by Alex Marwood
‘Touched,’ says Bel. ‘It’s “touched”.’
‘You don’t really believe that, do you?’ asks Jade. ‘Luh-ike a vur-ur-ur-ur-gin, uh-when yuh heartbeat’s nuh-nuh-nuh necks to mine.’
She wobbles, saves herself with a whirl of the arms. Kicks out one hip then the other, like a burlesque dancer. ‘Wuh-hoooo-uhuh-uh-woah-o-uh-woah-oh, woah-oh,’ she sings. Bel thinks for a minute, then climbs up beside her, strikes a pose.
‘No, no,’ says Jade. ‘Not like that. You’ve got to give it welly with the hips. Like you’re on a gondola.’
Bel’s not allowed to watch Top of the Pops, so she’s not seen the video. In fact she only knows the song from listening, transistor radio pressed to her ear on bottom volume, to the chart show on Radio Luxembourg after bedtime on a Sunday night. But she imagines what it would be like to be on a wobbly boat on an Italian canal, and thrusts her hips out as though trying to keep her balance. ‘That’s it,’ puffs Jade, and they both giggle.
The church door clunks open, and one of the Good Women of the Flower Committee, as Bel’s stepfather Michael calls them, steps out, carrying a pair of green-encrusted glass vases. She wears a Puffa jacket and tartan trousers, and her grey hair is clamped down by a silk scarf printed with snaffle bits and spurs. She tips the dregs from the vases into the church’s side-drain, straightens up and addresses Jade and Bel.
‘What are you girls up to?’
‘Nuffink!’ Jade employs her default response. ‘It doesn’t look like nothing to me.’ Her voice, adjusted to disciplining dogs in the open air, roars across the graveyard like a hurricane. ‘What are you doing on that wall? I hope you’re not damaging it.’
‘No, we’re not,’ says Bel in her plummiest tones. ‘We’re just dancing.’
‘Well, you can go and dance somewhere else. If that wall falls down, we’ll be expecting your parents to pay for it.’
Jade looks down at the century-old cross-stones beneath her feet. ‘We’ll take that chance,’ she tells her. ‘Don’t think it’s going to fall down for a bit.’
‘Don’t be cheeky!’ bawls the woman. ‘I know who you are, Jade Walker. Don’t think the whole village hasn’t got its eye on you!’
‘Yes, sir, no, sir, three bags full, sir,’ says Jade, and Bel sniggers. Girls in her world don’t talk to grown-ups like this. And if they do, they get sent to their rooms. Or, in her case, the cellar.
The woman tuts and heads back into the porch. Casts a parting shot over her shoulder. ‘I’m very busy or I’d be sorting you out right now, young lady,’ she says. ‘As it is, I’m going to finish these flowers, and by the time I come out I expect you to be gone.’
‘Or what? You’ll call the vicar?’ asks Jade.
‘Hunh,’ says the woman, and slams the church door.
‘Silly cow,’ says Jade. Crosses her wrists above her head and circles her hips suggestively. ‘Yuh so fine, and yuh mine.’
Bel copies the stance, joins in singing in her fine contralto. ‘Ibbe yoz, tuh the enduv tiy-yime—’
‘Woah,’ says a male voice. ‘It’s an itty-bitty titty committee.’
Bel starts, wobbles, clutches Jade’s arm for support. They hold balance for a couple of seconds then plummet together into the graveyard. Bel catches her thigh on a tilted gravestone as she falls, breaks the skin.
‘Ow!’ She looks down at the blood beginning to seep through the pink cotton of her shorts. Jade struggles to her feet and stands, arms akimbo, on a mossy box-tomb.
‘Piss off, Shane,’ she says.
Bel looks up. The eldest of the Walker boys stands on the pavement, a cut-price Martin Kemp in leather jacket and swooped-back hair, grinning blankly.
‘Who’s yer little buddy, Jade?’ he says.
‘Piss off, Shane,’ she says again.
Bel stares at him long and hard. She’s never had a chance to study him close up before; the general village policy is to scurry past when he appears, eyes averted. Shane, at nineteen, has a string of convictions for burglary and car theft: lacking his brother Darren’s street smarts and driving skills, he keeps getting caught. He’s only avoided prison because of his famously low IQ, but everyone predicts he’ll end up there sooner or later.
‘Think you’re the Human League, do you?’ he asks. His jaw seems to dangle from his skull as though its fixings have never been properly tightened, so that his lips have a wet, loose look to them.
Jade pulls a tuft of grass and earth out from by her foot, lobs it at him. ‘I said piss off, Shane!’
‘Going down the Bench anyway. Oh, and Jade?’
‘What?’
‘You been nicking again? Only our dad’s after your hide.’
‘Oh, fuck,’ says Jade, and sits down hard in the grass. Bel’s never met anyone who swears with such casual calm before, as though the words were simple adjectives. She’s impressed and unnerved at the same time by it. If she let the sort of words slip from her mouth that Jade uses without seeming to even register them, she’d be locked up for days. She gazes at her admiringly, her hand still clamped on her leg.
‘I hate this bloody village.’
‘Me too,’ says Bel.
‘Does it hurt?’ asks Jade.
‘Bit.’
‘Let’s have a look.’
Bel lifts her hand away and shows her. There’s a graze the size of a fist on her thigh, a bruise already forming. Pinpricks of blood seep into the wound, filling out, closing up.
‘Fuck,’ says Jade admiringly.
‘It doesn’t hurt. Not really,’ Bel says proudly.
Jade shoots darts of poison at Shane’s swaggering back. ‘Bastard,’ she says. Then: ‘You ought to wash that.’
‘Oh, it’ll stop,’ says Bel.
‘It was only twenty p,’ says Jade. ‘How could he notice twenty p?’
‘Grown-ups,’ says Bel authoritatively, ‘notice everything.’
Well, if it’s me they do, she thinks. If it’s Miranda they don’t notice a thing. Or if they do, they find a way to blame it on me anyway.
She gets to her feet and hobbles over to the wall. ‘What’s your dad going to do?’ she enquires.
Jade shrugs. ‘God knows. But I’d better keep out of his way for a bit.’
‘He’s not going to hit you, is he?’
Jade acts scandalised, the way she’s been trained. ‘Of course not! Who do you think we are?’
Yes, thinks Bel. Best not to talk about it. Not till I know her better.
‘I’m going to get a bollocking,’ says Jade. ‘Best not go back for a while. Maybe I can put the money back and he’ll think he made a mistake.’
‘Yeah,’ says Bel. ‘Good plan.’
Jade sighs. ‘Bloody Kit Kat’s not going to get me through to teatime though,’ she says.
‘That’s OK,’ says Bel. ‘You can come back to mine.’
Jade raises her eyebrows, unused to invitations. She’s certainly never issued one herself, even if she had anyone to ask. ‘Won’t your mum and dad mind?’
‘Stepfather. They’re on holiday,’ says Bel with affected insouciance. ‘In Malaysia.’
‘What, and they didn’t take you?’
‘No. They’ve taken Miranda. But I was naughty so they left me behind.’
‘So they’ve left you all by yourself?’
Bel waggles her head. ‘Don’t be stupid. Romina’s there. But she does what I tell her.’
Chapter Twenty-one
It’s dark inside the café. It takes a moment for her eyes to adjust and make out Amber, sitting on a sofa in a corner at the back, her features half hidden behind a pair of gigantic sunglasses, despite the gloom. She’s not sure what she should do next, now that she’s finally spotted her. What do you do in a situation like this? Smile and wave?
As she approaches and the other woman’s features fall into focus, she see that Amber’s face is solemn, slightly defiant, slightly frightened. She vacillates between staring hard at Kirsty and looking anywhere but at her as Ki
rsty winds towards her. She feels the way I feel, thinks Kirsty. She doesn’t know what to do or why she’s here, any more than I do.
She arrives, standing awkwardly in front of Amber, who stays in her cushioned seat as though she’s been nailed there.
‘Hi,’ she says. What now? Do they shake hands? Kiss?
They do neither. She puts her bag on the Bali Teak coffee table and slides into the vacant end of Amber’s sofa. It’s a Chesterfield: old leather, the worn spots covered by a length of woven ikat. A five-dish candelabrum, stalactites of melted wax depending gracefully from elaborate ironwork arms, sits unlit on the table before them.
They stare at each other. Kirsty is struck, again, by how old Amber looks, how strained. She sits and fiddles with the cigarette packet Kirsty scrawled her number on, turning it over and over between her fingers and drinking her in expressionlessly. I wish she’d take those damn glasses off, thinks Kirsty.
‘I’m going to get a coffee,’ she says. ‘Do you want anything?’
Amber jerks her chin towards the counter. ‘I’ve got a tea coming,’ she says.
Kirsty subsides. ‘OK.’
They look away from each other to cover the silence. Kirsty takes in her surroundings. It’s the sort of boho bar she thought she’d left behind when she left London, a place that would be right at home in Brighton: stripped brickwork, painted floorboards, velvet drapes, sunburst clocks, Moroccan mirrors, gold-painted wall sconces. There are twenty tables altogether, each surrounded by a collection of second-hand sofas and antique bucket chairs, mugs and cups and plates and glasses mismatched beautifully in junk-shop chic, a buzz of laid-back relaxation she’s not found in this town, where pursuing the next thrill is the order of the day. The artists have started colonising Whitmouth. I guess Whitstable’s got too expensive. Give it a few years and a couple of gay bars, and this town will be following the rest of the coast up in the world.
Over by the steamed-up window, she sees the stringer from the Mirror, coffee and a roasted-pepper-and-mozzarella ciabatta by his elbow, typing frantically into his laptop. Her own deadline is seven o’clock and she has no idea how she’s going to meet it. She barely remembers a word from the press conference. He doesn’t see her, and she hopes it carries on that way.
Amber studies her silently, her mouth downturned. ‘We shouldn’t be doing this,’ she says.
Kirsty turns back to look at her. ‘No. It’s stupid. We’re stupid.’
‘If they ever found out …’
Kirsty knows what she’s saying. They’re violating their licence, deliberately and clearly. If someone saw them now, it would be the end, for both of them. They’ve stepped over the line and there’s no way they could claim coincidence. ‘It’s once, Amber,’ she says. ‘Just once. And after this we’re done. They won’t find out. It’s not like we’re tagged or anything.’
‘How often do you have to report in now?’ asks Amber.
‘Once a month. Or if I change address, which I never do. If I go on holiday. Abroad. You know.’
‘How does that work? How do you fit it round your …’ She gestures at the netbook, the notebook and the mobile phone she’s put on the table.
‘I’m freelance. Really I can say I’m anywhere, anytime, and no one would know any different.’
‘Useful,’ says Amber.
‘Mmm.’ She’s not sure how to respond. ‘How about you?’
Amber shrugs. ‘I work nights.’
‘Mmm,’ says Kirsty again, and cranes round to find a waitress.
‘I wouldn’t even know how to get a passport,’ says Amber.
‘It’s not that difficult,’ begins Kirsty. ‘You need your birth certificate and your deed poll …’
She sees that it was a rhetorical statement, clams up. She’s so used, through parenthood, through work, to being the person with the information, the one who offers advice, that she’s forgotten that it’s not always being solicited. Amber’s lips are pursed and she’s looking away again, over Kirsty’s shoulder.
‘Sorry,’ says Kirsty.
‘It’s OK,’ says Amber. They both fall silent again, studying each other’s features. Putting them together with the children they both once knew.
‘So you look as though life’s treated you OK,’ Amber says pointedly.
What do you say to that? To someone for whom life has clearly not done the same? ‘Yes. Can’t complain’?
‘Yes,’ she says meekly. Vertical lines run down Amber’s upper lip, as though her mouth is pursed a lot. Two more deep verticals divide her eyebrows. Kirsty is getting marionette lines and horizontals across her forehead, light crow’s feet at the sides of her eyes: the lines of interest and smiling, and none of them as deep, or as firmly etched, as Amber’s. Amber’s blond hair crackles on her scalp like seagrass. Her hands, wrists, neck, ears are devoid of ornamentation, other than a dull, practical watch on a waterproof band. Kirsty feels uncomfortably overdecorated, conscious of her engagement ring, which cost, by tradition, an entire month of Jim’s salary; of the fact that her necklace and earrings are not only matching, but are set with real emeralds, even if they are small ones.
Amber’s nails are cut short, the cuticles dry and ragged against work-roughened skin. Kirsty, though she spends too much time at a keyboard to maintain a manicure, nonetheless keeps hers shaped, and protected with a coat of Hard as Nails, the skin regularly fed from the tube of cream she keeps in her bag. Nothing speaks more about the contrast in our lives, she thinks.
‘So you’re a journalist, then?’
‘Yes.’
‘You could barely read when I knew you.’
Kirsty blushes, feeling ashamed at the memory. Remembering posh Bel Oldacre back on a summer’s day and feeling ashamed again. ‘Well, you know – I was lucky at Exmouth … I wasn’t allowed to just hide at the back of the class and fulfil expectations …’
Amber goes pale, sits back. She seems – scandalised. Angry. Wow, thinks Kirsty. I’ve hit a nerve.
‘Exmouth? They sent you to Exmouth?’
Everyone in juvenile facilities knows about the other ones; the big ones, at least. They are discussed – constantly, fearfully, enviously – as inmates come and go, are transferred and given licence. Kirsty knows how lucky she was, being sent to Exmouth. Knows every day, is reminded every time she has to do a story on any related subject, how lucky she was. ‘Uh … yes,’ she says carefully, still feeling out the land.
‘Do you know where they sent me?’ asks Amber. The words are more accusation than question.
‘No,’ says Kirsty. ‘No, of course I don’t, Amber. You know I don’t.’
‘Blackdown Hills,’ she says.
‘Jesus.’ Once again, she’s stuck for words. Feels sick with shock.
‘Heard of it then?’ Amber glares, the accusatory tone back again. ‘It’s closed down now, of course.’
‘Yes,’ she replies. ‘Of course. I covered the closure.’
‘Yeah,’ says Amber bitterly. ‘And I’ve heard of Exmouth too.’
Kirsty shakes her head, feels a strange urge to apologise, as though her own escape from the world of lock-down and pin-down and short, sharp shock is the source of Amber’s misfortune. But Blackdown Hills … they used to use Blackdown Hills as a threat, at Exmouth. It was where they sent you if they thought you were never coming out.
‘Yes. God knows. Luck of the draw, I guess,’ she says, uselessly.
‘Yes,’ says Amber, ‘I guess.’
Amber looks at Kirsty and feels a stab of heartache. Of course I thought you’d got the same punishment as me, she thinks. Of course I did. And now look at us. We’re the diametrical opposite of what anyone would have said would happen if they’d seen us that first day, sitting on the Bench. I feel like a lab rat in a bloody psych experiment.
Kirsty is looking down and away, her cheeks touched with pink. She looks ashamed, as though Amber’s fate is her fault. They’re both lost for words, both briefly adrift in memory.
‘
So have you got kids?’ Amber changes the subject abruptly. She doesn’t know why this is the first question that comes into her head, but it is.
‘Yes,’ says Kirsty. ‘Two. Luke and Sophie. She’s eleven, he’s eight.’
Instinctively she starts to reach for her bag to find the photos she keeps in her wallet, changes her mind, puts her hands back on the table.
‘Good for you,’ says Amber dully.
‘You?’ asks Kirsty, timidly. Please let her have something good. I don’t know if I can bear the guilt.
Amber shakes her head. ‘No. No, nothing like that.’
Kirsty wonders, as she always does when this issue comes up, how she is supposed to respond. Is she supposed to commiserate? Gloss over it? Spout one of those lucky-old-you palliatives parents often seem to feel obliged to come up with, which everyone knows are insincere?
‘Would you have liked that?’ she asks. ‘To have had children?’
‘Of course,’ replies Amber, and meets her eyes. ‘But there you go. Luck of the draw again, eh?’
‘I’m – I’m sorry,’ says Kirsty, and looks ashamed again.
‘We’ve got two dogs,’ says Amber. ‘Well, me mostly. I don’t think he gives two hoots either way. Mary-Kate and Ashley. Papillons.’
Kirsty laughs. ‘Good names.’
‘I know. It’s a bit mean, but …’ Her expression softens suddenly, and her face takes on a glow. She looks pretty, for a moment. Younger. Kind. ‘It’s not the same, of course, but it’s – I love them. Stupid amounts.’
‘They’re great, animals,’ says Kirsty inconsequentially.
‘Have you got any?’
‘A cat. The thickest cat in the world. He just sits there, mostly.’
‘What’s he called?’
‘Barney.’
‘Right,’ says Amber, and Kirsty can’t tell what she’s drawn from the name. By God, she’s unreadable, she thinks. Apart from that flash of anger, I’m getting just about nothing from her. A normal person would be spilling tells all over the place. I know I am.
The waitress arrives, bearing Amber’s tea. It comes in an earthenware mug the size of a dog-bowl. ‘There you go,’ she says. ‘Nice and hot.’
