The Drowning of Arthur Braxton. Caroline Smailes

I’d known that Silver reads palms. I’ve been working six weeks now and I know pretty much everything that goes on. I’m sitting on the stone steps outside the Males 1st Class entrance, reading and loving that it’s a suntrap. I’ve got another one of my little dresses on, Mum treated me, buying it from Miss Selfridges instead of Mark One. It’s got tiny yellow-and-blue flowers on it. I’ve got it hitched up into my knickers. I’m stretching out my legs across the steps and I’ve even taken off my DMs. I’m happy. I hear him whistling. Silver comes and sits next to me.

      ‘Show me your palm,’ he says and I do. I mean I don’t even think twice about it. I like Silver, he’s got kind eyes and he’s bought me a tube of Smarties from the shops every day for the last two weeks. I’m saving the lids, trying to spell out ‘Laurel’, but I’ve not got ‘r’ or ‘u’ yet and I’ve only got one ‘l’. I slide my hand off my open book and hold it up to his face. Silver smiles.

      Silver lifts my palm up close to his eyes. He tilts my palm this way and that way and bends my fingers one by one. He runs his chubby man-fingers over the lines.

      ‘Oh,’ he says.

      ‘What?’ I ask.

      I look at Silver, tears are already falling from his eyes.

      ‘What?’ I ask.

      ‘Run for your life,’ Silver says, letting go of my palm with a deep sob. He steadies himself on the metal railing, trying to get to his feet.

      ‘Silver, tell me,’ I say. I’m terrified.

      ‘I can’t, pet,’ he says. ‘It isn’t what I do. Things happen as they should.’ Then he walks back through the open wooden doors and into The Oracle. I hear him sobbing.

      ‘Silver,’ I shout, dropping my book and getting to my feet. The steps are hot.

      ‘I wouldn’t bother,’ Martin Savage says. I hadn’t seen him coming. I pull at my dress, to make sure that it’s not still tucked in my knickers. He’s at the bottom of the stone steps, dragging on a rolled ciggie. ‘He’ll not tell you if it’s bad.’

      ‘Will you?’ I ask.

      ‘Don’t know if I should, what with you not letting me take you out,’ he says.

      ‘Please,’ I say.

      ‘Okay,’ he says, and then, ‘But you’ll owe me one.’

      He climbs the steps to beside me.

      ‘Sit down, Laurel,’ he says. I do. I don’t want to owe him, but I’m that desperate.

      ‘Give me your palm,’ he says. I do.

      ‘How old are you again, Laurel?’ he asks.

      ‘Nearly fifteen,’ I say.

      ‘You’re pretty,’ he says, stroking his index finger up my fingers and down to the base of my palm. It tickles, I giggle even though I don’t want to giggle. Then he brings my palm up to his mouth and kisses it with his lips. He makes me want to be sick, I don’t like his kisses. ‘Ask Madame Pythia,’ he says.

      ‘Ask her what?’ I say.

      ‘To read your palm, I do tarot.’ He laughs, a low and dirty laugh.

      He lets go of my palm and leans towards me and kisses my cheek. ‘You owe me one, you promised. Nice girls don’t break their promises,’ he says.

      He smells of ciggies and stale beer and he makes my insides hula-hoop. I’ve seen what he likes to do. A couple of nights ago I sneaked up onto the viewing gallery and sat on the back row, on one of them fold-down seats. I was quiet, proper quiet and I watched just what he does to heal the women. I wanted to understand all that stuff he’d said about love. And that’s why I know that Martin Savage’s dirty, I mean he does proper dirty things. The noises he made and the mess they made. If that’s what love is, then I don’t want any of it. And I certainly don’t want him loving me.

      But Martin Savage is used to having women falling at his feet. I mean I’ve seen them all at The Oracle. They’ll be queuing down the steps leading up to the Males 2nd Class pool. Some days the queue goes all the way down and onto the beach. He’s the only one of the water-healers who does a drop-in session every night. I’ve watched when Martin’ll come swaggering along the sand and the women’ll turn into quivering wrecks, dying to take their clothes off and let him swim naked with them in the Males 2nd Class pool. I overheard one of the women saying that after one of her friends had let Martin Savage do things to her in the pool, then she’d been able to have babies. She reckoned that Martin Savage could heal insides and because word’s spread now every woman in the world’s wanting to have a bit of him. It isn’t like that with me. I mean I don’t get why all the women are falling at his feet, and I know that there are some women who’d happily swim to him sitting naked on the edge of the pool and suck on his willy, while he’s huffing and puffing for Wales and trying to say words to heal them.

      So when he kisses me on the cheek, I mean I don’t know how to react. It’s not like I fancy him. I mean he’s old enough to be my dad and I’ve seen where his lips have been. I mean Martin Savage’s probably the kind of bloke Mum would have gone for. He’s married, he’s got kids and he’s a bad bad man. I need him not to love me.

      I turn to look at Martin and he moves in to kiss me on the lips. I pull my head back and bang it on the metal rail.

      ‘My head,’ I say. It hurts like hell.

      Martin Savage gets up, and walks into The Oracle. ‘You promised, you owe me, prick-tease,’ he says.

       He Wants a Virgin:

      Later, I was sitting at my desk when he came over and sat on the edge as usual, bending in right close to look at his appointments in the book.

      ‘I haven’t had a virgin for a couple of years,’ he said. I looked at him, he stared at me.

      At first I thought I’d heard him wrong and so I didn’t say a word back to him. And that’s when he said, ‘You’d better be a virgin. I don’t want to be wasting my time on you. No one likes a filthy whore.’

      ‘I am,’ I said and I blushed again.

      ‘You’re a prick-tease, that’s what you are. We had a deal, you owe me,’ he said, before pushing the appointment book onto the floor and ordering me to pick it up. I didn’t at first, I was looking around to see if anyone was watching. They weren’t. And that’s when he shouted. ‘Pick the fucker up.’

      I bent to pick up the book.

      ‘And the toilets in my changing rooms need cleaning,’ he said, before walking off.

      That was a couple of hours ago and I’ve still not plucked up the courage to go into his changing rooms. I don’t want to be near him, I don’t even want to be here in The Oracle. I told Mum last night, told her about how weird Martin was and how he made me feel and Mum said that I should just grin and bear it. And then she said that I should stop my moaning and be grateful that I had a job and that we needed the money, and if I gave up then she’d have to think twice about whether or not I could go to college.

      So I go to have a look in the Males 2nd Class changing rooms. I push the door open and shout a ‘hello’ but no one replies. I walk around, looking and looking some more, but it all seems to be pretty clean. I mean I know Maggie, the cleaner, was in this morning. I mean she comes in every morning. There’s no towels lying around, the floor isn’t dirty, there’s not even any water on the floor. I’m walking towards the toilet and that’s when I realise that he’s in the changing rooms too.

      ‘Time you let me suck on those little titties of yours,’ he says. I turn. He’s standing in front of the door so there’s no way I can get out. ‘Undo your dress,