‘What are you doing?’
‘Nothing,’ she hissed.
I stared at the jacket. It was Inflatable George’s; I recognised it. ‘What are you doing?’ I repeated.
‘Nothing,’ she muttered again.
I didn’t know what to say, and for once neither did she. I thought she’d brazen it out, but she must have known that this time she’d gone too far, because she looked pale as a spectre in the shadowy passage, and her hands shook as she hung the jacket back up.
‘If you’ve taken money . . .’ I was scared for her.
Twin points of colour reappeared in her cheeks. ‘Of course I haven’t!’ she snapped. ‘His wallet’s not here, is it? He must’ve taken it. They must’ve gone to the pub for lunch.’
I turned and went back to the shop, planning to apologise to any waiting punters in a really loud voice. But Jinn was on my heels anyway. She tugged out her chair and perched on it, smiling blandly up at a mother with a child in her arms.
‘Bless,’ said Jinn. ‘They’re lovely at that age.’
All I could do was stalk out. I was too furious even to wait and buy a sandwich, so I had to settle for a cereal bar out of the newsagent’s on the corner. I decided I’d take it up to the cliffs, because I had to think quite hard now.
Going north out of Breakness, beyond the harbour and the car showroom and out past the golf course, the long glittering beach broke very abruptly into more dunes and rocks and then sheered upwards into sandstone cliffs. It was a gorgeous walk on a bright day, if you could be bothered. I’d seen dolphins more than once, and more seals than you could shake a club at. I tried not to let it put me off that a drowned teenager had been scattered at sea there last year, out among the skerries, tipped out of a plastic canister from the harbour master’s launch. It wasn’t as if you could see him now, a slick of ash on fallow water.
Where would his family have their picnics? I wondered. Well, maybe they’d put up a bench, one with a little plaque. There were plenty of others; it seemed like a popular trend. This was a beautiful spot, looking out to sea and the skerries and the very, very distant hills across the firth. Patches of glitter and patches of shadow on the water. A sky bigger than anything you could imagine. You could fall through that sky and never touch ground.
The cliff path was high and narrow, and I kept my iPod clamped firmly to my ears because the diving gulls made me nervous. As soon as I got my own car I’d be taking the easy way to the cliffs, driving round the airbase and the hangars and up on to the flat field where you could park your car and watch the jets pierce the sky. A couple of miles’ walk from the beach, it wasn’t the most popular spot, but this was such a beautiful Sunday it was almost busy. I could see two four-by-fours, a dark blue Yaris, and one bright yellow sports car as shiny as a toy.
I tugged off my iPod and tucked it into my jeans pocket. Bertha’s little Renault Clio was there too (never ceased to amaze me how she squeezed herself into it), and sure enough, when I walked a bit further, she and Inflatable George were crushed together on my favourite bench, twenty metres along and down, gazing out to the shining horizon. His arm was resting on the back of the bench and she was leaning into him, and I sucked in a happy little sigh and released it. Sitting down where I was, I decided I wouldn’t disturb them. They looked so contented, it seemed like the world had it exactly right at exactly that moment.
And then the world blew it.
‘Dead romantic, that.’
I froze to my patch of cliff, curling in on myself, keeping my mouth tight shut. Nathan, though, wasn’t put off. He sat down beside me, leaning back against the slope with his hands behind his head. Down the slope, happy in their own little bench-world, Bertha and George hadn’t even noticed us.
Lucky them. My day was ruined. He’d tugged a cloud across the sun again, even though the sea still glittered.
‘Can we not, like, get along? I’m not leaving your sister anyway.’ Sitting up straight, he leaned his elbows on his knees and turned his face towards me. He was grinning but it was a bit different to his usual smirk; it looked uncertain, a little nervous even. He looked a bit as if he was scared of me. I studied his face, less beautiful than it used to be. Or maybe just thinner and paler.
‘Come on, Ruby Red. Mates? Just for show, at least? It would make her happy.’
‘What would you know about her being happy?’
He didn’t answer me at first, just counted on his long fingers. ‘Eight words. Is that the most I’ve ever had out of you? It’s a start.’ He smiled.
I would not be charmed. I refused to be charmed. ‘You don’t make her happy.’
‘Yes I do. Bloody should. She makes me happy.’
I couldn’t go on watching his eyes, the only bit of him that was still really beautiful, golden eyes that had sunk into deeper shadow. I turned to stare out to sea.
‘I love Jinn,’ he said. ‘I swear to God I love her.’
I still said nothing. It’s not that I was being deliberately mean; it’s only that I was giving it some thought, for the first time. But I must have thought about it too long.
‘Can you not just accept it? Can you not just pretend to like me?’ He swore under his breath. ‘Jesus, Ruby, you don’t deserve her.’
OK, he was doing fine till that point. ‘Piss off, Nathan.’
‘Rubes, we need to talk about it.’
I shook my head.
‘Well, I do.’ There was no trace of his sneer now. He was starting to be angry.
I scrambled to my feet. Nathan was between me and the car park, so I walked the other way, up the winding cliff path, fulmars tumbling round the sky below me. The breeze was stronger up here, stirring the dry gravelly path and blowing sand into my eyes, but I ducked my head into it and folded my arms, striding on. With the wind battering my ears and the sun’s dazzle, I’d almost forgotten him scrambling along behind me.
‘Ruby, listen!’
He grabbed my arm and pulled. I wobbled and slipped, and stumbled towards the edge.
I cried out, but not very loud: too busy panicking about the long plummet to my right, but I wasn’t really off balance and I scuttled closer to the hillside. Nathan had skipped back a bit, his eyes wide and startled and possibly a bit remorseful, but as I recovered he grabbed for my arm again.
‘Here, let me –’
Finish? Sod that. Viciously I kicked the dry path, sending up a shower of grit and sand; the breeze caught it and whipped it into his face. He gave a shout of surprise and covered his eyes with his hands.
‘Ow! What’d you do that for?’ He took down his hands, blinked, but his eyes were streaming and still full of grit, so he covered them again. ‘Ow!’
He jumped and danced, yelping at the pain. Big jessie. I looked at the drop.
I could have pushed him really easily. He was way off balance, thinking only about his stinging eyeballs. Honestly, I could have done it with one hand.
‘I’m going home,’ I said, pushing past him on the safe side. He was calming down now, blinking hard at the path and going ‘Ow, ow! Feck, ow!’
It was another chance to shove him over, but of course I didn’t.
I’ve done it in my daydreams, though. Many times, since that moment. What’s that I said about wishing I’d done things differently? I could have stopped it all then, if I had pushed him.
If only.
The last time I saw Nathan Baird in our house, he was dancing the tango. At least, he was dancing a not-bad version of it, sliding his narrow hips against Jinn’s in a way that made me blush. Her fingers slid down over his backside and they were gazing into one another’s eyes.
A snake enchanting a mouse: that’s what it made me think of. They were intense, hypnotised, the pair of them.
Jinn didn’t giggle but she smiled as he pulled her face close to his. I’m sure it wasn’t a proper tango, but what can I say? It was in the spirit of the thing. They were having sex with their clothes on. I almost didn’t dare breathe but they wouldn’
t have heard me anyway. The Grumpy Old Bugger next door would be through soon to complain about the volume of Mary Coughlan singing ‘Ain’t Nobody’s Business’, all raw-Irish and passionate and tango-ey. Nathan Baird was gazing into my sister’s eyes like he could eat her, but like it was all the same to him if she ate him instead. Like they could destroy each other, burn each other up, and neither of them would care. He slid his fingers under the chain of the amber drop and the dead mosquito and pulled her in so close I thought they’d fuse.
I look back on that tango and I wish he’d stayed.
Winter
Eleven
By November, the nights got dark really early. Winter was coming on in its usual dull snowless way and you almost couldn’t believe the sun would ever reappear; you could understand why all those cavemen back in the day used to bribe it with blood sacrifices.
I thought I’d be late again but there was no smell of cooking when I got in from the salon, and there was no music. These days that usually meant Jinn was mad at me, but she didn’t look too mad: she was peering into the toaster, pushing the lever down and down again. I picked up the disconnected plug and pushed it into the wall, and she turned to me and smiled, like she’d just noticed I was there.
Jinn was always the first one to speak. It was tradition. So it was beyond unsettling when she didn’t.
I was scared, so I had to shield myself with high dudgeon.
‘Where is he?’
She bit a nail. ‘Who?’
‘Nathan.’
She went on nibbling the nail, but sighed through her teeth at the same time. She looked more abstracted than upset.
‘He’s left,’ she said.
She didn’t look at me, which was just as well, because she didn’t see me smile. I put my hand over my mouth and stopped myself, but I was wasting my time because she didn’t notice.
‘Why?’ I said. Which was a pointless question, because I didn’t care why. I wanted to drop the subject; I wanted never to mention him again and it would be as if he never existed. It would be Jinn and me again. Just us.
Jinn turned back to me. I was frightened by her expression because she didn’t look happy, but then again, nor did she seem terribly upset. If Nathan had dumped her, she’d be devastated, so something wasn’t right. The sun was streaming in the window and lighting her hair with a silver halo, and I had to peer quite hard to make out the look on her face. Her lips were tightly closed but she was smiling. Her expression was a bit judgemental. It wasn’t Nathan she was angry with, I realised: it was me.
‘He’s got another place to stay. With friends.’
The implication of that was clear.
‘What brought that on?’
‘He said it wasn’t really working. He said we’d all be happier. He said also you wouldn’t end up killing him or blinding him if he just fecked off out of here.’
That took a bit of digesting, and Jinn obviously had no intention of helping me out. She ripped off a square of kitchen roll and polished a butter-smear off the side of the kettle.
‘So he’s not coming back?’ I said at last, hopefully.
She examined her reflection in the shining kettle. ‘He’s not coming back here.’ She gave it a sliver of emphasis I didn’t like.
Another awkward silence. I wanted to ask if she’d be seeing him again, but I didn’t want to hear the inevitable answer out loud, so I left it.
I didn’t have to ask again. Now I was sorry I’d driven him away, because at least I’d known where Jinn was and I knew what she was doing. Worrying about her was not something I was accustomed to; maternal fretting was Jinn’s job. I didn’t see so much of her but I didn’t want to nag. She started coming home a lot later, sometimes when I was in bed, and there were times I was this close to snapping Where have you been? Or even What time of night d’you call this?
I was worse than Inflatable George, who fussed round Bertha like an obsessive sheepdog. It irritated her but she was pleased at the same time. He tutted about Jinn too, but that just caused me unmitigated annoyance. Jinn wasn’t his business. I mean, strictly speaking even Bertha wasn’t his business, given that she was married to somebody else. But that was up to Bertha. Jinn was up to me.
Work was going well. I loved it, I loved the salon and the training was good: one day a week for four days of work. The pay was pretty rubbish because all I was doing was washing hair and sweeping up clippings, but they were good about letting me watch the stylists. I loved the way their fingers smoothed out locks of wet hair like rivulets of water, I loved the sharp quick motion of the scissor blades, I loved the quiet buzz of shears and the high whirring blast of the hairdryers, the green and red foils decorating heads like Christmas, and the way the clients eyed themselves in the mirror, half vain and half apprehensive. I wanted to be let loose on them; I wanted to be the one making their eyes widen at the mirror with gratitude.
When I’d told Foley what I was doing, he thought it was the most ridiculous thing he’d ever heard.
‘Hairdressing?’ he yelped. ‘You have to talk, Ruby.’
‘You don’t have to.’
‘Bloody do. You have to ask them if they’re going out at the weekend. If they’ve got any holidays planned. It’s compulsory. It’s in the job description.’
‘Don’t be stupid.’
‘You, hairdressing! I mean, you.’
We fell out about it. I stormed off and he pretended he didn’t care. We lasted about twelve hours, then our conciliatory texts crossed in mid-air. I fell out with Foley rather more often these days, which I looked on as proof that the relationship was going somewhere rather than fading out.
However, this new phase meant I wasn’t paying such close attention to Jinn, and she must have seen it as a godsend. I’d stopped giving her grief about Nathan Baird, because he was out of sight and out of my mind as well as his own. I should have been wary, I should have been worried. All I could see was the surface and all I could feel was relief.
For months that’s how I left it. Sleeping dogs and everything. It was only when she started staying away overnight that I got anxious again. Even then I thought: well, if the night was dark, if it was late, if it was cold, she wouldn’t be wanting to trail home. She’d know I’d worry less about her staying over at Nathan’s than walking home in the dark and the snow and the sleet.
That winter seemed to go on for ever. They always do, but that one especially. I saw less and less of Jinn. By February I was starting to wonder where she really, truly lived.
It was the beginning of May before I finally trailed her to Nathan’s new place, and then it was kind of by accident. I didn’t mean to follow her or spy, but I knew where it was and it was a spur-of-the-moment decision.
She hadn’t been home for a couple of nights, and I was starting to be slightly worried. I thought: Friday afternoon. She’ll be at work. So I nipped into the mini-mart, and she wasn’t.
Wide Bertha wasn’t around either; just Kim, sullenly swiping cans and cartons across the scanner as she chewed gum. I was taken aback because I knew Jinn always worked Friday afternoons. Wide Bertha wasn’t around to ask, and I wasn’t striking up a conversation with Kim of all people. There was only one thing for it and that was to check Nathan’s place.
It was just a few streets away and the only reason I hadn’t been near it earlier was I was trying to ignore the whole situation. I stopped on the opposite side of the street and stared.
I don’t know why I’d expected nasturtiums. It wasn’t the time of year. It wasn’t like it was Jinn’s home, and if she’d been treating it like her home I’d have been even more offended, so I don’t know why I was surprised.
The name of the place was Dunedin, which sounds a lot nicer than it was. It was one of those quite stolid, respectable-looking houses that used to be the homes of middle-class merchants. These days, a lot of them had been split by landlords into flats. Outwardly Nathan Baird’s new place looked a lot posher than our little grey sixties council house.
But there weren’t any nasturtiums.
I shifted from foot to foot, hesitant now, my hood up and my hands in my pockets. How I imagined this would make me invisible to Jinn, should she happen to glance out of a window, I do not know. But it wasn’t the sort of house you’d look out of. The windows were grimy in a dirt-of-decades way, and one of them was cracked across a bottom corner. There weren’t any proper curtains up, just lengths of faded patterned fabric. They were hooked back from the eyeless windows, so they can’t have been strung up properly, just tacked above the windows with drawing pins. Up on the high point of the gable a seagull balanced, squealing over and over, plaintive and nagging, and all at the top of its voice. I squinted up at it, wishing I had Mallory’s bread pellets and Mallory’s aim.
Nathan’s was a ground-floor flat, so it overlooked the tiny double-square of garden on either side of a short concrete path. I’d have thought the sight would have driven Jinn to gardening: the straggling grass, the dandelions, weeds twining through a single stunted rhododendron. It can’t have bothered her. There was a tyre lying in one corner but Jinn certainly hadn’t put it there. It was still stuck to a rusty wheel rim, almost swallowed by undergrowth. It had been there for ages. It wasn’t a potential tyre garden, it was litter.
I found that garden beyond depressing; for some reason it made me feel slightly unwell. It was that uneasy nauseous feeling when you’re faced with some danger you can’t identify and can’t avoid.
I knew three of them lived there, including Nathan. Not that I knew who ‘they’ were. I’d seen them hanging about with Nathan, coming out of the pub or propped against the wall by the newsagent: skinny wrecks with drained faces. Neither of them had Nathan’s sleazy charisma, at least not at a distance. One was male and I think the other was female, but it was kind of hard to tell. The almost-definitely-male one came out as I watched, caught nervous sight of me, then scuttled away down the road. Even from over the road I could smell the staleness oozing out when the door opened, a cankerous stink. Burnt candyfloss.
The Opposite of Amber Page 10
