Genie and Paul by Natasha Soobramanien Read Free Book Online Page B

narrowed.
    How old are you?
    Thirteen.
    Christ. They’re putting babies in here.
    Genie asked the wraith how old she was. Nearly fifteen, she said. In her mouth the ‘teen’ had the sound of a fork tapped on the rim of a crystal glass.
    That small door in the wall connected them, and, though they would knock in warning before climbing through, Eloise always ended up treading on some part of her, or she on Eloise. Eloise was so thin, Genie could feel the bones through the blankets as she swore at her. Life, for Eloise, was full of things to swear at. Genie would sit on her bed as Eloise talked about sex in an offhand manner and sniffed that liquid which made her laugh and cry. She always offeredGenie the bottle and Genie always refused, fascinated. Genie liked to watch her. And Eloise would look at her, moon-eyed , and stroke her skin.
    Where are you from? she asked Genie one night.
    My mum is from Mauritius. And my dad is too. It’s a tiny island in –
    I know where it is. That’s where my mum’s family were from. Though they came back to France before my mum was born.
    Maybe our families knew each other! Genie gasped. Maybe we’re related!
    Maybe, said Eloise. Or maybe my family used to own your family.
     
    One Saturday, Genie followed Eloise through a gap in the hedge of the hockey field, out into an alley and down into town. On that first visit, Genie swaggered the seafront like a sailor on shore-leave, dazzled by the novelty. But when, three weeks later, Paul came to visit, she walked around more slowly, wanting to immerse herself in a place she realised she only half lived in, shut away as she was in the convent for most of the week. How white the place was! How she and Paul stood out. And that gave her a sense of the place being acutely English in a way that somehow felt very foreign. Like Eloise. But not like London at all.
    They were on their way to the station so Paul could catch his train home, when Genie saw Eloise. It was the first time she had thought of Eloise as pretty, Genie realised, as she approached. Eloise was pretty in the slight, tattered way certain wildflowers were pretty: long-limbed, slim, a long-stemmed flower. It was the ragged fringe and the pale eyes and maybe also the drifts of cigarette smoke that hung about her. But she had dense, compressed features, almost Slavic, which threw you off somewhat. It took a while forpeople to work out that she was beautiful, Eloise would later inform her.
    She was on her way to Roxy’s, she said. Eloise had taken Genie there on that first trip into town. She had bought Genie a fudge sundae and sat smoking menthol cigarettes while Genie tucked in, not daring to look further than her engorged spoon, afraid of the boys slapping and thumping the games machines around them: rough white boys with gelled hair and raw skin who were suddenly leaning towards them, staring at Eloise while she blew smoke-rings and stared back with narrowed eyes.
    Now Eloise was looking at Paul that same way. And he in turn looked almost hostile, Genie thought, just like one of those sneering white boys.
    See you around, said Eloise, sneering back.
     
    The next day was Sunday. Genie and Eloise had skipped mass. They were alone on Castle Hill and walked around the ruins of Hastings Castle, arm in arm. The sky seemed burdened with cloud. Eloise said, You get witches here, you know.
    Genie thought about the part of town they had walked through to get there. Where the shops gave up all pretence of being commercial outfits and resigned themselves to what they really were – the front rooms of slumped houses. In the windows old radios and hoovers, hamster-wheels , dusty cakes, collections of old medals from forgotten wars, displays of Fifties-style satin dresses, some faintly stained, hanging stiffly. It was easy to imagine the place full of witches but they were Mrs Cantrips: dowdy, ageing, fusty-smelling spinster witches with worn-out powers and moulting broomsticks.
    You’re wrong,