The Second Life of Amy Archer

by R. S. Pateman

  ‘It is something nice,’ Libby said. ‘Esme, get your coat. We’re gonna get some fresh air. Blow the evil spirits away.’ She chased Esme into the hallway with her arms above her head, like the ghosts in Scooby-Doo.

  I said I’d stay at home, get the ironing done, but Libby really wanted me to go. We ended up at Wythenshawe Park.

  I ain’t been to a park for donkey’s years. The big bits of grass they’ve got mean you can see what’s what . . . who’s about and what have you . . . but there’s nowhere to hide – for the nutters or for me. Bushes are dodgy too, as you can’t see who’s in them, and if you have to run, the roots will trip you over and you’ll sprain your ankle so you can’t run no more.

  Playgrounds are the worst, mind . . . Swings and climbing frames ain’t for fun or to make you giddy, they’re just . . . traps. See-saws make you a sitting duck . . . and the roundabout . . . oh God, the roundabout . . . It ain’t the spinning that makes me belly lurch, it’s the memories. Like g-force . . .

  I kept telling meself to keep calm, everything was fine, nothing could hurt me . . . Even so, I could’ve hugged Esme as she pulled us in the opposite direction to the playground, away from the danger and towards the safety of the community farm.

  ‘She’s never been big on swings and stuff, have you, Es?’ Libby said.

  Esme shook her head.

  ‘They make me sick,’ she said. She squeezed my hand so tight it hurt.

  I should’ve known better to think the farm would be okay . . . There’s shit on every type of farm, city farms or pukka ones. Even if I didn’t remember that, Esme had.

  She fussed over the piglets sucking at their mum . . . smiled for her photo feeding a lamb with a bottle . . . cast a spell to make the mare give birth to its foal right there, right then.

  It was all sweetness and light . . . like the nursery rhyme, Old MacDonald with his cow, pig and horse, ee-i-ee-i-o.

  Yeah, right . . .

  And on that farm he had a . . . duck.

  Ee-i-ee-i-NO.

  There they were, above the noise of greedy pigs and hooves in mud. Ducks, squabbling, with a quack quack here and a quack quack there.

  The lump in me throat was as big as a boulder . . .

  Here a quack. There a quack.

  Everywhere a crack . . . crack.

  I closed me eyes and was back in Amy’s bedroom during a sleepover. She’d woken up screaming . . . screaming the whole bloody house down. Her mum came running in and told her it was only a dream, a really bad dream. She held Amy tight and rubbed her back.

  ‘Was it the duck again?’ she asked her.

  Amy nodded and buried her head.

  ‘From Peter and the Wolf,’ Mrs Archer said to me. ‘It’s a piece of classical music.’

  She kept telling Amy it was only a story, only a duck . . . that it would make more sense if she was scared of the wolf, but Amy said she was scared of him too.

  ‘He ate the duck, but the poor thing’s alive,’ she said. ‘It’s trapped and its friends can’t help it.’

  I was as scared as Amy and slept in her bed for the rest of the night. Amy didn’t wake up again . . . I didn’t go back to sleep. I had to keep me eyes open . . . looking out for the wolf.

  Libby wanted to go to the duck pond but I said I needed the loo. Esme said she did too, so Libby said she’d catch up with us in a bit at the café.

  ‘Mum loves the noise ducks make,’ Esme said as we walked away. ‘She thinks they’re all laughing at a really good joke.’ Her hand slipped into mine. ‘But I don’t think they’ve got much to laugh about, do you?’

  ‘Oh, I dunno,’ I said. ‘They can swim and they can fly. That ain’t bad going.’

  ‘Yeah, but they’re not safe anywhere, are they?’ Esme said. ‘Pike get them in the water. Guns get them in the air. And foxes get them on the land. It’s no wonder they sound sad and panicky!’

  She squeezed me hand and told me that someone at school reckoned that a duck’s quack had no echo.

  ‘I don’t believe that,’ she said. ‘Do you?’

  I stared ahead . . . didn’t answer.

  ‘I don’t,’ Esme said. ‘I don’t believe that at all. Everything has an echo. Everything.’

  D is for duck. Sitting ones and dead ones. Ducks that won’t shut the fuck up.

  E is for . . . egg.

  I dunno what sort of trick Amy had pulled off by coming back, but it must have been magic . . . the sort of things I’d read about in me books. It weren’t white magic neither . . . not the good stuff. This was black and dirty, the stuff you ain’t never gonna shift with bits of crystal or joss sticks.

  Some of them books went on about natural law . . . you know, about the universe arranging things to be just like they was meant to be. Crappy things happening was tough but there weren’t no stopping them.

  That’s what happened with Esme . . . with Amy, I mean . . . I thought I’d got away and found a new life, but that just weren’t what the universe wanted. You can run but you can’t hide. Fate’s fate, good or bad . . . The rhythm’s gonna get you in the end . . .

  I think I knew all that from the word go, really. It’s pretty much what my parents believed too, it’s just they didn’t have poncy words for it . . . Sod’s law they would have called it, not universal law.

  Amy had always been good at tricks and I was always the stooge, falling for ’em every time. Pick a card, any card, she’d say, and I’d try to be clever and pick one that didn’t stick out from the pack and weren’t in the middle or right at the end. But she always got my card, first time, every time. She made money disappear from her hand too . . . just a quick click of her fingers and ta dah! It turned up in her coat pocket.

  I wanted her to show me how to do it but she wouldn’t. Magic was the only thing she never let me in on. Everything else, no problem – clothes, felt-tip pens, sweets, fill your boots – but magic? Uh-uh . . .Universal law, you see. I just weren’t special enough to know things. I believed she had magic and that I didn’t.

  Until that day at school when, for once, I got to be the big I am. I was the one with mysterious magic powers and she was the one left scratching her head . . . Sort of, anyway.

  I ain’t got a clue what Miss Clapton thought she was teaching us that day in science, but I bet it weren’t what I actually learnt, which was give me the upper hand over Amy and bingo! Everything’s fucked up. Universal law will make sure of it.

  Miss Clapton got me and Amy up at the front of the classroom and then she gave me an egg and told me to squeeze it hard over a bowl. Even I knew it would break, everyone did, but I still jumped when it went crunch. I had yolk all over me fingers.

  Then I was told to take another egg and squeeze it at the top and the bottom, instead of from both sides. Just as I was about to start squeezing, Miss Clapton stopped me.

  ‘Do it over Amy’s head,’ she said. ‘I dare you.’

  My classmates gasped. Amy blinked and got all nervous as I held the egg above her head.

  ‘I don’t want to get messy, miss,’ she said. ‘I washed my hair last night. And my mum’s always on at me about keeping my uniform clean.’

  But Miss Clapton told me to get on with it. Amy screwed her eyes up.

  I squeezed and squeezed as hard as I could, but the egg just wouldn’t break. Everyone thought it was magic, and that I was magic too . . . Everyone except Amy, that is.

  ‘Do it again!’ they shouted.

  I waggled the egg in front of Amy’s face.

  ‘Abracadabra.’

  ‘It’s not magic,’ Amy said. ‘It’s science. Isn’t it, miss?’

  The egg exploded and Amy got splattered with slime, all over her hair and face. She screamed at me, saying over and over that I’d done it on purpose.

  I always was clumsy . . . got me fingers tied up in cat’s cradle and dropped catches at rounders – I even dropped Amy’s guinea pig, Moon, although that was a good thing, or she’d never have found out it weren’t a girl like she thought
, but a boy.

  I couldn’t be trusted with nothing, especially precious or fragile things . . . like magic . . . or Amy. It was no use wanting it to be different so there weren’t no point in trying. If I did, I deserved everything I got . . . and the harder I got it, the better.

  E is for egg. They’re easier to break than universal law.

  F is for . . . fairy.

  Like I say, some things just can’t be changed, and people don’t like change much anyway. Take the other mums at Esme’s school.

  I knew some of ’em, the ones who’d got kids at the nursery anyway. They’d drop their toddlers off, then dash up the road to the junior school with the older ones. We weren’t mates or anything like that . . . just said a quick hello and caught up on what the kids had been up to, if they’d been upset or ill . . . that sort of thing.

  But they knew I didn’t have kids of me own, so their eyes was on stalks when I showed up at the school with Esme. It weren’t really any of their business, but I had to say something. I didn’t want ’em thinking I’d kidnapped her or got her off the internet.

  There weren’t no point in lying, so I just told them Esme’s mum lived with me. That gave the gossips something to chew on, I can tell you. I said me and Libby were just friends and they were all nice about it – to me face – saying of course we were friends . . . it weren’t none of their business anyway. And it weren’t.

  But them tongues got wagging behind me back soon enough and it weren’t long before their kids were suddenly too busy to come round to play with Esme. It was me and Mrs Archer all over again . . . See what I mean about not changing things? Same old same old. If you think diamonds are for ever, try crap. That just keeps on coming.

  I used to go round Amy’s house a lot . . . at first, anyway. If Mrs Archer opened the door, she always looked surprised, like she didn’t know who I was even though she saw me every day outside the school.

  I never felt really comfortable there. I mean, Mrs Archer never did nothing to put me off, but I could tell I weren’t welcome, even though she gave me glasses of Coke and crumpets with jam.

  ‘Amy’s Granny Jam made it,’ she would say.

  I always made a big show of saying please and thank you and did me best when we did painting or crafts or baking. Everything Amy did was wonderful . . . of course she was better at things than me. Why wouldn’t she be? She got packed off to extra lessons and activities all the time . . . piano and horse-riding, Sunday school, one-to-one maths and French, trips to Stonehenge and York.

  Amy said her mum reckoned it was every mother’s job to give their kids all the opportunities going. But I reckon it was just Mrs Archer’s way of splitting me and Amy up, as my mum and dad didn’t have spare cash for days out and private lessons and wouldn’t have seen the point of them even if they had. Mum said she didn’t know why Mrs Archer had bothered having kids.

  ‘She never sees her! Always farming her out to somebody else. Poor kid must feel like she ain’t wanted or has done something wrong – always being made to jump through hoops.’

  I told her Amy didn’t enjoy most of the things she had to do and she’d like it more if I went too.

  ‘Well we can’t do much about that,’ Mum said. ‘But why don’t you ask Amy round for a sleepover?’

  I didn’t . . . but I made out I had . . . came up with loads of excuses for her, like she had gymnastics class, or extra maths . . . her grandparents were visiting or she was grounded for too much back chat.

  But Mum didn’t give up, and eventually she asked Amy herself when we were at the school gates. Amy was dead chuffed but Mrs Archer made excuses . . . Amy was tired, had a dentist appointment . . . her guinea pig needed cleaning out.

  ‘Maybe next time,’ she said, but I knew she didn’t want it to happen any more than I did.

  Amy kept banging on about it.

  ‘But my flat’s too small to run around in,’ I told her. ‘And we ain’t got a garden. Grandad don’t like lots of noise.’

  ‘We’ll play Cluedo then,’ she said. ‘Or cards. You’ve got dolls, haven’t you?’

  ‘The lift ain’t working,’ I said. ‘We’re on the tenth floor so you’ll have to climb lots of stairs.’

  ‘Tenth! We’ll be able to see everything.’

  ‘Can’t we go to the park instead?’

  ‘We can do that any time.’

  She got sulky and said I didn’t want to be friends any more . . . so I had to give in. I told meself it would be okay . . . there’d be safety in numbers.

  But I knew as soon as we got home that I was wrong. Grandad gave us a bag of sweets each and put Spice World on the video. Amy said it was her favourite film and that she knew it word for word. Grandad said he liked it too. When the Spice Girls sang ‘My Boy Lollipop’, he jigged his legs and tried to get me to sing along too.

  Amy wanted to show off one of our Spice Girl routines but I said no. Mum said Amy was my guest and I had to do what she wanted, it was rude if I didn’t. She told us to go and get into our costumes.

  We couldn’t both be Baby Spice. I didn’t have enough clothes to go round, so I let Amy put on my floaty white dress with fluff on the hem. I had to make do with a clapped-out fairy costume. It was way too small for me and the wings were torn and the wand all bent.

  I hated the way Grandad looked at us . . . stroking his shaggy beard, his smile slippery with spit. He clapped loudly and shouted for more. That’s when Amy spotted his bad finger and asked him what happened to it. Grandad held out his hand to her and said he’d had an accident, years ago.

  Amy asked him if it hurt and he said no . . . which was a lie ’cos it did.

  Mum and Dad went out afterwards, down the Canterbury Arms for the karaoke competition. I didn’t want ’em to go, but Mum said they had to as there was fifty quid up for grabs and the red leccy bill had just come in.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘Grandad’s here. And Amy.’

  Grandad gave Mum and Dad long enough to get out of the flat . . . then he came into the bedroom, singing.

  ‘My boy lollipop!’

  Amy giggled. He picked the fairy wand up from the floor . . . waved it over our heads . . . asked how many wishes a fairy granted.

  ‘Three,’ Amy said. ‘Everybody knows that.’

  Shut up, shut up, I wanted to say . . . close your eyes, pretend he’s not here.

  He sat on the bed . . . asked her how many wishes a fairy got.

  Amy shrugged her shoulders. Grandad slipped off his shoes . . . wriggled along the bed.

  ‘As many as they like,’ he said.

  He brushed some hair from Amy’s face.

  ‘My first wish is that nothing ever stops Dana and her parents from living in my warm and comfy flat.

  ‘My second wish is that your teachers don’t expel you for speaking out of turn and being a liar.

  ‘My third wish is that you do everything I say, like your parents expect you to.

  ‘My fourth wish is that you’re just as nice to my friends as you are to me.

  ‘My fifth wish is that you keep our little secret.

  ‘And my sixth wish? Well, that ain’t really a wish at all. It’s a promise . . . If you don’t grant all me other wishes, I’ll hurt you.’

  All of his wishes came true.

  F is for fairies. Their endless spells and wishes.

  G . . . G is for grandfather clock. That dangly bit hanging down, swinging. Oh God . . . oh God . . .

  H . . . H . . . H is for . . . help me. For ho . . . Dirty ho. Dirty, easy ho.

  I . . . I . . . is for . . . I don’t want . . . I will . . . I have to.

  J is for joke. The joke’s on me. Ha ha ha. A joke of a girl.

  Kicking K. Kicking K. K is for KID! A little kid.

  L is for lava. Erupting. Erupting like lava. For laughter. Erupting.

  M . . . M is for . . . mask. Happy face. Sad face. Smiling. Masking.

  N is for nothing. Nada. Nothing.

  O . . . O is for ouch. A
nd ow. And . . . oh God . . . For over and over again . . .

  The room is suddenly lighter, the air cooler. I realise I’ve been squirming so much the duvet has slipped from the bed and the laptop is precariously close to the edge. My eyes are hot and wet and waves of nausea rush over me.

  I turn the player off, curl into a ball and rock myself. Sobbing. Just like Amy must have done that night. Every night it happened. Dana too. Dana too. Bile rises in my throat. I hurry from the bed and puke bitter mouthfuls into the pink waste-paper bin.

  I turn back to the bed. The laptop’s stare is blank and impassive. The player’s control panel shows tells me Dana still has more to say. I don’t want to hear it, but I have to.

  I sit on the edge of the bed and press play.

  P . . . P is for padlock.

  Padlocks are for locking things in.

  I turn the player off again. I can’t do it. I can’t listen. Not yet. Not now. Not ever. But Dana’s words burn into me. P is for padlock. Padlocks are for locking things in. This has been her secret for a long time. Their secret. A living hell. Dana has finally found the strength to let the horrors out. The least I can do is listen.

  Q is for . . . quiet.

  Sporty Spice would’ve kicked ’em in the bollocks . . . they’d have been too scared to touch Scary Spice once, let alone again and again. Things like that don’t happen to Posh girls, and Ginger would have mouthed off, screamed it from the rooftops . . . but Baby Spice . . . she was the quiet one, easy meat, just like me and Amy was.

  It ripped me up that it was all ’cos of me that Grandad and his friends got Amy. I tried to keep her away, I really, really tried, but what could I do? What?

  And you know something else . . . something really, really disgusting? I was actually glad it was happening to Amy too . . . glad. Shit, what kind of a friend would feel like that? Not the sort of friend Amy deserved, that’s for sure.

  But I was relieved I didn’t have to go through it all alone any more. Having Amy there was like having someone to do detention with or to help me with my homework . . . bloody selfish of me, I know, and I ain’t proud of it, any of it, but Amy didn’t mind helping me out with my homework and in a way this weren’t no different to that.