I wanted to ask him what he was doing, but it seemed presumptuous. I just sat down beside him – not too close, though – and rested my arms on my knees and looked at the thing he was looking at. I shuffled a bit closer and looked harder. It was one of those knives that folds back into the handle.
‘You’re not meant to have that,’ I said, shocked.
‘Oh, it’s not like I’m going to use it.’ He could do scorn, he really could.
I hugged my knees and rocked back and forward a bit. ‘What are you doing?’
‘I’m thinking.’
I wondered why he had to think in the slimy air beneath the bridge, or why he needed a knife to do it. Then I realised his sleeves were rolled up. My eyes widened.
‘You’re not cutting yourself?’
He gave me an acid look. ‘Don’t be stupid.’
Sure enough, his arms were smooth and unscarred. I licked my lips, wondering why my heart was thumping. I wanted to make a joke and say, There’s always a first time, but I didn’t want to because I had a horrible feeling about this. Instead I said, ‘Are we going to stay here, then?’
His eyes went wary and wide all at once. ‘We?’
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘We could go and get a coffee or something.’
‘I’m not really in the mood . . .’
All the same, I wanted him out from under that bridge. ‘You like walking, don’t you?’
‘Um,’ he said. ‘Um. I guess.’
He snapped the knife shut and put it in his pocket.
It was kind of like our impromptu west coast holiday, only more so. Maybe we were both just older and less hung up. I don’t think he was seriously considering slitting his wrists, but let’s just say I was happy to have moved him on from under that bridge. Alex himself seemed to float at my side like a helium balloon. I actually heard him laugh, more than once, rather than snort and put his hand to his mouth.
Since he wasn’t in the mood for coffee, we stayed in the park. We bought ice creams, we harassed the seagulls, we fooled around on the swings and slides. I can’t remember what he talked about, but that boy certainly could talk. I didn’t, much, but I liked his company. He had some interesting thoughts about things: books, life, the world. I thought again about how I’d been his nearly-girlfriend, and wondered if it would be so bad, or maybe kind of good. There didn’t seem a lot of point pining for Foley, not when he was snacking habitually on Annette Norton’s ear.
We shouldn’t have left the park. If we hadn’t left the park and walked up to the community centre, leaning in to each other and having a bit of a laugh, we wouldn’t have seen the other kids from school, we wouldn’t have seen Foley. We’d have walked on up to Starbucks and had a coffee and eventually we’d have said goodbye and gone safely home. Our parting gazes might even have lingered an extra second.
Except we did go out of the park towards town. And we did slow and stop as we saw people we knew – or rather, people I knew and people Alex occasionally passed in the corridor.
‘Hi,’ said Foley, and smiled.
He drew out of his little group, and turned a bit towards us. Except he didn’t turn towards us, he turned to me.
And Annette Norton nowhere in sight. Hallelujah.
‘Hi!’ I said. I smiled. Smiling I could do.
I don’t remember what we talked about (or let’s face it: mostly what he talked about). I remember Foley was really funny; he didn’t say anything earth-crackingly philosophical but somehow everything he said was interesting, half of everything he said made me smile, and altogether it seemed like the best time I’d had in ages.
I thought we were including Alex. I thought he was in on the joke. But maybe in hindsight we weren’t at all. Maybe that’s why, when I finally turned to him and frowned, he had stepped back a few paces, breaking the circle of laughter.
‘Come on then,’ he said.
‘Come on what?’
I was genuinely bewildered. I didn’t have a clue what he was on about.
‘Starbucks. We’re going up to Starbucks.’
‘I thought you didn’t want coffee.’
‘Yeah, but we were going up that way.’
I frowned at him, annoyance rising. ‘Yeah, well, no hurry. Right?’
‘No hurry,’ he said. ‘Right.’
I wanted to stamp my foot with impatience. Foley had drifted back to his little group, and though there were a few girls there, they didn’t include Annette Norton, and I wanted to affix myself to his side while I had the chance. He was interested; even I could see that. If Alex hadn’t been there I’d have had a clear run at Foley, and the worst of it was, it was my own stupid fault. If I hadn’t taken pity on Alex, there under the bridge . . .
‘Come on then,’ he said.
‘In a minute.’ I returned his scowl.
‘Not in a minute. Let’s go now.’
I stared at him, nonplussed. I wasn’t that assertive myself, but to be over-asserted by Alex Jerrold of all people . . . God’s sake, I’d only talked to him out of pity.
‘So,’ he said. ‘Are we going then?’
‘No we bloody aren’t,’ I said.
‘Oh, right?’ The beginnings of hurt, and that was what I couldn’t stand.
‘Oh, Alex,’ I said. All grown-up and withering. ‘Take a running jump.’
Twenty
‘So,’ said Bertha. ‘This is the part where you ask me if I’m going somewhere nice at the weekend.’
I grinned and rolled my eyes. I was looking at the back of Bertha’s head and she was looking at Coronation Street, and I’d been kind of hoping I’d get away with it. Unfortunately not a lot was happening in Coronation Street tonight.
‘Oh, leave her alone,’ said Mr Bertha.
That wasn’t his name, of course. I suppose he was Mr Turnbull, but I always thought of him as Mr Bertha, especially as he never came out of the house. We were in their hot little lounge and the TV was too loud, at his request. Mr Bertha’s theory was that he was ill, so everything had to be very loud – even though he wasn’t remotely deaf – and very hot. I think that was why Wide Bertha loved the open air so much. This was why she liked to be outside at lunchtime, even in the middle of winter, or up on the cliffs, jacketless on the coldest days, letting the wind blow her hopeless hair into an even more hopeless tangle. (And it was nice and private up on the cliffs when Inflatable George was in town, so why would she mind a bit of a breeze?) I’d seen her sitting on the river wall in a T-shirt and sandals in January, smoking her head off. In between drags she’d breathe in a huge lungful of frosty sea air, as if compensating for the nicotine. No wonder she liked the outdoors. No wonder she liked Inflatable George and his outside life and their secret cliff walks.
‘You need a bit of looking after yourself,’ George would say. ‘You need somebody looking after you, Bertha.’
Wide Bertha would eat that stuff up. ‘Oh, for any’s sake,’ she’d sigh, ‘what a load of nonsense,’ but she’d be lapping it up all the same, trying not to smile too obviously. I think she did wonder wistfully how it would be, being flirted with and appreciated and coddled 24–7 instead of once a fortnight on delivery day.
I was barefoot as I cut her hair, because it was the best way to keep cool, and I’d stripped down to my strappy top. I wiggled my toes in the deep pile of the beige carpet. The room was crammed. Besides a television and two leather sofas, there was a tiled fire surround with leaping flames, a sideboard and a glass cabinet stuffed with ornaments, as well as a tall dresser crowded with the decorative plates Bertha liked to collect and which were rotated weekly. Today’s favourite, brought proudly into pole position, showed the head of a golden Labrador, grinning manically like something out of The Omen. Despite all the clutter the room had a thick atmosphere of homeliness which I liked. It had its very own atmosphere, dense with the smell of burnt dust, but warm and breatheable. It was Mr Bertha who took up most of the room, parked firmly in his chair with his feet up on a stool and under a rug. A rug!
/> ‘I tried to phone you today, Ruby,’ said Bertha. ‘I was going to say, come a bit early. You could have got home a bit sooner.’
‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I lost my phone.’
‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, Ruby. How did you lose your phone?’
I shrugged, drew a lock of wet hair straight and trimmed it. Snip snip snip. ‘I don’t mind, anyway. I haven’t got anything else to do.’
‘Aye, right. So how did you lose your phone?’
I hesitated and drew another thin lock of hair between my fingers.
OK, Bertha, here’s how it was. Foley and I were at the little playpark, the one by the river wall on the furthest side of the Dot Cumming Memorial Park. We were watching Mallory scramble up the rope rocket. That girl was going to go far; she was completely ruthless. She shimmied up those ropes, overtaking toddlers and teenagers alike, standing on anyone her own age till they shrieked. She was a spider on her own web, fast and sure and pitiless. At the top she hung triumphant, gloating at the rest.
I envied her the certainty that she wasn’t going to fall. She’d never jump either, not Mallory. If you shouted at Mallory to Take a Running Jump, she’d tap her temple and stick out her tongue and swear at you. Mallory had the sense and survival instincts of a six-year-old and they may not have been perfectly honed to the ways of the world, but at least she wasn’t old enough to be stupid.
Foley and I were sitting on the river wall, backs to the river. Because we were high up, we could see straight through the playpark to the road beyond, so when Jinn came out of the pub in the middle of the day I was looking straight at her.
She was with a bloke I’d never seen before, fat and beery, and she had that fixed but empty look on her face. Any minute now she was going to raise her head and look across the road and see me. And in a sort of perfect storm of buttock-clenching coincidences, Tom Jerrold’s car was slewing in to park at the side of the road, right opposite the building site where new flats were going up. He hadn’t seen Jinn yet, but I knew he was going to. Jinn’s head was coming up towards me and the light of recognition was starting to warm her dead eyes. So I swung round quickly, a hundred and eighty degrees, almost unbalancing, and dangled my legs over the other side of the wall towards the river.
Foley leaned back a little, and tilted his body so that his shoulder knocked into mine. Languidly he said, ‘Will I tell you when she’s gone?’
I was mortified. ‘Yeah.’
After a few moments he said, ‘She’s away.’
I shivered. ‘I’m not ashamed of her or anything.’
‘Sure.’
I bowed my head and stared at the brown rushing river. It was maybe four metres below us, but the tide was high and the river was full and the water came right up to the wall, mounting up against the stones with its force and leaving foaming eddies of beige scum. The wall was black up to the high waterline and there was dark green weed growing off it that streamed out horizontally towards the sea. It was hard to remember paddling across to the dunes in summer, when the river was silver and gentle.
Foley pushed himself off the wall, jumped down and walked away, but I didn’t turn to see where he was going. Anyway, I knew, because I could hear him shouting up at Mallory.
‘Would you let him go, ya wee MINX? Put him DOWN.’
I was too used to Mallory’s evil schemes to bother to turn and see which child she was torturing. Instead I narrowed my eyes and peered down at the water through my lashes. It wasn’t so far below, but you could pretend it was; you could pretend it was hundreds of metres below. But if I sat on a wall just this way, but the wall was fifty times higher, it wouldn’t feel the same. It would be the same, strictly speaking, but I’d probably fall because I’d know I could fall.
It works the other way, I’m sure. You see pictures of climbers standing casually on the edge of insane corries. Climbers must have brains that know there isn’t any difference between five feet and fifteen hundred feet, that you’re standing on the same square metreage, that the air isn’t any heavier higher up, that the hill can’t tilt you forward and knock you off.
On the other hand, some of them do fall off.
Anyway, I don’t have a rational brain like that. I could sit on this wall, close to the river – that was easy enough. I probably couldn’t sit on the edge of the rickety bridge over there. It was only a few metres higher than this one, but that was too high.
I wondered if Alex Jerrold had a rational brain. I wondered if he’d stood up there on the community centre roof and known he was just as safe as he would have been on a low garden wall. His feet were taking up the exact same space. It wasn’t any different than it would have been if the ground was two metres below. I wondered if he’d got confused, and forgotten he was up so high, and thought maybe he’d just step off and go and get a fish supper.
Making excuses again.
I jumped when my phone vibrated in my pocket, and then shrilled its ringtone. My fingers were shaking when I pulled it out and flipped it open. It was from Jinn.
U ignorin me?;–)
I peered at that, a horrible feeling in my stomach. Partly the message itself and the implication that I was ashamed of her, partly that the Jinn I knew would never have bothered with winky smiley faces. Before, she’d have asked me straight out and po-faced, because she wasn’t scared of rejection. She was sending me winky smiley faces because she wasn’t a hundred per cent certain of me any more.
‘Hello,’ said Tom Jerrold.
That was when my phone took a flying leap out of my fingers. A life of its own, I always said, and now it was committing suicide. I watched in horror as it arced through the air, and snatched once at it, uselessly. It hit the water with barely a splash and was swallowed. I swore.
‘Oh,’ said Tom. ‘Sorry. Did I give you a fright?’
I swore again, scrambling down off the wall so I could lean over it and peer down, but the phone was gone. If it ever surfaced again it’d be in Norway.
‘I’ll get you a new one,’ he said.
I shook my head. I didn’t want him to buy me a new one. I didn’t want to be any deeper in debt to Tom Jerrold. I’d buy it myself; I could afford it, just. But it was starting to sink in, what I’d lost: numbers, ringtones, photos. Shit.
‘What d’you want?’ I snapped. I didn’t mean to, but I was furious about that phone.
‘I was going to ask you for Jinn’s number.’
‘Hah!’ I glanced at the river again.
‘I wanted to talk to her.’ He reached into his pocket and brought out a pen, waiting expectantly.
Something, oddly, made me want him not to.
‘I’m really sorry.’ I licked my lips and lied. ‘I don’t actually know her number.’
‘Oh.’ He twitched an eyebrow.
‘It was on my phone. Quick-dial. Just pushed a button. Sorry.’
‘OK. My fault then.’
‘I’m the one that dropped it.’
‘Yeah, but – never mind.’ He shrugged. I’d thought he had a grown-up face but the way he looked now, he was like a schoolboy again. ‘Well. I can get hold of her, I suppose.’
That made me want to snigger, in a very juvenile and schoolgirlish way. I managed not to, but he blushed and turned even younger.
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘About the phone, I mean.’
I lifted a shoulder. I wondered where, in the weird power play between us, he’d suddenly become the supplicant. And I wondered how long it would last.
‘You’ll just have to go and look for Jinx,’ I said.
‘Well?’ said Wide Bertha.
I shook myself. ‘I lost it,’ I said again.
She tutted. ‘That’s not what I asked. The phone was five minutes ago. You’re a hairdresser, Ruby. If you can’t be a good talker you’ll need to be a good listener.’
‘Sorry.’
Bertha’s fingers fluttered through her hair. ‘Can you make it a bit pink next time?’
I stepped back and examined her head
. ‘Yeah. Could do.’
‘I think it would look nice.’
‘Bloody nonsense,’ said Mr Bertha over the racket of his TV. ‘I think it would look ridiculous.’
‘Aye, but nobody’s asking you,’ retorted Bertha.
‘It’d look good,’ I said, partly to annoy Mr Bertha, who was getting on my nerves. ‘I’ll put in some highlights. Really funky.’
‘Uh-huh. That’s what I thought.’ Her face pinked with pleasure.
‘Rubbish,’ growled Jabba the Hutt in the corner.
I handed Bertha her own little mirror and she admired herself. She was in her forties but she still had lovely skin. Her pale mousy hair would take colour well. Almost too well. Maybe she’d need something more subtle.
‘You don’t want lilac,’ I thought aloud. ‘I could do lilac but it’d be like a blue rinse.’
She nodded happily. ‘That’s what I thought. Can you do it on Thursday evening?’
‘Yeah.’
I caught her smile in the mirror and returned it. Inflatable George delivered on Fridays. As if on cue, the phone beside her buzzed and tinkled.
She lifted it, made a face, showed me the text message. George.
‘He does fuss a bit,’ she whispered as I leaned down to peer at it.
She didn’t seem displeased though. With one shifty glance at Mr Bertha, she tapped out a quick reply with her thumbnail.
‘How’s Jinn doing?’ she asked loudly.
‘She’s OK,’ I lied. ‘She was working at the Folk Museum.’
‘Aye, two months ago. What’s she doing now?’
‘She’s signing on. She’s looking for a job.’
Bertha put down the phone, tilted the mirror higher. Gave me what the books call a gimlet look.
‘Nathan Baird?’
I hesitated, picked at a nail. ‘Still going out with him. Loves him, unfortunately.’
Bertha snorted. ‘Each to his own.’
‘She’ll get over it,’ I said.
‘Sooner the better.’
My fingers trembled as I put away my scissors and my combs and my razors. I needed to breathe clean air; I needed to get out of this house. It wasn’t cosy any more, it was suffocating. I felt like throwing the hairdryer through that bloody TV screen, just to shut it up.
The Opposite of Amber Page 15
