To the station…

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Fifteen minutes. That was if the traffic was good. Could be twenty. Leah looked at her phone again, checked the time, flicked open the Uber app. Still showing five minutes away which, based on the last ten minutes, was a lie. Say it was five minutes that meant a minimum of twenty until they could get to Aps. She thought about ringing the driver. April and Cora were over by the window, pulling back the curtain to keep an eye on the street. A black Tesla pulled up outside. The five minutes wasn’t a lie. The latest five minutes at least.

None of them really spoke in the car and the driver had taken this as his cue to turn his radio up, some rock station that April vaguely recognised as something she’d tried when 6 Music had been decommissioned. Some song none of them knew pushed them out onto the pavement outside the police station; a blast of pounding noise and someone singing about gambling. As the Uber door shut behind them and they were left with just the traffic noise on the street, a muffled don’t forget the joker shouted from the radio in the car behind them, Leah realised she had no idea what they were supposed to do.

In the moments after Aps had called it had all been clear. Our friend is in trouble: we go and help her. Nothing to contemplate, nothing to consider, no doubt. How do we get from here to her? The problem was as simple as that but now that problem had been solved, what now? None of them had dealt with this before. Leah was uncomfortably aware that the others were looking to her to guide them. What? Just because she called me? She wondered at that: why had she called me? But now wasn’t really the time. Leah led them inside, through a revolving door. If it wasn’t for the sign announcing The Bridewell Police Station it could have been any other office block, glass panelled walls demarcated into rectangles by red, steel strips. Beyond the initial door there was a decompression zone that was pretty common in large buildings, an expanse of space ended by a series of health screen machines that you had to proceed through to be allowed access further inside. Standard temperature check and cross reference to the national viral health register.

Leah cleared the health screens last. She should have expected it; her EU registered status always took longer to clear now in the UK, there were just more cross references back to the Italian database where her main health records sat. April and Cora were already at the enquiry window as she caught up.

“…we just want to make sure she’s okay,” Cora was saying to a dead pan police woman. She was ensconced behind a screen, mainly some sort of frosted glass that you couldn’t see through but with a clear window through which her head was visible. They were speaking through an intercom. She looked bored.

“What are they saying? Can we see her?” said Leah.

“No, you can’t see her,” replied the police woman, Inspector Martin from her name badge. “She’s still being processed under the terms of her arrest.”

“Can you at least tell us what she’s been arrested for?” said April. “It must be some kind of mistake.”

There was just a shake of a head in response and a gesture that they should all move to sit in the waiting area, a stretch of moulded plastic chairs bolted to the floor. There was a vending machine but most of the numbers displayed against its range of drinks had been scratched out. The three of them sat down. April got up again, walked up to the machine and looked at it.

“Anyone for a hot drink lottery?” she said. The others shook their heads. She swiped her contactless card and punched three numbers: two, two, three. Nothing. She tried again: one, one, two. This time the machine stirred, dropping a cup and filling it with a squirt of some unidentifiable black liquid topped off with hot water. It passed as black coffee and April cradled it back to join Cora and Leah.

“What do we do now?” said Cora.

“We wait, I guess,” said Leah.

“But we can’t do anything.”

“But we came. I think that’s all we could do,” said April. “We’ll be here when she gets released.”

“If she gets released,” said Cora.

“When,” said April. She blew across the top of her coffee and took a sip.

It was three hours before Aps was released, on a caution. In that time they discovered that 112 was definitely black coffee, 114 might have been a cappuccino, and 220 was the worst cup of tea that any of them had ever tasted. Talking about the drinks was the only thing that had distracted them from worrying about their friend. When she emerged, escorted by a woman dressed in blue scrubs, surgical mask hanging loose around her neck, she broke into a run and the four of us collided in the waiting area, Aps clinging to us in a desperate and grateful embrace.

“I lost my MedLet,” she said, repeatedly, as we held her. “I left it at James’s.”

None of them asked the questions they wanted to ask about that. They could all keep until later, for when it was safe to laugh about the whole thing, and start the enquiry about last night. They all bit their tongues about whether there had been any biting of tongues.

“What now?” said Cora. “Can we go?”

“Yes, it’s all sorted, I’m free to go.” Aps held up her wrist to show them a new MedLet, issued in the station, its warning light softly glowing green.

“Green equals clean,” said Leah.

“Green equals clean,” they all repeated.

Aps arrested

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I had thought about walking the long way home in the early sunshine, taking an extended morning after walk of shame or stride of pride depending on your point of view. I wasn’t ashamed to be honest but it hadn’t been a night to take much satisfaction in either. The amble of ambivalence? Whatever. My desire for a shower trumped all.

I was half way back when they stopped me. Two police officers approached from Redland Park, I didn’t think much about it until they got a little closer and I realised they hadn’t shifted their gaze from me. They were wearing the mask attachments on their helmets, I’d only really seen that in footage of what they did during lockdown, patrolling. You didn’t see it on the streets; if they needed masks you were usually indoors.

“We need to take you back to the station, Miss Daniels,”

I’d read about the CCTV and ID bank upgrades but it still took me by surprise to be addressed by name. “I don’t understand…,” I started.

“We’re placing you under arrest under the Viral Health Act, 2024….” It was the guy that continued talking, reading out my rights, but I didn’t hear the words. I felt exposed, rubbed at my arm and wished that I hadn’t taken my jacket off. It was the other one, the woman, that placed a firm, gloved hand on my shoulder and began to escort me up the street. They didn’t say much and I was too shocked to make much sense, just repeatedly asking what I had done. “We’ll tell you more when you’re secured from the public, Miss Daniels.”

They had a car parked around the corner on Whiteladies Road. I sat in the back, a screen sealing them off from me. It must have been soundproof because I could see the guy talking into a walkie-talkie but I couldn’t hear him. She drove. No sirens, no flashing lights, just me sitting in silence as we passed the University. I thought there was a police station down near the Royal Infirmary so I assumed we were going there. I only knew where the Infirmary was because directions to the nearest hospital had been in the student welcome pack we’d all got, part of the viral awareness literature that had been pushed on us since we were at school but updated a bit now we were older. Mainly stuff about risks through fluid exchange, the old romantics. I was feeling a little calmer, the strange quiet in the back of the car had helped me gather my thoughts. It must be a mistake. Or something silly. It’ll be fine.

In the station they took me straight to a temporary ICU. I didn’t even know they had them but so many places had isolation units for emergencies now that it didn’t surprise me. Technically it wasn’t a cell and they didn’t seem to lock the door but someone stayed outside the whole time, I could see him through the porthole window. They told me that someone would attend to me soon and to make myself comfortable. I paced up and down for a bit and tried to think through what I needed to ask, what I was entitled to. Most of my police procedural knowledge was from that night me and the girls had watched those VSI re-runs and I was pretty sure screaming for my attorney wasn’t going to help. I didn’t have one, for a start, unless Jane Atkins, a girl I’d met in the first term who was studying law counted, and I had a nagging feeling they weren’t even called attorney’s in the UK. All the times someone had asked for a phone call on the show seemed to have worked though so maybe that was legit.

Eventually a woman came in, asked me a few health questions, and requested to take a blood test.

“Listen, you can refuse,” she said. “But then I just have to get a warrant processed as part of your arrest and we do the test anyway and all you’ve achieved is some time and pissing everyone off.”

I let her scratch into my arm, it didn’t seem like a big deal. She even managed a thin smile and a muttered ‘thank you’. As she was finishing up, blotting a small piece of cotton wool onto the place she’d made the incision, deftly taping it down, she moved her hand down my arm and tapped my bare wrist.

“You know why you’re here, right?” She tapped again and looked at me and I realised I wasn’t wearing my MedLet. The good parts of last night came back to me, the kissing parts, the undressing parts, the taking off my MedLet part.

“It’s just a mistake,” I said quickly. “I haven’t got any symptoms, I’m not hiding anything. I just stayed at a friend’s house last night, I must have taken it off to sleep and forgotten it. You can’t be serious?”

She smiled, glanced up at my slightly disheveled hair. “Well I hope your ‘friend’ was worth it because, unfortunately, failure to wear a health monitoring and tracking device is serious and can carry a big penalty. Let’s hope you’re not carrying. You might just get a caution if you’re clean.”

“What do we do now?” I said.

“I need some time to run the test diagnostic. In the meantime you wait here.”

My earlier calm had evaporated now and all I could think to lean on were some of the lines I’d rehearsed in my mind earlier. “Can I make a phone call?”. She nodded, said to use my own mobile but she’d wait while I just made one. I didn’t know who could help or what anyone was allowed to do. I called Leah and burst into tears when she picked up. She listened as I explained what had happened, forcing the words out through sobs and shortness of breath. There was no hesitation on the other end of the line.

“Hang on, Aps, we’re coming.”

Kiss and no tell

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I woke up and I could hear a shower running next door. I knew I was in his room, in his bed, kind of naked in his bed. None of that was a surprise. I hadn’t been so out of it that I didn’t remember, it just took me a bit of time to piece it back together. I tried to see if my clothes were in reach or if I was going to have to risk ducking out from under the duvet before he reappeared from the shower. I couldn’t see them.

So, last night. From the top. We’d met as planned at the Kandi Klub and as promised the girls had left us alone to talk. I had occasionally caught a glimpse of Leah pulling faces at me over his shoulder but nothing that he would see. He’d seemed a bit more sure of himself than usual which I’d hoped was him finally relaxing around me, the whole shy-nervous-sweet thing was starting to wear thin. I thought there was some chemistry but I didn’t usually like to really judge until I’d kissed someone. Someone said that was a bit shallow but I never thought so; I wasn’t judging him, I was judging us, together, whether or not we were going to be a thing. Okay, I was probably judging him a bit. I’m a spectacular kisser.

He’d had a couple of drinks already and I topped him up. He wasn’t drunk but he was definitely looser, it was the first time we’d danced together. Or, you know, sort of awkwardly facing each other in amongst our circle of friends who were also dancing. I don’t think you can dance together in an indie club anyway. It wasn’t even the sort of place that stuck a slow one on at the end. The DJ usually faded the lights up to Daydream Believer so the most you might manage is holding hands, lifting them in to the air, and swaying in a mass singalong. Anyway, we danced. After a while I beckoned him off the floor, gestured that we should get another drink.

I was probably a bit buzzy from the couple of beers I’d had and the dancing. As we walked toward the bar I’d grabbed his hand, met with no resistance, and guided him off to a table back under the stairs that led down from the entrance. I sat him down and he looked, momentarily, a bit startled, like he’d sobered up very quickly and remembered that he was Mr shy-nervous-sweet. I didn’t really want him to remember that, it was no good for my purposes, and so I leaned in and started to kiss him. He tasted faintly of beer but I assumed I did too so that was okay. I’d closed my eyes so I couldn’t see if we’d managed to banish the unsure guy between us but from the movement of his lips, the push back from his tongue, I was pretty sure we had.

I don’t remember that much about the taxi, other than it was unusual to get one. Most nights me and the girls would walk back home, grab something to eat on the way. He’d suggested it straight after I’d suggested that maybe I should go back to his. I thought I should spare him running the gauntlet with my housemates and, to be honest, I sort of preferred it this way round. It meant I could leave when I wanted to, either that night if our flickering chemistry didn’t catch light, or the next morning. Assuming I could find my clothes.

I remember how it started. I’d asked for the tour, before his housemates got back, and stopped him in his room. I kissed him again and asked if he minded if I stayed over. From that point on I kind of led him through it, unbuttoning his jeans, slipping my shirt off over my head, guiding his hands to my hips. After that it wasn’t so elegant, both of us fumbling at our remaining clothes, removing everything and doing that thing where you’re both sneaking a look but both racing for the security of the duvet at the same time. As I reached to kiss him again I must have caught him with the edge of my MedLet, enough for a short intake of breath, so I whispered an apology and took it off, put it on a table by the bed.

And that was it. Last night, from the top. I’ve missed a bit out obviously but, sad to report, it was quite a short bit in the end. Sweet but short. I don’t want to sound mean but the sex took less time than it took him to get the condom on. I wondered if we’d talk for a bit and he’d be one who might come back around for another go but he fell asleep almost instantly. I toyed with the idea of leaving then but I wasn’t sure if I could find everything in the dark without waking him and I didn’t want to have a conversation about wanting a main course but just getting a starter. I guess I do sound mean. I’ll dress up his performance for the girls though, I’m not that mean.

The shower stopped running and I listened to the sounds of him doing whatever it is that boy’s do in the bathroom. No toilet flushing, thankfully. He came back in, fully clothed, rubbing at his damp hair with a towel. He seemed to clock that I was a bit uncomfortable and picked up my clothes, which I now saw folded in a pile on a chair by the bathroom, and passed them to me. It was weird that all my bravado from last night was as easily undone by the thought of him picking up and folding my knickers away.

He left me to get dressed. I said I’d call him.

No kiss and tell

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“So how was it?” asked Leah as soon as Aps let herself in to the house.

“I am not taking questions at this time,” said Aps, slipping her denim jacket off and slinging it across the bannister in the hall. The last couple of weeks had been warm, late Spring looking like it was going to full bloom into Summer, and they’d all been grateful that lockdown had been short.

“Oh, you so are,” said Leah, grabbing her by the shoulders and guiding her into the kitchen. “Check you out with the strapless dress and the perfume and the hair cascading just perfectly across those exposed shoulders. It must be getting serious. Tell me everything.”

“Are you hitting on me?” said Aps, smirking. “It wasn’t for him. I dress to make myself feel good.” Leah raised her eyebrows and nodded sarcastically. “And anyway this is just an old halter my sister didn’t want anymore. Nothing special.”

April had heard their voices and set aside the essay she was working on to join them. She  stopped in the doorway to the kitchen and turned to Leah throwing her arms up in exaggerated surprise. “Leah, who is this pretty, pretty lady? You did not tell me we were expecting a guest?”

“We’re really going to have to do some more work on those gestures,” said Leah. “You need to give it the full Italian. Like I showed you. I’m only half Italian and even I can give it full.” She stood up and threw her arms explosively, catching the lightshade above the kitchen table, leaving it swinging in the ceiling.

“Hey, I’d quite like to get the deposit back when we leave,” said April, reaching up and grabbing the shade, stopping it from moving. “I’m prepared to sacrifice fully playing out a stereotype for that.”

“It’s only a stereotype because it’s true. I can say that, you can’t.” said Leah. “We’re an expressive people.”

“Expressive is not my strongest suit,” replied April. “Anyway, I think we’re getting sidetracked. You were going to introduce me to this mysterious, beautiful stranger. She looks sort of familiar. Like someone I used to know… just, I don’t know, just shinier.”

Aps ran the tap and poured herself a glass of water, listening to them continue their performance. She said nothing until she was reasonably sure they’d finished.

“Alright, I’ll spill,” she said. The others pulled up chairs.

“Wait, I need to prepare myself,” said Leah. “What are we talking, here? Is this all going to be strictly rated PG, mild peril, moderate swearing, or are we settling in for an 18?”

“Well, spoilers, there’s no scenes of a sexual nature,” said Aps. “There may be violence soon though if we make it to a fourth film.”

“I’m not going to pretend I’m not a bit disappointed at the lack of adult themes in this story but impending violence sounds interesting. Continue,” said Leah.

“There’s not that much to tell. It was nice. He was nice. Is nice. Listen, I do think I like him, he’s sweet and attentive and he’s pretty funny when he remembers that he doesn’t have to be nervous,”

“How many dates now?” asked April.

“If you don’t count the online chat in lockdown then this was number three. So there’s nothing to stress about, right? It’s early days. There’s something there. Or at least I think there is. Maybe he doesn’t feel anything. Maybe we’ll just be friends.” Aps smiled at them.

She had enjoyed the time with James again, a walk across the Downs and a coffee in Clifton. He’d told her about a couple of bands he wanted to see over the summer, they’d talked a bit about what it must have been to like to go to Glastonbury, what it must have been like to be in any big gathering outside of a place where all the usual health checks could be run on everyone attending. They’d talked a bit about their families, his parents were both in medicine but he didn’t have the grades and was studying Politics. He’d started to talk earnestly about the balance between individual freedoms and what was good for society but had stopped himself. Aps thought he’d misinterpreted her reaction, mistakenly thought she wasn’t interested but he’d changed the subject even after she’d said that her listening face looked a lot like her bored face. She told him about her sisters, joked that he’d probably get on better with her eldest sibling. They could make playlists for each other.

“Surely he took the hint when you said he might prefer your sister?” said April.

“Not so much,” said Aps. “The stupid thing is that I think he is interested, he’s just pretty shy and pretty bad at picking up signals.”

“Do you want us to intervene?” said Leah. Aps looked genuinely horrified.

“God, no. There’s a reason I haven’t suggested he comes back here. It’s taken me three dates to get him to hold eye contact for more than three seconds. I’m going to stick with it a bit longer. You have to promise, by the way, to behave on Saturday. He’s going to the Kandi and I said I’d see him there.”

“I’ll keep them in line,” said Cora. The others didn’t know how long she’d been there, she must have slipped in whilst they were talking and was stood leaning on the doorframe. “He sounds promising. Quiet and slow can work out good. Take it from me, Rob was like that early on.” She said it quietly, eyes down, but she lifted her head back up and smiled at Aps.

“You know we wouldn’t really freak him out, don’t you?” said Leah, contrite. “Unless you want us to, obviously.”

“Don’t worry,” said Aps. “I’m going to let him take it slow I think.” She paused. “Or I might see how many drinks he has Saturday and then just push him into a dark corner and kiss him.”

“Sounds like a plan,” said Leah. “We’ll cut off his escape route.” She caught Aps’ frown. “Sorry, not that he will want to escape, of course.”

“Nobody would want to escape the pretty lady,” said April, clutching her hands together and shaking them in front of her face.

“Still not enough,” said Leah. “More expression.”

“They’ll be carving that on my grave,” said April.

 

Lockdown: April

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April used the time on lockdown like she’d always done: she read and studied, listened to music, drank wine in the evenings. She sensed the slight edginess in the rest of the house but just shut it out, retreated behind her thoughts, and bunkered down with books, a bottle, and Bowie. That first one, six months in the ICU, had been the hardest but even then she felt like she’d coped okay… and that was before she’d added alcohol to her distractions. They frowned on that when you were fourteen. This one was only four days old, routine community contact trace, would probably be over tomorrow.

There were tests coming up at the end of term so she read back through her notes on the set texts. It was probably adding to the tension the others were feeling, particularly the scientists who rarely passed up an opportunity to point out the imbalance in workload between their courses and April’s. She was prepared to cede the point to Cora and Aps but not Leah. Surely Psychology didn’t count? Pseudo science at best. Leah had spent an hour after that comment trying to explore what had happened in her upbringing that might explain her suspicion of trying to understand the workings of the human mind. It hadn’t convinced April any more of the scientific basis of the discipline. She was content to tell her that spending six months in solitary in your formative teenage years was enough time inside of your own head to not need anyone else to try and explain it to you. She mostly believed it.

The tests didn’t bother her. They never did, she’d always excelled at them. All of them except the ones that had been carried out on her. Those ones she seemed to have consistently failed or how else to explain why they’d kept coming back to carry out more? She looked at the faded red lines across the inside of her arm, faint fractured traces of her time in containment. She knew they’d been looking for a vaccine. They never quite came out and said it but she heard enough snatches of conversation between consultants and doctors and nurses to piece it together. Her parents knew more than they were letting on, too. They just kept telling her that there was nothing to worry about, they just wanted more tests because they thought she was special, thought she might help them figure out more about the mutations. April had never asked them much about it after she was released – sorry, reintegrated – because she’d stopped believing they would tell her anything she hadn’t worked out for herself. She didn’t even blame them but when she was older she did wonder exactly what they had known.

They’d talked a lot about her scars in the few months after coming out. Once a week with a dermatologist and twice a week with a therapist. We need to heal your psychological scars as well as your physical ones. Maybe that’s why she was a bit dismissive of Leah’s academic calling. Too much time having her thoughts and feelings prodded and pulled by well meaning strangers. Why don’t you use these crayons to express how isolation felt to you? Have you tried writing a story to explore that? You can change how you’re feeling, April, tell me, what do you believe about yourself? She’d preferred the dermatology. Lie back and let them apply some balms directly to the surface of her skin. None of this scratching around under it.

There had been one therapist, when she was about seventeen, that had stuck at it longer than the others. She was never quite sure whether her parents moved her on to someone new or if, privately, they waved a little white counselling flag and gave up. She won’t talk about how she feels. You can’t administer talking therapy if someone won’t talk about how they feel. The persistent guy was called Dr Lau. Anthony. She liked him despite herself. He’d said to her early on that she was probably going to get fed up with him repeating the same questions, making the same points, regular as a metronome. She hadn’t known what that was and when he’d told her she’d said it sounded a bit like a drum machine; she’d just gotten into the Sisters and told him about the one they used, Doktor Avalanche. It’s settled then, I will be your drum machine and you may call me Doctor Avalanche. She couldn’t really take him seriously when he called himself that but when she thought about it now she wondered if that had been his point. He had gotten her to talk.

What else makes you happy? That was one of his sessions. It was shortly after she’d told him about the Sisters, with probably a more detailed account of Wayne Hussey’s exit than he’d necessarily wanted for clinical purposes, and this was his follow up. Even then she was savvy enough, guarded enough, to recognise what this was. He’d patiently taken notes as she’d enthused about the early singles, listened intently to her make the case for them as punk band, really, not a goth one. It was all in the spirit of the thing, that was her point. She could feel herself speaking, in the moment, and there was nothing self-conscious about it, no division between thought and word, no accompanying bone dry commentary from internal April. And she knew that was what he wanted because she knew he thought that would be the source of her truth. That would be the route to all the insecurities and anxieties and issues that they all thought must be there from the six months locked up on her own. For a moment she had felt out of control but only for a moment. She composed herself and reeled off a pre-prepared list of things that she always said made her happy: her parents, her friends, school, shopping. Avalanche just nodded and made some more notes.

It hadn’t all been a lie. Not in retrospect at least. If she was speaking to him now and if she was honest with him now then she would still say ‘friends’. She hadn’t expected to enjoy sharing a house as much as she had and she couldn’t imagine not seeing Cora, Aps, and Leah every day now. What else would she tell him? Holding a sip of purple-black Shiraz in the roof of your mouth, letting the cherry and tobacco flavours seep into your tongue and down your throat. Reading the description of blank, silent snow drifting into the warm office of William Stoner in John William’s novel. She knew all her therapists would have a field day with that one. So you enjoy the metaphorical encroachment of winter into a place of comfort and security? The ridiculously grandiose choral introduction to This Corrosion; so huge and confident. Wagner and Jim Steinman’s beautiful bastard offspring. Dancing. That made her happy. Particularly on her own. Imagining she could see herself suspended as a sequence of snapshots, frozen through a fog of dry ice by the pulses of a strobe. Listening to the others talk, sitting just on the periphery and observing their lightness, their ease, their grace. She was sure that’s not how they saw themselves necessarily but that was what she saw. Their joy. That made her happy.

All of that stuff’s external, isn’t it? Things you observe or consume or experience. Avalanche would have said something like that. What about you? Inside you. What makes you happy from in there? That was where he’d been going with that line of questioning, that line of attack as she would have seen it then, and that was why she’d put the shutters up again.

She wasn’t sure she knew the answer, even now. She wasn’t entirely sure there was one.

Lockdown: Aps

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I hadn’t told the others yet that he’d started messaging me. I don’t think they’d noticed us talking in the club, it was the week after April had hit that idiot that had been harassing Cora at the bar. They can’t have noticed because there’s no way they would have kept their mouths shut. It had seemed to happen quite naturally in the end, I’d turned away from the bar and bumped in to him, spilling most of my drink over his arm. It seemed natural although I was a bit suspicious that he’d finally decided that the only way he could work up the nerve to speak to me was by forcing us into a collision. He’d insisted it was all his fault – it wasn’t – and bought me another drink. I think the others were dancing to Marilyn Manson but I didn’t like the heavier stuff.

“His real name’s Brian,” he shouted over the noise.

“Your name’s Brian?” I shouted back, mishearing.

“No. I’m James,” he said, leaning in slightly closer to be heard. “Marilyn Manson. His real name is Brian. Kinda funny isn’t it?”

I shook my head, decided to have some fun with him. “Not really, James. My name’s Bryony and I’ve got a brother called Brian. It’s been in my family for generations. My dad can trace us back to Brian’s in the seventeen hundreds.”

For a moment I thought I had him. He looked down, raised his palms in apology, and was just about to stammer an apology when he caught the smile on my face, noticed the eyebrow raised in what I hoped gave me a look of arch amusement and not one of someone who’d had half a botched face lift. He laughed and apologised anyway. He spent quite a lot of the conversation apologising but I found his gentle nervousness kind of sweet. Unthreatening. And he had kind, green eyes that peered out from under a mop of curly brown hair. I wasn’t sure if I fancied him but there was something about him that I liked.

We’d swapped numbers at the bar and he’d left with a bunch of friends before the others reappeared from the dance floor. He’d messaged me the next day. I thought that was kind of sweet as well but I left an industry standard two days before I texted him back. Since then we’d been in touch pretty much every day and just before lockdown I was going to suggest we meet up, it was becoming evident that I’d be waiting quite a while if I wanted him to make the first move. It was still sweet and way preferable to the guy in the first term that had started sending me unsolicited dick pics but I did want him to show a bit of courage. Some backbone. Just, you know, no other kind of bone.

Lockdown had brought a different intensity to the messages. I figured he’d done the same thing as me and was using his laptop to write instead of his phone and it had meant that our exchanges grew longer. It felt almost old fashioned, like we were in a Jane Austen novel. Was that right? Were they the ones where formal gentlemen wrote stately letters of courtship to regal ladies? What did I know. I was a chemist and checked out of English at GCSE. Anyway, we moved from half sentences, emojis and gifs to paragraphs and punctuation. I had a suspicion that he was looking to hit me with some poetry.

On the third night he sent me a link to a livestream happening in a couple of hours. Phoebe Bridgers. I knew her a little bit, my eldest sister, Hannah, used to make me playlists to, in her words, educate me when I was younger. She tended to have songs that she’d regularly string together in sequence, little patterns that she was obviously pleased with, or maybe she just forgot that she’d put them on some of the other mixes for me already. One went from Fiona Apple’s cover of ‘Across The Universe’ in to Phoebe Bridgers’ ‘Motion Sickness’ and then out to the whole of Emmylou Harris’ ‘Wrecking Ball’ album. It was a great record but I wasn’t sure if she meant to add all of it or just made a mistake. I never asked her because she got a bit prickly if I questioned anything to do with her music. I always thought she was a bit snobby about it; she still hasn’t really forgiven me for going to that Little Mix reunion gig last year.

It was pretty late by the time the stream started but it was coming from the East Coast in the States so we must have been a few hours ahead. I had my screen divided between the music and a chat window with James. I didn’t really notice at first but after the first few songs I realised that he wouldn’t message me whilst she was singing, like he was at a real gig and didn’t want to talk during the songs. If I was honest I was finding him a bit too intense. It was getting a bit claustrophobic in the house as it was, I knew Cora was particularly finding it tough, and I was looking for an escape, a connection. In a way it wasn’t fair to try and judge how this might go when things went back to normal, everyone coped with the lockdowns differently, but then I guess that these periods of community quarantine were part of ‘normal’ now so maybe it wasn’t so unfair after all. I think I just wanted to imagine that if we ever really watched her play in concert that, at some point he’d reach for my hand and not let go until we were both clapping her back for an encore. It was late and I was tired. I left the laptop running but crawled into bed as she was finishing up another one I knew from my sister. It was another sad one but that was Hannah. I drifted off with the song’s coda whispering me down into sleep: anyway don’t be a stranger, don’t be a stranger.

I guess that was our first date.

Lockdown: Cora

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The second day was always the hardest. There were too many memories bound up in day two, too many things had happened, too fast, that each time she was locked down now Cora knew she would relive them. This time almost too slowly to bear. Day two was the last day she’d spoken to Rob.

‘That’s some cosy looking isolation, wish I could join you’. That first morning he’d called her from the ICU in Inverness, pretty much as soon as he’d cleared the decontamination process and been admitted. They’d talked. They’d both kept it light. People went into isolation all the time, people came out all the time. Cora hadn’t seen inside one of the units before and so Rob gave her a mock tour of the room, flipping the camera from front to back on the tablet they’d given him and walking it round. From some angles you might have thought he’d moved to some new student digs, was settling into a one of those small halls-of-residence bedrooms, maybe ten square feet, bare walls waiting to be covered in posters, single bed, a chair, a desk. The details gave it away though. If you saw the bottom of the bed you could see the metal frame and the hydraulics that would lift and move its mattress; you’d see the wheels locked by brakes; you’d see pristine sheets tucked tight under the corners with a precision that didn’t belong to a first year undergraduate. If you saw the floors you’d see them flow up and into the walls, all nooks and crevices that might host dust or debris sculpted away in the design. If you were shown the tiny wet room adjoining, separated by a hanging, plasticky curtain, then you’d see the pull cord next to the toilet marked emergency, and you’d see the fold out shower chair attached to the wall. Most of all, as the camera swung around, Cora saw the medical monitor, a black LCD screen criss crossed with lines and numbers she didn’t understand. 

Cora had some old video on her phone of the day they’d gone up to Fort George. It was the footage she always came back to when she missed him; she liked to see him move, it was how she remembered him, full of energy and life. It was just a couple of sequences of them goofing around: Rob marching across the wooden slatted bridge at the Fort entrance and swapping salutes with a party of young kids being shepherded out by their teacher; Rob sitting astride one of the cannons overlooking the battlements out to the sea, her calling ‘if only’ and then the film shaking, briefly flipping to a view of the sky, as he jumped down and ran across to lift her in a hug. The video stopped but the memory ran on in her mind.

All through that first day they’d been in contact. There were times that he’d have to dial off, the hiss of the door decompressing signalling the arrival of a masked nurse or doctor. She never saw what they did, never really saw them at all, not properly at least. All she could see was just a pair of eyes behind protective goggles. In those gaps whilst they couldn’t speak she imagined their lives, sketched out a fictional version of these people that she had never met, these people that were looking after Rob. She gave them names and friends, lovers, family. She sent them on holiday, stripped them out of their scrubs and put them in swimming trunks and bikinis, let them splash in a hotel pool or swim some stretch of deserted shoreline. Somewhere hot. She made them endless cups of tea. She stole into their houses on Christmas Eve, after they went to bed, and padded out the pile of presents under their trees. She knitted them scarves, gave money to their favourite charities, watched them cheer on their football team (she always made it Caley), listened to their dreams, and whispered hope in their ears when they got scared. The first couple of times it was the same nurse. Cora had managed to blurt out her thanks before he’d made Rob switch off the camera, he’d waved to her briefly and said sorry that he had to cut them off. The others never had time to acknowledge her but that was okay. She understood. She was the one with all this useless time and so she imagined them all, talked to them all, thanked them all.

However many lockdowns she’d been through Cora knew that they’d all, always, be about that first one. When they’d taken her to soft isolation – no symptoms, all screening clear, just a precaution – she’d been so numb that she could barely process what was happening. There was someone inside of her screaming, scorched in agony, but she had hidden her away. She wasn’t for anyone else to see. Nobody could help her anyway. Everyone said the same thing, that it would take time, that it would get better with time, give it time, take your time, time heals. She didn’t believe it then and, now, she knew that time didn’t change how you felt about what happened: you just learned to carry the pain better.

The second day they only spoke once, early in the morning. Contact was restricted during the night so that patients could rest. Cora hadn’t really slept, impatient for the time that they were allowed to restore their link. She was tired from her restless night and from keeping up the face they’d both, undiscussed, agreed on as their way to see this through. When her phone started to vibrate she almost dropped it in her eagerness to answer. She slid the ‘call accept’ button on the screen and Rob’s face appeared. All her pent up anticipation melted into anxiety. He looked pale, stubble on his cheeks standing out in contrast to his grey-white pallor. He was coughing almost as soon as the call started and seemed to need a few moments after each sentence to catch his breath. She told him to rest, to not speak, just lay down and listen to her voice. She stumbled over repeated reassurances that everything would be okay, that he was in the best place, that he was young and healthy and there was nothing to worry about. It’s just a bad strain, this one, everyone’s saying it. Just a bad one but we’ll get through it. Just lie down and rest. She didn’t know whether she was saying it all for him or for herself. They spent a few minutes in silence. Rob had rolled on to his side on the bed and had propped up the screen against the wall, facing him. It seemed to help his coughing and she watched his chest settle into a steady rise and fall. They stayed like that until she heard the door open in his room and a gloved hand reached over to switch off the screen. 

She’d never told him that she loved him. That was what she remembered in lockdown now. That second day, in those few moments on that call, she hadn’t told him. She knew that he’d known, he must have known, but she hadn’t told him. On the days that she was kinder to herself she knew it wasn’t anybody’s fault, that neither of them could have known that they wouldn’t speak again, but she didn’t always have days when she was kind to herself. And she never had them during lockdowns.

Lockdown: Leah

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The lockdown started on Good Friday. They’d all seen the pulsing amber light on their Medlets, all checked the subsequent notifications on their phones. It was community based, nothing national, the sort of thing that cropped up every few months. More often than not they were false alarms.

“Looks like we’re spending Easter in here, together,” said Leah.

“How convenient, I’d been giving up staying in for Lent,” said Cora. “What is it? Standard trace and erase?” She mimed pointing a gun with her fingers, hands clasped together, brought them up to her lips and blew.

“You’ve been watching too much VSI,” said Leah.

“I love that show,” said Aps. She’d joined them in the kitchen, still in her dressing gown, hair bundled up in a towel. “You know the ‘erase’ is an anti-viral delivered through an injection? They just gave them those stupid dart guns in VSI to make it more dramatic.”

“Next you’ll be telling me real hazmat suits aren’t skin tight and cut to the cleavage.”

“Sorry to spoil it for you. Male Med Police officers don’t regularly have to strip to the waist because their suit’s been compromised either,” said Aps. “And I think they took a fair bit of license with the decontamination showers.”

“True,” said Leah. “I thought the point of a shower was to get clean. Some of those scenes are downright dirty.”

“We’re watching it tonight, right?”

“God, yes,” said Leah.”

In the end the three of them sat up watching old TV shows. April stayed in her room until later, finally coming down to join them as the credits rolled over some hospital drama she didn’t recognise. The others had gotten used to her taking time out to be on her own; just need some time back in my coffin was her stock response if any of them asked if she was okay. It was getting late and the room was dark save for the images on the TV. April lit the pair of candles they had set up above the fireplace and then flicked on the fairy lights that they’d draped around the picture above it. When they’d moved in it had been something the University had left, a picture of balloons lifting off over the Clifton Suspension Bridge, but they’d replaced it with a Rothko print that Cora had picked up in the village. A swathe of red paint with a careless blue rectangle at the bottom. As the weeks had passed they’d each started to stick photos on it, usually just mini print outs of pictures of their nights out.

“April bringing the vibes,” said Cora.

April bowed her head. “I will be your guide through this enforced vigil. I will tend the flames and be the keeper of the holy fairy lights from Wilkos.”

“We used to sit up at home on Good Friday,” said Leah. “It was the most Catholic my dad got. Nothing for the whole year, no confession, no mass, not a whisper, and then Easter would come around and it was like he’d had a visitation. I bet him and mum are sitting there now. He will have dusted off the painting of Saint Pio. It’s the only time he takes down his signed photo of the Inter squad from 2010.”

“You must miss them,” said Aps. “Has he come around yet?”

“It’s complicated,” said Leah. “I do miss them but me and dad are still barely speaking. He’ll appear sometimes in the background on mine and mum’s video calls. Ciao piccola. That’s about as much as I’ll get, maybe a wave, and then he’s gone again. I don’t know. When he gets his mind set he’s pretty hard to budge.”

“Like father, like…,” started Cora. Leah pulled out the cushion she was resting on and flung it across the room at her.

“Hey, I am not at all like that!”

“So, that whole performance last month when you made us stop the Uber because the driver had a Britain Rising tattoo on his neck and we had to walk home across the Downs at half one in the morning, wasn’t, you know, a bit like that?” said Cora.

“Not at all. He was an asshole. You guys need to take that stuff seriously. I know you think all these little far right nationalists are a bit of a joke but that’s how they start. They nearly ruined Italy. Dad hated what happened after all the first waves of infections. Everyone was scared and they took advantage of it, no-one really stopped to work out what we were signing up to,” said Leah.

“You were close, weren’t you,” said April suddenly. She’d taken her usual position on the floor, legs curled up underneath herself.

“Yes, we were. It’s a cliche but I was his princess, he was my papa. He taught me everything about his home – the language, the culture, food, football – and he used to take me out boating on the lake, just so we could talk I think. It was like he wanted to infuse Italy in to me, like he thought he had to make up for the fact that I wasn’t born there. And I loved it. I still love it. In all sorts of ways it is my home but it just got… I don’t know, it just got small.”

“You should call him,” said April. “Not tonight, not whilst he’s enraptured with Saint… what was his name again?”

“Pio,” said Leah. “He’s a biggie. Stigmata, healing, the works. Actually, with the whole stigmata deal you’d probably like him…”

April grinned. “I am a multi-denominational goth. If you insist on labelling me a goth.” She looked down at the long black dress wrapped around her legs, intricate lace detail decorating the hem. “Okay, I am looking pretty gothy today. But I’m interested in all faiths, all creeds, and all peoples, bleeding wrists not essential. Seriously, you should call him. While we’re in lockdown. Call him.”

It was late. Aps had already been yawning for the past half hour, so, one by one, they turned in for bed. Leah was last up, pausing to switch off the fairy lights, leaving their mosaic of pictures scattered across the Rothko illuminated just by the candles. The faces of her friends flickering in and out of view in the dancing light. One of the photos was a passport sized shot of Menaggio, one of hundreds she’d taken from the lake that summer she’d helped out running the ferries. The sun was slipping down past the mountains behind the town leaving it bathed in a warm, darkening orange glow. She touched the image with one hand, executed a half-remembered sign of the cross with her other, and whispered good-night.

Heart of gold

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Blame it on Bobby Gillespie. Blame it on the Scream team and Andrew Weatherall. Blame it on the Stones and acid house if you want to go back to the source. It didn’t really matter where you placed it but, afterwards, April knew exactly when they all came around. The precise moment that this one off tourist visit to an old indie disco moved from an exercise in humouring their friend to an essential, no the essential, part of their week. They wanted to get loaded. They wanted to have a good time.

They’d been in the club for about an hour before the DJ cued it up. April knew it instantly, the sleazy drawl of ‘I’m Losing More Than I’ll Ever Have’, Primal Scream flirting with Exile era Stones before the full blown affair they’d have later. She knew what would happen as well. She knew the DJ would mix into Loaded during the breakdown, line up the horns across the two tracks, fade out the rock and roll and… wait for it, the drop into those skittering, circular drums once Weatherall had chewed up the original track and spat it back out as a floor filling, killing masterpiece. There was a reason songs had hooks and she knew they were hooked from the grins, from the telepathic agreement to move to the dance floor, exerting its own inevitable gravitational pull now, and she knew from the way Leah leaned in and shouted in her ear: I thought you said it was miserable music you can dance to. She wanted to tell her that was true but there was joyous, mindless, switch-your-brain off, don’t think it, don’t fight it, feel it stuff too. She just nodded her head and raised both hands in the air, span in a circle.

It became their escape. Each week, once they were past the health screen on the door, they descended the steps down into the old boat, moored up, set fast in the harbour, and it felt like stepping out of real life for a while. April liked to disappear into the fog of dry ice close to the stage, dancing on her own to the early songs – the miserable stuff as the others called it – whilst her friends squeezed round a table drinking beers, shouting across at each other over the noise. April would float between their table, swigging at an offered bottle, and back to the floor depending on what songs were playing. Within a few weeks the others knew when it was best to leave her to dance: Freakscene, Add It Up, Velvet Roof, You Got It. Any of those they just sat back and watched her spin and hop, face submerged under her black, cascading hair. Later on when the happy stuff started they all joined her.

They’d never had any trouble before. There had been some pretty low key attention, a few yelled conversations while dancing from some boys they’d gotten used to seeing there every week. Everyone tried to respect the distances you were supposed to keep now; it was kind of accepted it was harder in a club but that was why they had the room limit and the checks on the door. There was one guy that the others were convinced was interested in Aps; they’d catch him looking over or nervously skirting around their space while they danced but all it took to send him scuttling away was for one of them to beckon him over or catch his eye. Leah had taken to winking at him, an over the top, entirely unserious piece of salaciousness. He would always run a mile. Cora wasn’t sure but she thought that maybe Aps wanted them to leave him alone so she could start a conversation more naturally. But it wasn’t going to happen. This was always going to be their night and no-one else was really invited.

There was just that one time that the bubble burst, that reality crashed in. Leah had clocked them when they came in, three guys that immediately hit the bar, loud enough to be heard over the PA. They looked like they’d be drinking for a while, all in suits, ties removed. She didn’t know what the door policy was but the club sold itself as a broad church; she figured it would have been odd to turn them away just for looking too straight, too regular.

It was Cora that had wanted another drink. She signalled to the woman behind the bar  and shouted for a beer when she leaned over to serve her. One of the guys, pin stripe, white shirt, top three buttons undone, moved up the bar and leant in to her shoulder. “Let me get that for you.”

Cora stepped away, holding her hands up to try to indicate both that she was okay and that she didn’t want him in her space. She smiled, warily, and said: “No. Thanks. I’m good.”

He moved up the bar, stopping just short of her, and tried again. “Come on, I’m just trying to be friendly. Let me buy you a drink.”

Cora was about to step away again when she became aware that his friends, the other two, had moved behind her during the exchange. She felt boxed in. One of them touched her back, leaning in to her ear to tell her that his friend was a good guy, give him a break. She felt small and exposed, started silently weighing the distance from the bar to the toilets. The guy offering her a drink took another step, smiled, and ran his hand across her shoulder, pulled her in next to him. “I’m Adam. Pleased to meet you.” Cora tensed and moved to duck away but felt his grip tighten, heard the three of them laughing.

And then April hit him.

Everyone had a slightly different version of it later. The way April told it she had heard the music change to Pulp’s ‘Babies’ and wondered where Cora was. It was the tune guaranteed to get her on the floor. The four of them would shout ‘my god’ in unison with Jarvis at the end of the song and then shuffle away in their own approximations of his louche moves. She’d spotted her trapped at the bar and decided to shoot first, ask questions later. She hadn’t hit him that hard but her fingers were covered in so many rings that she’d left a small imprint of a skull in his cheek. The way Leah told it she’d heard the yells after the first punch landed, saw April clawing Cora away, and had run across to join them. In the confusion she’d kneed one of the others in the balls. The way Aps told it she had just been about to start talking to her shy admirer when all hell had broken loose at the bar, he’d slunk away, and she’d arrived just in time to join in the stage where security was separating them all. The men were asked to leave.

Later, when it was calmer, it hit the point where the DJ played out the happier stuff. They all knew the Primal Scream mix up by now and they all stood up to dance.

It was the part of the night where all their accounts matched: the four of them, arms linked, in a circle, singing to each other: you’ve got a heart of gold, you can’t be bought or sold, you’ve got a heart of gold, baby.

 

Some Kandi talking

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“Who’s this again?” Cora was lying back on the sofa, watching the reflected sunlight from April’s Medlet dart across the ceiling. The music was a dark, droning dirge filling the room. It felt like sinking into the warm honeyed embrace of every one night stand she’d ever had; seductive, noisy, edgy, maybe not that healthy but the kind of mistake you knew you were going to make again anyway. After Rob she’d made a few mistakes.

“It’s The Jesus & Mary Chain,” said April. “Happy When It Rains.”

Cora turned her hands in front of her face, moving them in slow circles in a gentle nod to April’s default dance move. “Another one of those songs? And, happy when it rains, really? Is that, like, your theme song?”

April leant down over Cora, her face looming closer and closer until it blocked out the rest of the room. She stopped about an inch from Cora’s face. “Embrace the darkness, my friend, embrace the darkness.” They both smiled. “Is that my mascara by the way?”

“Well, you have so much I figured you wouldn’t notice…,” replied Cora.

When the others arrived home a couple of hours later they were still in the lounge, Cora now sitting up cross legged, April sat on the floor in front of her, head back in her lap. Cora had braided a few strands of her hair, interlacing them with purple ribbon. April’s eyes were closed and she was softly mouthing the words to a song none of the others knew. I’m not like them, I can pretend.

“Well look at you two,” said Leah.

“April’s been educating me on all the miserable music that we were lucky enough to miss in the late 80s. Now I know why our parents fucked us up so badly,” laughed Cora.

“It’s miserable music you can dance to,” protested April, opening her eyes. “Not this one so much but all the other stuff. And you’re more than capable of being a fuck up on your own without blaming your parents.” Cora poked her tongue out in response.

“Is this Nirvana?” said Aps. She’d come in behind Leah, laden with shopping bags. “That guy that shot himself. You know, the one on the tee-shirt.”

“I’m sure that’s just how he’d like to be remembered,” said April. “Yes, it’s Nirvana. Kurt Cobain is your man. Icon of alienation and isolation.” She flicked off the music streaming on her phone, thumbs flying as she searched for something. She held up a picture of him, blonde hair falling round his face framing blue eyes, a pensive frown.

“He sounds more like he’s your man to be honest,” said Cora. “I like ’em a little sunnier. He’s hot though, I’ll give you that.”

Aps snatched up the phone to look more closely at the picture before rummaging back through one of the bags she’d carried in. She fished out a flyer which she passed over to April as she handed back the phone. “I knew I’d seen him today. I picked this up for you, April, thought it looked like your sort of thing. They were giving them out in the Union.”

The flyer was postcard sized and filled with a picture montage of bands April recognised. Pixies, Nirvana, Dinosaur Jr, Stone Roses, Sisters, Mudhoney, Violent Femmes, Cure, Cult, Pulp, Oasis, Blur, the Stones, the Beatles. Kurt’s face was lost in there somewhere, the same shot that had appeared first on her phone. She had seen him today. Emblazoned across the top it read: Kandi Klub presents Club George. Down the bottom were details of the venue: The Thekla, Saturday nights, room limit 100. She shook her hair loose from Cora’s fingers and stood up. “We have to go. Seriously, we have to go to this.”

Cora, curious, plucked the flyer from her and examined it. “You sure they stick to that room limit? Someone told me about The Thekla. It’s that club on a boat, down in the harbour.”

“They have to stick to it,” said Aps. “They’d be shut down within a week if they mess around with that. They’ll have checks going in as well.”

“Come on Cora, it’ll be fun,” said Leah. “I mean, we won’t know any of the music but you can just pretend we’re partying in April’s head for a few hours.”

“So there’ll be dry ice and a strobe?” said Cora looking at April.

“You better believe it,” she replied.

 

 

……

This one is part of the overall set of stories about April and crew but as they’re in Bristol, even in the near future, it seemed only right to send them to the Kandi Klub. I don’t think it exists any more but perhaps someone will pick it up again one day.

RIP DJ George and thanks for the memories.