Apples Read online

  Apples

  Richard Milward

  Thank You

  Francis Bickmore + Canongate, Lee Brackstone + Faber, Pia Conaghan, Emily Dewhurst, family, Matthew Firth + Front&Centre, friends, Vinita Joshi + Rocket Girl, Cathryn Summerhayes + DGA, Emma Warren + The Face. And you.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  She Is Sick

  At The Traffic Lights

  Once Upon A Time

  Little Nicole

  Sun

  Levonelle

  Horny Child

  Outside Is Ok

  Doggy

  Three Children On A Dancefloor

  Boxing Day

  Daddy’s Girl

  Black Lungs One

  Black Lungs Two

  You Had To Fall For Dynamite

  The Lightning

  Revenge-O!

  Flapping Wings

  Resorts

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  She Is Sick

  Eve

  We got a McDonald’s the night my mam got lung cancer. Jenni was sat there smoking a superking, and I was trying not to sit there so upset. We looked weird dressed up and stuffing our faces, but I couldn’t eat a thing. I was hungry though. I didn’t have the heart to ask Mam for money, so I had to excavate a tenner out of my piggy-bank and hope to god it got me pissed. I slumped back in the plastic seat, watching Rachel squirt sauce on her chips while she messed around with her mobile. She was probably getting harassed by one of the boys she was screwing, but no wonder – Rachel had Hollywood hair and her skin was gold and rainbowed, but she reckoned she didn’t want a boyfriend or any of that massive commitment right now. When I broke up with Fairhurst I was glad to see the back of all boys, but when you’re out of a relationship you want to be in one and when you’re in a relationship you want to be out. Actually I broke with Fairhurst after he felt Rachel’s tit at a party, and I doubted she’d last a week without getting up to something naughty. But you’re only young the once.

  What’s wrong? Gracie asked – she always asked crap boring questions. I shrugged her eyes off, then we watched a smackhead causing trouble at the counter, and tried not to laugh while he kicked off at the moron serving. I was flickering between happy and sad, and it annoyed me. Sometimes it’s good to talk about stuff, but I couldn’t tell the girls about Mam – I’d only known about it myself a couple of hours, and they didn’t want some blonde bimbo putting a big downer on the night. The plan was just to get drunk and block it out, but there we were sat in the depressing white light at Ronald’s. It spun a shiver in the threads of my dress – Mam sat me and my sisters down in the living room, and you could see it was bad news. She had that serious tone of voice, and watery eyes. I was cross-legged on the carpet watching kids’ telly and thinking up dresses and make-up, then all of a sudden my mam was dying. But it wasn’t like me to be always looking on the down side, and Mam thought she might be okay and we had a bear hug and a little cry. I still wanted to go out and see my friends.

  Jenni bit into her McChicken sandwich, and I laughed inside because at school they reckon the boys at McDonald’s spunk in them. I started to lose my appetite, and it was very welcome. You wouldn’t even really want your own boyfriend’s stuff in your mouth. I got back so late from school (me and Dan read the magazines at Bells, he stole us some Anglo Bubbly and we blew it up together on the courtyard), I only managed a couple of custard creams for tea and my insides felt like a cave. I glanced back at the smack-head trying to score a free Happy Meal or something, and I thought to myself if they could afford all that horrid smack how couldn’t they stretch to some burgers and fries? But then I thought about us swallowing ecstasy pills together, and not giving one hoot about eating or sleeping or weeing or any other bodily functions. Perhaps he was going cold turkey, his hunger coming back with a vengeance dead unexpected. The boys behind the counter were clearly panicking, but they tried to look cool in the baseball caps and I wouldn’t put it past Jenni to suck their dicks anyway. I smiled the Urban Decay right across my face. That’s a lipstick.

  Are you not eating, Eve? Rachel asked me, picking bits out of her burger. You can have that minging gherkin, if you want.

  We laughed, but in the end I stole some chips off her. I gobbled them down, then ducked my eyes and murmured, I’m so skint. Just gonna save my money til we get in Empire.

  I couldn’t wait to get in the club – it’d been a hard week, what with the exams and the cancer and everything. I promise you now I wasn’t intending on dwelling on it, it’s just the sitting around doing nothing that was getting to me. We needed to move! Kicking all the thoughts from my head, I tugged blonde fringe out my eyes then clippety-clopped my high-heels on the dirty floor. The empty stomach would at least get me dead hammered.

  I bet some handsome stranger buys you loads of drinks … anyway, look you could even work here if you wanted. Debbie pointed at the poster STAFF REQUIRED, and I was surprised she could read it because she was always banging on about her dyslexia. It’s true that thing about dyslexics being good artists – I taxed another chip off Rachel’s tray, then stared as Debbie scrawled a cartoon girl on the tabletop. She squeaked the Magic Marker in between stains and rubbish, tracing a black babe with big boobies and seventies Afro. She had on typical star-shape sunglasses, and the shading was all cross-hatched and professional. Debbie wasn’t black, but she signed her tag everywhere like a nigger and she only ever went out with black boys or half-castes. It was funny the way she spelled her name DEBE like she was putting on the disease, but the letters were always mad and funky and we buzzed off her. I didn’t know why she always came out with a marker, though.

  Debbie coughed and scratched her dark braids, each one of them perfect but you could tell she was bored as me. Jenni was finishing that nasty cigarette, and she stubbed it on the brown tray, probably melting it but I didn’t care to look. This was my mam’s outlook on getting wrecked: drink as much as you want and bring home boys now and again, just never ever smoke a cigarette. Health-wise I think it’s even worse than taking pills and whatnot, and I didn’t like the taste anyhow. It’s nicer taking something to make you happy than make you completely reek. I adjusted the blue-silver top, watching people come and go over Jenni’s shoulder while Rachel kept beeping her phone next to me. I wondered what sick things she was getting sent. At school these girls from the richer estates had boyfriends who took them to smart restaurants before the Cornerhouse or Tall Trees or wherever – the most expensive place Fairhurst ever took me was G-Force down Linthorpe Road, for his alloy wheels. McDonald’s was okay, but it seemed ever so lonely in the bright lights with only a little bit of movement outside and my girls not really talking to each other much. I wondered if we had more of a laugh at Brackenhoe than out on the town. I thought about Mam and I thought about getting IDed at the theatre; my hollow belly was full of butterflies, and all they had was a couple of French fries to surf around on.

  You spoke to Claire today? Rachel asked me, since I was in her Maths class on Fridays. She’s not replying.

  Rachel shoved her mobile back in the croc-print bag, then finished off the chips as I went, Yeah.

  Is she coming out or not?

  Naw, well isn’t she grounded? I think she’s having loads of hassle with Shane and all, I explained. I couldn’t imagine staying at home knowing all the girls were out, but her step-dad was probably a bastard. I wasn’t positive why she’d been grounded – often she made up excuses like that just so she could stay at home and shag her boyfriends. She was sort of the loose one. The daftest excuses so far had been debt, period pain, and petit mal epilepsy. She was a drama queen. I could see regular sex getting boring though, after all most of it�
�s just laying there getting pounded, but everyone gets their kicks differently. Gracie was the only one I had doubts about – she might not’ve been a virgin, but she always dressed angelic and acted shy in front of boys. She had that sort of Drew Barrymore look; innocent and pretty, but from the wrong angle you could accuse her of being a mong. She tended to attract a load of nonces – in actual fact this group of oldish men were gazing at us across the white restaurant. We made plans to hit some bars pretty sharpish – no one was in the mood to get raped, and I was feeling fidgety. Dyslexic Debbie held the McDoor open for me and my friends, then we dashed into the night. I joined up with Jenni and we clattered up the pavement nice and quick – the streets looked shimmery and fantastic, and I hadn’t even drunk anything. I smiled and hugged Jenni a little bit closer, then we set off on the rampage.

  Adam

  I had to shut the door seven times or else my family dies. I also had to put With The Beatles on a couple of times, only because it’s a good one. I got transfixed by all the words, lying back in bed and smacking my head off the wood frame. Back then they were always crooning about courting girls and twisting and shouting and that, but all I ever did on the weekends was sit around in a shit mood. I stuck ‘Don’t Bother Me’ on full-blast, though you could still hear my dad slamming the door on his way out. Every Friday he got lashed after work and went over the Beechwood Easterside Social, and I sat up and pondered if he’d left any drinks in his bedroom. I couldn’t stand being a boring cunt. I watched out the window Dad walking along then crossing Deighton Road, the sun lounging in the background and whacking off the housetops. I had to shut the curtains six or seven times or else he’d get struck by lightning.

  Two disc spins later I was still sat on my bed and my head was knacking from all the inaction. The Yellow Submarine clock only said 8:31, and I crept out of the room with white spots in my eyes. I let the guitars continue clanging off the walls and furniture, then snuck my head round the door and tried to keep my toes quiet. All the kids at school had started to boast about drinking and doing sexual intercourse, but the nearest I’d been was that brandy at Christmas and wetdreaming myself over the girl with the boobies at the end of Magical Mystery Tour. It took me about an hour to finish a little glassful, the brandy I mean, and I went around licking the walls and being off my head. The wet dream resulted in me changing my sheets for the first time.

  I spun softly into my parents’ room, over-exaggerating the detective footsteps – is it quieter walking on the balls of your feet or the heels? It was always frightening going in there – that one time I saw my mum getting changed was enough to scar me for life. She had yellow skin from smoking too much, and tits like potatoes. They hadn’t even made the bed since this morning, and you could still sort of smell the smell. I fumbled round the diamond wallpaper but there was no really obvious place to hide a crate of lager, and I couldn’t go down to the kitchen because Mum was there chaining the Mayfairs, and she’d fucking go mad at me. I stood around, then went for my dad’s cabinet, where he kept important things like aftershave and creams and massive undies. It was a bit too cramped for a keg of beer, but there could’ve been a bottle of whisky rolling about. I ended up disappointed. I tried to make it look like I hadn’t been snooping around, but it was difficult having to shut everything five or six times and I felt like I was being noisy.

  ‘Adam, you got any washing?!’ Mum screamed from downstairs. My heart jumped out of my jumper, and I scuttled from the drawers then yelled back, ‘Naw.’

  I thought for a second if I put my school uniform in the basket or not, but I wasn’t bothered. I hated school. I got my breath back, put my hands on my hips, then went looking in the cupboards but I couldn’t drink any of his shirts or overalls either. I was getting desperate, keeping my eyes peeled for bottletops or ring-pulls but there was nothing left to do really. I straightened the floral sheets. You could still hear the Beatles enjoying themselves in the room next door, and I thought what fucking knobhead couldn’t even get merry on a Friday night. I daydreamed all the kids at school indulging in a massive multicolour orgy and me not invited. I was frustrated – I checked every one of my dad’s socks for a can of Carling. His drawers were full of shit, and I leaned right into them, the lightbulb glinting off dingy polyester and money and the odd journal. Most of them were old Boro programmes, but delving in a bit deeper that was when I found the magazine called Razzle. It looked sick – the girl on the front was permed to the max, with her teeny tits popping out of this Day-Glo top or whatever it was. Later on in the book, she was naked and all bent over like she’d dropped something. I skimmed through it on my lap, chock-a-block with eighties girls in crap skirts and knickers, some of them getting off with each other but mostly just hanging out in their bedrooms. I didn’t know whether to stiffen up or shrivel up – the fanny parts did look kind of mangled. Some were brown and dropping out, others were like pink seafood. I couldn’t believe the girls at Brackenhoe were like that between the legs – I always imagined your minge to be a sort of innocent V-shape like how you draw them at school. The ones in Razzle were sewer rats. In the past I used to cut out girls’ heads from magazines and pencil them in filthy poses, but I always did have artists’ block when it came to the special little details. Waking up, I suddenly got very aware of perusing a porno in my parents’ room, so I chucked it back in the drawer and limped out to the landing. I sat back on my bed and thought about what I’d learned. At 10:13 I put on the White Album, but I couldn’t concentrate on the music with all those flowers in my head. I drifted in and out of a funny sleep. I wasn’t even bothered about not drinking, my head was in a jumble anyway. When Disc One finished I had to shut the lid seven times or else the world would end. I didn’t have to shut my eyes seven times; I was too tired. I dreamt of a day playing something like ‘Happiness is a Warm Gun’ or ‘Helter Skelter’ to a girl, but they probably wouldn’t get it. I dreamt of a night with loads of mangled fannies instead.

  Eve

  The Hard made his willy soft. We stayed in bed til about eight or nine, our heads clanging like we had buckets on them. I put back on the CK knickers and went into the bathroom. You could tell he wanted me to come back to bed, but I was shattered and in the morning touching was always a bit sickly. My head was fried. I got myself freshened up, then he walked me to the bus-stop and I had to kiss him bye but I wasn’t fussed if he phoned me. We had sweet breath like a dustbin lorry. The sex was okay, but you could tell we were wrecked because we couldn’t get it in and he kept losing his erection and I woke up with a bit of a sore throat. He didn’t appreciate the poppers.

  I was pretty nervous about getting IDed in the Empire, but all you had to do was poke out your 32Cs and get through the doors. The excitement! It was still early and I was pissed offof the Reef and those shots bought for us in Bar Zantia. Gracie was tugging on my sparkly top as we queued up, and I felt seriously low on energy as I paid the girl with the sad face on the counter. I needed food, but instead we got Aftershocks at the bar since it was pretty empty. We got eyeballed by the packs of wolves, dumb wankers – Gracie was lapping it up, but the boys were mostly losers and all they ever did was try and grapple you into bed. I liked it really, but we’d only just walked in the door and I didn’t want a night of running away from stinkers. We had the shots then went for shelter in the ladies; Rachel gave her red cheerleader jacket to the cloakroom and the other girls waited about with her. We were a motley crew – I grimaced in the mirror, throwing a bit of powder on and the Urban Decay even though I didn’t like using it up. You could see my eyes dropping – the adrenalin was going, but it was dead fake energy like popping a pill when you’ve got a cold. I picked out a bit of black sludge, then dragged Gracie outside again because there was no more time to mope around.

  We dancing in a bit? Debbie shouted at me, and you had to because the house music was so loud. I nodded, a bit zombified, watching Rachel getting hitted on. I didn’t realise she’d come out in the gold porno top, and I laughed to my
self because she always took guys for a total ride. She ended up with two watermelon Breezers, then fucked off to the dancefloor with us lot. It was emptyish round the stage, but that’s what you got for setting off too early – we’d only been to Zantia and the Ex, and in winter it feels a lot later than it really is. The love-heart on my arm said 10:16, and it seemed to be spinning slower than normal.

  Bacardi Breezer Person tried to hang out with us for a couple of dances, swishing about Rachel like a floppy dick, then he got the hint and slinked off someplace else. In a way you felt bad about blowing men’s wages, but at least they had the money and you weren’t really forcing them. Rachel smiled an eensy bit, then went to me, Here have one of these. I know you’re skint and that …

  I didn’t even like watermelons. I clenched the bottle, then spotted Dan Williams in the opposite corner and I had to go over. He was cute as anything in a new whitey shirt, and I tried to chat him up but he wasn’t receptive to that sort of thing. Rachel liked him too, and I wondered how long her promise to stay off boys was going to last. She appeared at my elbow in two seconds flat. So we bantered for a while, not really knowing what each other was saying, and I couldn’t really get rid of Rach because I was drinking her drink. Dan was sexy, but he also seemed to care about you and loads of times we walked home together and went on adventures. Over there, it looked like Jenni and the Dyslexic had got the hump and they stormed up the ledge to the bar, trailing Grace since she was easily taken into stuff. Debbie had this boyfriend from North Ormesby called Brandon (coloured, of course), but Jenni always got jealous of me and Rachel knocking around with stud-muffins. Jenni wasn’t the prettiest bush in the garden; she tended to settle for absolute monsters or worm her way into mine and the girls’ sexy rejects. The last lad she’d been with was a twenty-year-old care-worker with a hare lip.