, but she’s crying. She walks through the room, out into the hall, then, going on the banging sound that follows, up the stairs.

‘Wow,’ says Paul.

‘Drama,’ says Anne.

Jamie immediately rushes out of the kitchen after Thea.

Which leaves Emily with only one option: to go and find out what happened from Bryn.

He’s asleep when she gets outside, looking kind of sexy with his shirt off and an apple in his hand. On his right is a pile of logs. On his left is a pile of apples. There’s a bottle of lemonade, but it’s all warm from being left in the sun. Emily takes a swig anyway. It’s horrible.