SNAKE BEACH

The models invaded us a few days after the birds fell. Those genetic freaks arrived in a breeze of perfume and glitter, stepping off a bright pink coach in clippetty shoes. ‘Twenty of the prettiest young ladies in the whole country,’ my mum said, with a glint in her eyes. ‘Catwalk Queen come to Hayle. How lucky are we? That’ll put us on the map.’
I wasn’t sure we were that lucky at all. Things with me and Han were just starting up again and a load of catwalk queens walking all over the place in bikinis, I reckoned I could do without.
I learned of their arrival when I came into our front room for breakfast. My mum had put on her best navy blue dress. Shamefully, it had a white peter pan collar. She was reading The Truro Courier, which had a picture of our beach covered in thousands of dead blackbirds and a dramatic headline that took up half the space, which said “The End of Days?”
‘Booming myxie. Toxic algae out to sea. Dead birds without a mark on them. Never known anything like it,’ she said, more to herself than me.
‘Where’s Dad?’
‘Taking all them poor birds to the tip. The bin bags were stinking out the site. He’ll be back in a minute. We’re going out.’
‘Big surprise,’ I said, watching as she went over her bum with a lint roller.
‘Your father’s had a terrible red dream, most likely brought on by seeing all that death spread over the place. He needs distracting.’
‘Where you goin?’
‘Just to the car park.’
‘You’ve washed your hair.’
‘Ain’t I allowed to wash my hair occasionally?’
‘What’s that smell? Apples or something. Oh my God, you’ve only gone and used my conditioner. What happened to hot rinses and scalp massage being better than hair products sold by millionaire capitalists?’
‘I never said that. I said billionaire.’
I poured myself a bowl of cornflakes and made up some powdered milk to go with it, since the milk bottle was put back in the fridge empty again.
‘Can you give my cream shoes a wipe off? Once you’ve eaten your brekkie, I mean,’ she said. ‘I’m in a bit of a rush.’
‘What’s going on?’
She sighed. ‘Nothing really. Just those dolly birds are coming to the town today. Me and your father are going to see them. Lots of the neighbours are going along too. It’s not just us.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘You know, that programme from the telly where they take pretty girls and turn them into beauty queens. Britain’s Next Catwalk Queen. They’re filming some episodes here in Hayle.’
‘How sad is that,’ I said, my heart racing. So that’s what Rick Sylvester meant.
‘I’m sure they won’t have anything on you, Jen.’
‘Like I care.’
‘Everyone’s going. Should pass a nice hour or two.’
I wondered if Han would be there. It didn’t seem like his scene, but you never knew.
‘Can I come?’
‘You’ve got school, haven’t you.’
‘There’s only two weeks of it left, so there’s hardly anything going on. Just revision. I could do that at home.’
‘I don’t want you to get behind.’
‘I get straight As. One day off isn’t going to ruin my life, is it? Come on, Mum. How often does Hayle get TV crews? And I want to see the models, like you do.’
If they were going to be my competition, I thought I might as well see what I was up against.
‘Well, only if you promise to introduce us to your boyfriend.’
‘He’s not my boyfriend.’
‘You didn’t get in until almost midnight last night.’
‘We’re just friends.’
‘Your dad wants to meet him. So do I. Ask him around for tea.’
‘No way.’
‘Make sure you take an apple for your break today.’
‘Mum.’
‘You’re not having the day off unless we get to meet Yann.’
‘You know his name isn’t Yann, Mum. It’s Han.’
‘Like off Star Wars?’
‘Yeah.’
‘What a thing to call a child.’
‘He doesn’t mind. He likes it.’
‘I suppose he likes that green hair too.’
‘Better to be an individual than a sheep. That’s what you say, isn’t it?’
At least that’s what she said when it came to buying me three pound trainers from Lidl rather than eighty pound ones from JJB Sports.
‘Hmmm, I suppose I do say that.’
I picked up her shoes for her and started to wipe away the grime.
‘And actually he does like the green hair. He wouldn’t dye it that colour if he didn’t. It’s not naturally green, you know. He’s not a warlock. He’s making a statement.’
‘Good. He can come and make some statements to me and your father. Six o’clock tonight.’
‘I said no.’
She waved at me. ‘Off you go to school then.’
I put her shoes on the table.
‘Mum.’
‘Are you going to ask him around or not?’
‘He’s not a stranger. He used to live in Hayle.’
‘Boys change a lot in a few years.’
‘Well Han’s just the same.’
‘He’s at least two foot taller.’
‘Fine,’ I said. ‘I’ll ask him around, but only for a cup of tea and not a meal. And he’s not my boyfriend. We’re just mates.’
So that’s how I found myself watching a pink coach pull up into the big car park on the edge of the dunes.
A woman with black hair got off the coach first. She definitely wasn’t one of the models. She was old and chubby and really bossy. The cameramen had already arrived earlier in 4x4s. ‘Who’s that old woman?’ I said to one of them.
‘Producer. She takes a bit of getting used to.’
Another one of the men made a witchy cackling noise.
The Producer had a really loud voice for someone so short. When she had finished ordering all her people around, the first model finally stepped off the coach. She had red hair and a cigarette tucked behind her ear. She was followed by a massively tall blonde girl who had a Welsh accent but looked like she came from Sweden. The third girl to come out had a Cleopatra hairdo and no bust whatsoever; she turned to look at the crowd and I could’ve sworn she smirked slightly at . . .  me. I smiled back without meaning to and then looked at my feet.
Every time a new girl stepped off the coach, people cheered. My dad had brought his fold-away chair and he went to set it up at the top of a sandy bank overlooking the coach, ‘where there was a better view,’ he said, winking at my mum.
‘Hoping to see down their tops are you?’ she said, smiling her tight smile.
‘Can’t bear hordes. You know that.’
I listened to the crowd. Stunners, beauts and goddesses was how some people described the models. Others called them scrawny slappers and bags of bones. The mums mostly called them the horrible names. Perhaps they thought they were bad examples to be setting their own daughters. Later, Mr Hitchcock would call the models Hard Work in Female Form, which seemed like an accurate description.
Some of them wore tight dresses in pink or acid yellow. Others had on white trousers, or leather skirts that only just covered their bottoms. They had legs that looked longer than garden hoes but they still walked around in high heels. Taller than any man I knew and thinner than any woman.
When the models lined up in a row, the effect was even worse. My mum whistled at the sight of them, ‘Christ almighty. They’m just like you see in the magazines. I better put some lippy on meself, case your father do go and get ideas.’
The stupidest models had their middles twisted, hands on their hips, and necks stretched up like they was swans. Showing themselves off to their best advantage, they must have thought. Like the dopey women in old novels who kept walking around the edge of the room so that rich blokes could eye them up better.
I turned to my mum again and I said, ‘Look how twisty they are. Imagine if they was laid flat on the ground instead of standing and you traced around their bodies with a pen. They wouldn’t even look human.’
She did a big gasp as if I had shocked her. ‘What a sinister thing to say,’ she said, linking her arm in mine ‘making ‘em sound like murder victims’.
‘I didn’t mean that, I just meant that they don’t stand normal. They’re all bendy like they’ve been gutted or something.’
‘Jenny!’
‘It’s true though.’
Han was loitering around but I couldn’t bring myself to look at his face, in case he was perving at the girls. I couldn’t have stood that. So I looked around for Mr Hitchcock instead, but he was nowhere to be seen. I remembered it was pension day and he’d most likely be down the town, doing his weekly shop before going off to read his newspaper at the allotments. It was a shame, I thought, because he loved anything stupid, and this was about as stupid as it got. I promised myself I would make as many mental notes as I could, so that he wouldn’t miss out on anything.
I looked over at my dad who was staring at the fluffy sky as if it was the most worrying thing in the world, and I wondered what he could see that I couldn’t. Once he got my mum to come and collect me early from school because he claimed to have seen three sixes in the clouds above the Sports Hall and he was worried it meant some psycho kid was going to go postal with a shotgun. Didn’t happen, but we had a nice afternoon playing chess down the beach.
I turned my attention back to the scene in front of me and started eavesdropping on all sorts of conversations, but nobody seemed to know much about the girls, which was frustrating. Eventually I cornered the coach driver, who was happy to speak to us once I offered him a Wine Gum. According to him, these girls had come from a top London hotel with a red carpet outside, and four-poster beds in the rooms and Jacuzzis on the roof. The coach driver was called Kenneth and what he told us had everybody listening.