‘I’m not your nanny,’ I said. ‘If you don’t eat, you’ll be ill, and I’m not spending my summer messing about with all that.’
‘All what?’ said Becky, wide-eyed and far from innocent.
‘My sister Kylie had bulimia and that was bad enough. I don’t want the job of nurse. So I’m going home tomorrow.’
Becky picked up the slice of cake and took a bite.
‘Too sweet,’ she said.
‘Yeah. As I said, it tastes like crap.’
We both started to laugh. We found a bottle of wine – yes, you guessed it, the Burnses had a wine cellar. The combination lock was dead simple to crack: Becky’s birthday. Did her parents really think we were that stupid? We got drunk and I made popcorn. We sat outside. It was a warm night and Becky told me she did want to be a writer, just not now, but after she’d lived a bit. Ruth expected her to go to Oxford but Becky wanted to go to the University of East Anglia like her half-brother.
Wait. Rewind. I should have mentioned Alex. It’s just that he wasn’t around much when I lived at the Burnses’ house. Becky’s dad was his father. Ruth and Mari, Alex’s mum, had been best friends back in the days when they were at art school. How Ruth qualified as a best friend I’m not sure. She nicked Mari’s husband so I would call that a prize enemy. Alex was two and a half years older than Becky. He stayed away from Ruth and his dad as much as possible. You couldn’t blame him. Ruth would always introduce him as her stepson. You’d think ‘stepson’ was his name, it was used that often. I’d met Alex for the first time around the Christmas before Becky’s book was published. He and Ruth were like two cats in an alley full of fish arguing over one salmon. Becky.
I remember him shouting, ‘You will send her over the edge if you don’t stop pushing.’
I was a bit scared of Alex. He was dead fit, he said what he thought and he didn’t care about the consequences.
At supper one evening, Ruth and Simon were talking about politics. I zoned out when those two started up. Not Alex. He pounced on them.
‘Your crappy 1970s socialism. I hate any “ism” that’s related to religion, and politics is a cancer as far as I am concerned, an evil that’s infecting this world. We will be nullified by dullerism if we’re not careful.’
Ruth told him to go to his room. He laughed, left the table and caught a train home. I didn’t see him again until that summer I was in Orford.
Fast forward. As I said, we found a bottle of wine and I listened to all Becky had to say. We fell asleep on the sofa and were woken the next morning by Becky’s mobile. Then mine rang. We ignored them. Then the house phone rang and finally Becky answered it. It was Ruth calling to remind us that Mark, the chimney sweep, was due at ten. Were we up, had Becky eaten, was she all right, had Jazmin arrived? I heard all this because Becky put her on speaker.
We were having breakfast and being a bit silly when the doorbell rang. I had boiled eggs and I’d cut the toast into soldiers. I was doing aeroplane noises, flying the soldiers at Becky to make her eat the egg. We’d forgotten all about the chimney sweep until I opened the door. If it hadn’t been for the bag of brushes and the toolbox he carried, I’d have thought he was a salesman. He wasn’t young. He had short grey hair and glasses. A neat freak, didn’t look like a sweep, but I suppose I had this Victorian image of a man covered in soot. He was an advert for washing powder.
Becky was pleased to have an excuse not to eat her egg and toast.
‘I mean it,’ I whispered. ‘You’ll be all on your own some if you don’t eat.’
She took the toast to the sofa and nibbled it. She asked Mark if he’d always been a chimney sweep. He said it was a new venture for him. He said it was good to be out and meeting people.
‘What did you do before?’
He seemed reluctant to answer and told us he was known for being one of the cleanest chimney sweeps in the Woodbridge area.
Becky pulled her knees up and asked him again, but he still he didn’t say much.
I offered him coffee and while I was in the kitchen I could hear Becky asking question after question. He was old school. I could tell that he didn’t like talking about himself. At last, Mark said he’d worked for the prison service.
Now, if it had been me, I would have left it at that, but not Becky. She wanted to know more, and being smart, she knew how to get the answers. She reminded me of a tin-opener. With each question she cut a bit more round his lid until all the beans spilled out.
He told her he’d been looking after a prisoner who’d been in solitary confinement for years. I thought, what a boring job. Recently this prisoner had been moved into an open prison nearby. Becky asked what he’d done.
Mark hesitated for a long time and then said, ‘Do you remember the story of the two teenagers from round here – Skye and Lazarus?’
OK – that interested me. I mean, who hadn’t heard of those two? The lovebirds who jumped or fell or were pushed off the dome of St Paul’s Cathedral. If you put it in Google, hundreds of sites pop up. Some say that they never jumped, others that they’re being held prisoner somewhere far away. Then there are those who are certain that they were taken by a UFO. Yeah, a lot of hocus-pocus.
Becky pretended to look as gormless as a crab in a bucket.
I said, ‘You mean those two kids who jumped off St Paul’s?’
‘They didn’t jump,’ said Mark, unpacking his brush and rods. ‘They were pushed.’
‘But they never landed,’ said Becky.
‘They must have landed,’ I said. ‘If they were pushed off St Paul’s, they’d have landed.’
Mark said nothing.
Becky had that Moleskine look on her, the one she had when she was writing.
‘What’s the name of the prisoner?’ she asked.
Mark said, ‘Go outside and see if the brush pops out the top of the chimney. That’ll show there’s no obstruction.’
We trooped out in our jim-jams and slippers. Sure enough, chim-chiminey and all that, there it was. Mary Poppins, eat your heart out.
We went back inside. Mark was putting away his kit.
‘The prisoner, the man who pushed them off the roof – what was he called?’ Becky asked.
I knew the answer. I mean, you’d have to have lived in a bubble not to know it.
His name was Icarus.
Chapter Four
It rained a lot in Orford. That’s English summers for you. Becky lit fires and sat, writing in her Moleskine, not eating, not speaking.
I found Simon’s computer in his study. The password was the same as the wine cellar’s. Pathetic. After looking at sites with all the clothes that I couldn’t afford, I checked the gossip columns. And then I put into Google ‘Icarus Old Bailey’. Do people really have nothing better to do with their time? There were conspiracy theories and non-conspiracy theories and they all centred on what happened when Lazarus and Skye were pushed off the dome of St Paul’s Cathedral. They’d never been to London before, having lived all their lives around Woodbridge, and the first thing they did, according to the Daily Mail, was get a taxi to St Paul’s, where Icarus was waiting for them. When I thought about it, it gave me the creeps because it made no sense. Look, call me old fashioned but if you were sixteen and you found yourself in London for the first time, no way would you want to see some old cathedral. And if you were going to jump from a high building into oblivion, wouldn’t you choose one where you had less chance of getting caught? It was the day before the Lord Mayor’s Show, there were cameras everywhere, set up to record the parade. The video shot that day is still on YouTube. You can see Lazarus and Skye standing on the edge of the dome, holding hands, and behind them is a man later identified as Icarus. In the clip it shows him quite clearly pushing Skye and Lazarus off the dome. OK so far – two and two are making four and not yet adding up to weird. Still hand-in-hand, Skye and Lazarus begin to fall. Someone had the bright idea of freeze-framing the shot. It shows them suspended in the air, then what appears to be a flash of l
ight – then nothing. Now, if you believe that two and two make four you have to accept that if two people jump from the dome of St Paul’s, they would be bound to land. They’d be dead but they would land. This is where it gets really freaky and the physics doesn’t work. Two people jumped from the dome of St Paul’s, witnessed by many. No one lands. Icarus was arrested and charged with murder, though what happened to Skye and Lazarus was never properly explained. The conspiracy theorists went into meltdown.
So here we go, the top-ten loony tunes of what happened to those two flightless love birds:
One: they were kidnapped by aliens.
Two: it was a magic trick and they’re both alive and well.
Three: they’re being held in a secret prison.
Four: they were a couple of holograms and an innocent man was sent to prison.
Five: they were angels.
Six: it was a forewarning of the end of the world.
Seven: it was a cover-up by MI5 and the CIA.
Eight: it’s all to do with the Bermuda Triangle.
Nine: they were fairies and fairies are really aliens.
Ten: the answer lies in the writings of Icarus, which so far have proved impossible to decode.
A load of rubbish, that’s what I thought back then in the rain-soaked days in Orford. The day I lost my rag with Becky was the day the sun came out for a minute.
Becky wasn’t eating and I couldn’t keep threatening to leave and still stay put. I had it out with her a week later, after an evening of watching her chop up all her food as small as she could, then, as if I wouldn’t notice, hide it under a lettuce leaf. The next morning, I went at her. All brass and bugles blaring, that’s me. But it was no use, she just curled into herself, didn’t say a word. Absent while present, if you get my drift. I was so angry I had to leave the house. Slammed the front door shut, felt like a right turnip. Mum always slammed the door when she was losing an argument. And, hello, here I was doing the same thing. I regretted it the second I started to walk away from the cottage. I shouldn’t have called her a spoilt bitch. Never should have said that. I thought when I returned she’d most probably suggest that me and my big mouth catch a train to London.
I went for a long walk to calm down. I considered all my options and none of them looked that rosy. If I stayed and Becky didn’t eat, I would be blamed. If I left and Becky didn’t eat, I would be blamed. I definitely wasn’t holding the Willy Wonka golden ticket, that’s for shizzle. I was munching on all this in my head when I noticed Mark driving past in his van. I remember thinking, how boring, he just has ‘Mark Keele Chimney Sweep’ written on the side. I reckoned it should have said ‘Mark Keele, the Cleanest Chimney Sweep in Suffolk’. He waved at me and I didn’t wave back. This nursery-rhyme village was beginning to give me the willies.
‘Hello.’
I looked up to see this woman, a woman I had never met before, smiling at me as if she’d known me all her life.
‘You’re staying at the Burns house,’ she said.
‘Yes,’ I said, slightly aggressively because it was no one’s business where I was staying.
But Mrs Sunshine with her straw shopping basket bobbing with vegetables took no notice. She had a smile glued to her face, the one the Jehovah’s Witnesses wear when they knock on our front door. A sort of martyred expression, as if to say, whatever the world throws at me, I will smile.
‘I’m so glad that Becky isn’t there alone,’ said Mrs Sunshine. ‘She needs a friend. If there’s anything you want, just call on me – everyone knows where I live.’
Mrs Sunshine said her name and it went in one ear and drained out before reaching the other.
I walked away and tried to figure out how she knew that I was staying at the Burnses’. But then, when I looked at all the cottages around me, I could see their windows listening, their loose-tongued curtains flapping. It gave me the heebie-jeebies, made me long for the silver-foil lights of the high-rises in London.
It started to rain – that thin summer rain that is more of a mist. I went back to face Becky, certain I’d see my rucksack packed and waiting in the hall. Instead, I saw Becky sitting cross-legged on the window seat in the kitchen, writing in her Moleskine. She closed it when she saw me. I thought, here it comes: ‘Pack your jim-jams and bugger off.’
She said, ‘Tomorrow, will you come with me to the open prison?’
That was the thing about Becky. You never knew what she was going to say. She hopscotched over conversations you were having and returned to them when you’d forgotten what you’d been talking about. It kept you on your toes.
‘Why?’
‘Because there is someone there I want to interview.’
I was pretty sure it had to be Icarus. I couldn’t think who else Becky would be interested in.
I said, ‘Is it him?’
Becky nodded and went back to the Moleskine.
I didn’t get it and said so.
She looked at me with a sad sort of expression as if to say, I doubt if you’ll ever get it, Jazmin. But she didn’t say that. I thought it, but she didn’t say it.
What she did say was, ‘I have an idea for my next book.’
‘Becky,’ I said, ‘you can’t just walk into an open prison and say, “Hi, I would like to see this man called Icarus.” They won’t let you in. For open, read shut.’
Becky had that lazy smile on her face, the one that told you she’d already managed the impossible.
‘I phoned Tess Renshaw.’
‘Who?’ I said, though I knew the answer. I just needed time to figure out my reply.
Tess Renshaw was Becky’s editor. It turned out that she was all friendly with a man who worked with the Home Secretary. Job done. Permission granted. Tomorrow at eleven o’clock.
I sat down, defeated. Talk about being wrong-footed.
I just said, ‘Will you eat something if I make it?’
Becky shrugged. ‘I’ll try.’
But when I leapt up to go to the kitchen, she said, ‘Tomorrow.’
I had no wish to climb onto the same merry-go-round that I’d just managed to climb off. Look, if she wanted to starve, that wasn’t my problem, was it?
Chapter Five
I don’t know how helpful all this is to you. Perhaps it’s a bit too much information. Are you recording what I’m saying? Because you haven’t taken any notes.
You must have a good memory – that’s a rarity these days. Go on, show me how good your memory is.
You remembered every word. That’s ruddy phenomenal.
It’s strange. I haven’t spoken about this to anyone before – well, no one who wasn’t involved in it – because no one has ever understood what really happened. After the inquest someone suggested that I see a psychiatrist. I couldn’t face looking at another person who believed that I was telling fairy stories. You’re not like that, Mr Jones. You listen. Two rare qualities, listening and memory. Back then, no one was silent long enough to hear their own breath, let alone what I had to say.
I suppose you want to know what happened when we went to the open prison to meet Icarus. All right. If I tell you, would you answer one of my questions?
Chapter Six
Tess Renshaw. She drove an Audi, one that made me think of a cockroach on wheels and only had two seats. Two seats. Just hold that image because if you take me, Becky and, of course, Tess, that makes three. Me being the ‘does she have to come?’ girl, I sat scrunched up in the back while Tess drove us to the prison and did all the talking. I lay there and watched the sunlight play on the trees – you know, that golden summer light when the days are long and carefree? The carefree bit is a joke. Becky drew with her finger on the window and I don’t think she listened to a word.
Tess has a motormouth. Tess said she had the most exciting piece of news: this really hot actor was to play the lead in the film of The Martian Winter. Becky didn’t stop drawing.
‘I don’t know who he is,’ she said.
Tess laughed. She
laughed not because something was funny, but because she wasn’t sure if she was dealing with a mad girl.
Still Becky said nothing. Tess changed the subject. Her voice was a tad more serious, talking about the open prison and about Icarus.
‘He was nineteen when he was convicted so he would now be about forty or forty-one,’ she said.
‘Too old to be of interest to you, Becks,’ I piped up.
Becky giggled.
Tess let out an exasperated sigh.
‘I hope, Jazmin, that we’re going to be grown-up about this. It took quite some arranging.’ Tess answered her hands-free. ‘No, darling,’ she said to who knew who. ‘That’s my final offer.’ Click. Gone is the speaker. Through gritted lipstick she muttered, ‘Agents.’
I felt Becky’s hand find mine and give it a squeeze.
How much wire fencing does an open prison need? Open? No. Though the word ‘prison’ describes the dump very well. We went through one clanking door after another until we reached a waiting room. The place smelled of disinfectant and sweat. I sat on a green plastic bench while Tess and Becky went to see Icarus. Two minutes later – maybe three – all right, five – out comes Tess on the war path, deploying her weapon of mass destruction.
‘Is this some kind of joke, Henry?’ she said into her mobile. ‘Becky Burns wanted to see Icarus, not some nineteen-year-old drug dealer.’
I couldn’t hear what was being said by Henry but before he was nuked into tomorrow Tess marginally calmed down. Her voice pivoted on the see-saw of believing and not believing. She came down on the side of not believing. From the bass note of Henry’s voice I got the impression that jokes weren’t his thing. Tess glanced at me, an irritated ‘I could do without you, cow’ kind of look, and walked into the corner of the waiting room near a water cooler. The rest of the conversation was inaudible.
Finally, she knocked on the door that she had stormed out of and the guard opened it – not to let her in but to let Becky out.
‘Becky, darling,’ said Tess, ‘there’s been some terrible mistake but I can put it right.’
My Side of the Diamond Page 2
