‘Yeah?’ asks Joe.
David takes a deep breath and hopes the pause might signify the gravitas of what is to follow.
‘Ellen has invited me go away with her. To a cottage. Overnight. With some friends.’
Joe stares at him. He tries – unsuccessfully – to disguise his amazement.
‘And …? How am I supposed to help with that?’
‘Because … Mum’s never going to agree. So I need you to say I’m with you.’
Joe shakes his head, jaw firmly set.
‘No.’
‘Wait,’ says David. ‘Let me just –’
‘I’m not doing it,’ says Joe. ‘I’m not going to lie for you. Not to your mum. Certainly not about this.’
‘I’d do it for you.’
‘Would you?’ he says, with a sceptical raise of an eyebrow. ‘I’m not sure. In any case, you know I’d never ask.’
‘Why? Because you’re such a goody-goody?’
David knows his tone is too sneering, but it’s too late. Joe smiles wryly, gets up and walks over to the door.
‘I’m going to head off.’
‘What? Come on. You’re not even going to think about it?’
‘What the hell are you doing, David?’ says Joe, looking at the floor. ‘You don’t even like these people, remember?’
‘Yeah – and you were always on my back, saying I should give them a chance. So I did.’
‘Well, I was wrong and you were right, OK?’
‘About Matt – even Ben,’ says David. ‘But not Ellen. You can’t lump her in with them.’
‘You did.’
‘Yeah, but –’
‘She was going out with Matt until a few weeks ago. For a long time. Do you think they’re really that different? You saw what he was like at the party. Plus he’s going to kill you when he finds out. You know the kinds of people he hangs out with. Is it worth it?’
‘Look – if you don’t want to do it, then fine,’ says David, turning away. ‘I just thought I’d ask.’
‘OK then,’ says Joe with a smile. ‘I’ll see you around.’
David nods and Joe leaves.
‘The Falcon!’ shouts David. ‘He’s black and he flies.’
But he can already hear the front door slamming.
Chapter 24
There’s Always Room for More
David lets go his hold on the wall of the church tower and floats free, a gust of wind buffeting him and making him drift to the south.
He swoops down over the graveyard, so low his body almost brushes the lichen-dappled headstones. The grass flattens at his passing. Dead flowers shake in their plastic vases.
Up now. Up and over the boundary hedge, blood-dropped by berries, bristling with thorns. Up and up and over the stand of ash and oak, rook infested, a cacophony of flapping black.
The river below, picking up light and sending it shimmering down its arcing length, and the road alongside dull and unconscious of the drama in which it now plays its part.
David peers into the wind. There. The car is only now climbing up the side of the embankment. It has not yet even entered the water. If he can only –
But Lightforce is on him before he even realises, blinding light made solid, smashing into him, knocking him off course and driving him down towards the ground, picking up speed all the time until they hit the road, tearing up the tarmac and sending fragments spraying into the air.
David struggles to push Lightforce away, but it’s no good. He is being driven further and further down until he can see nothing at all and he wonders, even in his panic, how deep they might go. Maybe they’ll just keep going and going until they end up at the Earth’s molten core.
David makes one last effort to struggle free and –
‘So?’ says Holly, clattering into the room with the hoover. ‘How was the party?’
David is wrenched back to his room in an instant and sits up, blinking, Lightforce still burned into his mind’s eye.
‘How did you get on at the party with Helen?’ says Holly, pulling out the lead and reaching down for the plug socket.
‘Ellen,’ corrects David. ‘It was OK.’
‘Just OK?’ says Holly with a half-smile.
Ordinarily it’s a rule of David’s to give no more information than is strictly speaking necessary. But he finds to his surprise that he wants to tell Holly. He wants to talk to her. He wants to talk to her about Mark, but knows he needs to take care and pick the right time. This will serve as a distraction.
‘It was good – me and her. The party was pretty crap though. I almost got beaten up.’
‘What?’ says Holly. ‘Over Helen? I mean Ellen.’
‘No,’ says David. ‘Well, sort of. She invited me. Some people didn’t want me there. Her ex in particular. Him and his mate jumped me. They smacked my friend Joe in the nose when he tried to help. Joe’s black and, well, things were said.’
‘Bastards,’ mutters Holly.
David nods.
‘Yeah. But I knew that already. I shouldn’t have gone.’
‘What happened?’
David gives Holly a quick run-through of the main facts of the evening.
‘Does it worry you that this is who your girlfriend was going out with before you?’
Yes. Of course. Of course it does.
‘No – you can’t judge someone by their friends, can you?’
Holly frowns.
‘I’m not so sure. I think maybe you can. A bit.’
He sees Joe in his mind’s eye and feels a pang of guilt. But it isn’t fair. Ellen can’t be blamed for Matt.
‘OK – well, not by boyfriends,’ he says. ‘Boyfriends are different. People go out with each other for all kinds of reasons.’
‘So you’re saying he’s so good-looking she ignored the racism and general assholery?’
David smiles.
‘No. Maybe. He’s not that good-looking.’
‘Ah – not to you maybe,’ she says. ‘Men never get what women find attractive. They have this idea about what is and isn’t good-looking, and if a man is attractive to women and doesn’t fit, they behave like he’s cheating or the women are stupid.’
David shrugs.
‘What about women?’ he says. ‘Don’t they think the same way when men fancy women?’
She shakes her head.
‘Men are led by their dicks and nothing more.’
‘You sound like Marie,’ says David.
‘What?’
‘Er …’
‘Why would you say that?’
‘Because she’s always saying stuff like that. My mum’s always telling her to shush.’
His own mentioning of Marie trips him up and he can’t think of what to say next. Holly peers at him. David shifts uneasily.
‘What is it?’ she asks.
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘You’ve got something on your mind, I can tell.’
David sighs. He has to tell her, and there is no safe way to phrase it.
‘I saw you with Mark.’
Holly flinches like she’s been burnt.
‘What?’ she says, colour rising to her face. ‘Mark who?’
‘Don’t. I saw you,’ says David. ‘So …’
Holly stares at him. David can see the effort on her face; the effort to come up with any plausible explanation for whatever David witnessed. And then the anger as she knows she can’t.
‘That bloody telescope. You’ve been spying on me again?!’
‘Yes.’
‘You promised you’d stop.’
‘No, I didn’t.’
‘Fuck!’ she says, followed by a low growl.
She closes her eyes and clenches her fists and mumbles words to herself that David can’t catch.
‘That’s why you were so panicked when I saw you the first time, isn’t it?’ he says. ‘Not because you had just any boyfriend?’
Holly puts her face in her hands.
�
��Why?’ says David.
She slowly lowers her hands, opens her eyes and stares at him.
‘Why what?’ she says mechanically.
‘Why are you having an affair with Mark?’
‘An affair?’ she says with a bitter chuckle. ‘My God.’
‘What?’ says David, confused. ‘Isn’t that what it’s called?’
She sighs.
‘In a Jane Austen novel maybe.’
‘So why?’
‘Why an affair? Why a married man? Why Mark?’
‘Yes,’ says David. ‘Any of those. All of them.’
‘None of your fucking business actually,’ says Holly. ‘What happened to it being none of your business what people did? What happened to you being cool with it?’
‘That was before the “it” was Mark! It does make a bit of difference.’
‘What – are you shocked?’
‘No,’ says David. ‘Yes. Of course I am. A bit. I know him. I know Marie. I know their kids.’
She puts her hands to her face again.
‘You and that fucking scope,’ she says bitterly. ‘Happy now? If you spy on people you’ll get secrets.’
‘You’re the one with the secrets,’ he says. ‘You can’t blame me for that.’
‘Yes, I can!’ she shouts. ‘You have no business knowing. It has nothing to do with you.’
David says nothing. He would leave if he could, but it’s his room – that would just seem weird. What seems like a lot of time passes before Holly speaks again.
‘You think you’re like some kind of god up here, spying on people, don’t you?’
Sometimes. Kind of.
‘No,’ says David.
‘We’re like your little playthings, aren’t we? Going on about our lives while you watch.’
‘It’s not like that!’
Although it is a bit like that.
‘I thought you’d lose interest now you had something a bit more exciting in your life. I thought you’d put all that behind you and get on with life.’
‘So did I,’ says David.
She lets out an exasperated groan.
‘So?’ she says. ‘Are you going to tell?’
‘No. Of course not.’
To David’s surprise, Holly begins to cry. For a few moments it is as though he is watching something on TV and his main reaction is one of fascination as her body heaves and rocks with her efforts to stifle her sobs.
Then, tentatively, fearfully, as though stroking a sleeping leopard, he reaches across and puts his arms around her and she lets herself be pulled towards him.
David holds her close, her face hidden behind her hair, pressed against his chest, and he realises that he has never held anyone before – that he has always, always, been the one to be held.
The whole wide world comes to a halt and hangs in freeze-frame, in a frozen orbit around that moment. David feels the thud of a heartbeat and can’t quite tell whose it is – and he does not care.
The Hulk himself could not have pulled David’s arms from around her and yet, when she slowly pulls away at long last, his arms become self-conscious, clumsy things once more and he draws them in like the recoiling tentacles of a shy anemone.
Holly’s face is pale and pained and David is lost for words. He had felt fine when he was holding her – more than fine – more than himself – but now he realises uncomfortably that he too is close to tears.
‘I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing any more,’ says Holly.
David stares at her.
‘I’ve never known what the fuck I was doing,’ says David.
She smiles as though he is trying to be sweet when it is just the plain truth, and he frowns. He doesn’t want her thinking he is just saying some crap to make her feel better. He hates people doing that.
‘You think that everything is shit already,’ she says. ‘But that’s one thing I’ve learned – there’s always room for more shit. There’s always room for more.’
She takes a deep breath, hunching her shoulders up to her ears and making her hair spill over them. She lets out a long sigh of world-weariness that seems to go on and on, and when it’s finally over, she sits miraculously transformed.
Holly has now become restored to the Holly of half an hour before and there is almost no visible sign of the frail and vulnerable Holly whose warmth is still clinging to him. David can see it – just – in the redness around the eyes, a more hesitant set to the jaw – but he wonders how many others would – or ever had.
Or ever will.
Chapter 25
The Stillness of a Quiet City
David’s exam results come through. They are fine. They are more than fine. His mother is delighted, although she is clearly surprised at how well he’s done. So is David for that matter.
He texts Joe to check on his and gets a terse response giving him the grades and little else. David eases himself back into the sofa. He is tense but is trying to exude relaxed nonchalance – something that does not come easily to him at the best of times.
This display is for the benefit of his mother, who luckily is too busy to notice. Each time she walks by, David sets himself to speak, but he does this so languidly that she is gone before the words even form in his mouth. This charade might have gone on indefinitely had his mother not spoken first.
‘Are you all right?’ she asks. ‘You look like you need to go to the toilet and keep changing your mind.’
‘What?’ says David. ‘No. What?’
His mother shakes her head and begins to walk away.
‘Oh – yeah,’ says David. ‘I meant to ask you something.’
‘Yes?’
‘Joe’s asked me to go to this festival with him,’ says David. ‘It sounds a bit rubbish, but he’s got no one to go with.’
His heart is racing now. He has lied before but this is a big lie.
‘A music festival?’
‘Music … all kinds of stuff. It’s called the Lapwing Festival. I can show you the website if you want.’
‘I’ve heard of that,’ says his mother brightly. ‘It always looks exciting. Not rubbish at all. I’d have loved to have gone to something like that at your age. But wouldn’t you need to stay over? It’s miles away.’
‘That’s what I mean,’ says David. ‘It’s a bit of a drag, but Joe’s really keen. It doesn’t matter. I can tell him no.’
‘I haven’t said anything yet,’ says his mother with a smile. ‘You’re old enough and Joe’s certainly sensible enough for the two of you.’
‘Cheers.’
‘You know what I mean.’
He doesn’t really but it’s not the time to argue.
‘So it’s OK then?’
‘I don’t see why not,’ says his mother. ‘How will you get there?’
‘Train.’
‘And what about a tent?’
‘Joe’s got all that stuff apparently,’ says David, amazed now at how smoothly the lies are coming. ‘His family are into all that kind of thing.’
‘Really? I can’t see Jasmine in a tent.’
David just shrugs and his mother smiles.
‘It’s good that you two are still such mates after all these years. I like Joe.’
‘I know you do, Mum.’
And that, to David’s amazement, is that. He sits back feeling a little dizzy. He feels like a great bubble of nervous excitement has been building up in him ever since Ellen first mentioned the possibility of going away.
Part of him had maybe hoped that his mother would not countenance his going away for the weekend so that he wouldn’t have to give it any more thought and would not have to worry about that first night alone with Ellen.
But it was on. It was happening. It was an actual thing and he was going to have to deal with it. All those fantasies he’s filled his nights with, and here was real life outdoing it. He really ought to feel more keen.
David goes up to his room, still a little dazed and feeling hungry and nause
ous at the same time. By the time he reaches the top of the stairs all he can do is collapse face down on his bed.
After a moment, he turns over and stares at the ceiling. It slopes away from him, rising up to meet the other sloping ceiling in a sharp crease like a folded piece of white paper.
It is one of those strangely quiet spells – when all the clamour of the city has somehow come to a halt in synchronised silence. There is nothing quite so still as the stillness of a quiet city.
He picks up a Conan comic – Conan the Barbarian #24. The artwork is by Barry Windsor-Smith, who did all the early Conan comics. His style is so different to most comic-book artists, like Jack Kirby, with a much softer look to everything – more like illustrations from an old book. He inked his own stuff too, whereas normally the artist just did the pencil drawing.
This one was ‘THE SONG OF RED SONJA’ and has a story where Conan and Red Sonja meet for the first time and raid a jewel room in a high tower. On the way they go for a swim in the palace pool and Red Sonja takes off her chain-mail shirt to stop herself sinking. Conan stands staring open-mouthed, just as David imagines he would himself in similar circumstances.
That’s the fun of Conan. He’s powerful and skilled as a fighter, but he’s also a bit dim. He has the body of a man but the mind of a teenage boy. Marie would say that was true of all men.
Conan falls for Red Sonja but she – of course – gets the better of him and rides off into the night, leaving him to punch the wall in frustration.
A crack of thunder shakes the room and makes David start and sit up. There is a pause of about thirty seconds and rain starts to hammer down on the roof above his head.
It is so incredibly loud, it makes him get up and go to the window to gaze out in wonder at the hailstones battering the slates below his window and causing a kind of mist between him and the rest of the houses in the street.
He raises the blinds and opens the window, stretching out his arm and letting the stones hit his open hand. They sting his flesh – his palm and wrist and lower arm. It’s a strange sensation – painful and exhilarating at the same time.
The hailstones continue to fall, easing for a moment and then finding new power as lightning flashes and another crack of thunder shakes the air, sounding even louder and even more close, like giant hands clapping overhead.
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