Echoes - Laura Dockrill

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him plough his way through eight mattresses of buttery toast, the smell mortifyingly tempting. He then sank his hot tea in one courageous gulp. ‘So, like, what, like, happened?’

      An hour later, the shooting noises mixed in with the whiny scruff of rappers began splitting holes in Isabella’s head like a woodpecker. She was getting really tired. How the fuck did she end up here? In this dump? With these chavs. Ugh.

      ‘Can I?’ She held her forefingers out like a small set of scissors to encourage Paulie to pass her a joint. She smoked weed the same way you’d imagine a nun would.

      ‘Insane,’ she boasted, trying to fit in.

      The floor beneath her was covered in porn magazines, dirty plates with sealed splodges of dried-up ketchup and corners of toast.

      ‘So like, do you wanna sleep over and that?’ Stoo asked.

      ‘Sorry…shit,’ she said. Where had the day gone? She was licked. She did not expect to be sleeping the night with tramps in Cornwall, stoned and helpless.

      ‘I guess so. That okay?’ Isabella shrugged. She knew it would be, like it made a difference, there could have been people sleeping, fucking, lawnmowering in the kitchen sink and nobody would have batted an eye.

      ‘So, like, whass your mum and dad do?’ Paulie asked. Paulie was a John Travolta lookalike. Well, John Travolta aged…say nineteen. He could have done that as a profession.

      ‘My mum works for a charity and my dad is a…I don’t actually know what he does.’

      ‘Sceen.’ He accepted that.

      ‘What about yours?’ she asked, trying to be curious, but she didn’t care, she was just being polite.

      ‘My dad’s a librarian and my mum is a slag,’ he said, simultaneously shooting a sea of enemies.

      ‘Oh,’ Isabella smirked.

      ‘So, you’re rich then?’ J asked from across the room.

      ‘Why do you say that?’ Isabella asked.

      ‘Well, look at you, your phone, your bag, your stuff, your way.’

      ‘No. Most of this stuff was gifts, actually.’

      ‘From who? Fucking P Diddy?’

      ‘Mummy and Daddy.’ And she realized, as soon as the three killer words flooded out of her spic, span little mouth, that she sounded like a complete tit. And the response was not a let-down.

      Like a pack of hyenas, the boys began cracking up, frolicking. They loved it: their own personal pocket-sized posh bird as their new gadget that they could prod and push and make do funny stuff.

      ‘Low it, boys, come on, shut up,’ Stoo tamed. ‘Pass over that joint, bruv.’ He sucked in, his eyes drawing in, wincing. He huffed out in misty clouds. He was hot. He just was. His floppy hair, his long smooth arms and chunky wrists and those clean fingernails. He scooped his wrist round, a beaded charm bracelet shifted down his arm, and offered Isabella a toke.

      ‘Do you have a cleaner?’ J asked, unable to give up the game.

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘Do you have a big house?’ J asked.

      ‘It depends what you mean by big.’

      ‘How many bedrooms you got?’

      ‘Nine.’

      ‘Nine?!’

      The ruckus kicked off again and the questions kept coming on, strong.

      ‘BOYS!’ Stoo wafted his arm and got up, stretched and walked out the room. ‘I’ve got the munchies.’ He gargled as his voice trickled away into speckles of dust in the misty, intoxicated air. Isabella saved by Stoo yet again. But where was he going? Why was he leaving her now? At this desperate point of humiliation…this was just the rough side to getting everything you want, normal people–poor people–wanted explanations, as though telling them how and why you were wealthy would infect them with it too.

      ‘Okay, one more…What’s your full name? Bet it’s like double-barrelled and shit.’

      She should have lied, she could have said anything, she could have said half of the fucking thing and it would have lessened the load.

      ‘Isabella…’ she began

      J paused the game.

      ‘Mozzarella, Jezebella…’

      Bill put down his bong in disbelief.

      ‘Do you know what a jezebel is?’ Paulie giggled.

      ‘Bumpington-Brown,’ she rushed out in one breath, embarrassed.

      The laughter reached an abnormal peak, but to her surprise the boys thought she was taking the piss.

      ‘What a joker!’ Paulie smacked his leg. ‘She’s high!’ he warbled. ‘Blud, you are fucked!’

      Isabella pouted, covered her lips in Vaseline, and then looked at her phone.

      ‘Right,’ Stoo poked his head round the doorframe. ‘To the boudoir!’ he instructed, looking rather proud with himself.

      Thank fuck, thought Isabella. ‘Can I just use the loo?’

      ‘The loo is just here.’ Stoo was being a real gentleman, well as gentle as a boy in khaki shorts and a Run DMC t-shirt could be.

      The toilet was worse than she had expected. The pink walls were grimy with, well, grime, and had transformed into a grey peachy colour. In the cocoon of stink, she locked the door. The toilet seat had fallen off the bowl and had a new home down by the side of the bowl with ‘R.I.P’ written on it in marker. The bowl was covered in a waxy seal of gunk and foul design and splodges of piss and dirt. The sink was a mess of soap and pubes coiled round the taps and limescale chasing the plug and climbing all over wherever it could. The floor was carpeted in cardboard toilet roll cores, the little whispers of tissue clinging onto the rolls for dear life so as to not touch the slippery floor themselves from fear of infection. The rug was booted into a cuddle underneath the sink, like a small soaking dog it lay decorated in muddy footprints. Isabella made her exit as quickly as she could.

      Stoo was waiting outside the door for her. ‘Ready?’ He led her up the soiled carpeted staircase and put his hand on a door handle of a door decorated in South Park posters.

      ‘Now, princess, I know this is not what you are used to, but I hope it serves you well.’

      He bent the handle down and pushed the door open to reveal mess, mess and more mess. There was so much stuff, so much stuff she could not even believe it. It was a like a bad nightmare or a severe example of somebody with a hoarding problem. There were stacks of boxes, of records and CDs, of videos and game consoles. It sat like Aladdin’s treasure, only not for Aladdin, for a seventeen-year-old boy. Skateboards, footballs, clothes and magazines, books, textbooks, bongos, bin bags, bongs, jigsaws, sleeping bags, tents, guitars, towels, clothes hangers, television wires, video players, deodorant cans, Homer Simpson figurines, a bird cage, shit and shit on top of more and more and more shit, like a dump, like a big fat dump belonging to a bag lady. And, on top of all that, right at the very, very top, was a skinny little mattress, a pillow and a sleeping bag. Oh, and a twisted, tangled nest of fairy lights that were wrapped around the mess pyramid like an attempt at a recyclable eco-friendly Christmas tree and extension lead, plugged into extension lead, plugged into extension lead, plugged into the wall.

      ‘Cool, ain’t it?’ he smirked.

      ‘Is it always like this in here?’ Isabella asked.

      ‘Nah, you divvy, I just made it. Well, not the mess, that’s always there, but look…’ He ran excitedly up the mountain of crap and hobbled up the mattress.

      ‘See?’ he yelped. ‘Come and try. Hope you ain’t afraid of heights!’

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