Free Girl Seven by Hanna Jameson

heart.’
    I tried to imagine her watching pornography. I tried to imagine her with a woman. I stubbed out my cigarette in the ashtray behind me and motioned for the packet.
    She threw it back to me.
    ‘So... how’s it going with Monobrow?’
    I fiddled with my lighter. She was the only other person who knew, or who claimed to know. I had never actually confirmed anything or spoken to her about it properly. That way I could never be accused of lying.
    The silence was uncharacteristically tense for us.
    ‘I don’t think it’s going any more.’
    She nodded. ‘I’m sorry.’
    ‘He’s married; it was never going to go for long anyway.’
    ‘I think he really likes you, Kik.’
    I forced a smile, even though the mention of it all out loud was bringing the anger back. ‘He’s a prick... Actually, no, he’s not. He’s just... weak. Doesn’t know what he wants one day to the next.’
    ‘He won’t stay with her.’
    ‘He won’t leave her either.’
    ‘Go talk to him.’
    ‘Since when did you become a couples therapist?’
    ‘Just go to his house and talk to him! They’re dim, girl, they’re all really dim. They can’t take hints. Go talk to him.’
    The cigarette was starting to taste stale. ‘Maybe.’
    She was right. It was obvious; I did have to go to his house and talk to him, but not for the reasons she thought. At the time, I was sure everything was going to turn out all right, somehow. It was never my intention for anyone to get hurt.
    That night I dreamt about Seiko.
    One of my earliest memories of Japan, and of my mother, was being taught to deflect a compliment. It was the done thing there, deflection; not being too good, too distinguished. Mum embraced that idea more than Dad ever did. Maybe it was because he was Japanese and she was the other? The westerner? Maybe she just wanted to belong?
    The playground was dark and sullen with humidity.
    I went to a pre-school in Toshima-ku where they were shocked I could speak their language, looking as anglicized as I did. I had the straight dark hair, the skinny frame and the demure voice, but I was still clearly the other. My dark green eyes gave me away, the sallow tone of my skin and exaggerated size of my lips and nose.
    Mum walked me inside the gates with an umbrella hang­ing off her forearm, and started talking to some of the other mothers in broken Japanese. They humoured her, told her it was excellent, when it wasn’t.
    I spotted the only girl I liked, Seiko, and she waved at me.
    ‘Kiyomi is looking beautiful, Helena,’ said Seiko’s mother to mine.
    She was a sweet-faced woman whose teeth were a little too big for her mouth but I thought that only made her look more friendly.
    ‘No, she isn’t,’ Mum said, smiling.
    ‘She is beautiful.’
    ‘No, she isn’t. Thank you.’
    It was an ongoing argument between her and everyone around us who disagreed. To this day, I was never sure who I believed was right. But it was the first thing I remember being taught so overtly, how to deflect. No, not deflect. Reject.
    Seiko told me I was pretty when we were both a little older, when I had moved back to Tokyo for the second time and when we were both able to understand what it meant. It was a relief, coming back to Japan from London at the age of fourteen. I preferred the way I wasn’t leered at. I preferred not having to plan my walks home around the whims of men and their constant over-entitled harassment.
    I used to think that it was here, and only here, in this one city, that I felt a profound sense of calm. Now I realized it wasn’t the place; it was she.
    It was she who started calling me Seven, because of the OCD that dictated I do everything in sevens. I turned lights on and off seven times. I blinked in groups of seven if I got agitated. If I scuffed my heel on the road I had to stop and scuff it another six times...
    But it was all knocked out of me over time, when we moved to London.
    Seiko had inherited her mother’s features: the wide