(Just) The One

Harley was far too early. The train (on time), the taxi (waiting) and the traffic (non-existent) had conspired against her. Now she found herself standing outside the Coach and Horses probably decades before the place opened up, all alone. No, not actually all alone. There was an old man who looked like he had peeled himself off of a sofa a couple of minutes earlier and brought most of the upholstery with him. Even his cough had an adhesive quality to it. Her stomach was full of tiny, busy birds so she decided to walk up the narrow winding lane a while, then come back, so that if anyone did see her they would at least not see her waiting outside the pub and misunderstand. She was just going to have one before her mission (important). She set off and as the pub receded in her backward glances she realised that she wasn’t walking up the lane. Just pacing (elaborately).

The ears of corn were still wet from the dew and as they crashed through the yellowing stalks Harley could feel the dampness spreading on her t-shirt as if it had started to rain.
INDENT‘Wait for me,’ she said, stumbling again.
INDENT ‘Come on,’ Nicky said. ‘Keep up, you’re the runner.’
INDENTHarley stopped holding her arms out to protect herself from the whipping corn and ran like she was running the two hundred metres in the County Championships final again. She passed Nicky, then burst out of the crops and through a gap in the hedge. She stopped for breath, standing at the top of a steep hill, looking down on the reservoir that spread out in front of her like glass in the morning sun.
INDENTNicky shoved her in the back as she ran by. ‘Come on,’ she said. She tore off her backpack, held it high above her head and flung herself on to the grass. Nicky began to roll down the hill, all whirling limbs and long blonde hair. The backpack sounded a dull chime every time she rolled on to her front and the biscuit tin inside the bag hit the ground.
INDENTHarley lay down and started to roll too, gathering speed until she was going so fast the ground and the sky were a blur, until she couldn’t breathe, until the hill seemed to go on forever and ever. Then she was sitting up laughing, checking for scratches and pressing her new bruises. Nicky sprinted the short distance to the edge of the grass still waving the backpack over her head like a trophy she’d won. She jumped down the metre or so to the narrow strip of pebbles on the edge of the water.

‘Good morning,’ Harley said. ‘How are you today?’ (It was all going to be all right.)
INDENTThe man behind the bar nodded. ‘What can I get you?’
INDENTNow, why was this an unexpected question? It was, after all, the reason for her being here. A drink. A first drink of the day. Of the daylight, technically, it had been a late one. Ah, it was unexpected because if she went into Bradley’s just off the high road in the city (how she missed it), Bradley (all the male staff were called this) would know what she wantedbecause early doors she always wanted the same thing and that thing was…now, what was it…
INDENT ‘Well?’ the bar man said. He was just a bar man to her now, a mere functionary. He’d never be a Bradley, she could see that now.
INDENTWhat was it she had? ‘Guinness,’ she said. ‘I’ll take a Guinness.’ She hoped that she hadn’t said that, as she suspected she had, with a hint of an Irish accent, vowels heavy with a longing for potatoes, because that would be terrible.
INDENTHarley sat in a booth with her breakfast of champions, its black velvet depths revealing amber notes by the light coming through the whorls in the glass of the window. The table was dark and polished to a high sheen, reflecting the pint in its surface in a way that made the drink seem bottomless (if she looked from the right angle). There were horse brasses around the open fire which was all very appropriate, and not a Toby jug or anything pewter in sight. It was quite nice after all. The anxiety, which had been gnawing at her like an enthusiastic beaver at a sapling, subsided a little. Harley, surveying the period coving now, tried to remember if she’d ever been in the Coach and Horses before. She’d been in the Red Lion down near the village hall. She could remember that. Or could she? She seemed to have developed a memory like pair of torn stockings, remaining ever hopeful that things might catch in the toes because at least that would distract her from the horrors snagged in the gusset.

They sat facing the water, mostly hidden from view by the slope of the land. Every time Nicky moved Harley could feel something run through her that had voltage. The water was almost turquoise near the shore, but a couple of metres back it turned a much darker blue where the bottom fell away and the water was so deep there was a sign nearby saying swimming was prohibited. Harley shifted around trying to get comfortable on the pebbles while Nicky unpacked the rucksack. First came the trowel and then she tugged free the biscuit tin.
INDENT ‘Are you sure that will be all right?’ Harley said.
INDENT ‘They said so on Blue Peter,’ Nicky said. ‘I mean, they had this right fancy capsule, like a whatsit off a rocket it was, but they said a biscuit tin was dandy.’
INDENT ‘Did they put the tortoise in theirs?’ Harley said.
INDENT ‘No, they did not put that poor tortoise in it,’ Nicky said, slapping Harley’s arm. ‘You are a feck. Bury that poor tortoise, why would youse?’ ‘It’s so cool that you have a telly in your caravan.’ Harley thought of all the cool things the travellers had. Horses. Camp fires. Nicky.
INDENT ‘Not that cool when the rugby’s on and all them that don’t have a telly cram in and watch ours. Or when Liam’s mates come in. They watch all that horror.’
INDENT ‘Why don’t you tell your dad?’ Harley, like Nicky, was afraid of horror films.
INDENT ‘Because he gives me money,’ Nicky grinned. ‘Liam I mean, not Da. Liam’s on the nixers up at the farm.’
INDENT ‘The what?’
INDENT ‘The nixers. Cash in hand. Have I not taught you that?’
INDENTHarley looked at the biscuit tin that Nicky was cradling in her lap. Boland’s biscuits it said on it, with pictures of all the best biscuits they did; jam mallows, coconut creams and kimberleys. Harley had tried most of them sitting on the steps of the caravan with a mug of dark brown tea on her knee, watching Nicky and her little brother Donal, the Blue Peter fan, hanging washing out on a piece of thin rope strung between two caravans.
INDENTNicky tapped out a rhythm on the biscuit tin lid. ‘Let’s see what we’ve got here then. Afore we bury it, yeah?’

There were a couple of (sadly) empty glasses on the table, ice starting to melt in the bottom of one them and a mournful pool of water in the other. There was (thank God) a half-full one also. She tasted it cautiously in case it had anything soft in it, but it was (thank God again) like granite. And fiery. Although not certain of how they had arrived before her she felt fine about this. Relaxed. Had she ordered all these drinks at once or was the bar man sloppy, tardy with the table clearing? He looked tardy. Harley’s eyes roamed around a while, she could feel them doing it like marbles on a tea tray, and she spotted a blackboard littered with spelling mistakes and suggesting that a ‘Sunday Rowst with all the trimings' was available. She had been quite convinced it was Saturday but that did explain the odd train times and the lack of people wandering about earlier. She shuffled up the seat and peered around the edge of the booth. The room teetered a little (only a little) so she gripped the edge of the table and refocused. There was an old woman and her husband sitting in the booth next to hers. He was passing forkfuls of broccoli to her plate which she was swapping for carrots. They reminded her of her own parents. She felt a momentary wistful pity for them. It was an unpleasant yet trivial sensation, like finding the crust of a half-eaten slice of toast speckled with mould. She should go. She had things to do. (One thing). She’d have one more drink.
INDENTHarley scrambled up the hill to the bar. The row of men perched on barstools could have been an immersive exhibition where visitors could experience what it was like to have a drink with people who knew how to drink and were so good at it that to not drink would have been to fly the face of everything that was right and reasonable. A dereliction of duty and disavowal of talent.
INDENT ‘Deleriction is right,’ the man to her left said. ‘Dereliction.’
INDENT ‘Stout yeoman of the bar,’ she said with a very expansive gesture. ‘A drink for me and my friends.’
INDENT ‘I ain’t deaf, don’t shout,’ the barman said. ‘And we need your table. You’ll have to sit at the bar. Or in the garden.’
INDENTThe man to her left slapped the bar stool on the other side of him to indicate that she could sit there. She decided to call him Sebastian because although he looked like he’d been assaulted by a jumble sale, he did have a tatty grandeur about him.
INDENT ‘What do you want this time then?’ the stout yeoman said, although he looked as if he were made up of dirty bits of string knotted loosely together, not stout at all.
INDENT ‘I’ll have an Old Fashioned,’ Harley said, (showing off a bit).
INDENT ‘A what?’ the barman said.
INDENT ‘An Old Fashioned.’
INDENT ‘What’s that?’
INDENTAh, now, what was it? Harley wondered.
INDENT ‘Muddle some sugar with some bitters, put it in a glass, a tumbler mind, with two ice cubes, the rind of an orange and then pour over - ’
INDENT ‘Two jiggers of brandy,’ she said. She was so pleased to have remembered that she didn’t check to see who had spoken.
INDENT ‘Jiggers?’ the voice said. ‘Very good.’
INDENT ‘What the fuck is a jigger?’ the barman said.
INDENT ‘Language, Neil. I shall not ask you again,’ a man said. It was the man who knew what an Old Fashioned was (God love him). He was wearing an expensive three-piece suit of verydark navy wool and tan brogues. It was so nice how the rich and the poor were mingling alltogether. Cheek by jowl. And Sebastian’s jowls were splendid.
INDENT ‘Deleriction of language that is,’ Sebastian said. ‘Ladies present.’
INDENT ‘A jigger is 59 millimetres, Neil,’ Harley said. ‘Millilitres, I mean.’
INDENT ‘Why didn’t you fucking say that?’ Neil said.
INDENT ‘Neil, please,’ Mr Ambulant Price Tag said. ‘Really, enough.’
INDENT ‘And what anyone else wants, I need to be off soon,’ Harley said. She rummaged around in a pocket and dropped some crumpled purple notes on the bar with what she knew was largesse.

They laid the six items out on the warm pebbles like they were the crown jewels. Harley decided to memorise them precisely, so that whenever she wanted to she could look inside the tin, in her head. It had started out as a joke, the time capsule, but as the end of the summer came it became more important to Harley. Like they were saying things to each other they couldn’t say. She didn’t know what to do with all her feelings but she did know how to put things in a tin and bury them.
INDENT ‘Quite like to eat these fellas,’ Nicky said as she picked up a packet of Opal Fruits.
INDENTHarley took them away from her and put them back in the row. ‘You can get some later, they have to go in.’
INDENT ‘Sure they do,’ Nicky said. ‘I s’pose.’
INDENTHarley had shown Nicky that the right way to eat Opal Fruit was to unwrap all the sweets in the packet and roll them all together into a ball and eat them like a small apple, or a plum, all the different colours and flavours swirling together. There was a Panini football sticker of Paolo Maldini because Nicky thought he was handsome and Liam wouldn’t let her have an Irish player and he had three Maldinis anyway. Harley would have preferred it if Maldini had not been in the time capsule because Nicky liking him made her feel hot and cold at the same time. There was a postcard from Mallorca that Harley had written for Nicky and then bought back with her because Nicky didn’t have a letterbox. The writing was tiny because Harley had a lot to say. There was a scarf which Nicky swore was silk but Harley suspected wasn’t, not that it mattered. It had peacocks on it, some with their tails up looking very pleased and some with their tails down but still looking smug. That was in the tin because they’d found it in a hedge when they were coming back from swimming in the gully. They had swam with nothing on and when Harley thought of that afternoon she could taste songs and smell colours. There was a cassette full of songs they’d taped from the chart on the radio. They’d listened to it on Harley’s Walkman over and over again, their cheeks together so they could both hear through the headphones. The first side started with Papa Was a Rolling Stone which Nicky said her ma said was true, even though their Da lived with them. Even the way Nicky said mum and dad felt important to Harley, exciting. The other side started with Vogue which would have them standing somewhere they couldn’t been seen, waving their arms around like they did in the video. Sometimes they would stand too close, facing each other, so that they would tangle themselves up, giggling. The last thing was a book.
INDENT ‘I’m sorry this takes up so much room,’ Nicky picked it up and turned it over and over in her hands.
INDENT ‘It’s all right,’ Harley said. ‘It’s a good choice.’
INDENTIt was a copy of Billy Blue Hat’s Day. Harley had found it in the garage when her Dad was clearing some boxes out and snuck it up to her room. It was one of her books from school when she was learning to read. Nicky was embarrassed because she couldn’t read as well as her five-year-old cousins could, so Harley had taught her. She started with Billy Blue Hat's Day and moved onto Danny the Champion of the World, because he lived in a caravan, and then The Wind in the Willows, because Toad had a caravan too. Harley wanted to put the caravan in the time capsule really, but it was far too big. She wished there was a way of putting Nicky in a time capsule so that she could stay with her forever. But then she wouldn’t want to bury her.

The ‘rwosts’ had vanished as if they had never happened. It was possible, Harley reflected, that they hadn’t. (Where had Neil gone?) Lovely Neil, he was so surly. Much like Sebastian. (Where was he?) He’d gone home. He’d stumbled out of the door and needed assistance from a passer-by. Amateur. She looked along the empty bar and at the small squares of glass in the window frame. There was clearly something wrong with the window because it looked like it was dark outside and it couldn’t possibly be dark because she’d only arrived about an hour ago. (Perhaps it was longer than that though?) Ridiculous. (Where was Neil?) There was no one behind the bar, not a soul. It was an enormous, empty void as if some terrible plague had swept through and taken every living creature with it. She could, of course, nip behind the bar and served herself. She felt like she’d know her way round an optic., given the chance. She looked down. The floor felt distant, the bar stool vertiginous. (Maybe it was better to sit still for a while, until she felt better?)
INDENT ‘What can I get you?’ a woman said.
INDENTThere was a woman behind the bar. (Where had she come from?) That was more like it though. She looked like something out of a novel by… by who now? Not DH Lawrence. Harley had picked up a mild distaste for him. Thomas Hardy. (Was he better?) She couldn’t remember that either. (Maybe it was a brain tumour, a stroke she hadn’t noticed?) Thomas Hardy. Defoe. That’s what she meant. Willem Defoe. (Was that right?)
INDENT ‘Daniel?’ the woman said.
INDENT ‘Yes,’ Harley said. Another mind reader. It was amazing how much the village had changed. Elevated itself, psychically.
INDENT ‘Willem is great though,’ the woman said. ‘Have you seen the film where he has to shoot the very last…I think it’s a cat like a panther or something. I can’t remember.’
INDENTIt was contagious. It wasn’t just Harley, the alcohol scorching holes in her mind. It was some collective disease. The woman was still talking. Harley tried to focus on that instead of collapsing into the hole she’d opened up by accidently using the word alcohol, so close as it was to that other word, the same word with the extra syllable on the end of it. (Why had she done that when she knew better?) The woman had very pleasing lips. It was so easy to watch them moving around the words as she carried on talking about some film with Daniel Defoe in it. Willem.
INDENT ‘Mind you,’ the woman said. ‘He’s terrible in that Spiderman.’
INDENT ‘Everyone’s terrible in Spiderman,’ Harley said, thrilled to have not missed her cue.
INDENT ‘Would you like a coke or something? Some water?’ the woman said.
INDENT ‘No,’ Harley said. (Why would she want that?)
INDENTThe woman frowned. ‘I wasn’t sure if you’d had enough.’
INDENT ‘I haven’t had enough,’ she said. ‘I do know what I’m doing.’ (Did she look like she didn’t?)
INDENTI’m watching your lips as you talk and the way your eyebrows dip a little as you register a sense of concern for my wellbeing, Harley thought. I’m noticing that your eyes are exactly the same colour as grey suede pushed the wrong way, darker than expected, soft but with a sense of something rebelling. (Really? Are they?)
INDENTThe woman was smiling as if waiting for an answer.
INDENTHarley smiled back.
INDENT ‘Jamie,’ the woman said and held out her hand.
INDENTHow disappointing, Harley thought. It ought to be Florence or Ivy or Grace or something. Jamie. Pity. Harley went to the tiny village primary school with three girls called Jamie and hadn’t liked any of them. One in particular was a nasty goblin-like creature with very thin blonde hair, a shiny scalp, and a nose like the broken end of something. Something like a…no, her face had gone. Oh, well that’s one she wouldn’t miss. (Why did other things she’d like to vanish from her mind cling on still?)
INDENT ‘There you are,’ Jamie smiled and goblins everywhere fell down dead. ‘I suppose you’re right, it is mostly water.’
INDENTTheir fingers touched as Jamie put the pint of ale right in the middle of the beer mat, square as if she’d measured it.
INDENT ‘Sorry,’ Jamie said.
INDENTDid she blush a little? It was hard to tell, she had stepped back a little, shyly, Harley thought. This had to happen. That’s all there was to it. Jamie must live nearby, or they all had cars anyway, they all had to drive, living in the middle of nowhere. Harley remembered that being an impediment to escape when she was a teenager. Harley had been planning to take the speed in her coat pocket to stay up all night and then get the first train back so she didn’t have to stay at her parents. (Why did they cling on particularly?) This way she would have a bed to sleep in for the night and get laid, or rather the other way round unless Jamie was very much a morning person and then she could take the speed another time. Or she could share the speed with Jamie, which might be fun. Jamie liked obscure films. And was infinitely kissable.
INDENTJamie had vanished. Panic over. She was at the other end of the bar serving a man whose glasses had been fixed at one hinge with cream masking tape. Harley watched them carefully to make sure that she wasn’t being cheated on but there was no sign that anything untoward was between them. Quite the opposite in fact, Jamie was clearly as devoted to Harley as Harley was to her.
INDENTJamie glided back up the bar like a goddess on gilded wings. ‘You drink far too fast,’ she said. ‘Slow down.’ She patted Harley on the arm.
INDENTHarley watched this happening from somewhere else and it seemed as if she were watching someone patting a dog. A nice dog, sure, but an old dog with a baggy mouth that leaked drool. It felt like someone crashing a hot heavy cinder onto her arm and she saw that Jamie’s agile lips, her caring eyebrows and her enthralling eyes were not magical at all. The idea of being touched was repulsive. (Like being forced to watch her own flesh rot from her bones. She felt the roaming, adventurous slugs of Jamie’s lips oozing hungrily over her own and Jamie’s heavy breath, dinner lingering on it like grease on an apron, flooding her mouth, filling her lungs).
INDENT ‘Are you OK?’ Jamie said. ‘You’ve gone white as a sheet.’
INDENT ‘Yes,’ Harley said. ‘I’m fine.’ She felt the vinegar twist of bile at the edge of her jaw, just under her ears.

Nicky picked up a stone and threw it at the water.
INDENT ‘Harley,’ Nicky said. ‘I’m glad I renamed you. It’s much better than your other name.’
INDENTHarley preferred it too. She felt more like a Harley when she was with Nicky.
INDENT ‘I wish I didn’t have to go,’ Nicky said.
INDENT ‘Me too,’ Harley said.
INDENT ‘I don’t know why we can’t stay put for once.’
INDENTHarley thought it might be because the rest of village hated the travellers and were always calling the police about the dirty gypsies, their fires and their noise. They said they ate hedgehogs. They didn’t. It wasn’t fair. ‘You’ll come back though, right?’ Harley said. They’d had this conversation before but she needed to hear it again.
INDENT ‘I’ve told me Da that we need to come back next summer, for sure, even if we have to go to France for the winter.’
INDENT ‘What did he say?’
INDENT ‘He said yeah, we can. It’s good here. Plenty of room for the horses. Water. Pubs. All that.’
INDENTHarley thought about how far it was until the next summer. She thought of how much school there was in between, how many holidays. It would be all terrible without Nicky. It had only just gotten good and now it was going to be how it was before.
INDENTNicky put her arm around Harley’s waist. Nicky always smelled of bonfire smoke. Like firework night.
INDENT ‘Don’t cry,’ Nicky said. ‘Me Da promised me and I’m promising you.’

Jamie was lurking at the other end of the bar but she kept looking at Harley as if her eyes were drawn by a magnet that was hovering halfway between Harley’s glass and her mouth. It was like trying to eat with a puppy’s huge, soulful eyes peering over the edge of your plate. (Harley imagined grabbing the puppy by the scruff of its neck and smashing it against a nearby wall.) Why did she feel guilty? She wasn’t doing anything wrong. It was a pub, not a church hall. (She pictured the puppy sliding down the wall. It was making a tragic squeaking sound as it did so, its eyes growing bigger by the moment.)
INDENT ‘Do you live round here?’ Harley said.
INDENTJamie sidled up the bar. ‘Yes, on East Ridings,’ she said. ‘I bought one of the new builds with my boyfriend. The leasehold is a nightmare though.’
INDENTTypical. She must have been on the Old Fashioneds. Nothing knocked Harley’s gaydar out of whack like an Old Fashioned. She’d rather hear about the boyfriend than the tyranny of leaseholds though. If it came to it she’d rather have that often-heard conversation about how all the streets were named after the fields they’d been built on. Long Meadow. Narrowfield. Cow Slope. (That’s how stupid these people were. Cow Slope.)
INDENT ‘You don’t remember me, do you?’ Jamie said.
INDENT ‘I don’t remember most things,’ Harley said (overshared, really). ‘I think I have early onset dementia.’
INDENT ‘We went to school together,’ Jamie said. ‘Primary school. I was waiting for you to remember but I don’t think you will. You’re – ’
INDENT ‘Harley,’ Harley said. ‘Everyone uses my surname. Everyone. Since secondary school. I’m like Madonna but with my surname. No one calls her Ciccone. I know that.’
INDENT ‘No one calls you bleep anymore?’ Jamie said.
INDENTHarley couldn’t bear to hear Jamie say her other name. It didn’t describe who she was anymore. Who she hadn’t been for years. Bleep. She wondered what time it was. The bar was almost empty.
INDENT ‘Are your folks still up on The Slip?’ Jamie said.
INDENTWhat? Fox? Are your fox? Fucks. Feck. Fox. Four. Focus. Fandango. Harley looked into the bottom of her glass and tried a few deep breathes. She could do this. Focus. Folks. She meant parents. (Fucking bumpkins.)
INDENT ‘Fourteen. The Slip. Fourteen, The Slip,’ Harley said. ‘That’s where they live.’
INDENT ‘Do you want me to call your dad to come and get you?’ Jamie said.
INDENT ‘What?’
INDENT ‘Do you want me to call your dad?’ Jamie said.
INDENT ‘No, why would I want you to do that?’
INDENTJamie bit her lip and frowned again.
INDENT (It was pathetic. Give up woman. Woman with a boyfriend and a leasehold. A nice house on Cow Slope.)
INDENT ‘I’ve got a phone, thanks. In my bag. If there’s any calling to be done I can do it myself,’ Harley said.
INDENT ‘You left your bag on the train.’
INDENT ‘Did I?’ Harley should have been the first to know this, surely.
INDENT ‘Yes. You’ve only got your bank card and some money, quite a lot of money actually, and that’s it.’
INDENTJamie seemed to know everything about her.
INDENT ‘Listen,’ Harley said. ‘Look. My dad is about a hundred years old now, by the time he manages to get upright it’ll be Wednesday. And then he won’t be able to bend down and get his shoes on so he’d have to come down in his slippers and he’d be so embarrassed.’
INDENT ‘I saw your dad yesterday,’ Jamie said. ‘He’s very fit for his age. And he’s not even that old.’
INDENT (Christ. Fucking Christ. Why was her dad swanning around the place showing her up? Why couldn’t he just stay inside?)
INDENT ‘How’s your mum?’ Jamie said.
INDENT ‘Why don’t you tell me?’
INDENT ‘OK,’ Jamie said. ‘She’s been ill.’
INDENT ‘She’s dead, actually,’ Harley said. ‘That’s why I’m here. Back home.’ (This fucking hole.)
INDENTJamie looked shocked. Tearful almost. For a moment Harley thought that might really be why she was here. Jamie seemed so convinced.
INDENT ‘Cremation,’ Harley said. (Don’t stop now.) ‘It was a lovely service. We were all glad to see the back of her so everyone really enjoyed it.’
INDENT ‘That’s awful,’ Jamie actually had her hand over her mouth like she was a character in a third-rate soap opera. Harley wondered what a first-rate soap opera might look like and settled on the House of Commons. Jamie was talking, sympathising, her hand on her sternum now as if she thought that’s where her heart was. Third-rate.
INDENT ‘For fuck’s sake,’ Harley said. ‘She’s thriving. Thriving.’
INDENT ‘How do you mean?’
INDENT ‘She’s up there, at fourteen The Slip,’ she said. ‘She’s fine. Bit poorly apparently, but fine. She’ll make a full recovery.’ Harley started to laugh so hard either she or the room started to wheel off somewhere. She held on to the bar. Bars, she knew, were perfectly reliable.
INDENT ‘I think that’s a really terrible thing to say,bleep,’ Jamie said.
INDENTThere was a long pause, the horror of which Harley managed to witness in its entirety. Then she said, ‘I’m sorry. It’s my birthday today.’
INDENTJamie looked more upset than she had done at the thought of Harley being half-orphaned. ‘You’re unbelievable. It’s not your birthday.’ Jamie said. ‘You must think I’m stupid.’
INDENT ‘It is. It’s my birthday.’
INDENT ‘There’s no need to try humiliate me just because you think you’re cleverer than me,’ Jamie said.
INDENT ‘I’m not.’
INDENT ‘Well, you don’t look very clever from where I’m standing,’ Jamie said, as she rushed off to the other bar.
INDENTHarley smirked. It didn’t matter. Once she’d dug up the time capsule, (it’s just a stupid fucking biscuit tin, actually, don’t forget that) she was never coming back again.

Nicky scuffed more pebbles over the dirt with her toe and then stamped them down. No one would ever know there was something so valuable buried there.
INDENT ‘We’ll find it again, right?’ she said, dropping the trowel and dusting her hands off.
INDENTHarley turned around to face the fields, held her arms out and closed one eye. ‘Arms at ten and two o’clock,’ she said. ‘Pointing at that big oak and the gate up there. Then you walk backwards for three steps,’ she did, ‘and turn around and it’s right there.’
INDENT ‘Lush,’ Nicky said, throwing her arms around Harley. ‘Promise me something now?’
INDENT ‘Sure,’ Harley could feel Nicky’s breath moving her hair.
INDENT ‘Promise me that you won’t dig this up without me. And not until we’re really old, like thirty-five, like Ma.’
INDENT ‘I promise,’ Harley said. They were so very close, Harley could feel Nicky breathing, her chest moving against her own.

Harley waded through the carpet to the toilet and wrestled with the door (which also hated her). She lowered herself with great care on the seat. It was like sitting on a bull at a rodeo. It took her a century to start pissing and then when she did it seemed to go on forever (as if she was just a person-shaped bladder covered in skin). There was no toilet roll. Harley looked up in case there was a God and they were watching and would be interested in her feedback. Someone had thrown a can of cheap vegetable soup up the side of the cubicle. Closer inspection showed that the smear in it had been created by her own sleeve which was also covered in soup. Harley stood up leant on the other wall of the cubicle and tried to pull her jeans up without getting any more anything anywhere. It was becoming clearer and clearer that it wasn’t soup (even to her). There was a certain sharpness to the air, a certain viscosity to the substance that suggested that someone had been sick. The when remained a mystery. (The who was obvious.)
INDENTThe faces that swam up from the queasy depths of the mirror and glared at Harley with pinned, yellow-balled eyes were all hollows. The shadows under those eyes were so dark that Harley pressed them, wondering if she had been in a fight. She closed one eye and echo of the face vanished, leaving just one. And then that face swam away into blackness.

Harley stood in the middle of the empty field, switched off her Walkman and hung her headphones around her neck. The sky was grey, the hot sun trapped behind the clouds that seemed too near the ground. There were cracks in the earth where it had dried out. The field had been empty last year too, and the year before that, and the year before that. And so had all the other fields. When her mum had asked her what was wrong, the summer before last, Harley had explained, clearly and in great detail so even an adult could understand, that Nicky hadn’t come back. Then, when her mum had asked her dad to come into the kitchen so she could explain it to him too, they had both just stared at her. Well, her dad had said, I think it’s much better that this girl doesn’t come back and that you get on with being… His voice had trailed off and he’d looked at her mum who was blinking back tears. Harley thought at first that her mum got it, that she understood what it was like to be left behind, forgotten about, but that wasn’t it.
INDENTThey didn’t even tell her what she should get on with being. Nobody said another word about it. It was as if it never happened.
INDENTIf only she knew what to get on with being she might be all right. If she only knew who to ask.

(Watch now. See Harley stumbling over the ploughed earth, under the cold moonlight. It rocks under her feet, sometimes yanking away, sometimes rearing up. She stops to look, thinks she can see the moon reflected on the surface of the water at the bottom of the hill.
INDENT ‘Hey!’
INDENTIt isn’t moonlight on the water. Harley sees now that there are more lights, and they are much closer. There are hundreds of them. Some are tiny like fairy lights. Some are bigger, like the bright, bare bulbs of a fairground.
INDENT ‘Harley! Harley, youse eejit.’
INDENTHarley staggers nearer, catching her feet in the furrows. The lights are hanging from caravans and on the lines strung up between them. There are a couple of camp fires burning. Harley can smell smoke, sweet like late autumn apples. She can see a figure running, silhouetted against the sparkling camp as it speeds towards Harley.
INDENT ‘I’ve come for the tin,’ Harley yells.
INDENT ‘I knew you would,’ Nicky flies into Harley, knocking her over. ‘I knew you’d never forget.’
INDENT ‘You fucking forgot,’ Harley says.
INDENT ‘I didn’t,’ Nicky sits astride her, holding Harley’s arms at the wrists. ‘I didn’t forget for a second. Take that back.’
INDENTHarley fights, furious, howling. And then she stops.
INDENTNicky waits then lets her sit up, loosening her grip on Harley’s wrists. ‘Calmed down now, have we?’ she says.
INDENTHarley nods, sullen still.
INDENT ‘Shall we dig it up then?’ Nicky says.
INDENTWatch Harley follow behind Nicky, over the field between the caravans, through the lights. See how strange it looks. Unsteady in that impossible, golden light.
INDENT ‘Why are you camped out on this field?’ Harley whispers. ‘And not the usual one?’
INDENTBut Nicky is already racing away. Can you see? She’s off to throw herself down the slope, off to whirl herself all the way down to the water.
INDENTWatch Harley follow her. All the way down.
INDENTWatch.
INDENTWatch now, so somebody sees.)