The river curled round the bottom of Auntie’s garden, lapping like a greedy tongue. It was deep and thick water, full of glittering slime and snake-tail weeds. Her garden was on a slope, descending into the riverbank where great spongy heaps of frogspawn floated, soft and glistening. Occasionally we would see a little boat sail along the river, with a red sail. The man in it was a local, Mr Wishbone. He caught freshwater fish and slept on his boat. I waved to him once but he ignored me. I thought he looked hundreds of years old, like a moth-eaten wizard. Perhaps if you gazed into his eyes, you would turn into nothing. Aunt Eva had told me he’s an old miserable bastard and if he ever moored his boat at the bottom of her garden she would drill a hole in it and watch him sink.
On one afternoon that she read my palm, she opened a bottle of red wine and, after a few generous glasses, held my hand like a prayer book, studying the lines, the hidden words, the invisible threads of me. And she always said the same thing – “Someone is coming for you; he has ladybirds in his eyes.” – and then she laughed sadly.
“Is it a handsome prince?” I would say. She looked away from me. I took my hand away like a book that has been read and discarded. The little rituals we went through, they were always the same. As if we were both waiting for something to happen, something that, like lightning, would strike and leave a terrible imprint upon us. While we waited, we played these games.
The village in which we live was called Appledoor and was a small, sleepy-eyed place surrounded by fields of apple trees and ancient woodland. I had always felt as safe as a bed bug in this place. Snuggled up, squashed with love. But on the day of my sixteenth birthday things began to change. There was a great thunderstorm that day: black ribbons of darkness spread across the sky and the clouds were shaped like dragons, soaring and screaming. That evening the schoolmaster, Mr Quipple, was found drowned in the river. He had committed suicide, left no note.
Aunt Eva thought he was suspicious because he never grew any flowers in his garden. She said on Sundays he would read his newspaper in the garden and shout at the local tomcat if it was lazing about. She says that men who have gardens without any flowers or plants have no soul. She said the tomcat probably pushed him in the river. Or a mermaid lured him in, swishing her aquamarine tail and fluttering her moon-silver eyelashes at him. She kept the newspaper article of his death in the toilet next to our ancestor, Reginald Crump.
I asked her if anything else awful ever happened in this town and she said no, but she suspected the meat at the local butchers. “It’s probably human,” she said, then laughed out loud, a shocking laughter with hints of electricity in it that zapped and tingled.
She has a huge mane of thick hair that she dyes a vibrant flame red and crimps. It falls down to her waist like crazy snakes. I think she really is a beautiful woman. She’s something strange from a fairy tale, or maybe she’s Queen Titania. She’s made of raw magic and rare delights. She has just turned fifty and says she has never been in love. I don’t know if this makes her sad. I don’t really know how to feel about it at all. I think magical creatures find it difficult to live amongst humans, in a human world. She must be so frustrated. She must be so lonely. But she won’t tell me.
My mother is not beautiful like her sister, Eva. She is a tall, strong woman and a wonderful gardener. Hands always in the earth. Hands always making something grow. She campaigns for the suffragettes. I have no father. My mother told me he was a salesman just passing through Appledoor. He wooed her with magic tricks and then got her pregnant and left. There are no pictures of him, only her memories.
She said he was handsome with a lopsided smile and full of promises. And full of shit, as Aunt Eva often tells me. I am like my mother, tall and plain. My eyes are very pale, like a ghost. My mother tells me I have my father’s eyes. Hers are baby blue. They are the colour of safety and calm waters. Mine are the colour of moth wings, hiding and fluttering in a secret wardrobe. Just like Daddy.
On the day of my abduction, the sun was boiling like an egg. The hottest day on record for fifty years. I woke up sweating, my thighs damp. I’d dreamt that Aunt Eva was a mermaid swimming in the river, throwing insults at Mr Wishbone in his boat. I dreamt that mother was standing in a field of bright golden corn and that Daddy came to visit me, came into my room with a basket of apples. He said he knew a magic trick and he waved his hand over those green apples and they turned into bright red pomegranates, heavy magic orbs. He said they were delicious, “Why don’t you taste one, sweetheart?” His hair was greasy and his hands nervous. I thought, he’s just a con man. He’s a grin without a face. Something not to be trusted.
I heard Aunt Eva’s voice, like a soft siren coming from the waters, “Oh, my poor girl. That bastard. That bastard. He’s sold you.” The dream ended. I heard my mother leave the house and the neighbours’ dog howl. I pulled myself out of bed and stood in front of my mirror, examining myself. I thought, I have not been ravished yet, I wonder what it would feel like. I was sixteen and I had not been kissed. In fact, no boys had ever shown any interest in me at all.
I am only sixteen
there is plenty of