Genie and Paul by Natasha Soobramanien

was still warm from his skin.
    I don’t want you sleeping in Sol’s bed again, he said.
    When Genie asked why not he said she bloody well knew why not. Please tell me nothing happened.
    Nothing happened, Genie said. But so what if it had? She pointed out that Eloise had been fifteen when she’d first got involved with Paul.
    Nearer sixteen, said Paul. And Sol’s older than I was. But most of all, Genie, you are not Eloise.
    On their way back to the squat, they passed through the flower market. Genie stopped to look at a stall full ofroses. They were not the ruddy, gaudy kind she remembered from the gardens at school, with the rudely glossy leaves, the blousy bosomy show-roses in pinks and yellow which reminded her of the novelty soaps she used to collect; no, these were antique, puzzled-looking roses, their leaves smaller and darker – almost papery, almost dried. The blooms were strange muted colours, musky, dusky smoky, surly ashen pinks and dusty blues. She tugged at Paul’s sleeve. He appeared not to see them. His face was gaunt. For a second he looked made-up: the smudges and hollows, the violet shadows.
    You took Ecstasy last night, didn’t you? Genie said.
    Yep. I’ve been awake all night. Think I’m still tripping. You get this feeling when it’s starting to wear off. It’s like the feeling you get when you have a bath. It’s almost too much at first, too hot, and then suddenly it’s perfect, but that moment when it’s just right never lasts long enough. It goes from being too much, to being perfect, to being not hot enough. And once you’ve noticed it starting to cool off you just know it’s only going to get colder and there’s nothing you can do and in the end all you can do is get out. Because you have to get out at some point.

(xii) Lost Time
    The one place Genie had not yet looked for Paul was the club where she’d lost him in the first place. But she was back here now. Looking for Paul. For her lost hours. Looking for her missing three hours. And now she had found those hours: standing on the balcony, looking down at the dancers, taut and twangy and sharp as piano-wire, the bass like a cathode ray oscillator marking the peaks and troughs of her heart and brain waves oh! and that was when she realised she’d found them, her missing three hours. This was where – this was how – she’d lost her three hours the night Paul had gone. She had lost those missing three hours being lost! But it was Paul who was really lost. Wasn’t it always this way for him? Wasn’t he always losing hours here and there on nights like these? Wasn’t he always losing nights? And didn’t those nights add up over time? How was it to be Paul, wondered Genie, always waking up to feel as if he’d lost something the night before? Would there be a point at which what you’d lost outweighed what you had or what you remembered?
    As the numbers thinned out, Genie saw more dance floor than dancers. Mam had always liked to crowd her flowerbeds – she couldn’t stand to see patches of earth around the plants. It looked skimpy, she always said. That was what a half-empty dance floor looked like – a skimpily planted flowerbed. Paul had once gone to a club and lost his watch, the one she and Mam had given him for his twenty-first . He’d waited until the end of the night, until the dance floor had cleared, and then searched the floor. Not only hadhe found his watch, he told Genie later, he had found many watches.
    The lights came up. The few remaining dancers stood blinking, as though they had just been shaken awake.
     
    Genie found herself in a cab on the way to Sol’s place. Minicab drivers were always less interested in where she was going than in where she was from, Genie thought. Their first guess was usually the place where they came from. They were usually wrong. And as the driver continued to list possible countries, Genie stared out at the dark streets, absently tracing a finger along the edge of the stains