Send Nudes

  SEND NUDES

  For my grandmother Mimi short for Miraculous

  Yes, we were stupid for disrespecting the limits placed before us; for trying to go everywhere and know everything. Stupid, spoiled, and arrogant. But we were right, too. I was right.

  Mary Gaitskill, Veronica

  CONTENTS

  Tinderloin

  Overnight

  Snakebite

  Send Nudes

  Flying Kite

  Here Alone

  The Mothers and the Girls

  Blue 4eva

  The Bread

  Today’s Square

  Acknowledgements

  A Note on the Author

  Tinderloin

  I met Ryan on Tinder. He only had one photograph of himself on his profile, edited with a grainy filter. I thought he looked alright. I didn’t have much in the way of standards. My own picture wasn’t even really me; it was another lanky brunette that I’d found online, her face turned away from the camera. My bio was Tinderloin, after my favourite cut.

  We met in the Crown and Sceptre. I ordered wild boar sausages with mash and caramelised onion gravy. Ryan was older than me by eleven years. He worked for a cab service, picking up the phone. His hands were nice and thick, a good ratio of muscle to fat, and he’d crack his knuckles when there was a lull in conversation, or smooth out a napkin with his palms. When I told him about Papa’s shop he joked that he was a vegetarian. I raised my eyebrows and smiled; I’d already overheard him order the roast chicken at the bar.

  I went back to his after. He lived in his grandparents’ garage. There was an electric heater groaning in the corner, and the corrugated iron door gave the place an industrial look. I felt at home in there; it reminded me of the shop in a way. A few carcasses wouldn’t have looked so out of place, hung up next to his bookshelf.

  When I slept with Ryan that first time I bled through the sheets. I was sixteen and I’d done my waiting.

  A virgin then, are you? he’d said.

  I’d just looked at him. There wasn’t much point in lying. The blood had dried fast between my thighs and matted up my pubic hair, so the skin there pulled tight when I shuffled off the bed. The whole garage smelt of copper, like after opening a fresh pig.

  I spent the next evening in the back of the shop with Papa, sawing a few lambs down into primals. We had Radio 4 on in the background. Papa likes The Archers so much he has the theme tune as his ringtone. If I speak during it he puts his blue-gloved hand up to silence me. I had to wait until the programme finished to tell him about Ryan.

  I don’t need to hear things like that, Gracie, he’d said.

  He hadn’t even let me finish.

  It’s not right, OK? Talking about those private moments with your old dad. Keep it to yourself in future.

  It hadn’t occurred to me that I shouldn’t tell him, but then I was always doing things like that. I found it difficult to gauge certain situations. The day I got my first period I brought my knickers down to breakfast and laid them next to Papa’s bowl of cornflakes, with the purple-brown smear facing him. I was beside myself. I thought I was dying.

  Don’t they teach you about all this in school, Gracie?

  He’d picked up his cereal and was eating standing up, so to be further from my knickers. It came back to me then: all that stuff from PSHE about the menstrual cycle. I balled the knickers up in my pocket and went out to the back garden to set them on fire, in a sort of ceremony, and after that I went to school smelling like barbeque. I didn’t have the money for tampons, so I just used screwed-up wads of tissue paper for that whole first year, until Papa started paying me to do Saturdays in the shop.

  My mother died when I was six. I have a memory of being in the supermarket and losing her. I threaded up and down every aisle to look, and then I found her by the freezers. I was so relieved I could feel my heart throbbing in the roof of my mouth. She had her back to me. She was wearing a purple walking jacket and had her hand in with the ice creams. I ran up and put my arms around her thighs, pressed my face against her.

  Honey, she said. I’m not sure you’ve got the right person.

  I looked up at her and she wasn’t my mother at all. She was much older in the face, and she had a few burst blood vessels under her eyes, like tiny jellyfish. I jumped. I wanted to scream but the noise wouldn’t come up in my throat, so I just turned and ran as fast as I could down the aisle. I bumped into a man with a pot of yoghurt, and I knocked it from his hand. It split and went all over the floor, but I didn’t stop running.

  I can’t remember how I found my mother again, but I suppose I must have. She didn’t die until the year after that.

  The sex hadn’t gone how I’d imagined, but it had gone, and that was the main thing. I walked around that week feeling slightly lighter on my feet. I passed a mock GCSE paper in my maths class, which hadn’t happened before. I performed very well at my butchery. Papa couldn’t believe the consistency of my sirloins. He said he’d never seen anything like it, and even I have to admit they were quite lovely.

  The weekend after we first met, Ryan and I went on a country walk around a stately home that had its grounds open to the public. He drove me there with his dog, Petal, in the back. I’d brought Ryan a few nice chops wrapped in greaseproof, as a gift, and I was devastated when he fed one to Petal. She was one of those chunky breeds with skin so tight that you could see the shape of her skull under it. I watched the muscles of her jaw working away at the chop and thought of all the effort I’d put into separating them, the careful layer of fat I’d left, thick as orange peel.

  On the walk, Petal either tried to start fights with other dogs or barked at sheep through the wire fence. She had a taste for them now, that much was clear. When we got back to the car park, Ryan and I had sex on the back seats. Petal sat in front of the steering wheel and watched us through the headrests.

  There’s a good girl, Ryan kept saying. I wished he was talking to me.

  It was a month later that I found out I was pregnant. I was in the shop, and the smell coming up off the mincer was so intense I had to run out to the street to throw up into the gutter.

  Take a test, said Papa, when I returned.

  I wiped my mouth on the sleeve of my workwear. It took me a moment to understand what he was saying, and when I did I turned and walked back outside again. My vomit was a thin, yellow bile on the tarmac.

  The man behind the counter in the pharmacy looked embarrassed when I asked to use the toilet, but I’d already paid for the test so he let me. The two red lines flashed up immediately, clear as smit marks. I must have fallen asleep then, because the next thing I knew I was curled on the floor of the cubicle, my forehead pressed against the cold porcelain of the toilet, and the man was knocking on the door to check on me. I have no idea how long I was lying there.

  I told Papa straight away. He was shaping some of the mince into burgers and he didn’t look up. The meat squelched in his hands as he spoke.

  It’ll happen, that, he said. We’ll get you sorted.

  We made the call that evening. The receptionist at the clinic booked me an appointment for two weeks’ time. They didn’t have anything available sooner. Papa sat at the kitchen table with me during the conversation, and when I hung up we shared one of his pork pies with lots of mustard. They’ve won awards, those pies. Papa had special stickers made. I’ve asked, but he won’t give me the recipe. He says that when he dies, those pies will die with him.

  I didn’t make it to the abortion. I’m not sure I would have anyway; I’d been having second thoughts. I’d started to switch off in lessons, or mid-conversation with Papa. I’d find myself imagining a little baby, fast asleep in my arms. When I eventually came around, I’d realise I had no idea what had been happening in the rea
l world. I once found myself in a corner shop, buying chewing gum, with no memory of how I’d got there. Still, the decision was made for me, in the end. When the blood first started it was a very bright, garish red. I was in school, in the lunch queue, when a boy called Oliver pointed at me.

  Someone’s got the painters in, he shouted.

  I went home and stayed there. The blood got heavier and heavier over days, and the rest came out in pieces, alongside some of the worst cramps I’ve ever experienced. Some of the pieces were stringy and some more circular, dark and shiny as kidneys. I knew enough about flesh to know it was the baby.

  It didn’t stop until Saturday. That morning, in the shop, Papa said I looked pale. He sent me into the back to get on with some French trimming. I was using a boning knife that I’d sharpened the day before. The blade gleamed in the sunlight coming in through the little window. For the first time in weeks, the rack of lamb smelt bearable. I took the tip of the blade and pressed it into my left thumb on the chopping board. It broke the nail easily. I felt the knife scrape the top of the bone before breaking through to the other side. I pulled it out again. There was a horizontal cut almost the width of the nail, and just a pinprick at the back, where the tip of the blade had made it through. Blood spilt all over the chopping board and the floor. I could actually see it pumping; there was a definite rhythm to it. I used some blue roll to bandage my thumb. The pain was steady and vivid. I felt OK then, I felt almost normal.

  I’d been seeing Ryan regularly. We’d spend time in his garage, watching films and having sex. He had a camping stove attached to a gas canister in the corner, and in the mornings, before school, he’d fry eggs with some back bacon I’d brought from Papa’s shop. Ryan didn’t have a toaster, so he’d put the bread in the pan too and let it crisp up in the fat. Petal would get a portion about the size of mine, and Ryan would get double.

  I’d decided not to tell him about the pregnancy, but the first time I visited after I miscarried I could tell that Petal knew. She climbed up on the bed and put her head in my lap. I scratched her behind the ears with my good hand and she smiled with her tongue spilling out her mouth. This was the first time we’d ever really acknowledged each other, and Ryan was impressed.

  I’ve not seen her like that with anyone other than me, he said.

  Ryan made us White Russians with some milk he kept in a mini fridge. I’d never had a cocktail before, and I felt grown up with it. I drank very carefully, trying to move as little of my body as possible so as not to wake Petal, who had fallen asleep on me. I sat like that for hours, and when I complained of backache Ryan gave me a massage. His big fingers digging into me weren’t necessarily soothing, but I’d never felt closer to him. Petal’s snores wheezed through the silence. She was warm as a running engine.

  The next day, we went for a walk on the hill that overlooked the town. I threw sticks for Petal with my good hand. She chased them down and returned them foamy with saliva. Ryan carried on ahead with his hands pressed into his pockets. Eventually Petal bored of me and dropped her sticks at his feet instead. Ryan could throw much further than I could. After, he looked back at me and winked.

  She’s playing the field, he said.

  I laughed, then spent the rest of the walk trying to catch Petal’s eye. I wanted her to bring the sticks to me again, but she didn’t.

  We went to a pub after. I ordered a bowl of water for Petal and a pint for myself. The barman asked for my ID, but Ryan just put his hand on my shoulder.

  Alright mate, he said. She’s with me.

  We sat in the garden with our drinks. Ryan ripped open a bag of pork scratchings and lay the packet out on the picnic table. He’d drop one to Petal every so often, and she’d catch it in her jaws and crunch it to dust. It was late afternoon by then and cold, so I took my jacket off and covered Petal with it. Goose pimples surfaced quickly on my arms, and when Ryan noticed he slipped his own coat off and passed it to me. It was so huge it drowned me, and for the first time in my life I felt cute. We sat like that, in our swapped clothes, way into the evening.

  I didn’t get home until past dark. Papa was waiting up in the living room.

  Grace, he said. Jesus. I’ve been pulling my hair out.

  I told him I was sorry. I hadn’t thought about him all day and I felt terrible.

  You were with him again, weren’t you? he said.

  Yes, Papa.

  Papa smoothed out his frown with the tops of his fingers. You just look out for yourself, won’t you Gracie?

  Yes, Papa, I said, and then I went to bed.

  After injuring my thumb, I lost touch with my butchery for a while. I’d had the wound patched up properly at the hospital, but for weeks after I was still slow with my knife work, and this made me frustrated and inaccurate. At school, I couldn’t write, so I just sat in the back of my lessons and looked off out the window. The teachers didn’t notice; I’d mostly always done that anyway.

  Papa seemed a little hurt every time I presented him with my cuts, but he’d put them in the counter without saying anything. I busied myself in the shop by packing treats for Petal instead. I’d never been much of a dog person, but she’d charmed me that weekend. I’d bag up some offal while Papa wasn’t looking, or cut a few sausages from their string. I once brought her an entire beef hind shank. I’d stayed behind to close up shop, and before I left I stole it out the back, then walked over to Ryan’s with it balanced on my shoulder like a Flintstone.

  I was spending most nights with them by that point, and when I arrived Petal would run out of the garage to greet me. I’d lay her gifts down on the front lawn and watch her devour them, and then we’d go in together to see Ryan, Petal leaving a trail of pink saliva behind us.

  It didn’t take long for Petal to become protective of me. I understood that she’d learnt to associate me with good fresh meat, but I like to think that our bond ran deeper than her stomach. We felt comfortable around each other, was what it was.

  She’d growl whenever Ryan touched me. It got to the point where it was easier just to wait until she was distracted outside or asleep on her mat. I didn’t mind this; there was something romantic about it to me.

  She loves you so much, Ryan whispered once. He was leaning over my body to check that the coast was clear.

  I invited Ryan and Petal over to meet Papa one evening. It was six weeks or so after the miscarriage, and my thumb was fully healed. I baked the same chicken and mushroom pies that we sell in the shop. Evening light through the lace curtains dappled the whole dining room. Ryan put his glass down without a coaster, and Papa waited until he was in the toilet to slip one underneath. Petal sat up at the dining table with us and licked her plate clean. I felt proud of her.

  See Papa, I said. Isn’t she well behaved?

  Papa nodded. She’s a lovely dog.

  Ryan and I reached out at exactly the same time and stroked either side of Petal’s face. She was sitting between us. She turned her head to me first, and then to Ryan. There was a bead of gravy in her whisker, and she used her tongue to get it. We all laughed.

  She loves being the centre of attention, I said.

  I can see that, said Papa.

  After, we played Gin Rummy in the living room. Papa took two games and I took one. Ryan was slow with his cards and kept getting the spade confused with the club. Petal lay on the floor. A fire was going, and she looked pleased with the heat on her belly.

  When they were leaving, Papa shook Ryan’s hand and then went to pat Petal. She barked once and sunk her teeth into his ankle.

  I’m so sorry, said Ryan. She’s not good with new people.

  I got down on eye level with Petal and told her to behave herself. She looked ashamed, so I gave her a quick rub under the chin. Papa wasn’t one to make a fuss, but from down there I could see a few dark spots of blood coming up through his trousers.

  Ryan’s cousin was getting married in Wales the following weekend, and he’d asked me to have Petal while he was away. I waited until
the Thursday to tell Papa this. He was still walking with a limp, and I had to bring a chair out front in the shop so that he could sit down to rest when there weren’t any customers. He wasn’t enthusiastic about having Petal to stay, but I told him it was too late for Ryan to find someone else.

  I’d started getting excited about work again, now that my thumb was better. I’d go straight from school to the shop. I had half a pig to practise my seam butchery on, and the roasts came out beautiful. Papa cheered up when I showed him, but it didn’t last long. One afternoon, he caught me sneaking a whole rack of spare ribs for Petal.

  Can’t you just give her the trotters? he said, clicking his tongue.

  She needs some comfort this weekend, Papa. It’s unsettling, staying in a new place.

  Papa shook his head. Half of those ribs back, at least.

  I was stroppy, but I divided the rack into two and put one on show in the cabinet.

  That weekend with Petal was wonderful. I fried up a whole tube of black pudding and we shared it. We spent Saturday afternoon walking. I took her to a field of long grasses and watched her weave through them like a snake, leaving a stepped-down trail behind her. The sun was so bright it made the dew dazzling. After, tired out, Petal leant against me with all her weight and panted. Her thick tail slapped at my thighs. I picked a tick off her back, squashed it between my knuckles, and her warm blood ran down my thumb like ink from a cartridge.

  We shared a bed that night. If I rolled too close her sour breath would wake me, but when Sunday morning streamed in the first thing I saw was Petal. She smiled at me and squinted. I stroked her belly and rubbed my face into her neck.

  On Sundays, I always went and helped Papa prep the carcasses for the rest of the week. I’d been doing this since I was very small, it’s how I learnt all my knife skills. I brought Petal that weekend. She sat quietly under the counter, twitching her ears occasionally when something good happened on The Archers, leaving shiny patches behind on the linoleum when she licked up the scraps I dropped for her.