Saltwater by Jessica Andrews

Author:Jessica Andrews
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
Published: 2019-05-15T22:00:00+00:00

81

The man and I become obsessed with the moon. We drive out to the mountains at night to look at it. We measure the passing of time through its fragments. I read obsessively about the links between tides and emotions and circadian rhythms. I discover that more babies are born when the moon is closest to earth and the gravitational pull is strongest. I wonder if the moon could pull things out of me.

82

We slouched into school the next day with pink dye streaked in our hair and the smell of spilt beer wafting from under our uniforms. It seemed incredible to me that anything as dreary as a Maths class could possibly exist when hot lights flashed behind fire doors in unassuming parts of town.

Musicians became our role models. We knew there were other lives beyond the chip shops and the bus stops but we didn’t know how to get there. We didn’t know anyone who was a doctor or a lawyer, but most people had a brother or an uncle who played in a band. My mother was proud that I knew all the words to ‘Wonderwall’ before I learned any nursery rhymes, belting it out at playgroup while the other kids sang ditties about sheep and lambs.

When I was at school we were swamped by bands like the Arctic Monkeys; working-class lads who cut their lines with offhand Shakespeare and made it big on Myspace. The internet made art permeable. We could download songs illegally and send them to each other over MSN for free. We danced at indie discos to bands like Art Brut and nursed cans into the early hours singing Billy Bragg’s ‘A New England’, spread-eagled on someone from school’s stepdad’s carpet. We loved the Holloways and Jamie T. for their socialist whimsy and delighted in Tim Booth jangling across music channels in a dress. Women like Kate Nash and Lovefoxxx were special, singing about Escher and bird shit, twirling in trainers and tie-dye catsuits.

I scrawled ‘Red Squier Strat’ across the top of my Christmas list and in the morning it was waiting for me, a Santa hat hanging jauntily from the neck. I had been wearing a plectrum on a necklace for weeks in anticipation. My eyes were full and gold with plans for my band, the sequins we would wear and the songs we would play: rock covers of Girls Aloud and the Sugababes.

I started lessons in an outbuilding at the back of someone else’s school, with a man called Scott we found in the paper who taught me Green Day songs. My mother dropped me off and he watched her car pull away through the window.

‘I didn’t realise your mam was so lovely,’ he said, turning tuning pegs. I shrugged non-committally and pulled my stripy rainbow strap over my head.

The next week he stood at the window as my mother paced the schoolyard on her phone. ‘You look nice,’ he said, turning his attention back to me. ‘You and your mam going somewhere after this?’

‘Oh,’ I said.

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