Tideline Read Free

house on to me.
    Inheriting the house at my father’s behest seemed like a blessing. But no blessing comes without its cost. My mother needs me near her now, to fetch and carry, to listen and endure. But
she never really wanted me in her house, as she’s at pains to remind me.
    It’s not quite light when I wake the next morning. There’s the
phut phut phut
of a launch on the river. I want to lie here and cherish this feeling. A kind of fullness. A completion.
It’s like the night after you give birth and stare at the baby you have brought into the world. It’s like the moment you know you both feel the same towards each other. Made more
precious, now you know how rare these instances are.
    I hear footsteps along the alley as the first stallholders hurry towards the market. Soft grey light seeps round the edges of the curtains. I go to the window, pull them back. Outside, the tall
buildings on Canary Wharf are pale, the glass walls reflect the pearly sky that gives way to a peach glow where the sun rises beyond Blackwall. It’s very cold out there.
    The smell from the river is sharp, that rich oily mud stench which means the tide is out. Its swag will be on show. New deliveries will lie exposed on the shore: caskets, tyres, bicycle wheels.
I know its regular imports, but there’ll be the unexpected, too. However, I have no time for beachcombing this morning. I pull on my kimono and go to look at him.
    His face is paler in the early light of the music room and for a split second, I’m gripped by a fear that I may have overdone it. He mentioned asthma. Alcohol, I once read, can bring on an
attack. I bend closer, feel with relief his breath upon my cheek.
    He doesn’t stir, so I pick up one of his hands. Observe the slender fingers, nails long enough to pluck the guitar. One has caught on something and is torn slightly. Pink skin on the pads
of his fingers like a child’s. No coarse dark hair on the back of his hands, just a few golden filigree threads which catch the light. On his forearm a raised blue vein. I run my finger along
it, watching the rise and fall of the blood as I push. Seb’s arm had this same vein, most prominent when he was exerting strength, as he grasped a painter that he’d thrown around a
mooring ring. As he hauled himself up the pilings. Or as his iron grip closed around my wrists.
    I drop Jez’s arm and look at his face. He must have inherited his pale-brown skin from his French Algerian father. A square chin, turned up slightly, the stubble so soft, so slight, a
faint dusting of black specks beneath his skin. As I drag my lips over it I can barely feel it. I’m back with Seb. My nose, buried into his neck, smells the combination of smoke and male
perspiration for the first time. Feels the ridges and valleys of his body through his shirt.
    When I’ve had my fill, I must continue as normal. My mother’s expecting her Saturday morning visit and will become difficult if I miss it. If I go now, I can be back here before Jez
wakes. He’s in a deep sleep and, if I know anything about teenagers, will stay that way for most of the morning. I gaze at him for another minute as he turns, resettles himself. Then,
reluctantly, I slip away.
    Outside, the early morning sun is bright, though the air’s so cold it burns my throat as I breathe. Frost glints on the alley walls and I feel the crunch of ice
underfoot. Residue from the tide that must have been so high in the night it came over the footpath.
    Only a week ago there was still snow on the ground. I caught a glimpse through the almshouse railings – a cluster of snowdrops that had come through a small circle of grass where the snow
had melted. The brilliant white of their bowed heads against the unexpected green took my breath away and I hurried home to find my camera. By the time I came out again the light had gone and the
next day the snow had turned to slush. I was afraid the loss of that image would pluck at my brain. It’s