Stonemouth

She puts her head back and I can tell she’s rolling her eyes. ‘No,’ she says, extending the word the way a teacher dealing with a slightly dim pupil might. ‘Not as a career; just helping out when needed? You know: like in a porn shoot when the lead man’s not quite up to performing right then and they get the cameraman to do the money shot. That sort of thing.’

‘Whoa! You’re doing that sort of—’

‘No,’ she says. ‘Not that sort of modelling. Though not for the want of offers. Or moral … what do you call them? Scruples?’

‘Scruples.’

‘Screw-pulls, focus pulls,’ she says, toying with the sounds. ‘I’m a trainee photographer; that sound better? And I’ve been in a few videos.’

‘Really?’

‘Really. And not those sort of videos, either. Music, mostly. And I might be interested in films. Like, acting? Depends, though.’ She skips; unforced, just like a five-year-old. ‘Photography thing could work out, but the place to be really is running things: modelling agency, photo agency, casting agency. Thinking about an agency that bridges, like, all those?’ She glances at me again. ‘That’s long term. That’s where I’m aiming to be.’

‘Hey, good for you,’ I tell her, genuinely impressed.

She smiles a big, beautiful smile. Then she looks away. She does another little skip, but it seems lesser this time, half-hearted. She brings her camera round, one-handed, fiddles with it, lets it fall again. ‘You going to see Ellie?’

‘I suppose. Maybe. She’ll be at the funeral, won’t she? She is here?’ I ask, suddenly worried. ‘She’s not abroad or—’

‘She’s here.’

‘Well, we’ll both be at the funeral, I guess. Whether I’ll be allowed to speak to her—’

‘You’re both adults, you know,’ she informs me crisply.

I glance at her. Told off by the kid. Oh well, had to happen.

‘Yeah, but it’s not quite that simple, is it? There’s your dad.’

‘Yeah,’ she breathes. ‘There’s our dad.’ She goes quiet and we walk in silence for a while, the line of low dunes angling closer, the forest dark behind them. A few other people are visible, further north along the beach; dogs race and spring around them. ‘Do you hate him?’ she asks. ‘Dad; my dad, Donnie; do you hate him?’

I blow a breath out. ‘Hate? I don’t know. That’s a … That’s quite a big … I used to get on with him … I’m frightened of him,’ I admit to her. ‘Him and your brothers. I wish what happened hadn’t happened. I wish they didn’t hate me, that’s what I feel, I guess.’ I look at her but she’s not looking back. ‘We’ll never be friends, but I can see he’s got his… point of view. I did something that hurt Ellie and hurt the family, hurt him.’

‘I meant more about him being a gangster.’ She comes almost to a stop, pirouettes while still holding my arm and performs a sort of compact bow. ‘Or crime lord, if you prefer,’ she says primly, falling back into step.

I give a little whistle. The ‘G’ word is one that we tend not to use very much in the Toun. Technically it’s the truth, I suppose, but the way things get run in Stonemouth, between the Murston and the MacAvett families on two sides, and the cops on the other, means there isn’t much in the way of obvious gangster activity; not so as you’d notice, anyway. A pretty stable place, really. Enviably low knife crime, no shootings for years and while drugs are as easy to get here as they are anywhere, they’re better controlled than in most cities or big towns. Harder to buy shit here than almost anywhere else in Britain, if you’re a kid. Of course it means the cops are — again, technically — totally corrupt, but what the hey; peace comes at a price. The system is profoundly fucked up, but it works.

‘There are worse,’ I say, eventually. Though it sounds like a cop-out, in a strange way.

‘You ever hear of a man called Sean McKeddie Sungster?’ Grier asks suddenly.

‘Rings a bell,’ I tell her. ‘Can’t think—’

‘Paedophile. In Dartmoor or Brixham or—’

‘Brixton.’

‘Eh?’ she says, glancing at me. ‘Well, wherever. English prison.’

‘The kiddie-fiddler that lost an earlobe?’

‘Yeah. Everybody’s heard that story.’

‘Why, isn’t it true?’

‘It’s true, far as I know,’ Grier says. ‘Told he can’t ever come back here, not even for his mum or dad’s funeral or anything.’

‘Huh,’ I say. I’m not wanting to pursue any connections with my own case here.

‘And the whole town knows this story?’ she says. ‘And even the people that think Dad’s a disgusting repulsive crook and should be put away for life think that’s a good thing, that’s cool. He did the right thing.’

I shrug. ‘People will tend to think that,’ I offer, feeling lame. ‘I guess.’ (Lamer still.) ‘It’s their kids—’

‘Yeah, but even paedophiles have to live somewhere.’ Grier sounds grim. ‘When he gets out, now he’ll go somewhere nobody knows him at all.’

‘But there’s a register, and—’

She pulls her arm out from mine and steps ahead, turning to face me, her arms crossed as she keeps pace with me, walking backwards. ‘Don’t pretend you don’t know what I mean.’ I hold my hands up. ‘Grier, I’m not.’