Johanna Spiers: Old Fish

Johanna Spiers is a qualitative health researcher by day and a writer by night.

She is currently querying agents with her novel, Social Death, in which a snarky barmaid’s ex declares her dead online – and is now coming for her IRL.

Johanna also writes short stories about horrible people doing horrible things and, if you ask her nicely, the occasional funny poem.

She DJs hip hop whenever she is allowed and believes yoga is the solution to most problems. She is also on Twitter (@JohannaSpiers).

Johanna won this year’s Sansom Award, which runs alongside of the main Bristol Short Story Prize, for Bristol-based writers with her story, Old Fish.

Old Fish, by Johanna Spiers

Lolz01: OMG she said what??
Lolz01: did u tell Benson?

TayTay: nah angela would say i grassed and then theyd all hate me

Lolz01: U don’t deserve this

TayTay: thanks you da best
TayTay: i wish u came 2 my school

Lolz01: me 2

TayTay: I did have one idea about angela tho

…

Lolz01: Yeah?

…

Lolz01: Tell me!

…

The three grey dots jumped up and down, mimicking Maureen’s heart as she waited for Taylor to finish the story. Her carriage clock ticked out of time with those dancing dots.

Lolz01: TayTay? U still there hon?

The dots disappeared. Taylor had gone offline.

“Blast,” said Maureen. She stood, that spot in her upper right thigh complaining, as it always did these days when she struggled to her feet. Might as well make a cuppa; Maureen knew from experience that she could be waiting a while now.

What did Taylor do when she vanished like this? Maureen never asked. Rather, she had learned to imitate these sudden, lengthy disappearances, vanishing from time to time and swooping back in when she could stand the silence no longer, all the while affecting unconcern. It was just how communication worked between young people these days, she understood that. She had listened to a Radio4 programme about the impact of social media on attention spans, so she knew all about it. Maureen knew that nothing aged a person like saying that things hadn’t been this bad in their day, but heavens…

Putting her tea down, Maureen shut the laptop. A watched WhatsApp never pings, that was one of the things she’d learned since she had invented Lolz01 three weeks ago.

What to do while she waited? She could start dinner – but it was only 5.15pm. She could go to the library – but she hadn’t finished her books yet. She could go to the tennis club – but she hadn’t played tennis in 18 months now. She didn’t suppose she would ever pick up her racket again.

Instead, she put on a podcast and dusted the pictures of her husband and granddaughter that hung on the sitting room walls.

***

Maureen had never heard the term catfish until her friend Gillian had told her about a podcast she had listened to. Well, to be honest, she had had to ask Gillian to explain what exactly a podcast was before they even got onto the catfish part. “I’m listening to a great podcast about catfishing,” Gillian said, and Maureen wondered if the battery in her hearing aid needed replacing. Catfish. It sounded glamorous, sleek, quick. A cat who could glide through the water, turning on a tuppence. A fish that was beautiful, that eluded the shoal. A creature that made its own rules.

***

Taking her cup of tea, Maureen dozed in front of Pointless until that magical ping
jolted her awake.

TayTay: soz mum was yelling about homework
TayTay: FFS she has no clue

Lolz01: Mine’s the same, nightmare
Lolz01: What were you gonna say?

Taylor typed. The dots danced. Maureen looked at the photo of Laura she kept on her desk.

TayTay: I thought maybe if I could get angela on her own
TayTay: have proper chats
TayTay: maybe I could get her to see how shes making me feel
TayTay: what do u think?

What did she think about Taylor and her oppressor sitting down for a cosy chat over a can of Coke? Had Taylor forgotten that Angela had stolen her clothes from her locker, got her class to blank her for two entire days, got her into trouble with her English teacher? What did Maureen think? She thought that these bullies had to pay. Otherwise, they never stopped.

***

When Laura was a little girl, the air around her was always full of chatter, abuzz with books, golden with giggling. She told Maureen every grave detail of playground politics, sitting on Peter’s lap, flinging her arms around both of them at every opportunity. Laura always sought out the children who had been cast aside, involving them in her games. That was who she was. Maureen knew she was hopelessly biased, but she had a sneaking suspicion that Laura might actually be perfect. In those early days, there had been no indication that anyone else felt differently.

***

Lolz01: yeah you could try that
Lolz01: But like…

…

Now Maureen was the one to trail off, leaving those dots dancing. She looked at Taylor’s onscreen picture. A little bit plump, a little bit pretty, a little bit mousy. A little bit a lot of things. Still, Maureen longed to put an arm around her, tell her it would all be OK. Instead, she looked at the picture of Laura. Shining dark hair, warm eyes, kind smile. Yes, Maureen thought. She wasn’t biased. Laura really was perfect.

Lolz01: u no angela’s not a nice person
Lolz01: u need to fight fire with fire

The dots danced.

TayTay: OK
TayTay: wot do u think i should do?

***

The true crime podcasts were the ones Maureen enjoyed best, but she listened to others too. There were podcasts about everything you could think of. Cancer and comedy, politics and the paranormal. She had listened to a whole series about the effects of all the party drugs young people were taking these days. Podcasts were like the radio, but you could choose your own presenter and pause whenever you liked. They kept you company, chasing out the silence, filling the house with voices and facts and intrigue. She couldn’t think what she had done without them.

***

Lolz01: Didn’t u say your brother could get onto the dark web?

Maureen had heard about the dark web on a podcast. She’d Googled it and learned it was an eBay for sex, guns and substances. Maureen loved eBay, she used it to buy cheap wool and secondhand crime novels. It was ever so handy that Taylor’s brother could access this dark version.

TayTay: yeah why?

Lolz01: Can u ask him to buy u some Es? Would he tell ur olds?

TayTay: Es???

Lolz01: yeah, u no, ecstasy tablets

TayTay: ROFL are u like 100 years old? u mean molly?

Blast. Molly, of course that was the term she should have used. Ecstasy was what Inspector Morse called it, not what teenagers today would say. With hands that were shaking even more than usual, she typed a reply.

Lolz01: Ha ha, I know, blame my bro, he’s well old, that’s what he calls it

TayTay: u got an older brother?
TayTay: pics????

Oh goodness, no. Now she’d have to invent a brother. It was more complex than you’d think, this catfishing lark. The conversation must be kept on track. Think, Maureen.

Lolz01: Trust, u don’t wanna go there
Lolz01: But if I send u cash could ur brother get you some molly?

TayTay: probs he can get basically anything hes always bragging about it

Ok, good; they were back on track.

TayTay: but srsly WTF how is getting wasted gonna help??

Lolz01: Well…

***

It had all changed after Peter died. Laura came home from school quiet, her smiles made of cardboard. Shut herself in her room. Maureen tried to get her to talk, but Laura’s face was as closed as her bedroom door. Teachers called her quiet, withdrawn. No friends came over. Laura would claim to be sick and Maureen, unsure what to do, thinking she must be missing her granddad, would feel her forehead and say she was fine, she had to go to school.

***

TayTay: god u think of the maddest things
TayTay: i wish u came 2 my school

Lolz01: me 2

TayTay: do u think u could move for year 12?
TayTay: we always get loads of new kids then

Lolz01: dunno. Maybe. I could ask my mum and dad I guess.

TayTay: OMG that would be so cool!!!!!!

Of course Maureen knew she couldn’t go to Taylor’s school. But she could invent an excuse later. It couldn’t hurt to give the girl some hope, surely?

***

When Laura had shut herself in her room for the fourth night in a row without eating dinner, Maureen had knocked and gone in. Laura lay on the bed, her body small and still. Maureen sat next to her, stroked her hair. She tried to ask questions, but Laura stayed silent, so in the end, she just sat with her in the slowly darkening room, ignoring the twin rumbles of their stomachs, her hand on Laura’s shoulder.

Finally, Laura spoke. Told Maureen about the used tampons they threw at her in the changing rooms, the bag of dog do they left in her desk, the digitally manipulated naked photographs they had sent round.

Laura told Maureen all these things, but she was too scared to tell her any names. To this day, Maureen still did not who her granddaughter’s torturers were. When she’d gone to that whey-faced Mrs Godfrey and demanded to know who it was that was ruining Laura’s life, the headmistress had claimed ignorance.

“I’ll look into it,” she had said, indicating a faded anti-bullying poster on the wall behind her. “We take this kind of thing seriously at Brickhill.” But the woman was clearly so overwhelmed, so overworked that Maureen knew nothing would be done. This woman wasn’t going to do anything to protect Laura.

Maureen left with no names and with helplessness heavy on her shoulders. She had never missed Peter more.

***

In reality, Maureen was neither a sleek black cat nor a shimmering goldfish. She was an old fish now, if she was anything at all. She was creaky, and slow, and weary. Her fingers ached in the rain, her eyes ached in the sun. But behind her keyboard, none of that mattered.

Maureen understood that behind your keyboard you could, if you wanted, pull on a shimmering costume and use it to transform yourself. No-one could stop you. You could become a magical creature, glancing and darting from conversation to conversation, being needed, being loved. The accepted wisdom was that the catfish were deceiving other people, taking them along for a ride. But Maureen knew that when you became a catfish, you were fooling yourself so fully that the old you – the you whose hips hurt and whose husband was long gone and who didn’t push the headmistress hard enough on why your granddaughter had been replaced by a wraith – could be cast aside.

You could become someone powerful, someone with purpose. Someone perfect.

***

Lolz01: Did he get it?

TayTay: yeah. he said it was like 12 grams

Maureen sipped her tea and smiled at Laura’s photograph. Did her smile deepen, just a little? Of course not, that was just Maureen’s imagination. But if that was where her imagination wanted to take her, she wasn’t going to say no.

TayTay: i dont know how much a person needs
TayTay: he gave me loads of shit about it but then got it for me anyway
TayTay: course the coin from u helped
TayTay: hes such a hypocrite just like everyone else

Maureen knew how much a person needed. That podcast had taught her that no single person needed 12 grams of MDMA, especially not if it was divided into 12 different bags. Especially not if those bags were labelled with the initials of their friends.

Lolz01: so we’re good to go? You can do the plan tomorrow?

TayTay: if i go to school tomorrow yeah

What was this now?

Lolz01: r u not gonna go to school tomorrow? How come?

TayTay: its just so shit
TayTay: ive got history tomorrow and thats always the worst
TayTay: angela spends the whole class whispering to me that im fat and that no one wants to have sex with me and she gets her mate rob to join in and he tells me how ugly i am and benson just pretends he cant hear
TayTay: its true i am fat and ugly
TayTay: no one will ever want to touch me
TayTay: like I KNOW
TayTay: i see it in the mirror all the time
TayTay: they dont need to tell me
TayTay: but it hurts so much

Maureen had to shut her eyes. But when she did, all she could see was Laura. She opened her eyes again as the messenger app pinged.

TayTay: i rlly wish u went to my school

Without thinking, Maureen typed.

Lolz01: my dad said maybe i could transfer at sixth form
Lolz01: so perhaps next year

TayTay: OMG really???

TayTay: that would be so sick!!!

Taylor sent a string of smiling emoticons and warmth rushed through Maureen’s body. Maybe this was what molly felt like? Maureen had to admit to being a tiny bit curious. Right now, however, making Taylor happy was the only illicit drug she needed.

Lolz01: so we’ve got a plan, right?
Lolz01: I promise u, they’ll leave u alone forever once this is done

TayTay: yeah?

Lolz01: Yeah.

***

That awful day hadn’t felt awful when Maureen had been on her way home. She had won three match points, picked up some of the Gu puddings Laura loved, turned up the Kinks on the car radio. The night before, Laura had come out of her room to watch TV, had even joined in House of Games, laughing and shouting out answers. Maureen hoped they were turning a corner.

The house had been so quiet that Maureen wondered if Laura had gone out with some friends. Her heart soared at the thought. “Laura!” she called, huffing up the stairs. “Are you there?” No reply.

So Maureen had opened her bedroom door, hoping to find it empty. But instead, she had seen the worst sight imaginable. The sight she would see every time she closed her eyes for the rest of her life.

While she had been out winning three games of tennis, her granddaughter had been writing a note, standing on a chair and tying a dressing gown cord around her neck. Just as Maureen had been throwing her arms in the air and shouting ‘not bad for an old bird’, Laura had kicked the chair away.

Maureen screamed, and dropped the shopping, the Gu puddings smashing on the floor. She ran to her granddaughter. She got the chair upright, clambered onto it, tried to lift Laura up. But even though she was so small, she was too heavy. Maureen tried to heave and heft her, but it couldn’t be done, and anyway, it was clearly, so clearly, too late.

Even in the note, Laura didn’t name the monsters who had done this to her. Even in death, she was still scared of them.

Well, Maureen wasn’t scared of anything.

Not anymore.

***

WhatsApp was quiet.

She had played her part. Rung the school, left an anonymous complaint about Angela Edwards on the answering machine, to be picked up in the morning. Now, she was waiting. Maureen tidied her desk, dusting Laura and Peter’s pictures. Laura was smiling, but Peter looked disapproving. Briefly, Maureen put him face down. But she couldn’t leave him like that, so she stood the photo up again.

Maureen went through to the sitting room. It was nearly 5. Taylor was always home by now, always. Maybe WhatsApp had pinged, but she hadn’t heard it? She shuffled back to the office – but no, the laptop was still blank.

Back to the sitting room. Could something have gone wrong? Could Taylor have been caught on her way to school? She said she had hidden all the bags of molly in the secret pocket of her bag, but someone could have found them. What if a teacher had seen her, or one of the other girls? What if she had decided that she wanted to try to drugs and they had killed her? What if she was being rushed to hospital, foaming at the mouth, eyes rolling back in her head? And then Maureen would be responsible for the death of two teenage girls. Unable to protect Laura while she was still alive, unable to defend her after she had died. What if Taylor had –

PING.

Oh thank goodness. Back into the office, as quickly as she could manage.

TayTay: hey!!!!!

Lolz01: hey!!! R u ok?

TayTay: yeah!!! i did it!

Lolz01: Yeah? And ur OK? Ur home?

TayTay: yeah. took me a while cos I had 2 wait till everyone went home
TayTay: waited in the library after classes
TayTay: then went and did it
TayTay: got into angelas locker no probs
TayTay: just shoved the package in
TayTay: shut the locker again and got out of there
TayTay: OMG she is gonna get in so much trouble!!!!!
TayTay: ur a genius i would never have thought of doing this!!!!!

Lolz01: and no-one saw u?

TayTay: nah no one was left in school
TayTay: i mean theres like a cctv camera in that corridor that benson is always threatening us with but everyone knows there isnt really any film in it

Cold fear clutched Maureen’s throat. CCTV?

TayTay: u still there hon?

They had CCTV in schools now? That was just – Orwellian. That couldn’t be legal. Could it?

TayTay: srsly laura ur the best

Well, Taylor must be right. There wouldn’t really be film in that camera. It would be fine. It had to be.

TayTay: and ur definitely coming to my school next year right?
TayTay: so we can do shit like this all the time?

With numb fingers, Maureen typed.

Lolz01: yeah, definitely. Can’t wait.

TayTay: Laura ur my best friend

Laura always helped other girls.

She would have helped Taylor too, Maureen knew it.

TayTay: ur the only person i can really trust

The End

Main photo: Barbara Evripidou

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