Stonemouth

I’m getting quite a powerful hug here. I remember how we used to mess around when I was going out with Ellie, and Grier was just a lanky teenager with pancaked-over acne and fierce-looking braces, and so I decide to risk it. I pull her tighter to me and lift her up off her feet — she yelps, just like she used to — and swing her round. I can feel her laughing and I can feel the light pressure of her breasts through the layers of clothing, and — not for the first time — wonder, if things had been different … But, there you are. Heavier than she used to be; I’m twirling a woman now, not a kid. I stop gradually and put her down before we both get too dizzy. She’s still laughing.

I have a sudden thought. ‘Fuck!’ I say, glancing up and down the beach and back towards the forest. ‘Your brothers aren’t here, are they?’

‘No. Just me,’ she says, looking at her camera again. She switches something, pinches a lens cover into place on the big grey lens and hoists the camera over her shoulder. ‘You just walking?’ she asks.

Her face is smooth, flawless. Either no make-up at all, or stuff that’s so artfully applied I can’t see it. Her face is not so much like Ellie’s really, not now; Grier has a thinner, somehow sharper face, when you can see it. She always did have that thing of keeping her head down and looking at you from under her delicately carved brows. She always got called mischievous, too. I guess she still looks it, though there’s also a … a slyness there. Nothing mean, not necessarily, but there’s definitely still a roguish side to the girl that you’d be risking ridicule or worse if you missed. Not a lass to be taken for granted. Just like her sister. And her dad. Like the whole family, in their own sometimes grievous ways.

And the girls definitely got all the looks. Ellie and I were always roughly in sync as we grew up and the changes that made a woman out of the long-limbed girl who first took my breath away just seemed natural, somehow, or at least unexceptional; all the girls in our class and those around us were pupating into these dazzling butterflies back then and Ellie was no different, even if she was the most exotic of them all. Grier was seventeen when I skipped town but still gangly, one of those rare girls who resists maturity instead of trying to adopt it when they’re still twelve. But blossomed now, though, for sure. You can tell, even within the bulky jacket; something of a looker.

There was a rumour a couple of years after I left that she’d become a model, which I just dismissed at the time, or thought had become garbled and really applied to Ellie — Ellie you could always believe would be a model or a film star or something — but looking at the kid sister now, it’s credible. Yeah, well, some lucky man, and all that.

‘Yeah, just walking,’ I tell her, ‘I left the town, just kept on going—’

‘Recent habits die hard,’ she says quietly, with a small affirmative nod, almost before I register what she’s said.

‘—and I suppose I’m sort of heading for the … the main forest car park. Call my folks for a lift if I can get reception.’

‘I’m parked there; I’ll give you a lift.’

‘Sure?’

‘Sure I’m sure,’ she says. Sure I’m sure: that’s a new one. Used to always be posi-tive-ly.

‘Fair enough.’

She slips her arm through mine like it’s the most natural thing in the world and we head diagonally back across the beach, northwest. She walks easily by my side, stride for stride. Her boots look like riding boots, though from the trail of her footsteps we’re retracing, they have serious grips. She’s looking down at the sand, or the trail, seemingly intent.

‘Back for Grandpa Joe’s funeral, huh?’ she asks.

‘Yeah. Special dispensation from your old man.’

She’s silent for a bit. ‘That you done your time, you think?’

‘Doubt it. Saw your dad yesterday.’

‘Brave, foolish: delete as,’ she mutters, not looking at me.

‘He seemed quite happy I’d only be here till Tuesday.’

‘Tuesday,’ she repeats, still intent on the sand or her earlier tracks. A glance. ‘You well?’

‘Yup. You?’

‘Yup.’ I am being impersonated. She steals another glance. ‘Doing okay?’

‘Yup. Still lighting buildings. You?’

‘Still option D.’

‘Option D?’

‘There’s always an option D. Option D: all of the above?’

‘What’s the “all”?’

‘This and that. Stuff. Things.’ I feel her shrug.

‘Could you be a little more vague?’ I ask her, stealing one of Ferg’s lines from last night.

‘Certainly. How vague would you like?’

‘Actually, no; that was about right.’ I pull on her arm. ‘What are you doing these days? Or is it, like, classified?’

‘Sort of a photographer’s assistant, I guess,’ she says, sounding thoughtful. ‘Get in front of the lens now and again.’

‘So you are a model?’