by Ross Welford
He has the same puzzled look on his face as his dad did a few minutes ago when he heard me sneeze.
I know that there is no reason for Jesmond to think I am in his room, invisible. But, unlike his dad, Jesmond at least knows that invisibility is possible.
He stands in the middle of his room, holding his pyjama top, staring at the floor where it had appeared to ‘stick’ to the carpet.
I follow his gaze down to the floor, and I see what he is staring at.
There, imprinted in the thick pile of the carpet, are two perfect footprints where I am standing.
It’s probably only a few seconds, but it feels like about a year.
‘Hello, Invisigirl,’ he says, a sneering half-smile on his face.
Then he gently throws his pyjama top at me. It hangs on my shoulder for a second before falling to the floor.
Jesmond swears under his breath, and what happens next is so fast that I can barely keep track.
He darts forward, both hands outstretched, and I dash to one side and move over next to his bed.
‘I know you’re there,’ he whispers, and his eyes scan the carpet again for my footprints.
Meanwhile, Geoffrey has finished his snuffling and squats in the middle of the room, back arched in readiness for a poo.
Jesmond sees this and is momentarily distracted.
‘No, no, no. Oh, you dirty little—’
The words freeze in his mouth as he draws back his foot to aim a kick, and this is not just a little kick. It’s going to be a big one – I can tell from the angle of his foot that he’s putting a lot of force behind it.
And I just cannot stand by and let Geoffrey be harmed, so I shout, ‘Hey!’ and push Jesmond with all my strength, and he topples over, cracking his head against his dressing table, sending his deodorants and hair gels scattering.
I’ve got only seconds to act. I reach down and grab his phone from the bed. Jesmond sees it rise spookily from the duvet and he is scrambling to his feet when Geoffrey – little, brave, yappy Geoffrey – gives a tiny, furious growl and launches himself at Jesmond’s ankles.
It’s all the distraction I need. I run to his bedroom door, yank it open, and I’m off down the stairs, followed about three seconds later by Jesmond, who is calling out for his sister, and swearing at both me and Geoffrey, who launches himself again at his captor, sinking his teeth into Jesmond’s lower leg, causing him to yowl with pain.
By the time I’m at the bottom of the stairs, Jarrow’s bedroom door has opened, and she’s calling out, ‘What the hell is going on? I’m tryin’ to sleep!’
But she sees the commotion, and maybe clocks the mysterious floating phone, and joins in the pursuit.
Front door or back door?
The front door is closer, but as I’m nearly there, I see the entry panel and the keypad that they use instead of flippin’ keys and I quickly turn round, dodging past Jesmond, who has reached the bottom of the stairs, pursued by a very angry three-legged Yorkshire terrier.
‘Give it here,’ he snarls, grabbing for his phone, which he can see levitating along the hallway.
As I shimmy out of his way, the rug beneath my feet slips on the highly polished floor and I put my other hand out to steady myself. It connects with the glass cabinet of china dogs and the whole thing comes smashing down to the ground with a huge crunch, shards of glass and little dogs showering everywhere.
I’m barefoot, but I can’t worry about it. I plough straight through, stabbing my heel on the broken neck of an Irish wolfhound and limping through the door of the kitchen.
By now, Maggie has joined in the chase but hasn’t worked out who to attack yet. She decides to go for Geoffrey, who is having nothing of it. Courageous little lionheart that he is, he emits such a volley of yapping that, for a couple of seconds, the big dog – which could probably devour Geoffrey without even chewing – backs off.
It’s all the time I need, and I’m out the back door, legging it down the garden, pursued first by a cursing Jesmond Knight, then a snapping, snarling terrier (which is managing a few nips of Jesmond’s ankles), then a massive, slavering devil-dog. Behind them are Jarrow, and last of all Tommy, shouting.
‘WHAT is going on? Jarrow? Jesmond? Who smashed the cabinet? And where did that other dog come from?’
And there is Boydy.
Boydy? I’ve no idea what he is doing in the back garden, but he’s already running with me. I press the ON button of the phone as I’m running and the start-up light lets him know where I am.
‘Come on, there’s a hole in the fence. Follow me!’ he gasps, but his excess weight is holding him back.
I overtake him, heading for where I think he means.
‘To your right!’ he yells.
In the dark, I can see where he means. There’s a gap between two bushes and a section of broken fencing, and without looking back I’m through it, but I have to stop because I can’t just leave him.
‘Come on, Boydy!’ I yell through the gap. He’s nearly made it, and dives onto the ground just as Maggie makes a final, snarling leap.
Boydy howls as the dog’s teeth penetrate his jeans and grip his backside. I can see Jesmond closing in, and he’s about to grab Boydy’s ankles, when Geoffrey once again snaps, this time at Jesmond’s outstretched hand, and he screams.
I have grabbed Boydy’s hand through the gap, and I’m pulling as hard as I can, while he kicks his legs at Maggie. For a second the only sounds are two snarling dogs and our panting, then Maggie releases her grip to prepare for another attack.
It’s all Boydy needs. With a final, desperate kick, he’s through the gap. I have picked up one of the missing fence posts and I’m poised, like a baseball player waiting for the ball to be pitched.
An instant later, Maggie’s head comes through the gap, and I bring the fence post down on her head with all the force I can muster. She emits an unbearable howl, but still she keeps coming further through the hole in the fence, and I find myself saying, ‘I’m sorry, Maggie, I’m sorry’ as I whack her again.
She sinks to the ground and for a horrible, dread-filled moment I think I have killed her but then, groggily, her huge head lifts up and she retreats, beaten and bloody but alive.
Geoffrey’s yapping continues but gets more distant, moving further from the fence and back to the house.
Boydy’s lying beside me, but instead of moaning, he just says, ‘You got it?’
I nod.
He can’t see me nodding. ‘Well, did you?’
‘All done!’
I put the phone in his hand, and he grins, then moans in pain. On the other side of the fence … nothing. No shouts, no threats. In fact, there’s no one there.
‘They’ve gone out the front way. They’ll be here any minute,’ I say.
Boydy drags himself up, and we both clamber over the next-door garden’s wall. My heel is sore where I stepped on the china dog, and I stoop to pull a piece out of the flesh. It’s bleeding, but not badly.
Two minutes later, wheezing and moaning, we’re through the door into my backyard, and a minute after that, we hear footsteps pounding up the back lane.
‘She lives somewhere around here. One of these,’ I hear Jarrow say.
But they don’t know which one. We hear them rattling all the back doors up the lane, but none of them opens – and certainly not mine.
No … mine is shut tight. Nothing to worry about there.
All I have to worry about is right behind me.
Gram. She’s standing on the back step, with Lady.
‘Elliot? Oh my goodness, what has happened to you? And where is Ethel? I’ve been worried sick. I was about to call the police. Have you seen the time?’
For a second I think it’s strange that she’s asking where I am … and then I remember.
She can’t see me.
I’ve got to hand it to Boydy. Lying under pressure: it’s quite a skill to be so good at it by the age of thirteen. Mind you, the story he comes up with is s
o utterly far-fetched that I just stand there, invisibly open-mouthed at his fluent deception.
‘Ah, you’re up! Oh good – I didn’t want to wake you. Ethel’s fine, she’s just, erm … a bit poorly and has gone to bed in our spare room.’
I’m standing right next to him as he says this, of course, and my gaze darts from one to the other.
‘You’d better come in,’ says Gram.
She’s not buying this, I can tell. Not yet.
I follow Boydy through the back door into the kitchen, and stand in the corner, watching everything. This time, Lady doesn’t freak out, although I see her nose go up as she smells my presence. Instead she just slinks away to the front room.
In the light, the extent of Boydy’s injuries is more apparent. The back of his jeans is torn and soaked with blood.
‘Get those off,’ commands Gram. ‘We’ll clean you up and you can tell me exactly what is going on.’
So far, I have got to the age of nearly thirteen without once having to see a teenage boy’s bare bottom. Now I get to see two in the space of one evening.
Oh, lucky me.
‘How did this happen?’ asks Gram quite kindly.
It does look bad. There are puncture marks on the top of his thigh, and there’s a tear in the flesh of his large, pale buttock. Boydy leans over the kitchen table as Gram gets some witch hazel and cotton wool. He directs his comments over his shoulder.
‘I was attacked by a dog in the back lane.’
‘Good heavens. We should call the police! An attack like this is very serious.’
‘Er, no … don’t do that!’ He sounds desperate.
‘Why ever not, Elliot?’
‘I was, erm …’
Honestly, I can almost hear the cogs turning in his head as he thinks on his feet.
‘I was … taking a shortcut through someone’s back garden and it was a guard dog!’ He ends up sounding very pleased with this fib, and continues, ‘You see, I was coming round to tell you about Effow, because – ooh, that stings! – because Mum told me to take responsibility.’
Good. Clever. Invoke the command of a responsible adult.
‘Responsibility for what, Elliot?’
‘I think she – in fact, I know she – erm … drank some alcohol. Ooooow!’
Oh, thanks a lot, Boydy. Thanks a huge, great, gift-wrapped bundle.
‘Alcohol? Oh, Elliot, oh no, no, no.’
I now know that, of all the things you could say to Gram, this is probably the worst, given what she went through with my mum. The colour has drained from her face, and she stands holding the bottle of witch hazel, shaking her head.
‘I’m sorry, Mrs Leatherhead. It was only one beer. She didn’t even like it, and then she threw up and my mum put her to bed.’
‘Where did she get it? Did you give it to her?’ Gram renews her nursing with extra vigour.
‘I don’t know, Mrs L. Oooow! Honestly, it was just her. We only had Sprite and Fanta. I’m really sorry. I should have stopped her. Aaiiieee!’
Good, I’m thinking. I’m glad it’s hurting. It’s bad enough that he lied about me drinking alcohol. For a start, it’s disgusting. (I’ve never had any, but I have smelt wine before and I don’t think I will ever drink it. Why would you drink fruit juice that’s gone off, which is all it is as far as I can tell?) And for another thing, why choose that? He could have just said I’d overindulged on the pizza. You know, one slice of pepperoni and mushroom too many and up it all came, then I got packed off to bed.
Too much imagination, that’s Boydy’s problem.
Gram’s got the sticking plaster out now and is applying it to Boydy’s bitten bum.
‘Well, frankly, Elliot, I am surprised and disappointed. I thought you were more responsible than this. Although I appreciate you coming round to tell me in person. Right, you’re all patched up. It’s too late now, but I shall be calling your mother in the morning. And tell Ethel to come here before she goes to school.’
Boydy – to my great relief – has pulled his trousers back up and is hobbling to the back door.
Gram has her back to us both as she puts the medicine away.
Boydy takes out Jesmond’s mobile phone from his jeans pocket and holds it up to me. He points at it, then to himself, and then makes a wiping motion with his hand.
He’s going to wipe Jesmond’s phone. Good. You can do that without a passcode. In fact, that’s pretty much all you can do without a passcode: restore it to a blank phone, erasing all saved data.
He then takes out my phone that I’d given him before and puts it out of Gram’s eyeline, behind the toaster.
‘Thank you, Mrs Leatherhead. And, erm … sorry.’
‘Goodbye, Elliot. Pull the back door shut behind you.’
And if I thought I had had enough heart-stopping tension and excitement for one day, what comes next makes everything so far seem like a quiet evening watching Robson Green’s Country Walks.
I’m still in the kitchen, remember, trying not to put weight on my sore heel.
I have decided. Now is the time to bring Gram on board with the invisible stuff.
I can prove it, because I’m invisible.
I’m just thinking about what words to use: ‘Hey, Gram, remember what I said about being invisible?’ But I’m still kind of … what? Shy? No. Not shy, but …
Anyway, it doesn’t matter because Gram starts talking to someone who – apparently – has been in the sitting room all along.
‘It’s OK. He’s gone. You can come through.’
And he does. Gram’s toyboy, the guy from the Priory View doorway, comes into the kitchen, and says, ‘What was all that about?’
‘Ethel is staying at a friend’s tonight. She’s … she’s not very well.’
It’s the first time I get a good look at him since I first saw him at Priory View.
‘We’ll have to do this another time, eh?’ he says.
‘Yes. Perhaps you could come round tomorrow?’
Toyboy grins: it’s a nice smile. ‘Sure thing. Gimme a call.’
Last time I saw him, he was dressed smartly: jacket, pressed trousers. Now he’s just in a T-shirt and jeans. To my surprise, I see that his arms are heavily tattooed, which makes me wonder. Body ink is so not Gram’s thing. Surely she can’t …
Then he turns. Meandering up his neck, from out of his T-shirt up to his hairline, is another tattoo. A distinctive, unmistakable twist of green ivy that I have seen before, somewhere.
I gasp out loud, and both he and Gram look round, but each probably thinks it is the other.
As soon as I have the thought, it begins to make sense.
The accent. It’s not a London accent at all. It’s a New Zealand accent.
It is all I can do – and I mean that: it takes ALL of my effort – not to call out, ‘Dad?’
But I cannot forget that I am standing naked and invisible. It’s not how I want my dad – for the first time in ten years – to see me. If you see what I mean.
I hear Gram at the door say, ‘Goodnight, Rick.’
I’m still standing in the kitchen, and I haven’t moved a muscle. I don’t think I have actually breathed. My heart is racing at least as fast as my mind, and I am definitely not going to have the invisible conversation now.
Gram comes back in to turn off the light before going to bed. A blue glow comes from the digital clock on the cooker. It’s 11.45.
I wait a few minutes for Gram to settle in her room, then I sneak upstairs and into bed as quietly as I can.
And a thought that has been nagging at the edge of my mind becomes clearer: shouldn’t I be starting to get the tingling feeling? The itch, accompanied by a headache, that precedes the return of my visibility?
For the moment, I try to put it to the back of my mind. I’m exhausted. Mentally and physically drained. Besides, there’s a whole new thing I’ve got to think about now.
My dad? Ricky Malcolm?
I go over it again and again. The change
in appearance is no mystery. From a guy with snaggled teeth, a long mop of red hair and a huge, dirty-looking beard to a clean, shaved man who could be a teacher or, well … anything but a rock rebel. The difference is astonishing, and I would not believe it anyway, if it weren’t for the tattoos.
In my room, I quietly open my laptop and search Google Images for Ricky Malcolm.
There he is: the hairy rocker.
I enlarge one picture in which, on stage, his hair is swept back, revealing the tattoo on his neck. It’s definitely the same.
And now I look at his eyes: the same grey-green. In this picture, he’s looking directly at the camera, and I enlarge it even more, till the pixels begin to show, and the eyes are life-size. I rotate the picture until the eyes are straight and I just stare and stare.
That’s the same look he gave me when we chatted about Lady at Priory View. He had peered intensely into my eyes, because he knew. He knew that his were the same as mine, and that I was his daughter.
Why hadn’t he said something?
I’m lying here, and there’s a part of me that knows beyond a doubt that I may not have another chance to show Gram that I am really invisible. Yes, I have the recording of me becoming invisible – it’s right there on my laptop, the thing I filmed in the garage. But will that be proof? I’ve looked at it and, well … I’m not sure.
I’m about to close my laptop when it pings softly with an incoming email.
From [email protected]. Tommy Knight is emailing me?
Well, no. It’s Jesmond and Jarrow, using their dad’s account.
V clever, Invisigirl. We’ll admit that. Is it you that’s done our laptops as well? Thing is, Invisigirl, how do you know we don’t have a copy of it all?
You have stolen my phone. I want it back, or it all goes on YouTube tomorrow.
Jesmond
It’s past midnight, but I text Boydy nonetheless, attaching the email.
