Free Desert Fish by Cherise Saywell

she was gone.
    There was silence for a moment, apart from the creak of the sofa as Dad leaned back into it, and the sound he made drinking from the can.
    â€˜She’s growing up nice, that Lexie,’ Dad said. He wouldn’t look at me when he said it, so I guess he knew what he was doing. He wanted to keep on sharing his thoughts with me. ‘She’s quite a woman now, isn’t she?’
    â€˜I s’pose,’ I huffed. I got up and moved to the chair on the other side of the room. I felt him watching me. I was not a young girl anymore. I had breasts and hips and I guess he looked at me in a different way now. I wasn’t sure what he was seeing. My legs were not long like Lexie’s, and although my skin was smooth, I was fleshy and pale. I couldn’t work out if he measured me in the same way he did her.
    I deposited myself in the chair and then folded my arms.
    â€˜You should wipe your lip,’ I said.
    â€˜Spoilsport,’ he replied, including me again in that way that I hated. But he dragged his thumb across his mouth and cleaned it on his shorts. Then he licked the can where the rest of Lexie’s colour was smeared, upturned it and finished his drink.
    Â 
    Beside the pool the light lies in solid yellow blocks. The sun is high; the heat is the still, breathless kind. I can tell straightaway that the suntanned woman is nothing likeLexie. For a start, she meets my eye as she greets me, not looking beyond to see if there’s anyone more interesting to chat to. ‘Hi,’ she says as I approach the deckchairs. ‘Glad you’re still here. Thought I’d be on my own today.’ Her lashes are thick with mascara. She smiles into my face and then says, ‘I hoped you’d come out. I brought my kit with me.’
    She turns and opens a round pink case. It has a quilted lining, packed with manicure instruments and bottles of nail varnish. As she organises her things I notice that even the back of her neck is brown. She selects two bottles of nail polish and places them on the slatted table. Then she takes some varnish remover and a bag of cotton wool balls. She orders them, putting the remover at the front, the bottles behind, taking a handful of cotton wool balls from their wrapping and sitting them to the side. Everything about her seems measured and arranged in a way that stirs caution in me. My wrong body, my temporary shape and my uncertain story will be transparent to someone so precise. But when she has finished sorting out her cosmetics she reaches for her case again and takes a chocolate bar, putting it at the back of the table, behind all of the other things. Chomp , it says, in fat crass letters, red with an exclamation mark. It’s out of place beside the varnish. It doesn’t belong with feathery blonde hair and a cultivated tan and the way she has placed it neatly behind everything else makes me laugh out loud.
    â€˜What’s funny?’ she asks.
    â€˜Oh, it’s just that.’ I point at the chocolate. ‘It lookskind of, I don’t know, odd, with all the other things. And everything so neat, too.’
    She laughs with me. ‘I love them,’ she says. ‘Trev brings them for me.’ Leaning forward, she looks into my face. ‘What a funny thing to notice. It’s like you know me already.’
    I really want to be her friend when she says that. Something opens up inside me and I know I ought to go back to my room. ‘Not much to do indoors,’ I comment.
    â€˜No. You don’t get much duller than a motel room, I can tell you that from experience. Not when you’re on your own.’ She sits in the chair next to mine. ‘How long are you here?’
    â€˜Just a day or two more, I think. It depends on my husband.’ I love the way that sounds. My husband .
    â€˜Oh. We’ll be around for a week or so,’ she says. ‘I wish I could drive. I’d spend a day in the city,