Page 8 of Glitterland
He gave a melodramatic gasp. “Ah, you’re so rude, babes.”
It seemed, however, to have done the trick and, to my relief, we continued in silence. I didn’t want to have to think about what I was doing and I resented his clumsy attempts to converse with me. We both knew how this worked. If I had to endure any more of his banal confidences, it would surely extinguish the faint flare of desire I (inexplicably) harboured for his body. It had been so long since I’d felt anything like it that I couldn’t bear the thought of losing it. Like a piece of broken glass worn smooth by the tide, it was a bright trinket washed up onto my monochrome shores.
We’d been walking less than ten minutes and I had no idea where we were. But we seemed to be in the middle of the shopping district, which slightly reassured me on the murderer front, unless he wanted to off me behind Superdrug. My phone bleeped. It was Niall, of course, wanting to know if I was all right. I closed down the message and silenced my phone.
“That your mates?” asked Essex.
“It’s not important.”
“You should tell ’em where you’re going. What if I’m like a axe murderer or summin?”
“Then,” I shrugged, “you’ll have axe murdered me before anybody has a chance to stop you.”
“Oh, yeah, didn’t fink of that.” He brightened. “But they’d be able to tell the police who done it.”
“I’ll take my chances.” That was the point at which I should have left it but, out of nowhere, some spirit of mischief (or masochism) seized me, and I added, “Besides,Icould be the axe murderer.”
“Omigod, I didn’t fink of that eeva.”
He stopped walking, chewing his lower lip as though he was wrestling with an intense, private dilemma. Or maybe it was just the effort of cogitation, I couldn’t tell. Fuck, what had I done? He was going to change his mind, and where would that leave me? Alone, without even the smouldering ashes of this incomprehensible wanting.
“I’m not an axe murderer,” I said, urgently.
“That’s what you’d say if you was a axe murderer.”
“But…but I’m not.”
His raucous laugh exploded through the still night. “I didn’t really fink you was, babes. And, anyway, where’d you get the axe this time of night?”
That…that…wanker. What was he trying to do to me? I glared at him and that only made him laugh harder, his teeth flashing and his jewellery jingling.
“Your face!” he said happily.
“Fuck you.”
He gave another one of his theatrical gasps, eyes flying wide in a flurry of artificially lengthened lashes. Then he nudged me in the arm, as though he was inviting me to share the terrific joke at my own expense. I pulled away impatiently. Whereupon the most oblivious man in Brighton hustled after me, leaned in, and—of all things—kissed me on the cheek. It was so utterly unexpected that I didn’t have time to avoid it, and then he sauntered off like nothing had happened. Leaving my skin to burn with the memory of his lips, as though he had branded me with his smile.
We kept walking. Around us the city glittered in shades of orange and silver, like a paste jewel in a tinfoil crown. The sky was a bruised swirl of blue and indigo, the air sharp-edged with salt. We passed a Waterstones advertising my forthcoming book. My gaze recoiled and landed, instead, on the street sign above: Dyke Road.
“I know I shouldn’t,” said Essex, as though he’d read my mind, “but it always makes me laff.”
I didn’t dignify that with an answer.
He prodded me in the arm. “You didn’t say what books you wrote.” He’d noticed? He’d remembered? Urgh.
“No, I didn’t.”
“What, is it like porn?”
“No,” I snapped, “it is not porn!”
Oh, God help me, he was laughing again.
“I write, sort of…crime,” I said, to shut him up.
“That’s well sahnd. Like that geeza…wassisname…Derren Brown. Ah, wait no, ’e’s on the telly. The uvver one. Dan Brown.”
The last forlorn relic of my pride shattered on a street in Brighton. “Not like Dan Brown,” I said.
