Tideline (29 page)

The girl shrugs.

‘Go on. No one’s going to ID you if you’re with us,’ says Helen, which I think is doubtful since the girl who I dimly remember is fifteen, looks about twelve.

‘I don’t drink.’ The girl shrugs and pulls a sulky expression.

‘Then have something non-alcoholic. J2O? 7 Up? Coke? Got to keep your strength up, hasn’t she, Sonia?’

‘Sure,’ I say.

‘I’ll get a grapefruit juice with slimline tonic and a packet of Worcester Sauce crisps,’ she says sullenly, without looking at me. I’d like to correct her Americanism.
She is not going to get a grapefruit juice, she would like one if Sonia wouldn’t mind,
please, and thank you very much
.

We sit by the window. Outside, the river is choppy. In spite of the lovely start, the weather has changed, clouds have gathered as the light has begun to fade, and the wind’s got up.
Everything outside, beyond the window, has returned to monochrome, sludgy water, leaden sky, brown buildings on the other side, grey seabirds bobbing on the waves. What used to be the pub’s
old terrace has long since come adrift in a storm and is now moored out a little way, a strange wooden reminder of the days when the pub’s punters used to stand on it and laugh and drink the
evening away. The murky water sloshes over its dingy brown sides, and the once finely carved fence posts around its edges are jagged. Eaten away by the tides.

‘So I guess things could change in the next twenty-four hours.’

‘What?’

‘You’ve not been listening to a word have you, Sonia! What’s distracting you? You’ve been staring out there for ages.’

The platform. That’s what’s distracting me. The day I saw them come in on the raft. I was here! Here at the Anchor, standing on that very platform, outside,
waiting, waiting for Seb. Leaning over and staring upriver and waiting for him to come back to me.

Images march through my mind like those characters in
Fantasia
, grotesque caricatures of the people who had come to the River House that day. My mother was there of course, tall and
haughty, her perm distorted into a vast bird’s nest on her head, her lips pink, and to one side of her the couple she introduced as Joyce and Roger from the Choir. Joyce was wide and pudgy
and Roger was small and wiry and between them was . . .

‘Sonia, this is Jasmine. ’

Jasmine, unlike her parents, was perfectly proportioned. Jasmine had long hair the colour of butter and almond-shaped eyes the colour of grass. Jasmine was about my age but taller and better
developed and in my imagination now her eyes grow wider and her lashes longer and her stare more penetrating, than they could ever really have been. Jasmine wore a cheesecloth dress with tiny
spaghetti straps and buttons down the front in the shape of daisies. Her hair coiled around her as if it were the hair of a mermaid in a fairy tale, wrapping itself in long tendrils about her body,
and glowing yellow-gold until it almost blinded me. I stood in the living room and stared at the group until my mother told me to stop looking gormless and fetch Jasmine a drink.

When Seb’s voice called me from the door in the wall, I went to him with relief. His trousers were wet and muddy, rolled up above the knee, for he’d been messing about on our raft
again. Hair standing in wild peaks. Bare feet. Mud drying between his toes. He’d come to find me.

‘I need you, Sonia. Technical problem with
Tamasa
.’

‘We’ve got visitors. I can’t come out now.’

‘I’ll come and say hello, then,’ he said, and without waiting for me to agree to it, he followed me into the living room. I saw Jasmine lock her green eyes onto him.

And he was hooked. He couldn’t look away. His lips turned up a bit at the corners and he never even glanced in my direction after that.

‘Jasmine,’ said my mother in a voice that seemed to me to be artificially syrupy. ‘Meet Sebastian.’

‘Hi,’ he said.

Jasmine smiled at him. ‘Hi,’ she said.

My mother sat on the sofa and poured tea for Jasmine’s parents Joyce and Roger, and Roger said, ‘What have you been up to, Sebastian, to get all muddy like that?’

‘Oh, just messing about on the river,’ said Seb.

‘Could I go down to the river, Mummy?’ asked Jasmine.

‘As long as you don’t try any funny business like taking a boat out,’ said her mother.

‘Oh don’t worry Mrs . . .’ Seb began.

‘Harrison, Sebastian, Mrs Harrison,’ she said and smiled at him in a flirtatious way.

‘Don’t you worry, Mrs Harrison. It’s not a boat, it’s a raft.’

‘And it’s not as safe as a boat even,’ I said. ‘It’s not even properly buoyant.’

Seb gave me a hard look. ‘That’s what I wanted you for,’ he said, ‘To help with the buoyancy aids.’

‘Sonia will take care of Jasmine,’ my mother said. ‘Don’t you worry, Joyce.’

I glared at her as hard as I could and she didn’t notice.

My mother had always said she was too tired to entertain other people’s children, or that Daddy wouldn’t like the noise. I no longer expected to have friends home, and they’d
stopped asking me to their houses. Why had my mother suddenly conjured Jasmine out of the blue?

‘Off you go now. But take care, do,’ she said.

‘And don’t stay out after dark, Jasmine,’ said Mr Harrison. ‘We’ll need to go.’

‘Oh, but you’re staying for supper,’ I heard my mother say as I left the room. People never came to supper either. What was going on?

As I reached the hall Seb said, ‘Follow me, Jasmine,’ and I could sense them walking behind me as I crossed the footpath to the steps and began to go down.

It took me the best part of half an hour to sort out the buoyancy, getting cold and filthy in the water. But it was worth it to maintain Seb’s respect, to prove to the buttery Jasmine that
girls did not need to look like Sindy dolls to attract and keep boys like Seb. I was sure that there was no way Seb could take Jasmine out on
Tamasa
when I was the one to have made her
river-worthy. Still, Seb held the raft and Jasmine stood on the shore, giggling as he fiddled with the crates and oil drums and swore and ordered me about. And then, when we were sure it would
float again, Seb asked me to run up to the River House and borrow a torch.

I could hear the voices of the grown-ups, in the living room, and grabbed the torch without telling them. I wanted to get back to check Seb wasn’t going take Jasmine on my raft without
me.

But already, only a few minutes later, as I came back out of the house, I saw Seb had Jasmine by the hand and was leading her through the water. She shrieked. She was petrified, and enjoying
it.

It was as if I’d never had anything to do with either the making or the naming of the raft we’d nearly drowned on, in Seb’s quest to explore the other side of the river. It was
as if for Seb, I no longer existed.

‘You can’t go! They told you not to!’ I shouted. I ran down to the steps and although they were slippery that day – it had been raining, and the tide had not long begun
to go out – I jumped down them two at a time. The lower steps still glistened with water, I didn’t bother to be careful but slithered to the bottom banging my thigh hard as I slipped
and not caring about the pain or the livid bruise that would appear soon afterwards. Seb was leading Jasmine out to
Tamasa
, which he’d tied to one of the pillars of the coaling pier,
and she was climbing aboard. She’d left her lovely high, rope-soled wedges on the mud, near the wall and had pulled up her cheesecloth dress to reveal long golden thighs. Seb came to the
shore, took the torch from me, then waded back. He leapt on to
Tamasa
next to Jasmine and untied the rope that tethered the raft to the pier. I watched them as the river swept them
upstream.

‘See you later, Sonia,’ Seb yelled. ‘Wait for us in the pub. Mark’ll be there. Buy us a drink for when we get back!’

‘I won’t get served!’ I cried, and my pathetic words were simply tossed up into the air by the wind.

What choice did I have? I wouldn’t let them go off for the night. I swore I’d keep them within my sight, so I went straight to the pub where I knew I’d have a better view of
their voyage. Mark was at the bar. He offered to buy me a drink and I asked for a coke. Mark was never refused at a bar. You never got ID’d anyway in those days. We took our drinks out to the
wooden platform. Mark began to fool about, putting his arm around me to reach his crisps when there was no need to, then dropping an ice cube down my top. I think he fancied his chances, having
seen me kiss Seb. But I never wanted to kiss anyone else. I’d sworn to myself that I never would, that Seb would be the only one.

That hour stretched on forever. Mark told unfunny jokes and tried to touch me and laughed so that his spit flew into my face but every one of my senses was straining for sight or sound of
Tamasa
returning.

‘Where are they?’ I asked Mark at last. ‘That raft isn’t safe. I should know. I helped to build it. The buoyancy is as basic as it gets. The whole thing’s
dodgy.’

‘Maybe they’ve been mown down by a pleasure cruiser,’ said Mark. ‘Their dismembered parts are bobbing about amongst the flotsam and jetsam.’

I ignored this and made him buy me another drink.

‘Is that them coming now?’ Mark asked at last. He leant over the barrier of the platform. Sure enough there was the tiny beam of light from the torch wedged on to
Tamasa
. The
raft bobbed towards us. There was only one person on board! I looked again. Yes. Just Seb. My heart rose. He’d got rid of Jasmine, tossed her overboard, left her on the Isle of Dogs. Tied
something heavy round her and sunk her. She was lying with her butter-coloured hair wafting upwards like weed, at the bottom of the Thames. Her bloated figure would wash up in a few days down at
Dartmouth, at Tilbury, amongst the car plants. Green and rotting.

The raft came closer, carried by the incoming tide. Seb was not rowing the raft at all but lying on his front.

I ran straight down to the shore to help, all Seb’s thoughtlessness forgiven in the second it took to spot that he was alone.

Jasmine was neither lying at the bottom of the river, nor stuck on the Isle of Dogs. She was in my place, underneath Seb, and she had her arms wrapped around him. He didn’t seem to be
objecting. As they bobbed closer and closer and the vision could no longer be disputed, my whole world turned black.

‘So,’ Helen’s saying, ‘Alicia, tell Sonia what you found.’

Alicia looks up at me and I notice that, like Jasmine, she has eyes that are an unusual shade of green. She puts her hand slowly into her little shoulder bag and rummages about for a minute,
then extracts something tiny and holds it out for me to look at. I stare. For what feels like a long time I have no idea what I’m supposed to be looking at. In her palm is a tiny, curled, and
slightly ragged piece of card.

‘What’s that?’

‘Guess!’ says Helen, excited.

‘I’ve no idea what you’re showing me, I’m afraid,’ I say.

‘You tell Sonia, Alicia. It’s your story.’

Alicia shrugs. Looks at Helen. ‘I dunno what I’m meant to say,’ she says.

Helen takes over, enjoying another opportunity to spin a yarn.

‘She found a butt end on the path near where you live, Sonia, and the roach – this piece of card in her hand – was made of a piece of a ticket from the gig they’d been to
the week before. What was the name of the band, Alicia? Anyway, I’m getting distracted, sorry. Look, she’s certain it was Jez’s. They’d rolled that joint the night before he
disappeared, and I’d come in so they hadn’t smoked it. As if I don’t know they all smoke weed. She says Jez must have been smoking it along the footpath that Friday afternoon. She
reckons he’s somewhere not far off, being held against his will. He must have been abducted that day on the way to the foot tunnel, the day he didn’t turn up to meet her. I told her he
was coming to see you to borrow some music, so he would have gone along the river path. She wants to know if you saw him?’

The whole world slows down, as if it is grinding to a halt. As I speak, my words sound like an old vinyl 45 on LP speed.

‘How d’you know it was his?’

‘It’s the piece of ticket. We went to that gig together and, like, used the tickets to make roaches,’ squeaks Alicia. Her voice wavers as she continues. ‘Jez would never
have gone off on his own without his guitar. I know him too well. He tells me everything.’

Jez, tell her everything? He didn’t tell her he wanted to stay with me, did he? Snooping along the river path, informing the police about Jez’s personal traits,
he would have taken
his guitar, he wouldn’t have gone off without telling me
. She thinks she knows him best, but she doesn’t know him like I do.

‘The police will take this theory seriously, Sonia. We haven’t told them yet because we want to get more evidence. That he may have been abducted on his way to your house. Seems
Alicia may have found a vocation – future DI of the South London Metropolitan Police!’

Perhaps it’s the whisky at this time of the day, but I suddenly have a ridiculous urge to giggle. An image has come into my mind of a character from an Enid Blyton series, one of the
baddies, who referred to the children who set themselves up as detectives, as ‘them meddling kids’. I feel like telling Alicia to mind her own business, that she’s nothing but a
meddling kid.

‘She and I both wondered if you’d help us,’ Helen goes on. ‘You live on the river. We wondered whether you’d seen Jez, without realizing it was him? He must have
been near your house that Friday. Try to remember. Did you see a teenage boy? It’s pretty urgent, Sonia. The longer a person goes missing the less likely it is they find him alive. Jez could
be in real danger.’ Helen’s bottom lip starts to wobble.

I glance out at the river again. Jasmine and Seb bob towards me, across the water, a ray of sunlight illuminates them as they come to shore, as if it, too, is conspiring to rub their partnership
in my face.

‘Sonia?’

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘The police have already asked me about that. The album he was supposed to be coming for. I told them he didn’t.’