Fabulous

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She walked always with her shoulders back. Her hips swayed around the invisible plumb line which dropped from the crown of her head. Her centre of gravity was high, but securely poised. You couldn’t really picture yourself tumbling onto a mattress, giggling, with a girl like that.

You couldn’t see yourself kissing her, either, or blowing raspberries on her naked belly, or sucking her toes.

She was called Psyche.

Her parents were proud of her, but not as pleased as they supposed they ought to be. Their friends said, ‘You know what they’re like. I never know how many I’m cooking for.’ They said, ‘I haven’t seen him for days, hardly. He’s always in his room with that creepy friend of his. I’ve no idea what they do up there.’ They said, ‘She’s dyslexic.’ ‘He’s dyspraxic.’ ‘She’s anorexic.’ ‘We’ve tried counselling.’ They said, ‘I think they should do their own washing, don’t you? But you know. Sometimes, the smell …’ They said, ‘You’ve got to let them do it their own way, haven’t you?’

Psyche’s parents kept quiet. They really had nothing to complain about. Sometimes, at night, though, one of them would say, ‘Do you think Psyche’s all right? I mean, really?’ and the other would look out of the window, or pick a towel up off the floor, or neatly square off a pile of books, and then say, ‘Well, we’ve no reason to suppose that she isn’t, have we?’

They hadn’t. No reason at all. There was nothing wrong with Psyche. She was no trouble. It was just a bit funny the way that she had no friends.

The boys of the town were offended. They didn’t like a young woman to be so negligent of them. They swaggered about, these boys, their hair falling forward over their eyes, their tight trousers puckering around their ankles. Their boots were scuffed. Silver studs gleamed in their nostrils and gold hoops in their ears. They looked like desperadoes, but they were very easily upset.

The war memorial was their place. In the mornings they’d stand around it. They turned their collars up and smoked. Or they sat on the steps and ate bacon sandwiches, holding them carefully with both hands so that the brown sauce wouldn’t run out. They’d talk chorically, each one addressing all the others, each one adding a detail to the story they were telling themselves, mumbling, catching no one’s eye, with occasional barks of laughter. Then they’d scatter, to do whatever they each did by day, and when it was nearly dark they’d be back, waiting for the story to progress, waiting for the night’s episode to unfold.

Psyche saw them when she came out of the library. She said hello, pleasantly, to the ones she’d known at school, and walked on by.

The other young women passed in pairs or gaggles. They went noisily away up the side streets to shop for lip-balm or tights, or they settled in flocks around the tin tables outside the bar. They sat on each other’s laps when the chairs were all taken, and shared each other’s drinks – three, four, five straws converging in tall glasses full of ice-cubes and sliced fruit. They looked at the boys. The boys kept talking, and fiddled with their cigarette lighters. After a while one – the one whose leather jacket looked old and soft, its blackness whitened by scars – walked over to two girls coming back into the square with carrier bags, and he put his arm across the tall one’s shoulders, and her friend took her carrier bags without being asked, and the tall girl and the boy went away towards the river. That was the beginning of the night.