four stories not about fruit: grapefruit

I wrote this in spring 2019, because a friend and I had made a deal that I would upload four stories and she would upload four songs by April 23rd. It's unedited, and I do know which parts of it are clunky. I pasted together all four stories and put it on Kindle Direct Publishing, where it made about £4.50.

In March 2025 I'm off Amazon, so here you go.

Beth's new nightclub is navy-walled, silver-floored, with pink and white frilled crepe garlands below the air ducts in the ceiling. Pink and white strobe lights spiral across the dancers' faces and I step on a step that isn't there, feeling a crack in my shoulders as I resist the urge to fling my arms out for balance.

The music is sugary remixes of sugary songs from four summers ago, the year these cool girls were fourteen and I was... well, not.

I step left into a gap I see without seeing and look around for Beth's face. The bar is a school gym's balance beam, the bar staff standing behind it and in front of a wall rack of silver foil pouches, taking card payments in their hands and doling out pouches that they punch with a straw, smiling. Clockwise from that is the door to the toilets, its icon glowing behind pink acetate sheet. Then some more wall with cool girls leaning against it, talking close into each other's hair, and then there's a velvet sofa. Beth is in white, sitting on the sofa, looking interested in something a redheaded man is gesturing.

I cast off and drift through between the dancers towards this sofa. Beth must feel my eyes on her, and she looks up. To her credit, she looks delighted to see me and stands, both hands reaching out. The redheaded man stays seated but offers a smile up. It's the smile that's wondering if I'm important, I know it.

Taking her hands in mine I suddenly see overlaid on her all the times she's welcomed me. Beth in white at the lake house, surprise that I'm a day early. Beth in grey at the door to her room, revision books spread across the floor behind her. Beth in sequins at her last birthday party, turning the same smile on each guest in turn and not losing functionality for a moment.

She says "What do you think of it?"

I say "It's the right temperature!" and she thinks that over for one sugar plum fairy two sugar plum fairy and smiles, nodding.

"I'm really glad! Sit here, this is Henry, he's being shown the highlights."

I smile neutrally at Henry. The passive voice means that Henry has been imposed on her. I sit down, smoothing the legs of my trousers down towards my knees, which are tilted away from him. School taught us all so much.

Beth says "Don't you have a drink yet?"

"No, I saw you as I got through the door. I like the pouches."

"They're great, aren't they! Nobody's getting spiked tonight."

Henry looks down at the silver plastic in his hand with a horrified expression that makes it very obvious he had not considered that motive for a moment. Bless him, honestly. Beth passes me an unopened one from behind a cushion to her left, and I peel the straw off it and stab it through, feeling immediately eight years old.

It's sweet, but the mixer is citrus behind the sugar. Not regular orange, perhaps clementine or blood orange? I nod at Beth in appreciation.

"What are the highlights yet to be done?"

Beth grins. "I was trying to talk him into going to Olivia's gallery show tomorrow morning but he's entirely uninterested. You're going, aren't you?"

"Yes!" Clearly I am. "Olivia's great."

"I've told Henry we were all at school together. Shared everything."

Clearly we did. "Oh, everything."

"Actually I've offered to lend her a necklace for the morning, and I thought she'd be here tonight but I haven't heard from her. I expect she's gone to bed early."

I point at the black and white acrylic necklace she's wearing. "This one? It's lovely, I don't think I'd seen it before."

"No, the lapis one, she sent me a photo of the dress and I thought immediately -"

Henry has disconnected, is watching the dancers. Beth's hand moves quickly beside her leg, on the sofa, signing to me. I have to take something small from her tonight and get it to Olivia. I look up at her face to make sure she's looking at me and I mouth 'Flat?'.

She signs hotel and puts her hand back in her lap.

The fear washes over me, as it does every time I take instructions, that this will be the time I get everything wrong and put us in danger. I take another drink from the straw, the red-orange taste silkily covering the moment in which I don't say anything, in which I can't say yes and have never said no.

I think it's grapefruit, actually.

Henry looks back at us, feeling the pause between us under the music. He is either too well trained or too well mannered to ask what happened, even with his eyebrows - which are not red, thank goodness, that would be too awful under the pink searchlights.

Two girls spin out of the dancing crowd and rest against the arm of our sofa, leaning on each other and making 'whew!' faces, laughing. They seem to be wearing silk pyjamas - the taller girl in sky blue and the curvier girl in a rich white, like a parchment.

We both smile politely at him again. I say "How did you say you knew Beth?"

It's too sharp, I know as soon as I've said it. But perhaps he'll think I'm just jealous, insecure.

He says "Oh, my company have sent me over for two meetings in five days, and one of them is with her dad, so."

Jesus wept. If Beth's step-dad volunteered her to take this man round nightclubs I'll eat the whole sofa. This is nonsense. But which direction is it nonsense from?

The girls in pyjamas have finished tidying each other's hair and silk lapels and started paying attention to the three of us, an awkward angle.

"I do need to get in touch with Olivia and cancel breakfast, really." Beth says, thoughtfully, to neither of us. "I would have met her at her hotel but now I need to take Henry to Oatunut, he's never had a buddha bowl."

The white searchlight passes over her, her hair glinting.

"Oh yes, and Oatunut is quite the other way. Shame." I say, sign and countersign.

I know that white dress has a poacher's pocket across the back, slim and invisibly zipped at the waistband on the inside. I have a similar pocket in my shirt, vertically down a seam at the right shoulder blade. They're padded enough that even when you load them up the fabric just sits against you like skin. A person, a Henry, could run their hand across your back, as men like Henry do, could pat you to usher you through a nightclub crowd and not feel you had anything inside your clothes but yourself.

If, I think sourly, that.

But if Henry is what's stopping her he must know there's a transfer, and that's why Olivia isn't here, and why she can't meet Olivia for breakfast. So now he knows I know them both and can get between them tonight even if Olivia is also being covered.

A signal flickers between the girl in blue pyjamas and the girl in ivory pyjamas, and they focus in on Beth and me like documentary lionesses hunting, fully ignoring Henry.

Blue says "Girls, I haven't seen you dancing yet!"

I'm on Beth's payroll and I have a tracker in my upper arm, nobody can disappear me. Beth always says even arrest is ephemeral.

Beth looks over the cool girls, pantomiming assessment, and grins widely. "You're so right, we've been talking far too long."

It's only ever Beth who knows everything that's going on and of course I trust her. I want her to trust me, though, and what if acting as though I'm not bothered by her having this man obstructing her plans makes me look like I'm too laid back, not serious enough?

Henry says, in response to a look I didn't catch, "God no, you two go dance, I'd just embarrass everyone." and I see Beth give him a genuine smile.

And these girls, silky and deliberate, are they already on Beth's crew? Are they on payroll like me? Or are they with Henry, is that why they've blanked him? If you're hiding that you know someone, sometimes you overcompensate and ignore them more than you would a real stranger.

Beth puts her cool hand flat on my shoulder and I realise she stood up again. "Come on." she says. "We haven't danced in months."

If they're not on her payroll, what's the worst that could happen?

We slide a little way into the crowd of dancers. The two strangers and Beth are beginning to dance, but I can't feel the beat yet. "Does Olivia know the way here? If she is coming after all?"

"No, Olivia won't be here now. It's just us."Beth says, her skirt swaying as the music moves up her body. It hasn't reached her eyes, but perhaps someone who hadn't known her so many years wouldn't notice the business in them.

Another cool girl dances into me and slides away again, perhaps as a favour. Suddenly my anxiety matches its beat with the music and I can move my arms like the others. I am no worse at this dance than anyone else here, and better than some. "She'll be sorry to see me instead of you. I never have passed as you."

She grins, and covers it with a twirl, her hair fluttering.

Blue silk and ivory silk dance into us and we turn with them, breaking eye contact for long enough. I look up, dizzy, still tasting citrus in the back of my mouth, and a light hits me straight in the eyes. When I look back down the three women have trailing afterimages. Dance through it, I think, you've danced through worse.

"But you know, I've passed as worse." I say, leaning into Beth's ear as she twirls back towards me, and I feel the laugh across my shoulder.

We drift across the dance floor with the two pyjama-cool girls in our orbit, file into the lavatory and the door swings closed behind us, cutting off the music. Ivory pyjamas leans in closely to the long mirror, checking her eye make-up or perhaps her eyes. Blue pyjamas perches her narrow blue-silk bottom on one washbasin and leans back, waiting.

Beth and I exchange glances and go into the widest cubicle. I unzip the waist of her dress silently, then turn so she can unzip my shirt.

The delivery, this time, is two things taped together: a strip cut from a sheet of tablets, five blisters on the strip, one of them popped empty, and a memory card the size of a fingernail.

The tablets rattle, harsh in the tiled silence.

Ivory is leaning against the mirror as we leave the cubicle.

"I heard the song of my people." she says. "Could you spare two? I've got nowhere in this outfit to store anything." She holds out her arms to show us how little space there is. My eyes have adjusted from the dance floor and her skin looks rich against the silk.

She holds her gaze on Beth, so I can laugh. Beth, after a moment, laughs too, but says "I'm afraid that won't be possible, they're on their way to someone else who needs them more."

Oh god, so they're not on payroll, and if they're with the opposition then Beth's just completely - but I trust her. She's assessed them on levels I can't see. Beth doesn't take stupid risks.

"Would you like to help?" Beth asks them both.

I nod, willing them to agree.

"Like... to escort?" Blue says, play-innocent, and Beth laughs again. "You need that Percy-looking suit distracted?"

So now they're on payroll, and I relax from my temples on downward.

Back in the crowd, my shirt is cool against my skin, the new load in its invisible pocket adding no weight but feeling different.

I look over to check that Henry is still in the velvet sofa and yes, he's being brought another foil-sealed drink and the waitress is wiping her hand on her trousers as she walks away, she must have pierced it for him.

The music has quickened while we were out of the room and the white and pink searchlights are tracing their connected spirals faster than I can follow with my eyes, my arms, while my boots stay heavy on the silver floor. Ivory is a better dancer than any of us, fluid and somehow generous, her arms full of prompts for us. Blue is prettier, symmetrical and reserved.

I mustn't over-think this, just move something, move my arms, reach up, there, this twist, I'm okay at this. Ivory flings her arms up too, grinning, copying my lines. A cool girl behind her does the same, copying her better move with an even better one, or perhaps it's just that she waited for a beat, and I feel a smack against my back and it's wet all down my shoulder blade and my first thought is that a dancer has stabbed me, under cover of the pink and white light and the cool girls.

I whirl and reach left-handed behind me and look and there's nobody; they faded into the crowd again. I look down at my fingers and see no darkness; the wet is clear. Beth, a laugh freezing on her face, moves in towards me and takes my wrist, looks at my fingers.

It's a drink, that's all, someone spilled one of these foil drinks on me. On my right shoulder, exactly where the invisible pocket is.

Beth leans in, still swaying, and says "It'll be fine. Take her with you. Olivia will be ready." She reaches out without looking, catches Ivory's hand and joins it with mine. It's warm. Beth looks at Blue. "You'll stay with me."

I have never known anyone not do as Beth tells them.

Ivory says "Show me!" and squeezes my sticky left hand. A white searchlight flares across my eyes, I'm sure my smile looks stupid. Beth and Blue swirl back between the dancers towards Henry, to do whatever must be done. Ivory and I slide away towards the wall and around the edge, glowing and giggling, towards the door. She still has my hand as we leave, a shock of cool air from the vent above the door and then the quiet heat of the evening on us again.

People are standing around the door, waiting for their friends before they go in, or smoking little points of light in the night.

Beth's naturally right, it's less noticeable to arrive at the hotel as two of us leaning on each other and giggling in a haze of spilled cocktail, than just me on edge and trying to look sober. Sticky cool girls arrive at Olivia's type of hotel wearing not enough all the time.

We're already walking when I realise I've decided. There's been an awful lot of that lately.

Ivory says "What am I escorting?"

"As far as I know, a list of locations. Logistics, you know, parcel tracking."

"What kind of parcels get tracked by nervous hot girls in clubs?"

I squeeze her hand and watch her face as I say "The kind that aren't ours yet?"

She nods, grins, and starts telling me about her other friend who once joined a band - and I know the rhythm of this story at once, she's calming me down quite deliberately.

The hotel is white but amber in the streetlights. I know which window is usually Olivia's but I don't look up at it because that's not a normal thing to know, and anyway Ivory is holding my wrist in a way that presses the pads of her fingers against my pulse and I'm trying very hard to remember that we just met and why that matters. We look drunk; we look sticky and cool, and I've been agreeing with her conversation the whole way.

The receptionist doesn't remember me or I'm disguised by Ivory's company. We take the lift, happily tense in the tiny space.

Olivia is in the corridor, bare feet and yoga clothes, aiming her smile at us as the lift doors open.

"I'm so sorry I couldn't be at the club!" She launches a wide hug at me with not even a blink at Ivory's presence on my arm or my drink-splashed shirt. "Come in, come in." and we're ushered into her room.

Her weekend bag sprawls open on the enormous bed, cables and strands of clothing extending outwards from it. "Just shove everything over." she says and busies herself loading a glossy hotel coffee machine while Ivory sits at the foot of the bed between her travel gear.

I undo my shirt and slide it off my arms. "Someone chucked a drink over me."

Olivia says "No way! What had you said?"

Ivory hoots with laughter. I say "No, not like that, not threw, spilled - look." and hold out the shirt to Olivia, shoulder pocket first. This hotel room is so clean I can smell the drink on the cloth. It's the same red-gold citrus as I'd been drinking. Pink grapefruit, I'm sure of it now.

Olivia swaps me a dressing gown for my shirt.

Unzipped, the little payload is soaked through, the ink in the printed tape a bleary mess.

"Bugger." says Olivia. "Well, let's see if it still reads." and she glides - there's never been a better word for how she moves - across the hotel room towards her laptop.

I finish pouring three cups of coffee from the glossy machine while she taps, drags, taps, frowns. Ivory accepts one cup and I cradle another in my palms, not looking at either of them, hearing a sinking note of failure in my mind. If I was a better dancer, it would have been fine.

"No, that's wrecked." Olivia crosses back towards her coffee. "Where's Beth?"

"She had a cling-on at the club, she might still be there?"

Ivory says "I can call Casey? She wouldn't have left them. Too much fun."

"That's probably better than calling Beth, if the cling-on is what I think. Have you got codes?"

"We have one for trouble and one for getting laid, I don't -"

I say to Olivia "We just met tonight."

"Oh! Well, awesome to meet you. Tell Casey to find out if we can go to Beth's flat."

Ivory blinks and her jaw juts.

"No, first pretend I said that in a nice way, like Beth would have said it. Then please and thank you." Olivia smiles, which is how she gets away with that, and Ivory pulls a phone out of oh ok so her pyjama trousers had a pocket in, I did not see how that was possible.

Olivia and I keep our eyes on each other while she makes the call. It's in a cheerful shorthand that makes my heart lurch with envy - these are codes she doesn't even see are codes, it all just grew between two friends.

I say quietly "May I borrow a top?"

"Of course!" She points at the half-unpacked bag on her bed. "Anything, you know that, come on." She means it, so I stir through the jersey jumble and pick out something dark grey and as soft as the hotel dressing gown.

Blip, says Ivory's phone, and she looks up at us sunnily.

"They're at Beth's flat and Beth's ordered us a car to join them. They've got Korean barbecue and they're going to dose Percy's next drink."

"His name was Henry." I say, mostly to Olivia, who's putting on grey trainers and a light jacket.

"Sure, but he looked like a Percy. I don't make the rules."

I feel hollow on the way out again - the lift is bigger with three of us in it than it was with only two. The receptionist graces only Olivia with a nod.

The car she sends is, as always, dark blue and silent. Ivory holds my hand again but I can't get back to the giggling feeling I had before. She doesn't seem upset. Why isn't she upset? I'm being the worst pickup ever to have existed.

Beth's flat is in a terrace, a white door between bay trees on white steps.

Beth answers the door and on seeing her face Olivia and I both tense, our shoulders broadening to defend her. Our muscle memory holds very old codes buried deeply.

"Field trip to the spy museum and you all think you're Charlotte Gray!" Henry's slurred voice carries from the living room to the hall. Blue - Casey, I suppose - is laughing as though she can't stop, as though he is riffing on a comedy routine.

The food they've had delivered smells unutterably amazing and I feel an acidic lurch of hunger. Blue is leaning forward from Beth's good armchair and loading up a plate from various white cartons, her hands shaking from laughter.

"You're not going! To save! The world!"

I watch, speechless, as he fails to thump his fist for emphasis on the arm of the sofa.

"What has he had?" I ask Beth.

"I've not seen anyone react like this before." Beth sounds as though she's talking to herself, which is meant to soften the fact that it wasn't an answer.

"I know you lot! Gap years digging wells! Should have sent the plane fare to the. To the fucking village. But you want to be involved!" He tries to sit forward, to shake his finger at any of us. "And you can't stop! Got to keep pushing the. Pushing boundaries. It's politics but you'll never get gassed. You're safe. The lot of you."

Ivory has apparently figured out that he's not coordinated enough to be a threat and walks from beside me to beside Blue's armchair. They exchange competent glances and Blue pops a forkful of glazed chicken and rice into Ivory's mouth.

"You been ok?"

"It's been hilarious, doll. Meatfaced prick thinks he's putting us down."

"I can hear you!"

"If I thought that would stop you I'd have said it sooner." Blue says, peacefully arranging tiny glossy vegetables on a scrap of bread. "I'd have time travelled back to your cradle and whispered it in your innocent pink ear."

"Brats. I trained for my. I applied! You just end up with the money because you know the right people! I trained!"

"So anyway." Olivia says, her attention moving off Henry. She catches Beth's eye and signs, Small thing damaged.

Expletive small thing will be expletive damaged soon, signs Beth, looking at Henry's shoes on her coffee table. Olivia and I snort and I cover my face.

Replace writing, signs Olivia, patiently. Beth waves her towards the study and turns back to the noise. I'm sure in school I used to be able to follow two separate conversations, spoken and signed. I wonder when I lost that.

And then I make a connection I can't believe I'd missed. This was a true failure. My whole responsibility was to separate Beth and Olivia because Beth couldn't separate from Henry. The data at risk was never as important as keeping Olivia's face out of this picture.

"Think you know who should know what! Think you've solved it. In your good school. Never worked. Never had to please anyone but yourselves!" He tries again to thump the sofa arm and hits his own thigh, his gaze on the ceiling lampshade. "Never had to compromise so you just think you're right. Think you've got the right. My god."

They really will never rely on me again.

Blue says, entirely casually "Percy, what do you get out of stopping this?"

He turns his whole body to look at her, which drags his feet off the coffee table. Beth visibly relaxes.

Blue says "I mean, you're saying you applied. You have a normal job. You have a pension plan?"

"Yes, snotty little -"

"You get told where to go and which gorgeous women to follow so they can't, I dunno, meet up with other gorgeous women who are apparently famous artists and give them information that stops some other Percy in a house nicer than yours making another million quid."

Henry blinks.

"He's probably not even a Percy. He's probably a Quentin. A Peregrine!" Blue leans towards Henry and shines him a ferociously pretty smile. "He doesn't know you're here."

"You can't threaten me!"

"You'll know when I start. I mean Peregrine is asleep on Egyptian sheets while you're sweating poison to get these girls to cry and give up. But I just met them and I know women who don't give up. I just met you, Percy, and I know the four of us here can pull every one of your nails out and feed them to you and Peregrine in his swimming pool of cash won't know until your boss's boss's report lands on his marble desk and even then he won't care."

Olivia has come back in, made eye contact with Beth and me and patted her hip. I didn't know those yoga trousers had pockets, but that's clearly the mime.

Blue forks another little stack of glazed grilled vegetables into her mouth, chews thoughtfully and says "You don't matter, do you."

Henry has not looked away. I'm glad I can see that he's still breathing.

"You could vanish. They sent you because you're irrelevant." She cracks the knuckles of her left hand, watching him. We all flinch but he doesn't, he's locked onto her eyes. "You don't matter to your job. You don't matter to us. I've already forgotten your face, Perce, may I call you Perce?"

Henry nods, horribly.

"You should go, Perce. Everything will be better if you go. Try to sleep."

He stands like he's falling upwards. It's awful. I've never seen this done from the outside before. I step back out of his way as he walks, strung-puppet, towards the door.

Beth lets him out silently and returns.

Olivia says "Casey, I'm going to get you a drink." and Blue nods, concentrating on food.

I say, in the sudden peace "I know how bad tonight was. I'm sorry. I can't justify - If you need me to be out, I get it. I exposed you all to this risk."

"Sweetheart, we've all always been in the same amount of risk. I put you in situations -" Beth gestures widely and chaotically.

"That's because you're the boss."

Beth looks genuinely surprised. "Is that how you've been - I didn't think it was like that."

Olivia says "Beth thinks we're a network, honey. She only has more information than us because she has more time because she sleeps three hours a night."

"No, I know, of course we're a network."

"You clearly don't know, so hush. We aren't here because we're the best. The best would have finished by eight and been home with Book At Bedtime. We're here because someone is a cowboy with a white hat and won't let go of women she trusted in school."

Beth says "I've always -" but Olivia holds her hand up irritably.

"Trust isn't normal to any of us. It's got nothing to do with knowing you won't fuck up."

Ivory, docile but attentive in the corner of Beth's sofa, suddenly looks as though everything has become clear. "Oh, god, we absolutely have that. Case!"

The three of us standing look at her.

Blue says "Totally. We couldn't be friends if it was predicated on good behaviour. We'd have to find new girlfriends with standards."

Olivia says "You're here as long as you want to be. And after that, I mean if Beth lets you down somehow and you want out, there are data collection things in place that mean you're looked after as long as you're breathing."

On some level I know that ought to be creepy but it's not, it's so brutal it's reassuring. I let my breath out and step back from its weight in the space between us. The backs of my legs hit the padded arm of the armchair Blue's been curled up in.

I look round to apologise to her but somehow in that minute she's fallen asleep.

The room feels quieter, the air finer, now that I've seen that. Her hands uncurled beside her, a smudge of barbecue sauce on her silk sleeve.

"But you are good at this, even though I didn't choose you for being good." Beth says, her fingers twisting each other as she tries to navigate fourteen years of truth. "I don't think about it much. But you taught yourself, because you thought it mattered. I knew you would. That's the point, I think?"

Olivia says "It's far too far the wrong side of midnight to find the point. I have to look like an elite intellectual in nine and a half hours." She collapses onto the sofa beside Ivory, reaches for one of the open food cartons on the coffee table and digs in.

Beth says "There are beds for all of you, if you want." and Olivia nods, not even looking up from the food. I look at Ivory, who stands up saying "No, I need to be up in less than six, I have to get home."

It's gone one in the morning but it's still warm out. Ivory and I walk from the flat to a tube station holding hands, invisible in the amber haze. Our shadows are bruise-blue, flickering long to short to long to short as we pass under street lights.

She says calmly, almost sleepily "I guess that was sweet of her but I'm pretty sure you do matter."

"Sometimes that's what I want to think, but not often."

"Well, none of it was how I thought tonight was going. So you matter to me. And Casey."

I squeeze her hand and swing it a little. "It's okay if I don't, though. I mean it. If you wake up and go actually this was the wrong type of mad, it will really be okay. I'm glad you were here."

She stops, pulling my arm. "Hey."

"I mean, there are a lot of nervous hot girls out there you could meet. I bet some of them don't even know they're nervous yet."

She thinks that over, I can see it. And then she grins, sharp and sweet, and says "Meet them with me."