The sun hangs like a piñata waiting for the night to hit it down.

‘Hurt me. Go on. Punch me in the gut.’ Mr Zotov says, squinting.

‘No!’

The way she squeals as he lifts her up, like a cute CGI pig, ruffles Cherish, excites him. He looks across at the father winding up the daughter, a scene as secretly bitter as Beryl the Peril, and takes both earphones out. He is at a wedding and there is no mud on his Nike Air Force IIs. Bluebirds are in the trees. The grass is long. There are faded garden toys on the lawn. Four girls are playing badminton like there is no tomorrow.

Cherish plays them and they beat him. He asks one of them ‘what is your name’. She smiles and throws cake at him.

‘How OLD are you?’ she moans, 13.

‘20.’

‘But you’re so shit.’

‘I know.’

Cherish watches as his older cousin Sindy gets married in the hall of the mansion. She and Bernie are atheists. Bernie is wearing his uncle’s felt blazer; the back covered in multicoloured fuzzy felt that reads JUST MARRIED. Sindy wears a dress she made herself. It is brief, airless, something a young girl might laze around dreaming in. Sindy starts to cry walking down the small aisle because it is now. Bernie starts to cry. She grabs his hand like a child, leaping slightly. They both hold hands and listen. Bernie’s friend Stephen reads an extract from an Audrey Niffenegger book. Sindy’s friend plays one of her songs: The Kisser.

They kiss.

Meg is pissed on champagne and can see all the blurred promise around her. She tried to play pool but it all went wrong. She is trying to find the 20-year-old boy-man in an evening of star-like sweets.

‘20-year-old boy-man? Are you there?’

She tumbles out of the French windows and cracks her head open.

Cherish looks at her sleeping. He puts down his Gameboy. He takes her all in. The morning light from the window begins the hospital.

‘You didn’t have to come.’ says Mrs Zotov.

‘I did have to come Mrs Zotov.’

‘Why?’

‘Because she was looking for me when she fell. And she didn’t find me. But when she
wakes up she will have found me. And it will have been worth it.’

‘Okay.’ She drinks a drink.

‘Do you think it ruined Sindy and Bernie’s day?’

‘No.’ she says, stretching by the hospital-green curtains. ‘Love is never only about
one day.’

‘What’s it about?’

‘It’s about getting used to losing.’

The morning is foggy like breath as Cherish steps out, holding Meg’s hand, looking down at the stepladder of stitches in her head. A particular cloud in the sky resembles a number. He has left his phone in the hospital.

When he comes back Meg and her mother are gone. The note says

Meg pulls her trousers up. She’s wearing her green and orange boy boxers today and the material clusters at her crotch. She looks gladly at herself in the mirror. She has dark, short hair and blue eyes. She looks at her skin, white and pale pink in the bathroom light. She thinks of Cherish and comes out of the bathroom smiling.

He’s on the sofa.

‘Wuh! I forgot you were here.’ She tumbles over to him.

‘Really?’

‘No I knew it. I was thinking of you while I pissed man.’

‘Really?’

‘No. I was thinking of horses and loving ponies.’

‘Really?’

‘No I was thinking about you.’ She sighs above her years and lies on his brittle, unsupportive chest. ‘I was thinking about your face.’

‘I haven’t got a face.’

‘You’re a worm.’

Cherish kisses Meg like he did a week ago, as they rummaged through her wardrobe looking for the dressing-up box, looking for witches’ hats and sheriffs’ badges. Cherish said ‘Yeah. If only we were real’ and then swept in and held her head and kissed her small lips. She quietly came back for more. The wardrobe was dark and promising.

‘So like. Are we going out now then?’ asks Meg, holding Cherish’s chin.

‘We are going out.’ he says, sepulchral.

At the train station there are no bloodstains. Meg looked for them.

‘Becaauuse. The girls killed themselves here.’ She peers off the platform and then climbs down.

Cherish is thinking about the fact that he and Meg look alike, akin to siblings. They both sport shortlong black hair and are pretty skinny and tall, pretty good together he thinks. It’s strange, he thinks. +7 years, he thinks. He has green eyes and he knows that if you were to chop Meg’s eyeballs and his own in a curve, like a tennis ball, they would make great marbles.

‘The girls. Yeah I remember.’ he says, tossing a cigarette butt into the track. He joins her down there. The station is mossy and feels unused.

‘Yeah. They jumped in front of the train.’ Meg is sifting through the litter with a stick, looking for interesting things. ‘What would make someone want to DO that.’

‘The stress of life?’ asks Cherish.

‘No.’

‘No?’

‘No.’ she says, sure, as if she has it all mapped out in her head.

‘Okay.’ Cherish sits on the platform.

At the restaurant the Italian smiles. His teeth are glowing and his stubble is designer.

‘And for you?’

‘I’ll just have some water please.’ says Meg graciously.

‘I can’t believe this is happening.’ says Cherish, blowing smoke around the room.

Meg watches it collect on the window. ‘What?’

‘Us. I can’t believe we’re happening. I mean it’s only the other week that I met you, and we’re already. So. Good.’

‘Are we good?’ asks Meg, stealing a cigarette. ‘I thought it was going quite poorly actually.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes. I mean. I’m only 13. I don’t really understand a beast like you.’

‘I’m only a boy.’

‘You’re a brute.’ She tries to take the smoke down and chokes. ‘What are these things anyway?’ she says, sneering at the cigarette. ‘Why do you smoke them?’

‘They make me happier.’

‘How stupid.’

‘I’m stupid.’ Cherish says, thinking about Meg’s legs. Thinking about her body. Thinking about her cheeks, her teeth, her gums.

‘Quite.’

Meg is clearly amping up her maturity, thinks Cherish. She keeps using something she would consider highbrow. Declaratives, interrogative questions. 13, he thinks. But she’s lucky to be who she is.

‘What do you think of me so far?’ he asks, cocking his head.

She’s staring at him, her head in her hands. ‘I think you’re something.’

The coke cans lined up on the windowsill. Cherish kisses Meg’s taught, childish stomach. He looks at her in the eyes to check she is okay. She nods delicately as if to reply. She looks upwards away from her own body. Cherish kisses the swerved bones of her hips and her eyes glaze. Meg says ‘please be gentle’, genuinely worried. Cherish lifts his head and holds her ears. ‘Of course Meg, of course.’ Then he looks down at her neck. ‘We don’t have to do this if you don’t want.’ Meg smiles and lifts up her head, kisses him, drags his down. Cherish undoes her bra, pink crosses on it, and kisses the soft, impressible skin below her breasts.

At the forest Meg is lying in ivy. Ivy. Hedera helix (common ivy, English ivy) – often cultivated as an ornamental plant. There is a worm. Worm. Dirty worm. Bad boy. Cherish, as he dreams, remembers his first spoken word to be ‘dirty’, his mother calling, ambient, telling him to put his discovery down. A man is fishing and it would be a good idea for Cherish to gun him down, seeing as he is fishing. Cherish loads the shotgun and shoots the fisherman in the chest at first, and then the face, and his skull cracks and separates. The shower of blood plops into the water. Cherish throws the gun in also. Wasps buzz. Wasps. Or bees. Bees. A thousand bees and not one keeper.

Meg is coming round in an hour. Cherish woke up, dazed and confused, to a dark evening.

He lies with his back arched over the beanbag like a bridge. He plays the Gameboy upside-down.

Mario essentially loves his work, Cherish reckons. Super Mario Bros. is a plumber’s occupational hazards exemplified – the hazards of fire-spitting tendrils and primary coloured shellcreepers a perfect commentary on the outraged customers, the coins floating in the air so easy to grab. He saves his progress as Meg knocks on the door.

She is standing there in white shades like Cassie from Skins, with a similar stance.

Cherish hugs her and says ‘you okay?’ looking sincerely in her eyes like a father.

‘Yes.’ She walks into the flat. ‘Wow.’ she says, looking around. ‘You got that plant I see.’ She points at the bonsai.

Cherish thinks about saying tree. ‘Yup.’

‘Let’s have a conversation.’

‘Okay. What do you want to talk about? Do you want a drink?’

‘No I want a conversation. Sit down Cherish. Sit down.’

Cherish gets a drink. His own whiskey in his own flat in his own kitchen in his own glass. He moved out from his uncles’ house when he was 18.

‘I said sit down.’ says Meg. ‘I meant.’

Cherish holds her hand, pretends to crush it. ‘Chill. Let’s talk about childhood dreams.’

‘I’m still a child Cheri.’

‘You’re not to me. You’re beautiful. That’s all there is.’

‘Shh. Childhood dreams. I used to want to be a horse rider or a tv presenter or a presenter of pony programmes for well-off girls.’ Meg takes a gulp of Cherish’s whiskey.

‘Did you ride a lot then?’

‘Yes. Every day Cheri. Every day. Until Blossom threw me to the floor and I broke my neck.’

Cherish looks quickly concerned.

‘No I didn’t really break my neck. But it fucking hurt. Fucking horse. Cunt.’

Cherish smiles and lights a cigarette. ‘I hated horses. Ever since my sister tried to feed one an apple and it bit her hand.’

‘Wow that’s some story Cherish.’ Meg says, pouring herself a glass of whiskey.

‘It changed my life.’ he says hopelessly, looking at Meg’s bare ankles.

Outside is springtime. The foreplay of the seasons, thinks Cherish. A happy man puts a wooden ladder against a wall. The light is everywhere and bright. It’s all a lot of people need.

‘I’m so angry.’ says Cherish. ‘I can be.’

‘Why are you so angry?’ Meg sighs.

Sometimes in life everything needs to be smashed up and sometimes the hideous fucking sun, that creep, stares relentless and fearless, stubborn, spitefully reminds us we are not yet dead, considers Mr Z. He picks up the computer monitor and smashes is against his daughter’s art project. Both snap. His anger has risen and now it must settle.

He is swearing and Meg can’t sleep. She bites her pillow.

‘Meg are you awake?’ he calls, pumped but shameful. He waits. He breathes. ‘Meg?’

‘Yeah?’ she says, tiptoeing.

‘We’re going to PC World tomorrow, okay?’

In the car with her dad it’s all been done. Driving on the road has been done. They pass a weathered post office they have been to before, Meg was 10 and she didn’t care. She flicked through the envelopes. They were beige.

‘Why did you have to take me with you?’ Meg asks, looking at her father.

‘Because I didn’t want to leave you in the house alone Meg.’

‘I’m 13.’

He watches the road. ‘I know.’

A woman outside struggles with a large handbag.

She texts Cherish.

Cherish walks home from work and a man starts talking to him about ideas, about originality. It is the vagrant that often sits on the bench smoking, always carrying around a new set of pillows. They look like they have never been opened. He smokes Cherish’s cigarette in the moment, savouring every millimetre.

He coughs. ‘Have you read any Bukowski?’

‘Yeah.’ Cherish does up his skinny grey jacket.

‘We should all live like him.’

Cherish thinks about this. Whole families setting off for a lifestyle of menial jobs, alcoholism and womanisation. He pictures a gentle woman slumped over a bar. He laughs.

‘Maybe you’re right.’ continues the beat poet. ‘Maybe it is a joke. But we could all do with a little time off right? Why not take your fill?’

‘I gotta go man. I’m meeting my girlfriend.’

‘Good luck to you. And thanks for the fag.’

Meg on the brick wall crying.

‘Oh my god baby what happened?’

‘My dad smashed up my art project.’

‘What!’ Cherish shouts, shocked but overt. ‘Why would he do that?’

‘Dunno,’ she sniffs. ‘I think it was because of the people emailing him again.’

‘About your mum?’

‘Yeah.’

Cherish joins her on the wall. ‘What did they say this time?’

‘Dad said it was about her being a. Bitch. Or something. I don’t know Cheri. It’s so
unfair.’

‘Fucking right. Was it the people from her old company?’

‘Of course it was Cheri.’ She breathes out, the smoke from one of Cherish’s ex-cigarettes flailing upward.

‘But why your art project?’

‘It was the nearest thing I suppose.’

At the bowling alley the guns shudder. Reload reload. Shoot outside of the screen. Meg is laughing now.

‘Happier?’ Cherish asks, looking across at her determination, back at the people getting killed onscreen.

‘Yeah. But don’t get cocky – it wasn’t because of you. It’s just because I had a good cry and am now shooting people.’

‘I love.’ Cherish says, reloading and killing 6 enemies in 6 shots.

‘Hmm? Go on finish that sentence Cheri.’

‘You? Is that alright?’

‘No it’s not alright. It’s too soon Cheri. You gotta hide those feelings.’ she says,
grinning.

‘Anyway.’ says Cherish almost laughing. ‘I was wondering. Why did your parents change their surnames?’

‘It’s quite a long answer Cheri. Are you prepared?’ she says, putting her head on his shoulder. All her lives are gone. Continue? 987654321.

‘I’ve never been more prepared. I’m a curious cat for sure.’ he says, still smiling. He is winning.

‘Their surnames were changed to Z because of a desire for equality eccentricity anonymity and because of the meaning behind Z in that it is the final letter of the alphabet and appeals to them because they are interested in the finality of things and the fact that the generation I come from as their daughter could be loosely defined as Z as it is post-X and is rotting from Y into Z. At least that’s how my mum puts it.’

‘Word for word?’

‘Word for word.’

‘What’s it like having artists for parents?’

‘Gay.’

Mr and Mrs Z make love every night. Both in their early 30s, sexual activity has increased, primarily, Mrs Z thinks, due to them both being trapped in the 10-year bracket towards 40.

Mrs Z lies on her husband’s chest. It moves up and down.

‘Why her art project, Clyde?’

‘I have no idea. The shame is crippling.’

Mrs Z punches Mr Z in the thigh. ‘Why did you have to do that you fool. What kind of encouragement is that for Meg?’

‘Not the right kind. I’ve apologised. She wasn’t too miffed. It was only part of her research. It wasn’t a final or anything. But I’m still really sorry.’

Mrs Z sighs. ‘Sigh. We’re going to have to buy her something really incredible now, you realise.’

‘Yeah!’ Mr Z says, excited. ‘What shall we get her?’

‘A new dad that doesn’t have asinine bouts of rage.’

‘Expensive. I hear it’s difficult to adopt fathers these days.’

‘You’d think so wouldn’t you.’

‘Is it not?’

‘£5.50 plus postage and packing.’

‘Wow. That’s wonderful. Did you want something to eat?’ Mr Z asks, navigating in the darkness.

Mrs Z shakes the silhouette of her hair in the darkness. ‘No fatty.’

Meg’s older sister Crest is up watching something with gangsters. Mr Z walks round to look at her. Her eyes are closed; her face locked in a silent equipoise. He pulls the blanket to her neck.

‘Come on Clyde.’ whispers Mrs Z from the landing, lying on the carpet.

Back in their room the air is warm and welcoming. They lie next to each other. Mrs Z feels the confident tremble of his touch on her legs.

‘Meg. The other day. She was just bursting with ideas.’ says Mrs Z quietly, in thought.