LATE SLIP

Late afternoon quickened. Tourists and touts moved the street. Uniforms out of school, in easy drifts. Office hands, still substantial. Victoria Street owned generations. Flag-waving supplicants. Pin-striped servants. Brigades and scholars. Unlovely and dependable like a necessary spouse, its arcade concrete, glass and lights, a ritual for so many, striving in that first good job. A commuter street, on the clock. The train at this time. The bus at this time. The crenelated cut throughs, where wily sweats dodged traffic. The scotched distance, in mansion rows, to the river.

The young man was on the clock. His hurry convincing. Student or office worker, influencer or no one. Joanne remembered his trainers. Clean-looking, laced. Jeans of course. Plaid over a white tee. She remembered that. Clean-looking. A clean look. Brown curls. Beard of course. Stubble. Just coming in. A young man running. A young man’s confident energy. The black holdall gripped across his left shoulder, tight to his back.

Joanne hadn’t time. She had to get home. Cook tea. He tore the air along Allington Street. Sprinted across the lights. Ran diagonal by Little Ben. To the station.

Joanne saw someone’s life change. She supposed other people saw. But didn’t really see. As the young man’s momentum threw him towards Wilton Road, eyes on the traffic, the black holdall swung from his shoulder. A brief, unremarkable arc. The old woman determined to cross Vauxhall Bridge Road, a cramped acceptance of weakness etched in her face. The holdall struck her left arm. The young man lost in bodies sucked towards journeys.

The old woman mouthed in silence, her throat ribbed, her cry a black hole. Silent and screaming she clutched her elbow, the arm twisted down and back. Noise came: messy cats in the bins. An obstacle at sea, the crowd broke around her, distrusting her pain, disrupted at such wretched frailty.

Joanne kept tidy. Kelly’s extractive gaze revealed each slip. Joanne didn’t compete but clung to a plateau of sameness: neat clothes, good makeup, hair trimmed and clean. An effortless mum for her strong daughter. But this woman’s absolute, careless age was exhausting. Lined and cracked, in nondescript clothes, her screeching brought cold looks. Joanne was adult. Had to be adult. Her uncertain grip limped around the old woman’s spine. “What is it, love?” All she could say.

The old woman cradled her elbow. “That man.”

The most of a man she had in years. Joanne felt the thought as wrong but it was hers. Kelly would eyeroll and say, ‘Fuck sake.’ Which was laughter. “I’ll call an ambulance.” That was the thing – let people with the right outlook take charge.

“No trouble.” The old woman whimpered.

“He broke it. Bet you.”

More messy noise. “Did you see him?”

The sly type. After a witness or something. Joanne called 999. She did that six times in her life, each a recoil from something close enough to taste. The operator took details, believing the voice Joanne used at parent teacher afternoons. These routine questions: is the patient conscious, are they breathing. Wrestling her impatience, Joanne repeated the woman was upright and squawking. “It’s her elbow. She’s not been shot.”

Now someone was in charge the woman grew placid. Telling onlookers, like they might care.

It already felt long ago. Afternoon, when she saw the man. Now the light was changing. Shadows stained the pavement as the sun slid down the towers. There was no one who might think Joanne’s help a good thing. They’d say it, to gee her up. But no one thought it. Easy to make lukewarm noise, tell the old woman the ambulance was coming; soon she’d be in hospital; they’d make everything fine. Joanne didn’t ask if there was someone to call. These old girls had no one.

Noise and dazzle drove unwelcome eyes to her face. People rushing for trains, jostling to bars, saw Joanne and the old woman in the same breath. Linked objects of the same moment. An embarrassment. One paramedic asked questions, like this was a thing to investigate. The other led the old woman onto the hoist, stranding her as an exhibit while the hydraulics whined.

The chatty paramedic knew it all. “Breaks,” he said, importantly. “Different impact, different break. You got to know what you’re talking about. With trauma. Invasive, you see? Disruptive of the body.” His tongue drew around his lips.

“I didn’t see. It was quick. I think a young bloke give her a sharp edge.”

“He didn’t stop?”

“He was running.”

“You hear that?” He shouted to his mate. “Hit and run.”

He invited Joanne for the hospital ride. “No.” Her firmness stilled the air. “I’m busy.”

Among high-tide bodies, the ambulance a distant plea, Joanne felt marked as different, the whole walk to Strutton Ground.

These flats were old but alright. Old London flats, built for the poor. Four blocks round a courtyard. Cement and yellow brick. Lot of women with kids. Lot of women whose kids had more English than they did. She’d hate not knowing the chat. Joanne, in her way, took nothing for granted. When people cranked music or worked their engines or shut the door too loud, she told herself it was better than the street. Better than no door to shut. She lived here so long, people asked her advice. What she thought about stuff. Better than being no one.

Before her key felt the lock, she knew Kelly was home. Kelly was her world. Too old now to hear that. When they had to move here Kelly was a nosy little dot, into everything, too tough to say she was struggling. Now Kelly was a woman. By looks. By temper. Soon she’d want more.

Kelly in her room, door shut, breathy silence between unforced laughter. With Imani. Imani laughed different to Kelly. Kelly’s laugh came short and flat. Imani’s was deep, a breath longer. On their phones with friends in bedrooms in streets all around. Linked by knowing everything. They’d know Joanne was home. Their laughter would change.

The cooker, the fridge, the sink – old but still okay. Clean, clinging to whatever shine remained. She learned early the comfort of tidying up. Joanne’s mum got careless with things. Not just at the end. Right through. When Joanne was little and friends came to play, it hurt, that look on their faces. The up and down of it all, the drink and the wagon, everything fire to ice. Joanne didn’t plan to be a mum. She planned the neat home, making ends meet, a solid, sure-footed childhood. Without drink and men and midnight hospital rides. An ordinary mum, never to outshine her girl.

Kelly’s schoolbag lay tipped on the counter. The laptop with its pop star stickers, the rainbow water flask, her ID lanyard and bracelet, her timetable cards a dense arrangement of motion and rest. A sharp, uninviting strip of paper. Kelly was artful, not forgetful. It was there to draw Joanne. Like bait. Like showing off. Its tacky politeness: ‘Dear Ms’. Its barbed apology: ‘Sorry to inform you once again’.

The bedroom door released a crack of voices. Imani laughed. Kelly sang. Odd how Joanne still found her surprising. Tall now. Wide, tough shoulders balanced her round face with its sharp, recessed chin. Those spectacular curls. Where in the family did Kelly get auburn spirals that saturated her arms and hung across the growth-spurt chest she wore pinned high. Her eyes enlarged by boxy glasses. The monobrow she wouldn’t shape. The scar she wouldn’t cover. That fight: each step a test, each word a challenge. “We’re going out. We’ll get dinner.”

Through years of screams and silence, Joanne learned a mum wipes smiles off people’s faces. “What’s this?” The paper tested her fingers, its body flimsy and callous.

“Snooping again? That’s nice.”

“It was on the side.” She didn’t want to speak this way.

“So’s my homework. You want to do that?”

Distraction she couldn’t avoid. “Have you started your homework?”

“I’ll do it when I get back. It’s a piece of piss.”

“I want you doing your homework.”

“When I get back. It’s easy.”

The paper stuck to her hand. She couldn’t shake free. “I said no more of these.”

Those calm, savage eyes. “Ten fucking minutes.”

“You left on time.” Kelly could make the air cold. Her vibrant, muscular body could freeze its surroundings. Of course Joanne shouldn’t have said. Of course she’d be punished. She couldn’t tell Kelly she was forced to this, to persist in being mum.

“You been watching cop shows? I went out. The tube was fucked. It was ten fucking minutes. The bitch hates me, you know. You should use your moves on her.”

“Don’t talk that way.”

“How should I talk? They hate me.”

“We said no more late slips.”

“You said.”

“You’ll get bad reports.”

“And yours were perfect. Screwing round getting pregnant.”

“Where you going?” Joanne hung at the kitchen door, knowing what she must look like.

“I told you. Out.”

Imani drifted from Kelly’s room. Her elegance shamed the hallway. Imani’s mum and sisters all had that long-limbed grace. Her braids were dressed. Her bangles laid diamond lights on the walls. Her regular, teen-girl clothes looked made for her exactly. Next to her, Kelly was more adult and less remarkable. Joanne wondered if Imani got late slips. “Thank you.” The girl always said thank you. As though sitting on Kelly’s bed was a gracious favour. These girls made Joanne feel mean-mannered.

“Be careful.” With Imani there, she couldn’t say ‘I love you’.

The door slammed. They were laughing.

Closed stalls on Strutton Ground. Food trucks packed away, leaving oily ghosts of far-off flavours. What shitty school gave paper to say you got late? She should have binned it. But it did Joanne good to see what she was dealing with. To someway feel that hate. They moved fast across the roundabout, bus drivers and truckers squawking their brakes and yelling.

Along the canyon of Rochester Row, Imani seemed uneasy. An empath, Kelly was right inside people’s heads. She loved Imani. These were good times. She wanted her to be happy, having this white girl for a friend. “Sorry about her.” Kelly started that way. “She’s moody on the late slip. Best let her obsess.” Sounded clever, like she planned it. Maybe she did.

“My mum would lose her shit.” Imani chuckled. “Going off how some kids don’t get the chance of school. In her day school was precious. My sisters all get that talk.”

Family. Siblings. Babies. Her thoughts ran down the chain. “That thing we said. I saw to it. No bother.” That tough talk she grew up around. Something said was good as done.

Imani glanced at the church across the way, its lead windows hazed orange. “You good?”

“They was pleased I got it fixed.” She managed something today. She made something happen. She did more today than Joanne with her stupid job. Kelly didn’t feel different. Maybe she should.

Imani whistled. A soft, silver sound, her lips a swish of moist flesh.

“They was pleased.” Why say it twice? It could only be half-true.

“Not everyone would be so kind.”

“They’ll be happy.”

“Your cousin’s friend?”

“I gave him the money. He’s cool.” The best people could be paid to do things. They didn’t need kidding around. She gave him his price and off he went with his black bag. She played like a boss. She should feel different. “Anyhow, it’s for the best.”

“My mum would lose her shit. She be like,” a mocking, parody voice, “you do de ting you take de lick.” Imani let her breath run out. “You wait till she sees my plan for this life.”

“Your mum’s nice.”

“You say that, girl, where she pets you. She tells me: that Kelly, so smart, so serious. She thinks you got it.”

This slippy line. Who she was, who she should be. Kelly at home and Kelly at school. On the street and in sleepless early hours. “I don’t get caught.”

“Only for late slip.”

She had to laugh. They were friends.

The corner by Vincent Square, lost to low-hanging light that burst the sports field trees. Shouts from late games. Boys learning lessons in losing. She never told Imani about the wild grass after the pitches. She told no one. It was her time. Dark swilling her ankles, the boy so scared he could barely placate her soft material and above, late gulls swooping, recalling lands beyond the night sea.

At Vauxhall Bridge Road, a studenty girl in clump heels stalked through traffic. Her boots so stacked, they bound her moves. Girls with weaves and braids called to Imani. Everyone knew everyone. They cared for each other. Kelly played cool. Said a few good words. It was her with Imani, not them. They tumbled across Warwick Way, pushing by men boozing outside the pubs. Kelly knew how she looked in her shirt and jeans, bare make up, glasses, this luxury of brown curls. No little darling for men to chirpse. They’d be wary around Imani. Scared they’d say the wrong thing. She elbowed office women, uptalking the garbage that filled their day. Teachers – Joanne, sometimes – tried to focus her on the future. When she’d have to choose to do this or that. Fuck them all.

The supermarket on Wilton Road was somewhere to hang. Fun to watch the freaks shopping. That stupid couple making lovey-dovey decisions about their microwave date night. The vegetable freaks, squeezing everything. The mums failing to train their kids. It was restful, when none if it was your problem.

Imani saw him first. “He’s looking at you.”

“You, more like.”

Imani kissed her teeth. “He can’t take his eyes off you.”

A runt in a creased suit. A worn man. Discoloured, like he got left in the rain. A basket of poncey packet meals. A solitary, stay-home type. Staring at Kelly from moon crater eyes. Staring, like she was on offer. “Come on.” She drew Imani to the corner. “We’ll sort this.”

They went down an aisle, across and back up. This old man waiting for them.

“Bastard.” They went around again. “You go that way.” She loved how Imani just went. Like Kelly was boss. Kelly doubled back, took a sharp turn, got right in that man’s hungry eyes. He stared like she was everything. He tried not to. Tried to hang his gaze on the shelves. But he couldn’t. Drawn on want he couldn’t reel back. He couldn’t conceal what he needed. “Bastard.” She said it loud. He went on staring.

Imani cut round from the other way. Criss-crossed him. Made him piggy. Imani was stunning. Tall and smooth. But his blood eyes fixed on Kelly.

“Again.” They let him rummage some stupid posh cereal. They caught him again at the base of the row, Imani from left, Kelly from right, so close she could smell his dirty wishes.

“It’s you he wants,” Imani said. “Definite you.”

Every day was angry. But this was special anger. A nasty old man, to presume on her female self. To think she might be that stupid. When she was all this, with all she’d done. She waited till he was adrift, then angled around him. Met his eyes full force. How dare he even look. Even as he fumbled, as he clutched his pathetic bags, he couldn’t stop laying his gaze against her. His filth for this queen.

“Teach him.”

They synced their phones. They tracked either side of Wilton Road, data flowing between them. Not letting him out their sight. Kelly was quick. She ran forward, to wait at the bus stop. To film as he approached, shocked-looking, drawn always towards her. She shared the clip back to Imani, who filmed his reaction from across the road. Winding between traffic, Kelly got to the corner of Gillingham Street. Imani’s long, clean moves covered her from the far kerb.

The old man laboured against the inertia of his body, his cargo, the ugliness of his actions. Pitiful desire wouldn’t let him go. He wanted Kelly so much. This young, hard life to energise him. He didn’t try to hide when she filmed him. She was blatant and he couldn’t hide. His shock so fake. So totally lost to this girl.

Crowds filled the front of Victoria Station, bound to the dirty south. Office shirts caught among nylon families, these tourists and stupid couples wasting their night. Kelly elbowed and cussed these shoddy forms while Imani, made of magic, glided through. In the stale taste of the station, the old man scuttled to the Brighton side, shopping bags flaring from his body, suit messy with hurry.

“He’s legging it down the coast.” The phone still at Kelly’s mouth, though Imani was beside her. “Come on.”

“Come on to what, girl?”

So wrong to stop. Like throwing it away. She stared in her friend’s deep eyes. “We find where he lives. Teach him a lesson.” She was hot with it. Eager for someone to make amends.

Imani smiled like she knew stuff. “We ran him out of town, didn’t we?”

“It’s alright.” Kelly hated that crack to her voice. “We can have a night at the sea.” On the dark beach, beneath neon stars, two perfect shadows.

“We need dinner, girl. And I got to be home. She gets mad if I drop the homework.” Imani took her hand. “Next time.”

No bother. Not like he thought. When the train got clear of Victoria, stained from running, he took off his shirt. For half a second, he thought to slip it in the holdall. But it couldn’t go in the holdall. He tied it around his waist like a kid and watched the river slide beneath his feet. The power station, terraced rooftops, the pinstick towers of south London. Hot in the train. But good to travel. Good day. Worth his time.

Checking behind, checking around, he opened the holdall, just so much. It seemed okay. Good as their word. A calculated dose. The train was his idea. The task was nowhere local, nowhere anyone might connect one thing to another. So he thought get out, get to Brighton. The dose should be good for that.

By Croydon it started to feel more risk than adventure. And Gatwick got awkward. Locals off afternoon flights. Luggage and kids everywhere. He clutched the holdall on his knees, but the little girl sat next to him with her windmilling arms kept jogging his elbow. So he stood by the door, as brownfield Sussex wasted away to the sea. Some did this every day. They liked distance between getting paid and what they bought. Some got off at Haywards Heath. An orderly, empty place that seemed to exist just for this. The houses looked satisfied. The glass box offices rode a tide of sensible cars. The holdall shifted against his back. He counted the minutes to Brighton.

Sunset cut transverse shadows through the streets. Brighton was his idea. It was easy. Downhill to the sea. A young guy in jeans and a tee. A shirt tied at his waist. No one saw him. Empty shops and faded heights – so much of this place was paint over mould. The approaching sea at the end of the valley. Each corner more shoddy, more sour.

Verticals broke at Marine Parade, traffic slicing the shore. He jogged over to get a first breath of the water. A kid, his mum brought him here. It’s official, she’d say. When you breathe the sea, it’s official. It’s holiday now. Mum should still be around. She was no age. No age.

Though day got old, families clung to the beach. Towels and windbreaks owned their patch of stones. The holdall moved against his back. Now it came to it, he hadn’t thought this through. There shouldn’t be people. Not now. Not on a school night. The heat gone and light fading. Kidding themselves it was still a day out. That summer still bound them. The wind gave kisses and cuts. The tide swam low and, under the pier, banked stones and garbage. He put down the bag. Unzipped it. Stood off, like it was nothing of his. Like he never had a bag. One corner dented like something hit it. He didn’t notice till then.

Quick, wary of prying eyes, he clattered through shingle, up to the front. Into Manchester Street, and George Street, to a black and grey pub. It should be the station and home. But one drink couldn’t matter.

Halfway to the second bottle, she walked in. Waving to the barmaid, to old boys lost in mucky stout. A formless, easy walk. Straight up and down, like a boy. She got a pilsner. He got the same. It should be the station and home. But she had black hair in scimitar spikes. Rounded cheeks. Eyes with strawberry threads. She was Mitch. “You’re not local.”

“Ian.” He held out a hand, so they’d touch. “I’m here for the weather.”

“A tourist? I hate tourists.”

He liked that. “On business. A favour. For a friend’s cousin.”

Mitch chuckled. “Well aren’t you generous.”

“It needed my personal touch.”

There were tunes Mitch liked on the jukebox. There was beer on the shelf. A corner table saw light die to evening. “I was at university here.” Mitch split a pack of cashews down lengthways. “I stayed on, for want of ambition. I’m a geographer.”

“You don’t get lost then?”

“You know,” she flicked Ian a cashew, “no one ever said that before.”

“Is that what you do? Geography?”

“No one does what they study.”

“I’m a mechanic.”

“My car’s on the bricks.”

Slow walking along St. James’s Street, Mitch told him how these houses came to be. How fashionable, artisan, these terraced rows by the sea. The people looked artisan. Weightless, paint-smeared types. Not that sweaty old man hauling his weight to the beach as though sunset would end him. An unappealing rosy no one. To be that old and stained, Ian could never forgive.

Mitch had a bed and bath in Kemptown, above a shop on the slant. She rolled a coin one side to the other, to prove it. For sure, she did that with everyone. In early hours, while she slept, he watched the cracked ceiling, thinking about a bag that wasn’t his, on the beach below midnight high tide. Thinking what not to tell her.

Nasty tarts. Disgusting. The old man’s sweat clouded the vinyl seat. His shopping stacked, to deter company. The river beneath his feet. The power station, terraced rooftops, pinstick towers. Same every day. Hot in the train. Hot and cold sweat. Nasty tarts. Enthralling. The black one smooth and limber. The white one something else. Those tits, pushed high, sharp as razors. Those dense, savage curls. That stone face. The black one would bend in the right conditions. The white one would scrap to the last. No respect, neither of them. Pissing about, trying to make him guilty. Their high-rise mums would be glad to lose them. Not that he’d do anything rash.

He chose Brighton for a reason. London was pissy tarts. Brighton visitors brought each day’s fresh supply. A walk on the beach any daylight hour. A few pictures, carefully taken. Their little faces knew what their bodies were for.

This journey of wasted fields and vacant towns. He’d done it enough, this show of signs and windows and paint and offers. These places exactly nowhere. A petri dish of angry, lonely girls. More grateful than London tarts. But that one, the glasses and curls, that was special. Maybe he’d risk her again. Get her alone. Get her talking. The vicious ones were smart. They saw through the show.

He hauled his shopping home, then to the beach for last daylight. His house in these cocky streets of urban cowboys. A slim terrace, its backside to the water, its veiled windows of high-strung neighbours. The town’s bric-a-brac etiquette duly proper in his crafty things. In the trunk, with its soiled stickers of weary destinations, he kept a few pictures he printed, a few he bought, a few souvenirs that came his way these delirious years. Things left behind. Things found. Things that once touched skin now grown and indifferent. This old man was on no list. There were no suppositions about him. The ones he photographed would forget. No one remembered being young.

He rattled through town, the unbearable logic of sunset chasing him down. To get there before they were gone. Toy-like people got in his way. They repulsed him. That chubby bit with spiky hair and threads unravelled. The bloke she was with: some lean gorilla. Plain they did nothing all day. Nothing, yet they could live here. While he had to sweat in town. To get spooked by dirty tarts.

He slid down onto the stones, his balance slipping, the eagerness of his limbs more reluctant. He had a notion once, to meet one and get entwined. Have one for a proper girlfriend who’d welcome his caresses. To share his life by this or some other sea. He didn’t think of it now. Tried not to. Now the ones he first angled had girls of their own.

With bucket and spade, as though caught in the silt of distant years, these little ones already budding. It happened soon these days. They flowered early. He followed one, her cartoon tee shirt distorted by two pimply, obvious ridges. But her keepers were watching, laying moves in the corners of their mouths. He retreated, his legs, their skinned, insistent agony, retracing all his years. He tried to act indifferent to denim shorts and salt-slicked, tangled blonde hair. He walked under the pier, twilight shadows restless with rising water.

Among rocks and rubbish, someone left a bag – a good one. A sporty black holdall, like lads took to the gym. Clean enough to have been there just a while. He scavenged it out from its bed of stones. There was something light, uneven, some cargo slid aside with a damp thud.

Peeling the straps, unhooking the zip, brought light to wrinkled skin. A little blood in dusty varnish. Powdery eyes leapt back from sunken light. The baby wriggled its shoulders and hips, burrowing from the damp air. Its bloodied cord wept rubies. Its chest drawn in, it launched an unearthly cry. The man held it, not understanding, not then, the warmth of the crowd at his back.

Mark Wagstaff’s work has appeared in Cagibi, The Write Launch, Rockvale Review and Ginosko Literary Journal. He won the 39th Annual 3-Day Novel Contest with off-kilter romcom Attack of the Lonely Hearts published by Anvil Press. Mark’s raucous teen thriller On the Level was published in 2022 through Leaf by Leaf, an imprint of Cinnamon Press. And Cinnamon Press will publish Mark’s new novel Mascara a post-modern tale of politics and mayhem in June 2025. www.markwagstaff.com