by Alex Marwood
Amber takes it, barely thanks her.
‘Can I get a latte?’ asks Kirsty.
‘Sure.’
‘Ta,’ says Kirsty. Her first latte in Whitmouth. It comes as a relief.
‘Back in a tick,’ says the waitress. Kirsty turns back to Amber, sees that the unreadable has become eye-rollingly amused.
‘Yeah,’ she says. ‘We do do latte in Whitmouth,’ she says pointedly. Tears the tops off four sachets of sugar and dumps them into her mug. Sees Kirsty looking and gives a small, mirthless laugh.
‘Habit,’ she says. ‘All the energy of a biscuit, and it’s free.’ She eyes Kirsty as she stirs her tea. ‘So you live in London, I suppose?’
Kirsty lets out a small laugh. ‘No. Why would you think that?’
‘Oh, you know. Lattes and that.’
Kirsty hears her own false-sounding laugh again, wishes fervently that she didn’t always do that when she’s nervous. ‘No. Farnham.’
‘Surrey? Nice.’
‘Yeah,’ says Kirsty, and experiences a jolt of annoyance. She’s putting me into a box. Now she knows I drew the long straw at the beginning, nothing I’ve done is going to be anything other than luck, to her. ‘Well, we had to work hard to get there, but yes.’
‘I’m sure,’ says Amber, the unpleasant edge back in her voice. ‘And what does he do, your husband?’
Kirsty had never thought that Jim’s disaster might ever stand as validation of herself. Grabs it anyway and waves it in front of her former friend like a badge of honour. ‘He doesn’t, at the moment. The recession’s got us. It’s been a year. I don’t know where the time went. We’re … well, I’m doing everything I can, you know?’
Amber softens slightly. ‘Oh,’ she says. ‘I’m sorry. That’s tough.’
Yes, thinks Kirsty. It is. It is tough. It’s scary and fretful, juggling the debts, robbing Peter to pay Paul, sacrificing everything to avoid the bank that sacked him getting wind that we can’t actually cover the mortgage we hold with them as a consequence. But, yeah, it’s middle-class tough. I know that. No pressure groups weeping for us.
She knows she needs to ask some questions; that this might be the only opportunity she ever gets. Doesn’t know where to start. ‘And you? You mentioned someone?’
‘Yes,’ says Amber. ‘You – your husband, I guess – spoke to him the other day. Vic. We live together. Six years now.’
‘Good … I … good,’ she says lamely, aware as she says it how condescending the comment must sound. ‘How did you meet?’
‘Work. We work together. Well, not together, but he works at Funnland too. You?’
‘Oh,’ says Kirsty, ‘the usual. Mutual friends. We just … you know. Talked to each other a few times at parties, and … you know.’
Parties, thinks Amber. Another thing I’ve missed out on. At least the sort of parties you’re talking about: ones where people mix over the taramasalata and ask each other to dance. Why do I feel like she’s rubbing my nose in it?
‘So does he know?’ she asks. ‘Your husband? About you?’
‘Jim?’ Kirsty feels the prickle of hair on her arms at the thought. ‘God, no. Not a thing. I couldn’t. I wouldn’t know how …’
Amber’s tone turns harsh, interrogatory. ‘So what do you tell him? What’s your cover story?’
‘I … bad parents. Care system. Don’t want to go back there. You know.’
‘And he accepts it?’
‘He … At first I think he used to have a fantasy that he could bring about some sort of miracle reunion, you know? But he gave up a long time ago. I think he just accepts it now. Just thinks of it as being what makes me me. That I don’t want to go back there and I don’t want to be reminded.’
‘I’ll bet you don’t,’ says Amber.
Kirsty gulps. This isn’t going well, she knows. Though she’d had few expectations that it would. ‘What about your … Vic? Does he know?’
‘He doesn’t ask,’ says Amber. ‘I guess maybe that’s why I’m with him. He never asks. Not about anything, really. He’s the most uncurious person I’ve ever met.’
Incurious, says Kirsty’s mental editor. She slaps him down. But God, that sounds so – empty.
Amber sees the thought cross her face. ‘Oh, don’t feel sorry for me,’ she snaps. ‘I don’t need your pity. It’s how I like it, trust me.’
Kirsty feels herself blush, looks down. The waitress returns with her coffee. ‘I put some chocolate on top,’ she tells her. ‘I hope that’s OK.’
‘Thanks,’ says Kirsty, who’s more of a cinnamon girl.
She stirs the drink, peeps at Amber. ‘I’m sorry, Amber.’
A frown: suspicious, defensive. ‘Sorry? What about?’
‘No,’ says Kirsty hastily. ‘I didn’t mean it like that. I didn’t. I was trying to apologise if I’d offended you. And because I … I didn’t know about Blackdown Hills. I didn’t know that had happened to you.’
‘Yeah? And if you’d known, what would you have done about it? Come galloping to the rescue?’
‘You know I … Oh, God. I just didn’t know, that’s all. And I’m sorry.’
The defensive look is still on Amber’s face. I’m handling this so badly, thinks Kirsty. Jim would do it so much better. He’d know how to talk to her. I wish I could ask him.
Amber is shaking her head repetitively. ‘Yeah, well. I’m not the tragedy you seem to think I am, Jade. As it goes. It may not be Farnham, but I’m doing OK. For your information, we’ve bought our house, too. I’m not a charity case. I don’t need your pity, thanks all the same.’
Kirsty is ashamed, wrong-footed; squirms at the tone. She’s angry with me? I didn’t do it. I didn’t send her to Blackdown. ‘Yes! Sorry. God, I’m doing this all wrong. I know I am. I didn’t mean to …’ She dries up. Stirs her coffee again, miserably, while Amber studies the flock wallpaper from behind her stupid sunglasses. Kirsty catches sight of a figure in the window: Rat Man, from before. He’s leaning his arm along the glass to shade his eyes, and peering in. Funny little man. Something of a pest around here, I’ll bet. She turns her gaze back.
‘You know what I think?’ ask Amber.
Kirsty doesn’t really want to know. But she owes it to her. ‘No,’ she says.
‘I think you got Exmouth and therapy and education because you were the kid who got led astray,’ she says. Challenges her to contradict the statement. ‘In the end, that was what it was.’
‘Amber, I had to work for it!’ she protests. ‘They didn’t just hand me university on a plate. I did it on my own.’
Amber’s eyes narrow as she interrupts. ‘Yeah, but we all know why you got the chance to do that, don’t we?’
‘Why?’ asks Kirsty, miserably.
Amber fiddles with her teaspoon and glares at her. ‘Because I was evil, and you were misguided. It was what they said in the papers, after all. There’s nothing like a cut-glass accent on a kid to make her an evil bitch, is there?’
The words come out in a rush, the flow stopping suddenly, as though she’s run out of breath.
‘Oh God, Bel,’ says Kirsty. She doesn’t want to believe it. A kid’s a kid. Surely that’s true, isn’t it? ‘I’m so sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sure it was just a lottery thing. It has to have been.’
Amber looks away again, her face inscrutable behind her dark glasses. ‘Yeah, well,’ she says. ‘Don’t think you can just come in here and get my forgiveness. It’s not absolution time, Jade. Just so you know. I don’t think it’s OK that you got helped and I got punished. Whatever the rest of the world thinks. I was no more responsible for what we did than you were. And now I know, a bit of me’s going to hate you till the day I die.’
Chapter Twenty-two
Amber stands no chance of snatching sleep before her shift begins, so she comes in to work early. She feels restless, uncertain, and wants to be among people, because people are the best way to stop you thinking. Amber never comes to Funnland as a visitor, and finds herself sudden
ly keen to experience the pump-pump-pump of music, the hyped-up laughter of strangers, the breathless whirl of light and movement, without thinking about the junction boxes and the pistons, the pulleys and the cranes and the smoke and mirrors that bring it all to life.
She comes in through the back gate. Jason Murphy is off, she notices; a thin, solemn black man she doesn’t recognise watches her as she swipes her card and opens her locker. She nods at him and receives a neutral nod – neither friendly nor unfriendly, nor curious nor bored – in return. She dumps her bag, but keeps her jacket on, emptying her keys and cash into the buttoned breast pocket.
She can hear the strains of ‘We Are Family’ coming from the waltzer, ‘Blue Suede Shoes’ from the Terror Zone, ‘Echo Beach’ from the Splash Zone; her ear has become so attuned to the repetitive assault to the senses that she can hear each song individually, knows that each will be followed by ‘I Feel for You’, ‘Rock Around the Clock’ and ‘Once in a Lifetime’. Somewhere out there, she knows that Vic and his mate Dave are doing their Sister Sledge dance together, their little bit of showbiz, all manly shoulder-leaning and jazz hands; a little bit of theatre that makes the punters laugh and feel like they’ve witnessed a moment of joyous improvisation. Improvisation that, if they hung around the same spot long enough, they would get to see at eleven minutes past the hour, every hour. In seventeen minutes’ time the students at the roller coaster queue will ‘spontaneously’ become Take That, patting their chests and pointing to their crotches with choreographed abandon.
Automatically, she runs her eye over the punch cards in the rack. Funnland still has a punch-card system, as well as the swipe-keys, so that Suzanne Oddie can tell if any of the staff have been sneaking in for a bit of fun without paying. Few cards have been punched yet: just the early-evening skeleton crew who circle the compound, emptying bins and picking up litter with long-handled tongs. Amber had to fight long and hard to get the tongs: before she did it, the cleaning was an onerous cycle of stoop and stand, stoop and stand, absenteeism through back strain a serious problem. She notices that Jackie has punched in already; wonders why her laziest colleague is suddenly keen. Starts worrying, again, about what she’s going to do about the budget.
Shit, she thinks. I’m not going to get a minute’s peace. If I’m not thinking about what happened this afternoon, I’m going to be worrying about that. I don’t see how I’m going to do it. Could I cut back everyone’s hours, so no one has to go? Christ. And then it would be unfair on everyone.
She realises that she’s been standing here for a full minute, staring at her locker door as though in a fugue, and that the security guard is staring at her, this time with curiosity in his gaze. Pull yourself, together, Amber. Come on.
She shakes her head impatiently and heads out into the park.
The rain has died off and the park smells of damp and doughnuts. Over the babel, beyond the howls from the rollercoaster, Amber can dimly hear the crash and drag of the sea. She walks and pauses, only half aware of the surging crowd, and considers her options. She has been in Whitmouth for years, but has never ridden its famous roller coaster. She was too poor to afford the entrance fee when she first arrived here, and lately familiarity has rendered her almost immune to its existence, beyond the need to scrape and scrub its surfaces clear of chewing-gum.
She shakes her head, like a horse under attack by a fly. It’s not work-time yet. She refuses to allow herself to think about work until her shift begins. It’s intruded enough on her day already and, as days go, anyone would say that it had been a bad one. It was a mistake, facing Jade, thinking she was ever going to get a resolution; she knows that. She sets out to the head of the queue.
The roller coaster is always staffed by teenagers and early-twenty-somethings, a crew employed on the basis of their looks. It’s Funnland’s most prominent attraction, and policy dictates that the showpiece ride should have the showpiece staff. They even dress differently from the rest of the park staff: jewel-like in wasp-yellow Bermuda shorts and skin-tight scarlet T-shirts with the ride’s EXXPLODE!! logo scrawled across the front. She knows them all, of course. Two are the offspring of her own staff and one, a girl called Helen, lives four doors down on Tennyson Way, and is on her way to Manchester Uni and the big wide world in the autumn.
Helen’s on the gate now. Undoes the staff barrier and lets Amber through. ‘Hi, Mrs Gordon,’ she says. ‘How are you?’
‘Good, thanks,’ lies Amber.
‘Is there something up?’ asks Helen with polite concern. Amber is always amused, the way this girl talks to adults as though they were teachers, in an era when even teachers don’t get talked to like teachers. ‘Do we need to suspend?’
‘No, no,’ says Amber. ‘Nothing like that. It just suddenly hit me that I’ve been working here six years and I’ve never once ridden this thing.’
‘Ooh,’ says Helen, and laughs. ‘Ooh, how funny. I rode it about six times a day, the first week I was here.’
‘Yes. Of course, I’m not here when it’s working, most of the time.’
‘No,’ says Helen. ‘I guess not. Anyway. Let’s sort that out.’
She waves a hand at the front boarding gate, where four people – the winners of the queuing system – stand proudly awaiting the next train. ‘Get yourself in the line for car one and you can get on the ride after next.’
Amber quails slightly at the thought of being at the front. Her natural comfort zone would be better served by having some other cars, rather than clear air, in front of her. But she knows she’s being honoured, and concedes. As she takes her place, she is rewarded with the silent, baleful scrutiny the British reserve for queue jumpers.
The train pulls in and the queuers close ranks, as though they expect her to push in. Amber stands back to preserve their blood pressure, turns away and surveys the park.
On the far side of the concourse, the staff gate opens and a knot of people steps through. She recognises one of them as Suzanne Oddie, and sees that she is surrounded by the deep blue and health-and-safety yellow of what can only be police uniforms. She doesn’t think much of it. There have been police in and out of the park since the murder, and there’s the odd copper in here every day, even in the quiet times. She moves to the front of the gate as a new wave of riders is let through from the main queue, sees a sea of disappointed faces as they catch sight of her standing there. There’s hardly ever just one single seat taken on a row. People like to ride in pairs: courage in numbers.
What’s Jade doing now? she wonders. Did she find our little tea as disturbing as I did? My God. I had no idea. All this time I’d thought she’d be like me: trained by fear, squashed by shame, ducking out of harm’s way, keeping her head down. And now I know that everything was different for her, I’ll never be able to forget it. I’ve let the genie out of the bottle. It won’t go back.
It’s not fair. It’s not bloody fair.
A train thunders overhead and her skin tingles with the change of air pressure. It’s been designed that way so that the screams from above will raise adrenalin levels. With three trains on the circuit, you hear this twice while you’re queuing, and, whatever your rational brain tells you, your lizard brain is primed, by the time the safety bars clamp down, to believe that it faces danger. For Amber, accustomed to waiting in the dark for the sound of approaching footsteps, to striving never to attract attention, it’s a disturbing sound. She wants to turn tail and flee. But her train is rumbling to a stop and the passengers behind her are bunching to board, and she knows it’s too late. As the riders before her detrain on to the far platform, she steps with wobbly ankles into the pod and takes her seat.
Shit, what am I doing? she asks herself. This is a crazy, stupid thing. It’s more like punishment than pleasure. But maybe that’s exactly why I’m doing it. I feel bad, so now I’m beating myself up. I’m doing what I was trained to do. After all, in a place like Blackdown Hills, the best they hoped for was that we’d own the blame and learn to take our punish
ment.
The harness comes down, clunks into place. Pin-down. The people next to her breathe, laugh and throw each other anticipation-filled looks. Amber grips the padded shoulder bars and closes her eyes. Gulps. I hate things like this. That’s the real reason I never go on them. Every other reason is just an excuse. Over and over in my life, I’ve felt like I was falling out of control. There’s no way I’d volunteer to feel like that for fun.
‘Hold tight, here we go,’ bellows the automated announcer, and the wheels lock into place on the track. Oh shit, thinks Amber. There’s nothing I can do to stop it now.
She remembers her first night at Blackdown Hills. Still screaming after the sentence, her throat hoarse but her voice carrying on unbidden. The shower, half cold, the ache of medicated soap, the empty, falling blackness. My mum. She wasn’t even there in court. They hate me. I am their disgrace. She remembers black night through the bars on the windows, the falling silence as she walked, late and damp and frightened, into the mess hall for the first time. Hard, speculating eyes turning to check out the notorious newcomer. Officer Hills pushing her forward by an arm, no sympathy in her demeanour.
They reach the crest of the first climb. There is nothing between her and the track, clear air before the plunge. The train creeps forward, gathers momentum and clunks violently to a halt, throwing her forward against the restraints. She is hanging face-down, a hundred feet of drop before her. She feels her stomach lurch. The woman next to her starts to cackle nervously.
Lying awake. It was at Blackdown Hills that she learned not to sleep. After lights-out was the feral time, when girl gangs stalked the corridors and misfits wept with fear. Bel Oldacre, awake in the dark, ready to claw her way through the walls as, night after night, she listened to the click and scritch of metal as people tried the lock on her barricaded door. Sometimes a muffled cry or the sound of a chase invaded the darkness. They knew who she was. Of course they did. How many twelve-year-olds who talked like the Queen were there in the country’s institutions?
