by Lorna Reid
*
‘Fat freak. Can you believe that all he got was a detention?’
Poppy rolled her eyes at Natalie Jessell’s high-pitched squeak and watched her totter away from the door of the textiles classroom on wedge heels that were thicker than most of her posse. The girl returned to her place, along with the rest of the class, who had peeled themselves away from the windows.
Poppy flicked her long blonde hair back and returned to her work. She couldn’t wait to pump Russell for more information. What must that have felt like? She knew that his father, Jack, had a temper – with Poppy’s mother spending more and more time with him, she’d seen it when he’d been riled up by his work at the local gallery, or by the obtuse school – but Russell was a revelation.
Before she could wonder whether Danny and Katrina knew, the answer presented itself in the form of Danny’s mouth pressed fish-like to the window beside her, making her jump. ‘Dick,’ she muttered, banging the glass and making him cackle.
‘See you later,’ mouthed Katrina, and Poppy waved back, watching them move away. She’d rather be out there than stuck inside with the jerky, hive-like hum of sewing machines giving her a headache.
‘Still.’ Natalie clearly hadn’t finished. ‘This school’s full of freaks.’ The comment was thrown over her shoulder at Poppy. She considered snarking back, but given that the sun shone out of their tight backsides – as far as their teacher, Miss Tanith, thought – it was a futile errand.
Poppy glanced at the teacher to see if she had heard them and would rouse herself to actually say anything, but, as usual, her tightly curled black hair was framing her face as she poured over a fashion catalogue, between sips from the most stupidly small coffee cup Poppy had ever seen.
Typical, she thought. She looked at her watch for the thousandth time, counting down the seconds until the summer would stretch out before them. With that in mind, she decided she could tolerate Natalie’s crap for one more lesson.
She was studying the mess of a sewing bag that she had been stitching when she felt someone staring at her. ‘See your boyfriend was outside, waiting to whisk you off to his dungeon,’ Natalie smirked. ‘You and that other freak you hang around with.’ All the glossy heads in front of her had turned around to drink in her reaction.
‘She isn’t a freak and he isn’t my boyfriend. Just because we hang out, doesn’t mean we’re screwing.’ Poppy pretended to be busy, hoping they would bugger off.
‘He lives on your road, doesn’t he? The one with those tatty old Victorian houses, full of old people and weirdos?’
‘So?’ Poppy and Danny’s parents were friends and so they had grown up together. Besides, she thought, conversation with Danny was like pulling teeth with a pair of marshmallow tweezers.
‘Do you help him into his straightjacket every night?’ The group giggled again. ‘What does he see in you? Can’t be your taste in jewellery.’ Poppy followed Natalie’s over-made-up eyes down to the charm bracelet on her left wrist and the thin rainbow bangles, and fluttered her hand over them, feeling defensive.
Her mother had given her the charm bracelet; it had been a gift from Poppy’s father not long before he had died. As with anything to do with her father, the bracelet took on precious meaning.
‘Maybe you’re into something kinky? Or maybe you give a BJ on a first date,’ Natalie continued.
‘At least I don’t have my lips welded to the teacher’s arse,’ Poppy snapped. Anger bubbled over and the frustration spilled out. ‘Pathetic, identikit scabs,’ she hissed, but her words were drowned out by ‘we touched a nerve’ comments and vigorous blow job gestures.
At that same moment, Miss Tanith noticed Danny and Katrina lurking outside, laughing as Mr Jones was buried under a sudden avalanche of hockey sticks in the equipment store, and flung the door open to order them away.
While Natalie and her cronies floated to the front of the class to absorb more praise for their work, Poppy mulled over the choice between taking their shit and getting yet another detention. Her eyes flicked to the fabric glue gathering dust in the open cupboard by her knees, and then to the row of lacy coats hanging on the backs of their chairs. It would be worth it.
*
After separating from Katrina, Danny had spent an uneventful morning working in an empty classroom under the supervision of his head of year, Mr King. He had gone to school with Danny’s father, so Danny afforded him a grudging respect.
He doodled idly in his maths book, drawing gargoyles and odd stone creatures. His head had been filled with them recently, spilling over from his dreams. The dreams were always the same: stony, twisted faces, further distorted by shadows, see-sawing under a jerky light. A pale hand would reach to touch them and he would smell his mother’s perfume and wake up scrabbling for her, for just a glimpse, a sound, something.
The perfume … He closed his eyes. He remembered it from that day. The day she had kissed him goodbye, perhaps five years ago, to leave for a business trip. She’d never come back.
Danny’s world had no colour now. His biro gouged his maths book, the clean, sweeping lines turning into rough, harassed trenches of over-saturated colour. He wouldn’t give up. His father hadn’t. Thom hadn’t. None of them had. Poppy, Katrina, Russell … He saw his friends’ parents in his mind and he felt a flash of gratitude through the haze for the support and help they had given his father.
He loathed being away from his dad, but he understood that he had to find her. He was just afraid – what if he never came back, too? What if they all left him? Thom had been around since Danny was born and Danny loved him fiercely; he was his parents’ best friend and inseparable from his father, but what if whatever had happened to his mother happened to Thom, too?
The paper tore under the biro nib, bunching as the pen bit through the pages below. The dreams. They had to mean something. He resolved to talk to his father as soon as he got home.
*
Mr King re-read the note from Mr Larch and leaned back in his chair to toss it into the bin. Despite what many of the staff thought, Danny wasn’t a stupid yob; he was smart – he just shut down whenever he didn’t want to do something, which was, King admitted, frequently. Some staff would pick on him, and it was Danny’s reactions that usually got him in trouble – rather like his father. He smiled at the memories and then looked over at Pete’s son.
The boy could make a room seem untidy just by being in it. He was slouched in a chair by the window, with a dented metal pencil case lying open on the table, its paintwork long scratched to pieces by a compass. King couldn’t muster the energy to lecture him today. The end of a draining school year beckoned, and so did a hot bath and a bottle of vodka.
When he wandered over to check on the boy, Danny was halfway through shading in some details on a gruesome-looking gargoyle with a chewed blue biro. ‘You put that much effort into your schoolwork, Dan, and you wouldn’t be in detention so often,’ he said, perching on a neighbouring desk. Danny summoned a half shrug and gave a grin that was pure Pete.
‘Here.’ He handed Danny an envelope. ‘Your end of term report card. Your tutor said that you accidentally left it in the bin this morning.’
Danny glowered at it and shoved it into his bag along with the rest of his things, just as the school bell rang for the last time that day.
Chaos erupted in the surrounding classrooms, and shouting, laughing students spewed into the corridors and fell into a crush for the exits. After waiting for the horde to thin, King led Danny to the final detention of the school year.
*
The classroom was empty, sunlight pouring in through the large windows onto the mess of skewed tables and chairs. Danny pressed his face to a window, not caring about the cleanliness, and watched the other students flocking out of the gates and pushing their way through gaps in the hedges, laughing and free. An hour-long detention on a day like this would be torture, especially for something he hadn’t done.
He dumped his bag on a desk and was
just eyeing the lock on the windows when the door burst open and Mr Stevens stormed in. The man slammed his battered briefcase down on the desk, sending a pile of geography textbooks sliding to the floor, and pushed up an errant sleeve of the oversized cardigan that students speculated was permanently welded to his body.
‘Bad luck, Andy,’ said Mr King, who had followed him in, not looking the least bit sorry. ‘I know it’s a hassle,’ he said to Mr Stevens.
Stevens made a nasal exclamation and shoved his glasses back up his nose.
‘Hassle? Teaching these demons all year, and now I have to sacrifice my time while the rest of the staff swan off down the pub.’ He hauled his belt up over his gut. His white shirt and faded red cord trousers made him resemble a fleshy Poké Ball.
‘There are three more to come. I’ll go and get them. They should be at my office by now,’ said King, and he disappeared before Stevens could open his mouth again. Instead, the man glared at Danny, who openly stared back before yawning as expansively as he could manage. He enjoyed the look of disgust he got.
The door opened and Poppy, Katrina, and Russell were marched in. Katrina was holding a round cake tin, which immediately grabbed Danny’s attention and, on cue, his stomach growled. ‘Later, Andy.’ Mr King nodded to Mr Stevens and then shot Danny a wink before making a hasty exit.
Mr Stevens snatched detention slips from the three of them before pulling a cleaning tray from a desk drawer and dumping it in front of Russell, who reared back, as though stung.
Filthy rags and oozing bottles of pink cleaning fluid made vain bids for freedom among flat sponges and other detritus. ‘I want every one of these desks clean. Every scrap of graffiti, every crude drawing, clear?’
Russell was eyeballing the cloths in alarm. ‘Do you have any that are clean?’ he queried, receiving a snort in reply.
‘How are we supposed to do anything with these?’ demanded Poppy, plucking at the cleanest one and dropping it back with a repulsed look.
‘Tough,’ the man snapped and stomped away, slamming the door behind him. The wall clock above the door had barely finished swinging back into place when Danny was back at the windows, tugging at one of the locks.
‘Don’t think you’re not bloody helping,’ Poppy said, prodding at the cleaning tray.
‘Don’t think I’m bloody staying in this shithole a minute longer,’ Danny shot back. Katrina took one glance around the classroom and made a beeline for the windows, scrabbling up on the desk and working on one of the locks. Most had been painted shut years previously in one of the school’s more brilliant demonstrations of pupil safety.
Out of the corner of his eye, Danny saw Poppy and Russell share a glance and moved to join them. Russell dragged behind, scowling and casting glances back at the door.
‘Don’t worry,’ Danny muttered, anticipating his concerns. ‘No one will care, and with six weeks of summer ahead of us, no one will remember, either.’ He gave up on his lock and tried another, just as Katrina managed to force open her window with a hiss of victory.
Chapter 2
◊
‘YOU FEELING BETTER NOW?’ Katrina asked Russell as they leaned against the window of the greengrocer shop and waited for Poppy, who was inside buying strawberries. Russell managed to tear his eyes away from Danny, who was feeding the last piece of what had been his school report into a post box, and nodded.
‘Yes, thanks. Not the first time the bastard’s done that.’
‘You going to tell your dad?’ Katrina said. Russell looked at her, wondering if it was a dig about his father – he was uncomfortably aware of how his dad could be perceived – but saw nothing but earnestness and curiosity.
‘Eventually. He said next time Jones did it, he’d have breathing difficulties, too.’ Russell shared Katrina’s grin and then stared down at his well-polished shoes, secretly pleased. His father was upfront, strict, and argued with a deft, brutal grace, but it translated into a cloak of protection that made Russell feel comforted at times like this.
‘Is Poppy still staying at your place tonight?’ Katrina asked. ‘She mentioned that Kayla’s been playing up because her mum’s away.’
‘Yeah, Josie won’t be back for a few days, so Poppy and Kayla are with us,’ said Russell. ‘Makes the house a little less lonely, anyway.’ It did. As much as it was frustrating when Poppy’s chatter kept him away from his books or his computer, and as loud and distracting as his little sister – their little sister he corrected himself – could be, he liked the company. He idly wondered when their parents would finally move in together, and if he would get any peace when that happened.
His father was as quiet as Russell was, and when he wasn’t working at the gallery or away on business, he was often lost in books or papers. Except the evenings Josie came over – then he seemed to light up. Russell loved to see it; it had been too long.
Katrina pushed her hair back over her ears and peered through the glass. ‘Has Poppy got over it yet? Your dad and her mum, I mean?’
Russell snorted and Katrina gave him a consoling smile.
‘She doesn’t have to be so cold, you know? It hurts. She doesn’t think.’ He ran a hand through his short brown hair and struggled to keep the frustration out of his voice. He turned and watched Poppy through the glass as she eyed the grocery scales, eventually arguing with the beleaguered cashier over something.
‘I get it,’ he continued. ‘If my dad had died and my mum got together with someone else, even years later, I’d feel weird too, but …’ He stopped himself, hating himself for even thinking it.
‘He died before Poppy was even born, so what’s the problem?’ said Katrina.
Russell let out a breath of relief, grateful that she saved him from saying it. He nodded, still feeling guilty.
‘If my dad had died that long ago, I don’t think I’d mind,’ she said, shuffling over to make room for Danny, who leaned against the doorframe beside her, and started picking at the worn blue paint. ‘After how he treated Mum – what he did – I’m glad he left.’ She scuffed her boot over a cracked piece of pavement. ‘Wish she’d marry Thom. He’s brilliant,’ Katrina said.
‘They’re sleeping together. That’s a start,’ Danny murmured, smiling to himself as a huge piece of paint flaked away in his fingers.
Katrina’s mouth dropped open. ‘How did you know that? When?’
‘When they feel like it, apparently. They’re just friends who end up in bed together sometimes, Dad says – sounds good to me.’
Russell’s jaw followed Katrina’s to the floor and his cheeks started to burn. Before Katrina could quiz Danny further, a voice chimed in from behind them.
‘He should know.’ Poppy materialised in the doorway, eating a strawberry. ‘Thom shares your dad’s room as much as he uses that spare room at your house, Mum said.’ She twisted the top off another strawberry and grinned.
Danny puffed up, and Russell, who was sure his face was now scarlet, felt his stomach drop. Oh, don’t set him off, he thought.
‘So? They’re best friends. They share a room sometimes – what’s wrong with that?’ defended Danny.
‘Nothing.’ She shrugged.
Danny calmed down and took one of the proffered strawberries, and Russell breathed a tiny sigh of relief. As far as Russell knew, today’s eruption in school was the third this year after Danny had been goaded about his family.
They were all goaded, though. Their parents’ circle wasn’t perhaps conventional at the best of times; the constant business trips they all went on, and their close friendships, raised rumours among the other parents, but what business was that of anyone else’s?
‘Did you get the drinks?’ Poppy’s question burst into Russell’s thoughts, scattering them. ‘What’s up? Don’t worry, maybe Jones will die before next year.’ Poppy nudged his arm with the bag of strawberries and he couldn’t help but return her wide smile.
She could be almost mesmerising at times. Her blue eyes and perfectly oval face with h
igh cheekbones was framed by straight, long blonde hair that seemed almost silvery in the early afternoon sun. It was hard to stay annoyed with her for long.
‘We got them,’ said Katrina. ‘Russell said that Kayla’s usually napping about this time, so we thought we’d head to Danny’s house instead.’
Poppy frowned and Russell held back a smile; she never liked plans – especially her own – being changed, but she shrugged and fell into step with Katrina as they followed Danny down the road.
Russell’s distracted mind swallowed the walk to Danny’s house, which was tucked away on the same quiet street that Poppy lived on, separated from her house by only a few neighbours. Poppy had a sense for when something was up, and he could feel her gaze. He hoped that someone else would intervene before she started probing.
*
Danny scowled as he scrambled up to straddle the top of the wall. Katrina had beaten him by seconds and was giving him that same smirk that she always did when she out-climbed him. The fact that he openly grinned whenever he beat her was neither here nor there, and he pulled a face at her, making her snort out a giggle.
‘Glad you find it so funny,’ Russell griped, finally hauling himself up. His face was flushed and he looked irritated. ‘There’s a bench in Poppy’s garden. Why couldn’t we have sat there?’ He pulled a face at the lichen smears on his trousers and the mossy dirt on his hands and began swiping at them with a tissue.
Poppy lifted a tissue from his pack and started huffing and puffing over a tiny piece of dried bird mess that was too near her leg.
‘You can see more from up here,’ Katrina said. ‘You can see into nearly all the back gardens in the row.’ Russell looked unimpressed, but Danny enjoyed his perch. It was one of his favourite spots.
The wall ran parallel to the back garden of his and other homes, encasing a narrow, secluded alleyway of grass. One end of the alleyway met with a wall, which cut off a short passage between two buildings beyond – part of the old paper mill – and led to a quiet street; the other end of the grassy alleyway housed a tall wooden gate that led out onto a neighbouring road. It was quiet, rarely used, and perfect for Danny, who liked to be left in peace with his thoughts.
