Watch an interview with Yara Rodrigues Fowler

Yara Rodrigues Fowler grew up in South London. She is the author of two novels, Stubborn Archivist and there are more things. Stubborn Archivist was longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize 2019, the Desmond Eliot Prize 2019 and the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award 2019; there are more things received the Society of Authors’ John C Lawrence Award 2018 and was shortlisted for the Eccles Centre and Hay Festival Writer’s Award 2020 (both as a work in progress) and shortlisted for the the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction 2022. Her writing displays a commitment to both politics and craft. With each project, Fowler strains against tradition, testing the boundaries of how fiction might be used as a tool for change.

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Listen to an audio extract from ‘Best Last Minute Spa Deal for Under £40’

‘Best Last Minute Spa Deal for Under £40’

It’s hot girl summer.

That’s what Jess was saying. She was right: this morning she had showered at the house of a guy she met on the 333 bus the night before outside Elephant and Castle station. You! she had said, pointing to him as he appeared on the top deck of the 333. And they had gone back to his.

Jess, I have to go meet someone else. My friend Anita is taking me to a spa.

What station are you going to? I’ll walk you there.

Don’t you have to be anywhere?

Jess shrugs. Not right now. I’m just doing errands.

At the station, she says, Text me later, let me know you’re okay.

I will.

I worry about you.

If you get there first go in without me, okay?

That was what Anita had said. So, when you get off the Tube at Latimer Road, you follow Anita’s instructions. You walk out of the small station and down the street, past the off-licence where you and she had ended up one carnival when you were kids. You look at the yellow-and-purple shopfront. Ten years ago, you had waited outside this shop in the sound and heat, the street spilling people, while the boys from school had got their beers.

You look around yourself and the tower block is there. So much closer than you have seen it yet, since you had last seen it, since the fire. The large writing on the canvas is green on grey. You stand still and living children move past you on the street. A little Black girl with her hair in puffs wearing pink trainers goes by on a scooter. A small South Asian kid, running. Their mothers, walking slowly, hips almost touching, move past you. You take a breath.

The leisure centre building is large and next to a school. At the reception a woman with threaded eyebrows tells you to go upstairs. That’s where the spa is, hon, she says. She hands you a white bathrobe and white slippers. As you walk up the stairs, you hear a basketball hit against a wall and echo. You walk past the sign that says gym and the sign that says pool. You press against the door with the sign that says spa and then the door with the sign that says changing room.

The changing room is white like heaven in movies. No mirrors. It makes you think of the scene at the end of the seventh Harry Potter film. You stand between the rows of white benches and take off your trousers and your shirt and your underwear without going into a stall.

You get changed into the bikini you bought earlier with Jess. As you bought it you had said, I know – fast fashion – but I need a bikini for later and I forgot to bring one. And Jess had said, That’s fine babe.

Your breasts don’t sit in the bikini-cup scoop properly. They spread at the bottom. You touch your legs. You put on the spa robe and the spa slippers and lock your phone and bag away into a locker.

Anita’s email had said that there would be an ice fountain, a hydrotherapy pool, a sauna, a steam room and a monsoon shower in the spa. You know what two of those things are. Hydrotherapy pool will mean jacuzzi, Anita had said. She booked you both head massages too. Two days ago Anita had messaged you: I’m booking us a spa, what can you afford? £40? you had texted back. This is the best last minute spa deal in London for under £40, Anita had replied, sending you a screenshot.

The main room of the spa is light but without windows. It smells like eucalyptus and lime and there is music playing, a piano without a tune or melody. You hang up your robe and sit in the sauna, the hot wood hurting your thighs. It’s dark. There is a man in the sauna. He doesn’t talk to you. You lie back.

Anita arrives.

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Image © Alice Zoo