spruce up Walford.
‘Dull,’ I said.
Marina laughed. ‘What’s the school in Walford – there’s that posh one.’
‘Wolsingham.’
‘Yes! Wolsingham Girls! Is that where you went?’
I dug my fingers into my seatbelt. I didn’t want to tell her about the homeschooling. And I worried that if I told her where I’d really gone to school afterwards Marina might know someone who would tell her that I had. So I said: ‘Yes.’
‘Oh,’ she said. ‘So wait, hang on, you must know the Dukes?’
‘Mmm.’
‘What do you mean mm? They would have been … Like the year above you, maybe two years above. You must know Matilda.’
‘Oh. Yeah. I know of her.’
I had heard of Matilda Duke. Her family owned a large estate nearby – somewhere west of Durham – and in the early noughties the BBC had made a documentary about how her father, Bart, made money to maintain it. Bart was posh and swore a lot, which was considered hilarious, and I knew that he was thought of as a ‘prize guest’ on the Walford dinner party circuit. But I knew little about Matilda. She was at another school, so I’d never met her. I doubt she would have spoken to me anyway.
‘She’s actually surprisingly nice,’ Marina was saying. ‘I mean, her voice is annoying but once you get past that she has some great anecdotal material. She’s always been pretty … experimental.’
Marina went on to talk about how she knew the Dukes through her stepmother – they were related in some obscure way – and then went on to dissect Matilda’s personality without pausing for a response from me. I let go of my seatbelt, relaxed my shoulders.
‘She’s not actually as quote unquote wild as people think she is. She has few inhibitions in some ways but seems pretty prudish when you hear her talking about other people …’
Five minutes later she had come full circle and was talking about Matilda’s voice again.
‘It sounds like she’s eating a peach,’ Marina said. ‘Uverrything she shaysh is like she’s trying to keep the shaliva in her mouth.’ She turned and pointed at me, waiting for me to pick up the impression.
‘It would almost be Sean Connery,’ I said. ‘Except there’s too much plum in there. It’s more like …’
‘You don’t have to be posh to be privileged.’
‘Joanna Lumley,’ I said.
‘Very good … Hey, I wonder if she’s still doing those adverts.’
I settled back into my seat. The conversation was over: I had dodged the bullet. And I was right to relax: Marina never asked about Walford again.
We reached the beach and found a parking spot at the top of the hill. It was a tight space, so I got out while Marina parked. Then she climbed out and, without putting the roof back on, pressed a button on the keys to lock the car. The lights flashed twice: beep beep.
I stared at her. ‘Aren’t you …?’
She turned to me defiantly.
‘Aren’t I what?’
‘Aren’t you worried someone might … I don’t know, steal it?’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘The car. We should probably put the roof up.’ I paused. ‘Shouldn’t we?’
Marina waved her hand dismissively – a swift, sharp movement, like she was swatting a fly.
‘Eva, this isn’t Walford,’ she said sarcastically. ‘Crime levels aren’t nearly as high here.’
Not for the first time, I felt ashamed of my provincial background; of my unworldliness, of my ultra-cautious temperament. I was so neurotic. Also I was freezing from the journey. I pulled the collar of my coat tighter around my chin.
‘OK,’ I said.
Marina laughed. ‘Come on,’ she tugged my arm. ‘It’s going to be fun.’
It was fun. We drank beer and made sandcastles. We bought a disposable barbecue and piled it with meat, and bananas stuffed with chunks of Mars bar. I dug my toes into the wet sand, and through mouthfuls of charred chicken leg, asked Marina questions about her life before Northam. She spoke about feeling deprived of a ‘Generic Family Experience’, because her parents were divorced; because her mother had died when she was young. She spoke about her father experimenting with Buddhist philosophy, about how his investments had somehow benefited from the financial crash, about the ‘laughable’ attempts at poetry she had published in her teens. I pulled my coat fiercely around my neck. I drank a lot of beer. Marina drank a lot too, and I didn’t try to stop her.
It was getting late, and we were both quite drunk, when Marina slid off her coat and said that she was going to swim. She started to take off her other clothes. Then she ran into the sea. I didn’t join her because it was freezing, plus I felt a little self-conscious about a birthmark on my upper thigh. But I watched her, and I noticed everything. Marina’s skin was smooth and pale. Her underwear had a zigzag stripe. I studied her as she sprinted into the surf.
I remember, now, sensing a slow spread of anxiety as her silhouette charged into the high grey waves. The long slow curls sweeping across her back. Her small, fragile shoulders flinching as the cold water smacked against her stomach. The waves rising and falling, crashing onto her head, flattening her hair dark against her scalp. She seemed so vulnerable. She disguised it well – she did not scream – but I could see that she was fragile out there.
Later she emerged from the water, wrapped a towel around herself and sat beside me on the sand. ‘Pussy,’ she said. ‘It’s not even that cold.’
In the moonlight, the tiny golden hairs on her stomach stood straight, and there were goose pimples along her arms. She was shivering.
When we returned to the car it was raining. The seats were soaked through. The gearstick was slick with black raindrops.
‘Fuck,’ said Marina, expressionlessly. ‘That’s a shame.’
I said nothing.
We laid our coats over the seats and got inside. As soon as we sat down I could feel damp seep through to my underwear and so to distract myself, I smoked a spliff with the window slightly open. We drove home in a drunk daze. Marina was actually better at driving when drunk, or maybe it just seemed that way because I felt more relaxed. I really did. I was cold and wet and shivering, but I was also unusually happy.
Marina looked at me sceptically.
‘You’re quiet,’ she said. There was a note of accusation in her voice.
I told her my clothes were wet – that I was cold.
‘You can shower at my house,’ said Marina. ‘I’ll lend you some clothes.’
The following morning Marina returned the car, alone, and I forgot to ask about Graham and the rain damage. I still don’t know how much she had to pay for it.
ii.
There were a lot of things I forgot to ask Marina, now I think about it. The questions I did put to her were always beside the point somehow – too vague or too specific to elucidate what she was ever really thinking. I wish I’d fastened onto some of the other leads instead. I wish I’d asked where she was on certain days; how certain things made her feel. But there’s no use in regretting all that. I don’t know how much I can trust of what she told me anyway.
The conversational pattern of our friendship was this: I asked her questions about herself; she asked me questions about grand ideas.