The family’s been away since last night, but the smell of their cooking still lingers in the kitchen. Above the stench of cat food, I catch a spicy aroma that’s completely alien to our kitchen at number eleven.
Two stray children’s books lie on the table, pages splayed open. A teddy bear eyes me from the sideboard. Half-empty jars of baby food sit on the sideboard, plastic spoons sticking out hopefully. These objects look absurd in the absence of their owners.
I move through the downstairs of the house, opening doors, closing curtains and turning on lights. The whole place is heavy with nappy smells. The rooms are covered with jetsam and flotsam in erratic patterns. In the hall and living-room, all the surfaces are strewn with children’s toys. Poor Mr Phillips. How does he put up with this stench, this mess? Bumper-sized packets of Pampers and half-chewed biscuits litter the carpets. I rescue one of his records from suffocation by a stained silk cushion on the floor.
I open the connecting door to the shop and prop it with the wedge of folded cardboard he uses as a stop. Letters lie messily on the ‘Welcome’ mat. Each time a car drives past, the dull innards of the shop are illuminated through the blinds in a momentary flash.
Before leaving number eleven this evening I tucked the Valentine’s card into my jeans at the back. The edges of the card bite squarely into my bum. My coat pockets bulge with the other items.
I tug on the envelope and extract it. The card’s slightly dented, but it soon straightens out when I bend it to and fro.
During a lull between vehicles, I nip forward and place my card on top of all the other letters. In this light my glossy envelope looks grey, but when she sees it on Tuesday it will pulse with romantic pink, covered with kisses and the swirling letters of his beautiful name. The envelope will call to her from the mat. It will whet her appetite like the shiny icing on top of a cake.
The card has a picture of a teddy saying ‘Be My Valentine.’ It was quite expensive at ninety-nine pence, but I had to get this one because all the others had silly poems inside, like ‘Sweet love, you make my heart beat true, I promise never to part from you.’ I wanted a clear blank space to insert my lines.
I wasn’t lying when I wrote in the card that I love him. I think about him constantly. I will marry him. These sentences were easy to compose. I wrote the whole message in my sister’s handwriting and signed it with an H. Serious statements like these from a ten-year-old will definitely frighten him off and put an end to their silly games. The most difficult part of the card came when I tried to think of dirty things to shock Mr Phillips and Mrs Phillips, to really put them off my sister. I sat for hours with a completely blank mind. I inserted some phrases about French kissing and heavy petting which I remembered Those Three Girls saying when they followed me around at school. Finally I remembered Rebecca’s disgusting Japanese cartoon book. I went down to the study and forced myself to look at it for a few minutes. After that, I wrote a detailed description inspired by the pictures. This used up every last ounce of my energy, and I went to bed.
My card is designed to hit two birds over the head with the same stone. First, it will force Mr Phillips to stop his misplaced favouritism of my sister by making it look as if she is in love with him. When he realises she wants a great deal more than their childish games, not only will he go off her permanently, but he will be obliged to end their connection. The second bird is Mrs Phillips, who will read the card and think that my sister and Mr Phillips have been doing dirty things together. There’s no way she’ll stay with him after that. In this way, the Valentine’s card will act as a catalyst, speeding things up, helping me to flush out my sister and get rid of Mrs Phillips.
I close the door to the shop, walk back into the house and climb the stairs, followed by the cat.
Whenever I’m babysitting, I avoid using the upstairs bathroom because I don’t want to wake the kids. It’s the only room I haven’t explored properly.
The mirrored cabinet contains several strange-looking objects, including a concave rubber disk the colour of flesh and the size of a small jellyfish. I jab at it with my finger and sniff it, but can’t work out what it’s for. Other things I recognise from the Nelsons’ bathroom, such as the shaving brush, the aftershave and the clippers to snip hair out of men’s noses. My brain throbs with disbelief when I see all the packets of condoms. I can’t imagine Mr Phillips needing such dirty things. Taking the safety-pin from the broken zip on my jeans, I carefully prick a hole in each square packet.
When I turn on the bedside lamp in Mr and Mrs Phillips’s room, the sparkle of a wide-rimmed glass bowl catches my eye on the dressing table. It’s filled with pot pourri, sending out a strong fruity smell. For the first time I realise that the shadow of glass is solid, not transparent. In the lamp light, the shadow seems to have more substance than the glass. On top of the loose dry petals and buds in the glass bowl, a wire lizard sits alone with its head alert, poised to run.
Quickly, I dig in my coat pockets and extract the two items I brought from Helen’s room. I lay them side-by-side on the bedspread. Taking Helen’s Mr Men knickers first, I search for a suitable spot. I need to position them in a place that looks subtle enough to suggest she’s accidentally forgotten them during a secret visit to him, but visible enough for Mrs Phillips to discover. I bunch them up and stuff them into the toe of a woman’s slipper inside the pine wardrobe.
Just as I’m kneeling by the bed contemplating where to put the page I tore out of the False Diary, a door slams downstairs. I freeze. My other hand reaches out and switches off the lamp. My ears begin to roar. My body flops down by the bed.
The voices downstairs are muffled, but I can hear Mrs Phillips saying, over and over again, ‘I locked it. I did, I locked it!’
‘Maybe you forgot in the hurry.’
‘No. I locked it!’
As my dizziness recedes, I try to wedge myself into the cramped space under the bed. Pressed flat, I inch along the floor like a ground-feeding fish. Aiming for the far wall, I slowly withdraw every trace of my self into the darkest hiding place.
Their voices become more distinct. They’re standing at the bottom of the stairs. The cat meows at the top.
‘Why are the lights on?’ Her voice is shrill, almost screaming. ‘Is somebody here? Why is the cat up here? I locked him in the kitchen.’
‘There’s no sign of a break-in.’
She half-whispers, ‘go upstairs. I’m not going up there!’
‘Give me the suitcase. I’ll put it in the room and take a look around.’
I’ll say that I’m being pursued by a criminal gang and this is my safe house. I’ll say that I’m Mr Phillips’s secret daughter and he lets me stay here whenever they are away. I’ll say that I left an important piece of homework here while babysitting, and that I came back to fetch it.
‘Out of my way! Shit!’ Like an arrow on a map, the cat is leading the way directly to me.
Mr Phillips heaves and bumps the suitcase into the bedroom and turns on the main light. I watch his feet walk over to the bed. He’s wearing scuffed white trainers with two black stripes across each toe. I hear the cat purring and meowing. It minces along the bed, pacing out the full length of my hiding place.
The suitcase appears on the floor by the bed, blocking my view. I close my eyes, trying not to breathe.
‘Are you here?’ he whispers, and my hair stands on end. He must be able to sense my presence.
I watch his feet shuffling around. The wardrobe door opens and closes.
‘Shit!’ Mr Phillips says, then the light is switched off and the footsteps recede.
‘Nobody here! No need to raise the alarm!’ he calls in a funny voice as he descends.
‘Why are all the lights on? This isn’t right. Someone’s been in. Let’s call the police.’
I picture her sniffing the air at the bottom of the staircase with her freckly snout, smelling me up here in my hiding place.
‘We’re both tired,’ he replies in the same funny voi
ce. He sighs heavily. ‘I think it was me. I must’ve forgotten to turn off the lights when we left. Everything’s fine upstairs. Phone your mum and tell her we’ll be over in a few minutes. Find out if she’s called a doctor for Sammy, or whether it can wait till the morning.’
Metal bars press into my shoulders and upper arms. My nostrils and throat are coated with dust, and my eyes stream uncontrollably. As the voices move away from the staircase, I try to imagine that I’m with Mrs Nelson, sitting on the sofa sipping one of her James Bond Real Martinis. I’m not feeling hungry right now, so I don’t nibble any imaginary peanuts.
The cat crawls in with me, purring. It dabs my face with a paw. I try to push it away. It dabs again. I push again. It curls up, a contented ball leaning heavily into my side. We breathe in and out together in the cramped space.
I don’t know how long I’ve been here. The lights are still on downstairs, but the house is silent. My rib cage is too cramped to inhale properly. Long term, I know that this is a bad hiding place. I must try to get out of this house.
I nudge the cat to one side and haul my body into the bedroom, pushing the suitcase out of the way as I crawl out.
At the top of the stairs I pause and then creep down, one by one, until I’m by the living room door. After that, I run through the house to the kitchen, fumble for the key in my pocket, unlock the door.
I fall, half-sobbing, into the fresh night air.
When I get home, I realise that I left the page of Helen’s diary on top of the bed. I wonder if he saw it? Also, I didn’t put the suitcase back in place by the bed. I forgot to lock their back door behind me, and I didn’t put the key back in the shed.
****
Mon 13th February
Mrs Phillips stands on our doorstep with the rosepink Valentine’s envelope in her fingers. Its triangular tongue flaps in the breeze. Her frizzy hair sticks out stiffly like a windsock. ‘Can I come in, Lizzie? I need to talk to your mum about something important.’
‘Hello.’ I try to sound calm. I went up the road after school today, but when I caught sight of him moving around inside the shop, my body froze and I couldn’t go in.
She hasn’t given me a single funny look yet, and this gives cause for cautious optimism. If people are suspicious, they’ll always show it in the first five seconds. When they see you for the first time after you’ve done something, you’ll see their eyes examine you and probe you in a very particular way.
I usher her in. All my hard labour will yield a rich harvest tonight.
In spite of my growing optimism, however, I decide it would be a policy error to look too confident, so I don’t try to make polite conversation, nor do I comment on the fact that she isn’t at her evening class tonight. Instead, imitating the dull conversation of grownups, I ask, ‘Did you have a nice holiday in Paris?’
‘Where’s your mum? Through here?’ Mrs Phillips heads for the open kitchen door. She walks in a jerky way, like a soldier.
‘She’s in here.’ I rap on the study door. ‘Visitor!’
When Rebecca opens the door, Beethoven spills out, rolling towards the front of the house on a wave of smoke. She masks her surprise by saying, ‘Lovely to see you!’
I can tell she doesn’t want to be disturbed tonight because her voice is too high-pitched and it enters the air at the wrong angle.
I act as if I’m going through to the kitchen, but as soon as the study door closes I return and loiter outside.
Helen hasn’t come out of her bedroom since dinnertime. This works to my advantage because it’ll make her look even more guilty when the moment comes.
Everything is quiet for a few minutes behind the door, then suddenly Rebecca howls with laughter. Nothing in my card was designed to cause that kind of response. I move closer.
‘It’s not funny!’ Mrs Phillips cries out. ‘Things like this cause trouble. It’s not a joke. This could get my husband into very deep water.’
‘I shouldn’t laugh. But… Oh dear!’
‘What she’s written, it’s disturbing. Disturbed. Listen to this.’ After a pause, Mrs Phillips reads out my line inspired by the Japanese sex-book. ‘I like it when you do that dirty thing where you wiggle your finger inside my c-u-n-t, while the cats do it on the windowsill.’
Our mother hoots and, in spite of myself, I nearly laugh too. My line sounds different when it’s read out loud like this.
‘Oh dear! Sorry! This stuff is so infantile. Can’t you see? It’s just some kids messing about, some vulnerable kids who’ve got hold of a pornographic magazine.’
‘I certainly don’t see it as just kids messing about. This could get my husband into a lot of trouble.’
‘It looks a bit like Helen’s writing, but listen, I really don’t think we should take this too seriously. Children’s sexuality, especially at that age, is…’ Rebecca hesitates. ‘Polymorphous and perverse,’ she ejaculates enthusiastically.
‘It’s my husband who’ll be called perverse. He’s extremely upset, as you can imagine.’
‘Oh dear…’ Rebecca’s voice trails off as Mrs Phillips reads another section of my card.
‘“Your hands are soft and warm when you touch me on the arm. You are the only man for me for ever. Will you marry me?” If your little girl has a crush on my husband, that’s one thing. But if the police got hold of this, I can tell you, they’d turn the tables and take a very close look at him.’
I start to panic. The last thing I want is for the police to take Mr Phillips away. An unexpected sob rises quickly in my throat, like the winter tide. I bite my bottom lip to stop it coming out.
When I saw him inside the shop today, I couldn’t unlock my knees. I tried really hard to push my legs forward. One of the most important Rules to remember, if you are trying to cover something up, is that you must mingle with your targets as quickly as possible. The sooner you show your face, the more likely you are to secure your escape from suspicion. But I couldn’t get past the door. When somebody nudged past me, I turned and ran home.
I drank a miniature bottle of Southern Comfort in my bedroom after that, but it didn’t provide any comfort.
‘Let’s see what she’s got to say for herself, shall we?’ Rebecca moves toward the door and I rush into the kitchen.
‘Helen! Come down here a minute!’ she calls.
After a long guilty pause, my sister emerges from her bedroom and drags one sulky foot after the other downstairs, leaning heavily on the banisters.
In she goes, and I move forward again.
‘Do you recognise this card? Did you write these things to Mr Phillips?’ Rebecca asks.
There’s a long pause. My sister says, ‘No.’
‘Just tell the truth, Helen.’ Mrs Phillips’s voice is gentle, but I recognise in it a common tactic adopted by adults to extract information from young people like ourselves.
‘I didn’t write anything.’
‘What’s going on? Is something going on?’ Mrs Phillips asks.
Silence.
‘Tell me what’s going on!’
‘Nothing! Nothing! He said I was too old!’ Helen’s shriek rises through the house on a shrill, steady current.
This kind of overreaction during interrogation is a very bad strategy because now she looks guilty from a thousand miles away.
‘Too old for what?’ Mrs Phillips’ voice matches Helen’s voice, pitch for pitch.
‘Okay, stop this! Come on, let’s drop it. I’ll have a chat to Helen later.’ I can’t see her face, but I think our mother has lost patience because Mrs Phillips can’t see the funny side of the Valentine’s card.
But Mrs Phillips won’t let it drop. ‘What do you mean, “too old,” Helen? Too old for what? You mustn’t write lies like this. Promise me you’ll never do it again.’
I think I hear them moving over to the door again, so I hurry back to the kitchen. I sit at the dinner table and gaze at the dirty dishes. I’m not satisfied with developments this evening. Although my card caused a
reaction, Mrs Phillips’s behaviour has defied all expectations. There it is in writing, yet instead of driving off in disgust, leaving home as she was supposed to do, she’s attacked my sister and wrapped a protective cape round him. In spite of what’s written in the card, she seems to believe nothing happened. Meanwhile, I can’t stop reliving my terrifying experiences up the road. I didn’t sleep at all last night. Things like this leave permanent scars, especially on vulnerable young people like me.
‘We had to come home two days early,’ Mrs Phillips says in a calmer voice as she emerges from the study. ‘My mum overreacted. Thought Sammy had meningitis. Called us home. This card’s the last thing I need on top of the stress.’
The front door closes. Helen runs upstairs.
Rebecca comes through to the kitchen and puts the kettle on. ‘Phew!’ she says.
‘What did she want?’
Rebecca sits down. ‘Helen – or some kid from the village – played a prank on Mr and Mrs Phillips. Sent a Valentine’s card. She’s all upset about it. Thinks it’s more serious than it is.’
‘But how do you know it’s a prank?’
‘Just the tone of the whole thing,’ Rebecca sighs. ‘The stuff in the card. So immature and naïve. It’s clearly a joke. If not, they certainly need their head examined.’
‘Oh!’ I say, and stare at my hands.
****
Tues 14th Feburary
He’s gone!
While everybody slept last night, he climbed into the car and drove away. I didn’t hear a thing.
I can’t believe it. I was so tired I slept through it all.
While the mist rolled into the village from the marshes, he tiptoed off. My Mr Phillips. Nobody saw him go. He simply disappeared. Evaporated. Mrs Nelson was full of it this morning. She came round to tell our mother.
What about me?
Did he hope the sound of the car would wake me so he could take me with him? Maybe he waited for me on the road, just outside my window, hoping I would catch a trace of his presence and wake up with a jolt. He couldn’t hoot or call my name because it would wake people up. Helen might even think he’d come to fetch her instead of me.
The Third Person Page 19
