GALLEY BEGGAR PRESS SHORT STORY PRIZE 2025/26

LUCY CAMPBELL

‘Two Roosters’

I AM TAGGING ALONG TO MR WOLF’S WITH JAMIE. It’s a random Tuesday and I’ve nothing else to do. We’re in Jamie’s car, he’s a bit tense. ‘What don’t you like about your hair anyway? It looks great.’ Jamie had the best hair in school. He still has the best hair of anyone I know. Long black ringlets which tumble down his face and back. ‘You’re already a babe. What do you want to go changing for?’

‘Switch it up. I don’t know,’ he says. ‘I’m bored of me.’

‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘I’m bored of me too.’ I stare out at our ragged town centre; cobbles and a black sheen of pollution. No one goes here anymore, not since the mall was built, all shiny white marble with parking and restaurant chains. ‘Will he have amber eyes?’ I ask innocently. ‘A wolfish pelt with shaved sides?’ I know I’m being annoying but I need to obliterate my circling thoughts. Anyway, Jamie is ignoring me. ‘Pelt,’ I say again. The word feels good in my mouth. ‘I wonder if he employs the under-wolves to sweep the floor and wash hair. Will they be in uniform? Or do they get to wear their own fur?’

‘Mock if you like, Jameela, but he’s considered an icon, he’s got a cult following. Just because you haven’t heard of him, doesn’t make it untrue.

‘Jameeeela?’ I say. He usually calls me Jammy. We are Jammy and Jamie.

*

Jamie is parking outside a row of boarded-up shops. Except for one. MISTER WOLF’S it says in red neon capitals, and underneath, in looping cursive with its own quotation marks, ‘Expect The Unexpected.’ The words glow buoyant and optimistic. Perhaps Mr Wolf can magic me into something new. Maybe I should book an appointment. It doesn’t look too promising though. The upstairs windows have broken glass and torn industrial blinds. It’d be a good place to hide a body,or disappear in order to die. Mini-trees have seeded in the gutters and turrets, forming little roof-gardens for squirrels or pigeons. A row of pigeons survey us from on high, giving off a territorial vibe. One has tattered grey feathers and a puffy neck, and stares at me assertively with beady eyes, tilting its head to one side. Paul from school, I think.

‘Who does that pigeon look like?’

Jamie squints up, ‘Paul from school?’

*

Jamie’s still living in his mum’s flat. I left and went to uni. But I’ve come back. Back living with my mum and little sisters. I’ve not said that its permanent. Not yet. I haven’t told anyone The Thing. I don’t know what I am going to say. It’s good to be with Jamie today, just like it was before. The Thing isn’t even that bad. The first bit. It was what I wanted. Though his hands were unexpectedly cold. White icy fingers lifting off my top and dropping it on the floor, then the way he was staring at my breasts. I was just a body. He had forgotten that I was inside it. He put his finger on my lips so Ididn’t speak, in case I spoiled the moment. We were in my hall of residence bedroom, he had suggested we go there. Inside, he shut the door and kissed me, pushing me against the wall, his tongue in my mouth, and then on my neck, quite forceful. He was shrugging out of his jacket. Then he was directing me onto the bed, guiding me into lying down, unfastening my jeans, sliding them down my legs, and then, ‘You want this?’ and me nodding, and he was removing my pants, and then opening his flies, pushing his trousers down out of the way so his erect penis sprung out, bobbing like a Mr Blobby air filled man outside a petrol station. He was pushing my thighs apart with one hand and guiding his penis inside me, and then he was thrusting in, thrusting, groaning and thrusting. And suddenly he pulled out and watched himself pump come on my tummy skin, and whimpered a few times, quietly, like a puppy in distress. And that was it. He stood up, fastened his trousers, put his jacket on, took out the red handkerchief from his top pocket, and wiped the come off me. I wondered what he’d do with the handkerchief, but he kept it balled up in one hand while he pulled the duvet over me and tucked me in. He kissed my forehead, and left. Maybe it was OK. I wasn’t sure why it made me feel so horrible. Then I made it a whole lot worse. As long as I don’t tell Jamie, none of it happened. Keep it in the box, like Schrodinger’s Cat.

*

Jamie is triggering a clang from a bell as he steps into the salon. I follow close on his heels, sticking myself to him. It’s dim and cluttered inside. An overloaded coat-stand staggers as I brush past. I apologise. Faces turn, then look away. The salon smells of hairspray and peroxide and a tinge of bad-drains. No one else seems bothered by it, so I sniff myself furtively. Maybe it’s me. This rotting thing following me about.

We sit on a couple of chairs beside the reception desk and watch Mr Wolf attend to an old lady, spraying serum on her sharp white bob, chatting quietly as he shows her the back with a round mirror. She looks sleek with her short hair, smiles at Mr Wolf in the mirror. He smiles back, he has a lot of teeth, set in an angular jaw. He’s also quite old. His grey hair is tied back in a ponytail.

‘Silver Wolf?’ I whisper to Jamie. Jamie is not responding.

Mr Wolf disappears behind a pillar.

‘Do you think his fluffy tail is tucked inside his trousers?’

The lady leaves, the bell clangs, and then suddenly Mr Wolf is looming over us, holding out a black plastic cloak.

‘Which one of you is Jamie?’

I nudge Jamie off his chair. He elbows me back invisibly, and sways over to the styling chair behind Mr Wolf.

‘So what are we doing today, Jamie?’ Mr Wolf asks, and they fall into a discussion. Mr Wolf’s voice is hushed and gravelly. I am trying to make out actual sentences but can’t hear properly. My head feels heavy. I have a whole committee of vultures now, hanging about in the trees. I am a dead deer, shot by a little man in a tweed jacket notching upanother pop. Fair game. Nothing personal. And he was quite nice, of all the students, you are the one who stands out. What did I expect, a ring on my finger? This is normal sex. Sex for sex’s sake. I flick through old Hello and OK magazines and settle on reading ‘Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving’ in Men’s Health.

When I look up, it’s even darker in here. I wonder how Mr Wolf can see well-enough to cut Jamie’s hair, but maybe he’s in his own flow-state. Maybe he has night vision. The radio has gone quiet. I see that Jamie is no longer chatting to Mr Wolf, but is gripping the armrests. His hands look tiny and helpless, just his fingers poking out of the blackcloak. And the sound of snip snip snip as Mr Wolf’s scissors carve into each one of Jamie’s perfect curls, splicing themlike flowers that have turned themselves inside out. The word overblown sits in my head. Mr Wolf is turning Jamie into something from the 1970s, and not in a good way.

Jamie looks more and more upset as his head grows and puffs in a fluffy frizz. He has a full size lion’s mane which Mr Wolf is further enlarging with the hairdryer. I give a little wave and Jamie finally acknowledges me with a puzzled and discouraged look.

‘Expect the unexpected,’ I mouth, trying to look optimistic.

‘Rod Stewart?’ he mouths back, questioning, hoping I might disagree. His face is a bit crumpled. I think he might cry. I nod my head to one side, as if I can’t quite make up my mind, trying to keep him in a universe where this isn’t so bad.

*

‘I’ve been violated,’ Jamie says as we are getting into his car. He has hidden his monstrous head in the hood of his hoodie. ‘It’s pure spite. He did it on purpose.’

‘What did that cost you?’

‘Now is not the moment, Jammy.’

‘Over a hundred?’

‘Fuck off.’

‘I bet you tipped. Did you tip?’

‘Yes, so what? I believe it’s important to tip.’

‘What’s his actual name?’ I said. ‘Mr Wolf must be made up.’

‘Obviously.’

‘Maybe he’s a Justin?’ I say. ‘Or a Keith?’

We are on the familiar roads through town to Jamie’s flat, tall council blocks hide the heavy sky. We stop at some traffic lights.

‘He does look like a wolf though,’ I say.

Jamie is staring through thewindscreen.

‘My hair cried when he was cutting it.’

‘Put your hood down, let’s have a look.’

‘No.’

We drive silently for a bit. I put on the radio. Chris Martin sings, ‘Could it be worse?’ I warble along in a small high voice, ‘Lights will guiiiiide you home, and ignooore your phone, and I will tryyyy to fix you.’

Jamie turns the radio off.

‘But if you never try, you'll never know,’ I croon gently into the silence.

‘Hair cutting is a form of molestation,’ he says. ‘My hair was innocent and he took advantage.’

‘Why didn’t you say something?’

‘You can’t, can you. If they think you’re onto them, it could become overtly sadistic. They know what they’re doing. They enjoy it. Holding that power.’

‘You kept smiling at him.’

‘Stockholm Syndrome.’

‘It’s called Fawning, apparently. I read about it in Men’s Health. Over-accommodating others, difficulty saying no, and suppressing personal values.’

*

Later, we are in Jamie’s bathroom. He is sitting on a chair positioned in front of the mirror. I have made a hairdresser’s cloak by cutting a head-hole in a plastic bin-bag with nail scissors. Jamie is wriggling his head through the tight space like a baby emerging into the world. I have strips of parcel tape ready to secure it around his shoulders.

He stares at himself, tiny in the taped-up cloak, a reduced body with the big puff of hair.

I loom over him, too close, and blink my eyelids suggestively, ‘Which one of you is Jamie?’ I am brandishing Jamie’s clippers. ‘I think you need a number two.’

‘Funny,’ he says, not laughing.

‘You seriously want me to shred a two hundred quid haircut?’

‘It wasn’t two hundred.’

‘With the tip?’

‘Just fucking do it.’

‘Sure?’ I ask. ‘All your pretty locks?’

‘OK, make it a number five. Shape it into a pixie.’

‘You sure?’ I say, buzzing the clippers on and off threateningly. ‘Why don’t we use gel or conditioner and smooth it down. It might pop back into ringlets.’

‘OK.’

I rifle through the bathroom cupboard, and hold up a tube, ‘how old is this?’ I am squeezing the tube to see if there is any give.

‘That’s KY,’ he says.

‘It’ll do?’

He gives an aggrieved sigh and glances at the ceiling, so I poke about again, going deeper in, and find myselfin a secret layer of complimentary mini-shampoos, eyelash glue and out of date packs of tablets, mostly laxatives. ‘Your mum has a lot of laxatives. Or are they yours? OK. This might work.’ I produce a purple plastic jar called Wingz.

He eyeballs the jar, and nods. I hook out glossy white gunk, and smooth it onto both palms, then wipe it down hishair in a firm two-handed stroke. His head is instantly slimmed down. We stare in the mirror together. He looks like a wet cat.

*

‘How long are you here for?’ he asks, as chunks of hair slide down the plastic bag and onto the floor.

‘Is your hoover mended? We’re going to need it.’

‘You’re not answering.’

‘I don’t think the cloak is working as it should.’

‘When do you need to go back to uni?’

‘Oh. … I’m not going back.’

‘What? Why not? I thought you liked it.’

‘Not anymore.’

‘You’re not going to be a writer anymore?’

‘Like that was ever going to happen.’

‘Why not? I thought you thought you were quite good.’

‘Funny. … This thing, um, happened.’ The clippers veer alarmingly.

‘What?’ he says, dodging his head away.

‘… Like, I dunno, a nothing-thing really.’

‘Spit it out, Jammy.’

I wonder where to start. Perhaps with the deer analogy. But I was also, strictly speaking, a slayer. My chest is tight. My head clouds over. ‘A bullying thing.’

‘Oh god, I’m so sorry, Jammy. I’ve been a victim of bullying all my life, that’s awful. Bullying is the worst.’

‘I’m the bully.’

‘Shit. What did you do?’ Jamie is staring at me with perfectly round eyes.

‘It’s all twisted up. I slept with someone then wrote about it. And read it out in class.’

‘You slept with someone and then wrote about it, and read it out. In class. And the person was in the class?’

‘Yep.’

‘Jammy. That is bullying.’ Jamie looks really upset with me.

I switch the clippers off. It’s silent.

‘It was one of my lecturers. A man.’

‘You slept with your lecturer?’

Nausea floats into me. I nod.

‘And you wrote about it and read it out, in his class?’

‘Yup.’

‘Did you name him?’

‘Not exactly.’

‘Can I search it up? What’s it called?’

‘Alexander’s Technique.’

‘Is Alexander his name?’

‘Yes. Dr Alexander Arbinger.’ My stomach tugs into a cramp.

‘So you did name him?’

‘Only in the title. I nearly called it Arbinger of Doom but thought that was too obvious. In the story he has a made up name. He’s called Hugh Jeego. I toyed with calling him Hugh Janus. And Hugh Japeenis.’

‘Did he have a huge japeenis?’

‘Not sure. It was quickly over.’

‘But is he recognisable?’

‘Well yes, if you know his technique.’

‘His technique?’

‘Flattery, “mentorship,”’ I do the inverted commas thing with my fingers. ‘How he lures you in, how he has sex.’

‘So other people also know Alexander Arbinger’s technique and they recognised him?’

‘Yup. I went into a lot of detail. The other students loved it. Jameela, I’m shocked by how good you are. And so young. Your writing gives me goose bumps, it’s fearless. You are fearless. I admire you. I am honoured to be here with you. Clever and beautiful. You’re the one to watch. Let me help you if I can. I’ll introduce you to my agent, remind me, and I’ll email him. You can send him your work. God, this bar is noisy. Shall we find somewhere quieter? He’s had sex with a few of us first years. I didn’t know at the time. I thought he really liked me. I thought it was the start of a complicated, life-altering affair, like Anaïs Nin and Henry Miller. But then I realised I’d been played, so I wrote the story. I know I’ve been bad.’ I pick at my nail varnish, flaking it off, ‘but it works a treat for him. He’s had quite a few of us so far. And that’s just this year. One girl took an overdose because she was so miserable after. There are probably others who haven’t said anything.’

Jamie goes quiet.

I start the clippers again.

‘Did she die?’

‘No.’

My clippers graze his ear.

‘Ow! Focus on the pixie,’ he cups his ears with his hands.

‘Sorry Jamie. It’s been really stressful.’

‘How old is he?’

‘I dunno. Like forty or fifty.’

‘Fifty? Jeez.’

‘Forty then.’

‘How many times did you shag him?’

‘Once. I don’t think I shagged him. It was just him shagging me. Then he ignored me like it never happened. I went to his lecture the next day. I watched him pick one of my hairs off his jacket and drop it on the floor. I was sitting in the front row but he didn’t look at me. I assumed the plan was to avoid drawing attention to ourselves. So I waited behind, as if I had a question, but he rushed out as fast as he could. I tried to speak to him a few more times, but he was completely indifferent, like it never happened. He’s married. He has a thing for his students. Young skin, a new batch to choose from every year. Wide eyed first years keen to be teacher’s pet. It must be very tempting. He told me he loved the way I smelled, of burnt toast and daytime sleep. I put that in the story. And the way he tucked me in and kissed me on the forehead afterwards, like a dad.’

The clippers graze Jamie’s ear again. He dodges his head as if a wasp is attacking him. ‘I think my pixie’s done,’ he says, ‘you can put the clippers away.’ He runs a hand through his new short hair, looking in the mirror. ‘I quite like it,’ he says. ‘Good job.’

He can’t see the stragglers and uneven patches at the back.

I turn away from my drab face and ratty unwashed hair. Acne is breaking out on my cheeks. ‘Cheers,’ I say, holding my hand out. ‘That’ll be two hundred quid.’

‘Wasn’t there anyone you could go to for help? A different tutor?’

He has turned on the shower head and is kneeling over the bath. The water runs through his scalp and what’s left of his hair. It looks cleansing. I want to be shaved too. Maybe I can become a monk. I am suddenly exhausted. I letmyself slide onto the floor and lean my head against the wall.

‘I went to one tutor, a woman, but they’d already closed ranks. Because I’d written the story. It was unfair, she said. Anyone can make up these stories.’ I put on a posh educated voice and jab a finger in the air, trying to channel fifty-year-old froideur. ‘We university professors are sitting ducks for false, defamatory, and career-ending allegations. It’s cruel and it’s libellous. It’s another kind of Me Too. We as a group are fighting back. You, Jameela, are the perpetrator not the victim. She’s right. I gave consent. I wanted it to happen.’

‘That can’t be right, Jammy. It’s a Hugh Jeevil.’

‘A Hugh Jeevil,’ I say quietly, feeling as if I might cry.

The floor is covered in hair, it seems to have drifted everywhere.

‘I don’t think I’ll be going back,’ I say.

*

Later, we are curled up on the sofa like two cats, watching daytime TV. A badly acted thriller is in full swing. An old lady refuses to move out of her house despite the demands of lawyers representing a developer who is building a motorway through her land.

‘I have nowhere else to go,’ she says to the young social worker who has been called to her house to determine if she is mad, confused or demented. She thinks he is trying to trap her, that he works for them, and this is what we think too. ‘Those men have sent you to diagnose me with dementia,’ she says. ‘I’m eighty nine. I want to stay here til I die. That’s not confusion, that’s me knowing my rights. This is my home.’

The social worker lad is scratching his head with anxiety. He looks like he's pretending to be an adult. She watches a hair fall onto the shoulder of his suit. As he’s leaving, she lifts the hair from his suit, and when he’s gone, she sits in her large arm chair and melts a candle and forms it into a doll-shape, and winds the lad’s hair into the wax of the doll, while she sings an incantation. It’s actually pretty sinister.

‘We should do that,’ Jamie says, ‘make voodoo dolls, of Mr Wolf and Hugh Jeevil. Bring down our enemies with dark magic.’

Jamie disappears off into the kitchen, and misses the last scene, as the young lad’s car ploughs off a bridge and crashes onto a motorway below, and is flattened by a huge lorry.

Jamie comes back with a few candle stubs.

‘The end wasn’t great for the social worker,’ I say.

‘It worked then?’ Jamie is striking a match and holding it to one of the candle wicks ‘How shall we do this?’ He is dripping wax onto a saucer. ‘We can make the men, but we’ll have to source their DNA,’ he says.

We look outside, it’s darker than it should be for this time of day and the window is being assailed by flinging rain. We’ve been watching telly for hours.

‘Your mum’ll be back from work soon,’ I say.

‘Yeah, and it smells of fart in here, or is that the burning candles?’ he says.

‘It’s sulphur from the devil,’ I say.

He looks at me, slightly uneasy.

‘We should go out, get some air,’ he suggests.

‘Can’t be arsed,’ I say.

‘Yeah. Let’s not,’ he says.

We shape the wax, sitting on the sofa.

Two lean, gangly creatures are emerging. We use shreds of fabric trimmed from the edges of cleaning cloths and tea-towels, wrapping the colourful scraps around legs, arms and torso, and drip glue on to secure the ends. Each leggy humanoid has his own little top and trousers. I tell Jamie about Alexander Arbinger’s tweed jacket and red pocket square and Jamie makes a jacket out of a piece of hessian, and glues a tiny red triangle onto the place his breast-pocket wouldbe. I tell Jamie about how he wiped his come off my tummy with the red handkerchief.

‘Is that in the story?’

‘Yes.’

‘It sounds quite erotic.’

‘It might have been if it was a shared experience.’

We paint their hands and feet with pale pink nail varnish for skin colour and Jamie fashions two full heads ofgrey hair with fluff from the tumble drier, which he presses into their soft wax heads.

‘Pale, male and stale,’ I say.

‘Loose, puce and spruce,’ he says.

We balance the two dolls on the top of the TV, with their legs dangling down, and sit back on the sofa to admire them.

‘Two Gorgeous Men,’ Jamie says.

He gets back up and fiddles with the left one’s head. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Putting Mr Wolf’s hair in a ponytail.’ But Mr Wolf’s whole hairstyle comes off in Jamie’s hand. ‘Oh,’ Jamie says, and he presses it on again. It takes an extra smear of glue to stay in place. ‘No pony for you, Mr Wolf.’

‘Does he need a tail?’

Jamie pads off into his bedroom with the scissors and comes back with a thin strip of grey fabric. ‘Old school trousers,’ he says in a pleased way, and glues the grey strip on the backside of Mr Wolf. Then he disappears into his mum’s bedroom and comes out with a lipstick and a kohl eye pencil. He draws on black eyes, and uses the lipstick in the lip area, then applies lipstick to his own lips, and passes it to me.

*

When Jamie’s mum bustles in from work, wrapped in a big coat with a hood, and shaking out a very wet umbrella, we are nestled on the sofa like a pair of roosters in a shrub of blankets watching TV, our heads poking out. We both have bright red lips.

‘Hello Jameela. Not seen you for ages. How are you?’

‘Hi Frances,’ I say.

‘How’s uni?’ she says.

‘It’s fine, thanks. How are you?’

‘Tired,’ she says. ‘Working too hard. Is that my lipstick?’ She has shed the coat and is standing in her navy nurse’s uniform and worn out shoes. She looks at the dolls on the TV also with matching lipstick, ‘I see you two’ve been well occupied.’

She disappears into her bedroom to get changed. Jamie still has his hood up.

‘Aren’t you going to show her your hair?’

‘Not now. It’ll make her sad.’

We stare at the two dolls. ‘They remind me of an art opening I went to,’ I say. ‘There were these ceramic figurines doing bad things. We went for the free wine.’

‘What bad things?’ he asks.

‘Oh, like, a disturbing Victorian vibe. Overgrown children with rosy faces and clean-clothes doing nasty stuff.’

‘Doing what?’ he asks.

‘Like … depraved,’ I say. ‘One was cutting the head off a hamster with scissors. Another one was injecting something into a baby. Raping animals. That kind of thing.’

‘Oh,’ he says, falling silent for a bit, chewing into his lower lip. He is looking at our handiwork with trepidation. Then he picks up his phone. ‘So where does Hugh Jeevil live? We need a strand of his hair. We’ll need to go through his bins. Did you go to his house?’

‘No.’

‘Not ever, even for drinks? I thought creative writing degrees were all about sherry and conversation in houseswith private libraries?’ Jamie is typing into his phone. ‘Alexander Arbinger AKA Mr Sleezy …where do you live? I’m going to track you down …’

*

We wait til Saturday. It’s cold and rainy. Winter is bedding in. It’s dark already when we set off. Jamie has brought a rollof zip-lock food bags. They lie in the back of the car accusingly, like when the murderer has been to the hardware shop and bought a hammer, duct tape, cleaning equipment and a giant plastic bag. We’ve decided to do Mr Wolf first, follow him home to his big house in expensive-ville. Proper stalking. And we’ll retrieve DNA from his bin.

*

At exactly 5pm we are parked near Mr Wolf’s salon. He lets the last client out and locks the door. The lights go out, but he doesn’t emerge.

‘Shit. Perhaps there’s a back door? Maybe we’ve missed him.’

We get out of the car, and find our way to the back of the terrace. It’s a bit of a mess with litter flapping, broken crates and mud pools reflecting the street lamps in oily orange swirls. We pick our way over towards the only windowwith a light on, it’s behind a wooden fence. We peer through and see Mr Wolf stretched out on a sofa watching Wheel of Fortune on a big TV, a ginger cat on his lap. All the trappings of a bedsit are here, a plug-in cooker with two electric rings, a door to a toilet, a sink with dirty pans and plates, and a fridge. A duvet is folded up beside the sofa.

‘He must live here.’ Jamie says. ‘He must be a Justin. Justin is a name full of sadness.’

‘It looks quite cosy.’ Neither of us wants to punish Mr Wolf anymore. We watch Wheel of Fortune through the fence for a bit then drift back to the car. ‘We can still do Hugh. I’ve found his address?’

‘I’m not sure, Jamie. What’s the point?’

I suddenly feel overwhelmingly defeated. ‘Can't we just go home?’

‘You’ve gotta fight back, Jam, it’s important.’

‘I really can’t be bothered.’

‘Catharsis,’ he says.

‘I think I’d prefer to fawn on this one.’

‘Don’t suppress your personal values, Jam. It’s only an hour away. Jammy & Jamie On The Road.’

*

We are curving along the moors, trying to keep on the actual road as the car is blasted from the side by gusts of wind. The headlamps illuminate a few yards in front, but that’s all. It’s the kind of place where people and objects disappear, and reappear years later with no explanation.

‘What are you thinking, Jammy?’

‘Nothing much.’

His pure intent to have sex with me. That’s all it was. I took it way too seriously. And then I wrote the story. At least it’s not online anymore. The tutor woman said, take it down, or you could be done for defamation. I can’t look at my phone anymore, in case it has emails from lawyers. ‘What if he sues me and Mum has to sell the house to pay? What if I go to prison?’

‘I’ll come and visit you.’

‘Can’t we just go home?’

‘You have to commit, Jameela, he’s your enemy.’

I wonder about the word enemy. We loved his classes. He was a good teacher. We all wanted to be singled out. I wanted his eye on me. Maybe it was my fault not his fault. He touched my hair once. It was after lectures, we were in the pub, a few of us, he called us my clever ones. He stood behind me and drew my hair back away from my shoulders, liftedit up as if he might kiss my neck, then let it drop bit by bit, like water through fingers. He didn’t say anything to explain it. The others teased me after. What was that all about, they were saying. ‘Lurrrve,’ someone said. I think I believed it.

‘I might get my hair cut short like yours.’

‘Don’t even think about it Jammy, your hair is your power.’

‘You can do my pixie.’

‘It would break your mum’s heart.’

I think of Mum. I’d hate her to read my story. Only two months ago, Mum drove me to uni, for my first term. I sat in the front like a queen, my little sisters squeezed in the back next to the articles of my future life, the car spilling over with possibilities. The moors were yellow-green and the sky pure blue. Mum had bought me a duvet, pillows and bed sheets, which would become the props of my despoilment. And the towel I used after the hot shower which I hoped would erase the strange flat sense that something in me had been burgled.

‘What have you said to her?’ he asks.

‘Nothing. She thinks I’m going back soon. That I’m on reading-week or something.’

*

A bit later we are parked on a suburban road. Jamie is dictating into his phone, ‘We are outside the house of Jameela’s accuser.’ We watch the house from the car. It’s not a romantic Victorian pile in its own grounds, as I’d imagined, but a new-build in an estate of new-builds.

‘This is such a bad idea,’ I say. We are creeping down the side of the house, bent over like cartoon prowlers, wearing the blue plastic gloves. The wind and rain are intermittently whistling and screaming.

I glimpse Alexander through a side window, and duck. I’ve not seen him for a while. Except for his lead role inmy dark thoughts. He’s in there, watching TV, sprawled on a sofa, feet on a coffee table, channel flicking.

‘He’s hot,’ Jamie says.

Cold runs through me. ‘He’s all yours.’

I lift the lid of the grey bin. Bulging black bin-bags are crammed in, tied with knots that look like rabbit ears. A whole generation of dead black rabbits. A black rabbit massacre. All the ears poking up and perky, stuffed in here to die. Jamie makes a hole in one with a thumb, and a mass of hair pops out, pre-formed and springy. ‘Pubic?’ he says. He stretches out a strand, ‘long hair.’ We peer in to the room again. A long-haired woman holding a baby is settling next to Alexander on the sofa. A small dog jumps up. She is fiddling about under her top, and presses the baby to her, breast feeding. ‘Must be Harvey’s wife,’ Jamie says.

‘Harvey?’

‘Weinstein.’

‘We can’t involve the innocent,’ I say. ‘A kid and a dog. What if we get random skin flakes in by accident?’ I grab the hair-clump from Jamie, and lift the bin open a crack and post it back in.

*

We don’t talk much on the way home.

‘You’ll get back to your old self,’ Jamie says.

What old self, I wonder. It’s vanished, like the swing Dad built in our garden. I loved the swing. Where’s my flying girl? he’d ask when I was glum. Get back on the swing. It’ll cheer you up. But we grew out of it, and Dad got ill, and the swing broke, and nettles grew and you couldn’t get to it even if you wanted to. Someone told Mum it was unsafe, and one day it had gone, as if it’d never been there in the first place.

My body starts heaving and lurching in huge sobs like I’ve been inhabited by a large sad animal. I can’t hold it back. Tears splash out of my eyes and run down my cheeks and drip onto my coat.

Jamie looks at me a bit horrified. He doesn’t know what to say, so he says, ‘Crying Anne.’ His mum had found out that her hairdresser tagged a client ‘Crying Anne’ because Anne was always blubbing half way through her hair-do.Frances wondered what her tag was. Fat Frances, she said, but we came up with Flirty Frances, or Fanciable Frances. We had Crying Anne tags for everyone.

‘Joyless Jameela,’ I manage, in between gulps and sniffs, then, ‘Jobless Jameela.’ My voice comes out as a high squeak.

*

Back at Jamie’s we watch TV, curled up on the sofa again, warm in blankets. Images of war, wildfires and general world destruction fill the screen. We watch our planet imploding until Jamie channel flicks, coming to rest on an old black and white film. We settle in to 1950s Hollywood and more dependable evil. Cary Grant is walking up a staircase with a glass of bright white milk on a saucer.

Jamie approaches the TV. ‘Two Gorgeous Men,’ he says. He places Hugh Jeevil in his outstretched palm. ‘Hugh Jeevil, Alexander Arbinger of Doom, our very own Harvey Weinstein.’ He breaks one of the doll’s legs inside the glued-on trousers. ‘We should have crafted your over-active japeenis, so we could snap it off.’

He props him back in position next to Mr Wolf. The two dolls are reclining awkwardly, slumped away from eachother. Hugh Jeevil’s leg hangs limp inside his trousers.

I slide off the sofa and stalk over to the TV and pick up Hugh Jeevil.

I crack his head off, and drop it on the floor and stamp on it, over and over, grinding his face with my heel. It feels good.

When I’m done, the carpet looks like a mini crime scene. Hugh Jeevil’s face is a white moon-disc with black smudges for eyes and spreading red lips.

‘Do you have an envelope somewhere?’

‘In the kitchen.’

I rummage about in the kitchen, in the worktop clutter, and return with an envelope, a roll of sticky tape and a packet of felt-tips.

‘What’s his address again?’

Jamie gets out his phone and reads it out for me. With the purple felt-tip, I write,

DR ALEXANDER ARBINGER

PROFESSOR OF SEX WITH STUDENTS

3, MANOR GRANGE MEADOWS, WAVERLEY

And, in large orange lettering along the top, FRAGILE.

I pick up the flattened face and slide it into the envelope, followed by the little tweed-jacketed body with its corduroy trousers and red pocket square.

I seal the envelope, and wind sticky tape around a few times to make sure it’s fully secure. On the back I draw an emerald-green evil eye. Just a small one, pretty and eyelashy, with a cherry-red pupil.

I stand the envelope on the TV next to Mr Wolf, and flop back onto the sofa, pulling my legs up.

‘Busy night,’ I say, flicking the blanket back over our feet.

‘It’s great to use the postal system,’ Jamie says.