letters on its boot curse anyone giving the bus an evil eye, and advocate two children per family. A woman leans her head out of the window and vomits. ‘Oh,’ Alice says, ‘oh, that’s just beautiful.’ She shifts gears, goes a little faster. ‘Did you ever get that grant?’ she says, after a while. ‘Wow, you do remember absolutely everything, don’t you?’ He fills his mouth with crisps. He licks the salt off his fingers. ‘I did get it, I turned it down.’ ‘You what?’ she says, turning to look at him, narrowly avoiding a passing car that creeps up suddenly in the fog. ‘Careful!’ Jacob says. ‘I don’t know, I lost the original idea.’ ‘You could have used that money, paid off some debt,’ Alice says. ‘People would kill to get one of those grants.’ Jacob shrugs. ‘I don’t understand,’ she says, after five minutes. ‘I don’t bloody get it. It took you so long to get around to putting that application in. You stayed up two nights doing it, though I didn’t get why you had to leave it so last minute like everything el—’ ‘You do fucking remember every little detail about everything, don’t you. It must come in very handy, I’m sure,’ Jacob says, ‘with your steady banking job with its regular pay check. Superstar Alice. Rent payer extraordinaire. That actually rhymes.’ He stuffs half a chocolate bar in his mouth. The car stalls again, and Alice almost yanks the old-fashioned stick out of its socket. The car splutters forward.
Her nostrils flare. ‘What are you doing now?’ she asks. ‘This and that. Hanging out with some of the old St. Martin’s crowd. Living back at the parents again. Working on some sketches.’ Alice is silent. ‘You could do whatever you wanted with your life, you know,’ she says. ‘You’ve got talent.’ ‘Yes, and maybe, just maybe, this is what I want,’ he says. Alice suddenly pulls up to the side of the road. ‘Jacob, let’s not make the same mistakes again,’ she says, staring into his eyes. He lays a soothing hand on her shoulder. She pushes the hair savagely from her forehead. ‘Let’s not!’ she says. He nods. ‘Let’s not,’ he says. ‘Then don’t fucking agree with everything I’m saying!’ ‘Oh, come on, Alisha, don’t start—’ ‘My name. Is not Alisha,’ she says through gritted teeth. Jacob sighs. ‘Yes, it fucking is. Your name is Alisha. Named after Goddess Alisha by your lovely dad.’ ‘Who the fuck is Goddess Alisha?’ Alice spits out. ‘There is no Goddess Alisha.’ ‘There may as well be,’ he says. ‘You just want me to be religious because your mum is religious. Poor Jacob, no one drags him to church any more. How can he feel like a true fucking atheist?’ ‘Mum didn’t drag me to church.’ Inkspill Magazine | Issue 5 | 45