by Jenny Oliver
‘Go away!’ Dolly shouted.
One was making funny faces at Dolly, inane, wide grinning eyes. She looked away. She wished she was in her police car with her nice siren and the actual legal ability to make an arrest. But her and Fox were ordinary citizens today.
‘Just ignore them. They’ll get bored.’
But they didn’t get bored. They skidded through the rain, cajoling Fox to go faster, swerving really close.
The rain puddled on the hot, impenetrable ground, making the road like a skid pan and the bikes slide across the surface. Dolly could feel her adrenaline rise. She knew if she was in the driver’s seat she’d be tempted to floor it, to weave through the traffic. Ego demanded it of her.
But Fox just ticked over calmly. Purred along at a steady speed, refusing to rise to the challenge. Recognising, overcoming and transcending, thought Dolly, who wanted to stick her leg out and kick the skull tattoo guy next to her off his bike. But then suddenly he was reaching across to grab her. Eyes laughing. She could feel him pulling her dislocated shoulder, the pain so sharp she could barely hold on with her one good hand. ‘He’s pulling me off, Fox!’
Fox glanced round. Taking one hand off the handlebars, he did a swift karate chop on the guy’s outstretched hand to disentangle them. But as he did, a lorry up ahead pulled out from the slow lane, water spraying like a fountain off his tyres. Two of the bikers ahead shot dangerously through the narrow gap. But the one next to them was going too fast to do anything but swerve at right angles straight in front of Fox. Fox braked hard but it wasn’t enough. Dolly could see the panic in the other biker’s eyes. Rain streamed down.
Fox shouted, ‘Hold on!’
Dolly gripped the wet leather of his jacket as hard as she could as he swerved sharp left, cutting between two giant juggernauts, missing the front grille of one by a hair’s breadth.
Horns resounded. Their bike flew off the road through the bramble spikes of the grassy verge and then bounced down onto the furrowed earth of a cornfield, flattening six-foot-high corn as they powered forward in the driving rain.
Dolly gripped tight as she was thrown up and down in her seat. Her hands and neck were bleeding from the brambles. The corn was whipping past them. Fox wiped the rain off his visor, slowing as they went further into the field, looking around for where best to go but there were only fat green stalks like a jungle, then the bike suddenly hit a lump of earth and pitched them both forward, Dolly landing half beside, half on top of Fox, both under the full weight of the enormous bike.
‘Shit,’ Fox shouted. It was the first time Dolly had heard him lose his temper. He yanked off his helmet, wincing in pain as he tried with all his strength to lift the bike off their legs. ‘Can you get free? Are you hurt?’ He checked her first and foremost as his arms braced against the weight.
‘I think I’m OK,’ Dolly said, mentally scanning herself. Her dislocated arm surprisingly fine. Fox was taking most of the weight of the bike which meant she could wriggle herself free. ‘Are you OK?’ she asked, lifting her visor, unable to get the helmet off on her own one-handed.
Fox was trying to get out from under the dead weight of the bike. Dolly crouched down and using her good hand did her best to haul it upwards, creating enough of a gap that he could roll himself out, shuffling backwards till he was clear and she could let go, dropping the big lump of metal with a thud.
Fox lay back on the flattened corn. His eyes shut. The rain drenching them. Dolly sat down opposite. The pair of them hidden amongst the giant corn.
‘Are you hurt?’ she asked.
He exhaled once, then pushed himself up on his elbows and said, ‘No.’ He looked like he was trying really hard to keep his composure.
The rain was trickling down Dolly’s back. She looked down at her feet, away from his glare. She could tell he was steaming, trying his best to control the rage coiled tight inside. He stood up and tested his weight on his ankle, uncertain. With a vague limp that he clearly wasn’t going to admit to, he walked silently over to the bike, inspecting it. Rain was dripping off his nose. With both hands on the handlebars, he heaved it up off the ground with all his effort. The other side had fared worse. The body was dented, the paintwork ravaged. Fox flicked out the stand and went round to have a look. ‘Shit!’ he said when he saw it, hands pressed in anger to the back of his head.
Dolly bit her lip. She stood up too.
He scrutinised the damage like he was inspecting a child, fingers soft on the scratches. He shook his head. She knew he blamed her without him having to say anything. She blamed herself. Her overreaction had been basic training stuff: had she kept a psychological advantage? No. Had she eliminated the need for excessive force? No. Had she let her pathetic childhood vulnerabilities cloud her judgement? Yes, yes, yes.
Lightning forked down the horizon and thunder rumbled overhead. Fox kicked one of the giant stalks of corn in frustration. ‘Why couldn’t you have just …’ he stopped himself.
Hands on her hips, Dolly replied, ‘Why couldn’t I have what? Go on, say it,’ her voice muffled by the helmet.
Fox turned to look at her, standing in the middle of the decimated corn. His expression changed from thunderous to confused, then softened into a satisfied smile. ‘You can’t get that helmet off on your own, can you?’
Dolly looked away in frustration. It was still raining. They were both soaked.
Fox sauntered over to where she was standing and stood in front of her, arms crossed over his massive chest. ‘It would serve you right for me to leave you in it,’ he said, and Dolly felt a sickening sense of claustrophobia at the idea of her head being stuck inside the helmet for the foreseeable future.
She looked up at him. He looked down at her, still mad.
She swallowed. ‘Can you take it off, please?’
He paused, nostrils flaring with annoyance as he considered her request. ‘You’re an idiot, Dolly King,’ he said, his eyes boring into hers. ‘A child who needs to grow up. A hot-headed, temper-driven baby who has absolutely no understanding or grasp of her own emotions. Did you know that?’
Dolly didn’t reply.
Fox reached over and yanked her helmet off with none of the care and attention he had before.
Chapter Eight
Down at the crumbling cottage, the sea lapping gently on the sand, Olive couldn’t bring herself to follow Ruben inside. She was frozen in limbo on the well-worn doorstep. Zadie was already trotting through the dusty entrance hall nudging beer cans with her Converse-clad foot and trying to decipher graffiti. Olive feigned an untied shoelace, stalling for time.
She wondered what her dad would think of her, unable to set foot inside the house. He’d tell her about the night he broke into the catacombs of Paris. ‘If you’re not afraid of ghosts, then what’s the problem? It’s just dead people. And they can’t harm you.’
But what if you are afraid of ghosts? Olive thought, the cool smell of the stone cottage invading her senses. She thought of Mark all cosy in his new home with mousy Barbara. What would her dad think of that? The fact she had grown up to live, however unknowingly, comfortably loveless. He would say something symbolically practical like, you move forward by putting one foot in front of the other, Olive. Yet going into the cottage felt more like an unwilling step backwards. Like a purge. Or that blood-draining that Victorians did. Or …
‘I think it says, “Suck my—”’
‘OK, that’s enough.’ Olive strode into the dusty darkness, dragging Zadie away from the lurid graffiti. Ruben was nowhere to be seen.
Olive was immediately assaulted by the views from every angle. The big French windows that framed the back garden. The hallway, once covered floor to ceiling with her mum’s collection of oil paintings and sculptures. Zadie clamped to her side, Olive walked further down the corridor. She wasn’t sure if she was breathing, so made herself take a breath. The kitchen was ransacked. The oven on its side. Zadie picked up a saucepan that had been burnt right through. The only thing unchang
ed was the view. The sea so bright it was almost white in the darkness.
Ruben appeared, spiderwebs in his hair. ‘What a state!’
Olive nodded.
‘I’m really sorry,’ he said. He ran his hand through his hair and found the webs, swiping them away with a frown.
Olive shook her head. ‘It’s not your fault,’ she said, and walked on so she didn’t have to look at him. She poked her head into the living room, remembering the chair where her dad had had his daily nap when he was home. Piling logs into the wood burner in winter and rescuing little sparrows that had fallen down the chimney in summer. The shaggy lurcher, Everest, at his feet.
She paused in the doorway. Her brain was expecting rugs and lumpy soft furnishings, tasselled lamps and Persian rugs, sun-sparkling dusty air and a mantelpiece overflowing with jugs and ornaments. Instead, she saw a couple of disposable barbecues, crunched cans of Special Brew and an old Tesco bag. There was a distinct smell of mouldy wood and urine that made her want to cry.
Olive had no memory of it being cleared of their stuff. Who had packed away their belongings? It couldn’t have been her mother. Maybe Aunt Marge.
As she stood staring, Ruben and Zadie came up next to her. ‘This was the living room,’ he said to Zadie, her nose wrinkled at the smell. ‘It didn’t look anything like this. It was all papered dark blue, even the ceiling.’
‘Red,’ said Olive, absently, half listening. ‘It was dark red.’
Ruben frowned, ‘Really? Sorry, red. And there were big pictures and all these colourful lights and cushions.’
Zadie looked around as if trying to envisage it.
‘I am yet to see the point of a cushion,’ Ruben continued, ‘but I do remember a truckload of cushions in this room.’ He glanced at Olive and she smiled half out of politeness and half because his presence, his jokes, did actually make it seem less bleak. ‘And they used to throw the best parties,’ he shook his head in awe at the memory. ‘My God, they were fun. Think I threw up on gin for the first time at one of them.’
‘Vodka,’ Olive corrected.
‘Was it vodka?’ he looked unsure.
‘It was definitely vodka. We never had gin in the house.’ It was impossible not to remember what her mum was like after a gin fizz. It was Olive who had banned it from the house.
Ruben said, ‘Well these parties, Zadie, you wouldn’t believe it. The music, the dancing, the booze. The people. The whole bloody village was here.’
Zadie grinned. ‘Really?’
‘Oh yeah. And Olive’s dad would put on an old tux, do you remember that?’ he asked Olive, and she nodded, unable not to smile fondly at the thought of her dad donning his bow tie and slicking back his hair. ‘And her mum would have some big flouncy dress on and there was a band. Your dad was in the band, wasn’t he?’
Again Olive nodded. She could feel an actual ache in her heart.
‘See, Zaid, I’m getting it right,’ Ruben joked.
Zadie couldn’t help herself from smiling shyly at the use of a nickname.
In the room, everything was coming to life with his words and his memories. Different from Olive’s own. As if slipping out from under a blanket of darkness. Her dad doing a jig in his moth-eaten tux, fiddle under his chin. Dolly with her rusty trumpet. Her mum clapping along, golden hair piled on top of her head, her dress cascading layers of home-stitched satin ruffles. Tables bowing under the weight of wine and glasses as the neighbours poured through the door.
Because, of course, that was what her family did when they got a bit of money. Her dad was always off somewhere hunting down the next big thing, the hidden cache that would make them rich – opal mining in Australia, a Spanish galleon sunk off the coast of Cartagena packed with King Philip V’s gems, billions hidden in the jungle by an executed drug baron – all rumour and hearsay that had him packing his trusty camouflage bag. And on occasion he’d return with a big roll of folded notes in his pocket. But it never occurred to her parents to put it in the bank or pay the electricity bill. Oh no. Instead, they all got dressed up and went to Angelica’s Trattoria and ate fresh spaghetti with giant prawns and endless scoops of multicoloured ice cream. And her mum and dad would get up and dance. Her mum all ruffles and flowers, her hair like copper in the cheap disco lights, her teeth gleaming as she laughed. And Dolly would grin at Olive, and Olive would smile back, but always with a knot of apprehension in the pit of her stomach.
Olive’s mum had worked managing the small team that organised the public tours of Willoughby Park, her salary was minimal because it was pro-rata against a reduced rent cottage on the grounds. Her Christmas bonus went on booze and laughter for the village. Ironic, thought Olive, how determined she herself had been to never again live in fear of the electricity people knocking on the door and the hidden piles of red bills. Look where that had got her – abandoned by her supposed life partner, working in a job where new management hires she didn’t respect very much took her idea and tweaked it to save costs, altered the fabric choices and chose less reputable factories in order to profit the shareholders. All for the sake of the safe option. What would have happened had she just relaxed and enjoyed the party?
Ruben nudged her on the shoulder and said, ‘God, they were fun those parties, weren’t they?’
Were they fun? She had a flash memory of Ruben dancing with her mother. And her dad dragging her to the Persian carpet for a turn. Dolly in a tutu. Sitting under a table, legs of guests all around them, Ruben swigging port from the bottle, passing it to Olive. Outside, strolling down the icy beach so they could look back on the cosy glow of the house. His hand wrapped firm and warm round hers. Olive looked across at him and something to do with the setting, with the memories at the forefront of her mind, for the first time since being back it was like looking across at Ruben de Lacy, the boy from the Big House. Same eyes, same crooked smile. She remembered his hand on her cheek as they kissed for the first time, hidden in the shadows, the clouds of their frozen breath mingling with the sea spray. A moment when it felt like the whole world paused just for her and she could shut her eyes and live pressed against his dark woollen coat forever.
But then Olive saw herself reflected in the cracked glass of a mirror on the wall behind him. The sight of her own sad eyes bringing with it other flashes of memory. The times she hauled her mother to bed and sat guard to check she was breathing or stroking her hair as she sobbed. The echoes of the silent weeping all around her. The soft hand that clutched hers so tight she thought her bones might crush. Constantly having to calm down Dolly and her million and one desperate questions. The lurcher pissing on the floor because no one had taken it out. She thought of the times she’d searched the house for money, gone through pockets of coats to scrabble together loose change. Unscrewed caps of Ribena from the larder only to smell the sweet acrid stench of wine. She remembered sitting on the swing, Ruben on the grass in front of her, swigging from a bottle of whisky stolen from his dad that he’d got a whipping for later, staring out at the sea saying, ‘We’ve got to get out of here, Ruben, before it’s too late.’
In the darkness of the ransacked house she heard Ruben ask, ‘You OK?’
Olive had an overwhelming urge to be sick. ‘I think I have to go outside.’
Ruben nodded, his brow drawn with confused worry. ‘You don’t want to go down in the cellar?’
Olive shook her head, fighting against the urine-scented air and the collapsing catastrophe of her childhood home. ‘No, you go. It’s fine. Look in the corner. That’s where the coal was.’ She was striding out of the cottage before he replied. Walking so fast she almost tripped, her shoulder bashing against the corridor wall, out the door, through the too-narrow gap in the metal hoarding so her T-shirt tore, and down onto the beach. Stopping only when her toes were nearly at the water’s edge and she could breathe in lungfuls of sharp salty sea air.
It didn’t take long for Ruben to stride out of the front door. Zadie skipping along by his side.
Olive
was hovering on the path, half wondering if she should go back in. She hated being pathetic and defeated. ‘Sorry about that,’ she said as soon as she saw them.
‘That’s OK,’ Ruben replied, ‘you were right to get out, it was bloody terrifying down there.’ His clothes were sheened with white dust.
‘We saw a rat!’ added Zadie.
‘I wouldn’t have liked to see a rat,’ Olive shuddered, to Zadie’s look of disgust.
‘And you used to be so brave!’ Ruben teased, swiping the dust off his shoulders.
Olive hated how hard the joke hit. Where had her courage gone? They were standing opposite each other on the sand. Ruben turned to Zadie and said, ‘Do you know it was Olive who made us all camp out in the woods one Halloween?’
Olive frowned, she couldn’t remember it at all. ‘Did I?’
‘Oh yeah.’ Ruben seemed surprised she couldn’t picture it. ‘Your dad had that tent and you made us all drag out duvets and pillows. You must remember? The mad dog was there. And we told ghost stories that scared the crap out of Dolly.’
Olive put her hand to her mouth. ‘We did, didn’t we? Oh God, and that deer came over and we told Dolly it was a werewolf or something.’ She bit her lip guiltily. ‘Poor Dolly.’
‘Yeah, she never camped again.’ Ruben did a deep belly laugh.
Olive tried to stop from smiling. ‘We were really mean.’
Ruben shrugged. ‘I remember being pretty spooked myself. I think you were the only one who made it till morning. Out of sheer stubborn determination!’
Olive remembered then, waking up alone in the tent, the sound of the birds outside as the sun rose and filled the warm canvas with a calm orange glow. A moment of paradise, before heading back into the chaos of the house.
It was strange seeing herself as he saw her. His memories cutting through her own. Would she have so willingly fled the cottage had they had this conversation first? She pushed her shoulders back, made herself stand taller. She was suddenly quite pleased that her hair was messy from sea spray and her uncreasable white T-shirt was torn and streaked with dirt.
