While Skye Turner is queuing, with her pulse going at around 170, and her eyes filling and refilling with tears, because she thinks there should be privileges on this train, for people who have paid more to receive them, but can’t work out why, or what this would have to do with mindfulness, or what her father would say if he could see her now (she knows what Tash would say: she’d make Skye report the conductor to First Great Western and ask for compensation), the conductor declassifies first class and personally escorts the foreign students to Skye’s carriage and seats one of the most smelly ones in the seat next to Skye’s, which involves touching her jacket, her cashmere cardigan, her bag of rooibos teabags and her packed lunch, which she will probably have to throw away when she comes back.
When Skye Turner got her first big cheque (which she would think of as a small cheque now – for a mere £8,000) she bought a pair of sensible boots (but from Donna Karan!!!), and a shearling jacket and a new sofa and a holiday to Morocco for her and Tash. Tash told her to save some of the money, but Skye had a good feeling about her next single and the gigs she had lined up so she didn’t bother. With the next cheque she bought her parents’ council house outright. She threw out basically everything she had ever owned except her stuffed rabbit. All her Body Shop make-up went, even the green eye-shadow she’d only just started. Her polyester, fire-hazard duvet, stained from all the times she used it with no cover: out. Her lumpy pillows: gone. She even threw out every book in the house (there were fewer than twenty) and bought newer, shinier copies from Amazon. All her old shower gels and moisturisers: dumped. She even got a skip so that she could throw away her old life in one go, because she realised that for her whole life, that was all she’d ever wanted to do.
They weren’t due to take the skip away for about a week, and said they couldn’t come earlier, so, after two nights of looking out of her bedroom window at rain pouring on what she used to be, she checked into a hotel in Marble Arch and ate three cream teas in a row. Then she threw them up and got on with her life. She has never looked back. Except for sometimes when she’s drunk and she cries over her old Topshop silver polyester dress, and the covers of her old Enid Blyton books (and the fact that in the new ones the children aren’t called Dick and Fanny but Rick and Frannie). Decluttering is always a work in progress, of course. Skye loves cashmere jumpers, but can’t spend her whole life at the dry cleaners, so every garment she owns that cost less than £500 (there are limits) goes in the washing machine – on the silk programme, of course, if it’s delicate – and it either survives this, or it does not survive this. As a result there is about £3,000 worth of shrunk cashmere-blend (pure cashmere does not shrink) jumpers in the back of one of the wardrobes at the flat. Skye cries sometimes when she thinks of those too. But most of the time she realises that with cashmere it has to be survival of the fittest and that’s just how nature is. It’s not a decision she made. If she was in charge of the universe, no jumper she bought would ever shrink.
The first time Fleur had sex with Piyali, it was actually supposed to be a massage. It was her idea that he should learn how to become a masseur. Now that he was eighteen, why shouldn’t he pay his way at Namaste House, just like everyone else? When Fleur wasn’t making teas and remedies she was selling them at the local market. And this was as well as her yoga classes. Even the Prophet had started running some dodgy mail-order thing from his room that no one liked to ask about, but which Oleander said more than covered his share of rent and expenses. Ketki and Ish both offered massages and various other treatments, but neither of them got much return business. Fleur thought that a certain type of middle-aged woman might like to be massaged by Piyali, what with that jawline and those shoulders. So one afternoon she made him put down his book – probably Hemingway, perhaps The Old Man and the Sea – and come and learn how to be a masseur.
She explained to him about the paper panties, and putting a towel over the woman’s breasts. She got him a bottle of wild rose oil – that she had made – and lay down on her front, naked except for the paper panties, with her head in the massage table’s hole, giving him a few basic instructions as he began with her feet, and then moved on to her calves, thighs and buttocks, parting her legs only slightly so that he could get to as much flesh as possible. He soon had the technique down so well that Fleur wondered if he had done it before. But how could he have done? He’d left India at fourteen, and his parents had not exactly been into this kind of . . . By the time he reached her inner thighs the panties were damp and the only thought in Fleur’s mind was, Go higher. Please, go higher. I’ll do anything. This thought turned into more thoughts. Pi would take her from behind. He would thrust all his fingers into her and she would let him, no, she would PAY him, and he would say ‘Fuck your money’, and then screw her really hard to punish her for . . .
‘Turn over,’ he said, once he’d finished her back.
He looked at her tits. He forgot to cover them with the towel. She forgot to remind him. He started at her feet again, and once again gently parted her legs so that he could reach around. Could he see anything? Fleur sort of hoped so. She parted her own legs a little more, to help, but also perhaps to tell him something. He seemed not to notice. His hands swept up! And then down! And then up! Oh, actually, perhaps that time they did sweep a little higher but . . . Now it seemed to be time for him to massage her abdomen, which is not something that usually happens in massages, but actually it was rather interesting, and certainly not something worth stopping. Higher, higher his hands went, carefully avoiding her breasts. His hands swooped this way and then that way until inside her mind she was begging him to . . . And then, suddenly, he was massaging her breasts. Both of them at once, kneading them as if they were balls of dough, but with his thumbs gliding over the nipples in an ambiguous way.
Should she stop him? If he had pulled out a contract at that moment asking her to sign away all her possessions and even her soul in order for him to keep going, she probably would have done. So no, she was not going to stop him, even if she should have done. Was this even sexual? She knew that Indians saw the body differently from Europeans. Massaging women’s breasts is not necessarily transgressive or even sexual. But then he started again on her inner thighs. This time she let out a little moan and parted her legs a tiny bit more than you would if you were just being helpful. His hands went higher. His thumbs brushed up against the edges of the paper panties. His hands moved higher still, and this time they went just inside the paper panties. Swoop, swoop, a little higher each time until his hands were further inside the paper panties and eventually both thumbs were inside her and then on the next swoop he pulled her to the edge of the massage table and she heard his zip being undone and . . .
The second time they had sex, Pi had made his massages a bit more mystical. He prayed over every one of Fleur’s chakras and even put gemstones on some of them. Fleur didn’t find this especially arousing, but once he put his hands on her it was the same as before. Was he teasing her? It seemed to take an awfully long time for his fingers to enter her panties, although she enjoyed the tit massage more this time, because she knew, or at least reasonably hoped, that it was the build-up to more.
The third time they had sex, Pi had installed chains in his treatment room. These enabled him to walk on the backs of his clients without hurting them, or, at least, without hurting them more than the maximum amount they were willing to pay for. By this stage he was seeing almost all the middle-aged women and, judging from the return business they were getting, he was fucking most of them. Did they tip him? Did he charge them for extras? Or was the sex completely free? Did they use condoms? Fleur didn’t know how to ask all these questions. This time he walked on her back, and her legs, and her breasts and pushed her legs apart with his feet.
‘I’m going to make tea for the window cleaners.’
She says this in a way that totally implies that he should be doing it. Her very neutrality is utterly condemning. She doesn’t have to add any tone. She can do
all sorts of things without tone. He is a man. He should do it. To reverse years, no, centuries of . . . But it’s too late. She’s gone to the front door. Whenever Ollie has to talk to builders or window cleaners or the postman he can’t help putting on a faint how’s-yer-father accent that is reminiscent of granddads and cousins from his Working Class Past. Clem has no such thing in her background and can only sound low-voiced and posh, but in that soft pancakey way. Or probably crêpes rather than pancakes. Or whatever. Anyway, what she’s doing now is intriguing. She’s speaking to them in her normal, posh, authentic way but what she is saying is like something someone else would say.
‘White with one,’ she’s saying, ‘and white with none, right?’
She may even be smiling and raising an eyebrow. But here’s the thing. She has remembered how they take their tea. And she’s saying it the way they would say it, not the way she would say it. ‘White with one’! WTF??? One what? One sugar, yes, but she’ll have to use caster sugar as usual because she and Ollie are far too posh to have sugar in their tea, and therefore in their cupboards, although caster sugar is different because it goes in cakes, which are different from sweet tea in some way that Ollie has never fathomed. She has made it sound as if she takes orders for working-class tea (Ollie has been banned from calling it ‘Builders’ Tea’) literally every day. If any of Clem’s friends come round and she offers them ‘tea’ and they accept, they get loose leaf Earl Grey in a yellow teapot. Ollie made that mistake when he first visited the Grange. Earl Grey is a perfumed monstrosity, designed to repel rats, and anyway . . .
Clem comes back to the kitchen and puts the kettle on.
‘What?’
Ollie is laughing at her. ‘Nothing. Just . . .’
‘What?’
‘White with one and white with none.’
‘Yes, all right, I know.’
‘It’s like the beginning of window cleaner porn or something. White with one and white with none. You should be standing there in a pinny with a pink feather duster or something. And no knickers.’
‘I was aiming more for something like Land Girl, to be honest.’ She goes to the baking cupboard for the caster sugar. Ollie does not acknowledge the existence of the baking cupboard, and if he ever has to wash up the rolling pin, the pastry brush or any of those round metal things you cut biscuits with, he leaves them on the side for Clem to put away. ‘Or like comforting-warden-of-air-raid-shelter or something. You know, kind of matronly but not in a completely asexual way. But . . .’ She smiles. She laughs. ‘Oh.’
‘But? Oh?’
‘One of them was different. I remembered a different window cleaner’s tea order. But I didn’t realise he was different until he said he wanted two sugars.’
Ollie laughs too. ‘You’ve reduced the window cleaners to their tea order.’
‘Yes.’
‘To you, they are just their tea order.’
‘I know.’
‘You’re a posh bitch.’
‘Yes.’
‘Come here.’
‘I’m kind of . . .’
Ollie sighs. ‘Of course you are.’
‘Maybe later?’
Like this plant thing, yeah, like a kind of pod.
Peas in a pod
More like a kind of vanilla pod like
Ice ice baby . . .
Lols yeah whatever but not exactly like it’s really, really oily
Like thing your mum puts in rice pudding
Not my mum but yeah
You touched one?
Yeah.
Washed your hands afterwards.
For real.
And then you got one?
Not yet but it would be totes simple if I did want one there’s this guy and
They’re like actually deadly yeah?
Yeah, like really, really deadly.
Lols – really deadly!
???
Like dead is dead
Yeah but I told you these people talk about like different levels of death
Which is bollocks right
But
Like death is the end
But OK right . . .
If death is not the end I don’t know what is
Yeah but they say you come back but they don’t want to come back
If there woz a choice I would want to come back
And then there’s like the bit I can’t tell you because it’s so nuts
Go on
I did not make this up right
Whatever
These plants have a flower and if you look at the flower it might look like Jesus or Buddha or like some other religious thing.
That’s not even possible
No
Like the laws of physics or whatever
I know
These people are tripping man
Yeah totally
And why Jesus anyway?
Like if you’re enlightened you see other enlightened people
Sounds like you almost bought this shit
They are totally believable man even though obvs they are also bananas
You’re a hippy man
Not if I do this ☹
What do you mean
Like peace and love and
Well, you could just tell Greg to leave
Holly feels a bit funny between her legs, or at least she’s trying to feel a bit funny between her legs because that is what the book says she should feel when thinking about someone she knows at school – male or female – who she would like to kiss. But there isn’t really anyone she’d like to kiss because kissing, or at least what Chloe told her about kissing – grown-up French kissing, where you have to rub tongues together with a boy, inside his actual mouth – is disgusting and she wouldn’t want to do that with anyone. The book says, Have you ever put a pillow between your legs? And Did it feel good? And Did you squeeze? And you have to put a tick in a box next to the things you did feel or do, and Holly’s not sure that what she feels between her legs is what you are supposed to feel, and she’s also not sure that this whole thing isn’t just REALLY GROSS and she would absolutely die before she showed this book to anyone but sometimes she just can’t help herself and she has to get it down off the shelf and read it again.
This book has pictures of willies in it, which Holly likes looking at; at least she likes them more than she likes thinking about kissing. There are lots of little boys with little willies, but her favourite picture is of an erection, which is a big, more adult willy sticking up, which Holly has never seen in real life. Obviously if she did ever see one she would have to shut her eyes and maybe even giggle a bit because it would be SO gross, but in that tingly way that some gross things are. Because of this book, Holly now imagines the characters in her Famous Five novels with willies (the book says penises, but that’s just revolting) and vaginas, and sometimes she imagines them all being captured and forced to strip while some smugglers take photos of them naked and then send the pictures to a newspaper which puts them on the front page by accident so everyone in the entire world sees them!
Here’s another thing that could happen: George in the Famous Five is often mistaken for a boy, so perhaps she will get locked in a boys’ only cell by some gypsies or pirates and then the gypsies or pirates will say something like ‘Prove to us that you are really a boy’, and George won’t be able to, and then they will pull her knickers down and see that she has no willy, and then they will examine her really closely with whatever implements they have to hand, probably a pencil and a ruler, just to make sure, and then they will spank her bare bottom with the ruler as a punishment while Julian and Dick and Timmy the dog watch. And Julian and Dick will have had their pants pulled down too, to prove they are boys, and so George will be forced to look at their willies for the whole time this is going on.
‘Holly! Lunch!’
Oh no! Not her dad’s voice. Not while she is thinking . . . Anyway, Holly doesn’t even want lunch. The very idea of lunch makes her feel sick. Her
dad puts so much garlic in everything, and horrible green stuff like coriander or basil – although Holly quite likes basil on garlic bread, which also has garlic in it, so maybe it isn’t garlic she doesn’t like after all. Maybe just at lunchtime. And too much ground pepper, basically. And sourdough bread, which tastes like envelopes with puke inside them. And goat’s curd, which is just like that stuff that gets in people’s arteries when they smoke, which Holly saw on a school DVD and now can’t quite get out of her mind. Not that she doesn’t like her dad’s food. She wouldn’t say that even if a man came in now with a gun and said, ‘I’ll shoot you between the legs unless you say you hate your dad’s cooking.’ Or maybe just, ‘I’ll shoot you in the head’. Something about the feeling that may or may not be between Holly’s legs, and the feeling she definitely does not feel about her dad’s cooking, do not go together at all. The thoughts about all these things are now churned up in her head like sick.
‘Holly!’
Her door bursts open. God! She tries to slip the book under her pillow but she’s too late. Ash skips across the room.
‘What’s that?’
‘A-A-ASH!’ She draws out his name into a kind of indignant yell, making it into at least two syllables, maybe even three. ‘MUMMY!’
He reaches for the book but she can’t let him see it. It’s her private book and it’s not suitable for young children, or for boys, or for little brothers in general. But Ash has pointy, searching, often sticky, little hands, and so the only way she can prevent him from touching her book and seeing – actually, she can’t think those thoughts now about what he might see – is to whack him on the arm really hard. Twice. She finds herself gritting her teeth as she does it, sort of enjoying the pure hatred she feels in this moment. She wishes Ash would die.
‘Ow! DADDY!’
Now Ash pulls Holly’s hair sharply – at least having forgotten about the book – and starts to cry. If you made the stupidest sad-face expression right now, with your lip-edges pulled down as far as they could go, and then if you pretended you were in a slow-mo scene or something and said the word D-A-D-D-Y as slowly and as sadly and as loudly as you could, then you’d sound just like Ash. Holly really, really hates him. She REALLY wishes he would die or at least become suddenly paralysed and have to live in a wheelchair forever.