The Second Life of Amy Archer

by R. S. Pateman

  Amy was good at keeping secrets too. Like when she broke one of her mum’s ornaments. Mrs Archer had this absolutely minging china figure of a little boy her old man had bought her for Christmas. If I’d been given it I’d have been quite happy for it to get broke, which is precisely what happened when Amy and her dad were playing chase. Mrs Archer was always telling us not to play rough games in the house and she’d have a go at Mr Archer about it too, so they had to dash off sharpish to get a new one.

  It looked exactly the same – just as ugly as before – but it weren’t. Amy showed me where it had a bit of colour missing, on the boy’s heel. She said her mum wouldn’t notice it as she didn’t really like it and didn’t even look at it any more so there was no way she would spot the flaw.

  ‘It’s like a secret,’ she said. ‘There, but not there. Right under her nose.’

  Like me and Amy and Grandad . . .

  But Amy wanted to tell this time. She said we had to. It hurt and it was horrible and Grandad should be stopped.

  ‘We can’t,’ I told her. ‘No one will believe us. It’ll be like those little girls in the old days who made everyone think they had fairies at the bottom of their garden when really they’d just made it all up.’

  But she said they would, they’d have to. She kept going on about what the teachers had said in assembly about stranger danger.

  ‘But Grandad ain’t a stranger!’ I told her. ‘And he told us the teachers already know! My dad says there are good secrets and bad secrets. Like him dumping junk mail in the bin instead of delivering it. He reckons what people don’t know can’t hurt them so sometimes it’s okay to not tell the truth as long as it’s for the right reasons.’

  ‘But it’s not for the right reasons, is it?’ Amy said.

  ‘Grandad said you tell anyone and we’ll both get hurt,’ I reminded her. ‘And he’ll kick me and Mum and Dad out of his flat. I’ll have nowhere to live. I might have to move, change schools. We won’t be best mates any more. Please, Amy. You can’t say anything. Promise me you won’t.’

  She promised . . . we both did. We crossed our hearts and hoped to die . . . Hoped to die . . .

  Our secret made us really tight, even tighter than before. ‘Say You’ll Be There’ became our theme tune. Our code.

  We used a code name for Grandad too. The Grey Wolf, we called him. It was Amy’s idea. Her dad had a nickname for her mum, two names actually . . . sometimes he called her Pookie and sometimes he called her Dabs, although they didn’t really suit her, not like Grandad’s name did.

  He had silvery black hair all over him, even on his back. It was horrible and scratchy, rough . . . like a Brillo pad. He had long yellow teeth and he moved quietly and he was always hungry . . . Wolf suited him down to the ground.

  He was always on our tails. No one batted an eye when he turned up at the park to take us home. Why would they? They’d seen me with him when he took me to school if Mum couldn’t. He was a responsible adult, doing right by his granddaughter, making sure we got home safely and promising us sweets on the way.

  Me and Amy tried going to other parks, but Paisley Park was tiny and the playground was crappy and rusty and Burgess Park had loads of old tramps and winos who sat on benches swearing and shouting then got up and fiddled with their zips to piss on the pathways with their cocks flopping out.

  The only place we were safe was at school. I couldn’t wait to get out of our front door in the morning . . . I hated it so much when the holidays came round that Mum and Dad joked about me becoming a right old swot, trying to keep up with Amy and be teacher’s pet.

  They were so made up when me marks got better and I got a good report that they gave me extra pocket money. But I didn’t buy sweets or comics or necklaces with it . . . it weren’t right to be quids in for looking like I was good when I weren’t. I shoved the money in a collection box outside the sweetshop . . . Postman Pat it was, like Dad, only he didn’t have a slot in his satchel collecting for the NSPCC.

  Turned out school weren’t safe for long . . . the Grey Wolf found us there too. We were learning all about Edward Jenner one day, about his injections for smallpox or whatever, and there he was, the Grey Wolf, coming out the school reception. Turned out he’d gone and got the job as school caretaker.

  I can still hear him, clattering around with his bucket and jangling keys. The rattle of his toolbox kept us in line. He used to show up when we were in the hall doing PE with our T-shirts tucked in our knickers, stretching and rolling and bending over . . .

  He always had an excuse to come in the hall . . . fixing a dodgy electric socket . . . swapping a light bulb. When he cleaned the windows his breath got them all steamy, the wolf huffing and puffing to get in . . . reminding us he was there and that we should be good.

  He even came into our classroom, saying he had to bleed the radiators, which meant kneeling on the floor by our desk and looking up our skirts. It made us fidget . . . Miss Clapton told us to ignore him. We should let him get on with his job.

  We did as we were told . . . in silence.

  I kept me gob shut when Amy vanished, too. A police-woman sat next to me on the sofa, asking questions and telling me to think, really think, and take me time before I answered. Mum, Dad, the copper – they were all too busy looking at me to notice Grandad at the door, ready to pounce. They didn’t see him zip his lips with a finger and thumb.

  Me and Amy had had an argument about silly things, I told them, like whose turn it was to choose what film to watch first that night and if All Saints were taking over from the Spice Girls. She’d walked off in a huff and left me on the swings in the playground on me own.

  I’d told her she’d better stay as Grandad was coming to get us, but she said she never wanted to come to my house ever again. So I went home . . . told Grandad Amy weren’t coming.

  They asked if I’d seen anyone hanging around in the park, close to the playground, anyone suspicious or scary, and I told them the truth.

  ‘No.’

  Mum said she wished she’d never let me go out. Dad said he knew that last drink at the pub was a mistake. Grandad said he felt guilty now ’cos he’d been pleased he didn’t have to come and pick us up as it meant he could go down the South Bank and soak up the atmosphere of all the people getting ready for the fireworks.

  The copper told us not to blame ourselves . . . Shows what she knew. She wouldn’t swallow my story even if I did tell her. My own grandad? In my own home? With my parents under the same roof? Grandad’s roof.

  It was all down to me . . . I was a bad, stupid, dirty girl just like Grandad said . . . like life said. It was natural law . . . I deserved everything I got. I’d get the same as Amy if I grassed on Grandad, but if I kept shtum, he might let her go.

  I slept in Mum and Dad’s bed that night. Dad said he’d get some of my favourite toys and bring them in, and Mum went off and made me a hot banana Nesquik. Grandad stuck his head round the door.

  ‘I don’t know nothing about this, okay? Nothing,’ he said. ‘Nor do you. Get it? Keep your trap shut and I’ll leave you alone.’

  Somehow I knew . . . I knew I’d never see Amy again. I cried my eyes raw and shivered all night long, but next morning I finally saw a way out.

  I couldn’t do nothing to bring Amy back . . . it was too late to save her but I could save meself, not by running away or being a smartarse or telling tales. No . . . All I had to do was what I always did . . . Fuck all.

  It was bad enough I let Amy down in the first place at the playground, but then, true to form, I go and do it again . . . by doing a deal with the Grey Wolf . . . keeping me gob shut so I can stay safe.

  He never touched me again, but Amy, she never let go.

  Q is for quiet. Silence without peace.

  My fists pummel the mattress. How could she do it? Betray her friend to save herself? Keeping secrets. Keeping quiet – at least until she met Libby and Esme, when all the stories and anecdotes came tumbling out in a torrent. The Man Who Didn
’t Wash His Dishes. The flawed figurine. My nicknames. Granny Jam. All of it, laid out on a plate and picked over, memorised and exploited for a revolting, brutal ruse.

  I can see it all now – except I don’t know where Dana is and I still don’t know what her grandfather did to Amy or what he did with her body.

  Dana can tell me herself.

  R is for . . . roller coaster.

  No need to tell you I got it all wrong again . . . Yet another fuck-up. Sure, the Grey Wolf didn’t touch me . . . but he didn’t have to. I got attacked by guilt and nightmares instead, and not just when I was asleep neither.

  It was all up there, on the bedroom wall, like shadow puppets.

  There was bubbles getting burst with a bite of sharp teeth . . . two girls who jumped off swings, only one always landed on a squidgy bed and the other went down a hole in the ground.

  And all the time I could hear the quack of a duck. I couldn’t get it out of me head. When we ran around the school hall, it weren’t plimsolls I heard squeaking. In the park all I heard was kids squealing and the shriek of bike brakes. At home the lift made a grating noise as it went up and down. That noise was everywhere. I tell you, Amy kept quiet when she was alive but she never shut up once she died.

  Esme was her echo.

  There was no point in running, as you’ll never outrun your fate, never. Esme was my fate, sent back to get me . . . one way or the other.

  I holed up in me bedroom with the lights out and the curtains drawn but the shadows still found a way in. Esme would knock on me door. Did I wanna play draughts? Could I dry her hair? No . . . She said I didn’t love her any more but I told her I did, I always had . . . always would.

  ‘No matter what?’ she said.

  ‘No matter what.’

  Libby reckoned a change of scene would sort me out. She’d got lucky on a lottery scratch card and had some money back after a cock-up with her tax code. Right pleased with herself she was, like it was all her doing. She weren’t a millionaire or nothing, we’re not talking Disney in Florida or a cruise round the Med. We’re talking Blackpool.

  I weren’t gonna go but Libby kept banging on at me. I suppose she must have had a word with Maggie, as she chimed in too, even bunging me twenty quid.

  ‘You’ve not had a proper holiday since you’ve been here,’ Maggie said. ‘You deserve it.’

  As if.

  But, seeing the way it turned out, I guess I did deserve it . . .

  I ain’t big on funfairs. I don’t get the fun in being scared shitless on roller coasters or spinning round and round till you chuck up or get chucked up on . . . Like there ain’t enough in the world to be scared of or enough shit flying around already.

  Anyway, all the fun of the fair begins before we even gets through the gates. There was a fucking clown sitting in a glass booth. Not a real clown, obviously . . . that would have been bad enough. This . . . this . . . thing was much worse. It was like a big toy, a mechanical toy . . . with shaggy silver hair and mad dark eyes, a painted-on smile and loads of yellow teeth.

  And he moved, oh God, he moved . . . rocking backwards and forwards, rolling about with uncontrollable laughter, like a madman. He had a child clown on his knee and it got tossed about as the big clown jerked around, laughing, laughing, laughing. The little clown had a painted-on smile too . . . a really unhappy smile . . . and its mouth was open but silent. No laughing, no words, nothing.

  Libby wanted a picture of it so I ended up sandwiched between Esme and the clown. Demons behind me, ghosts in front. The air from the generator was like hot breath and made Esme shudder as much as I did.

  The clown’s laughter followed me around the fairground . . . even when I couldn’t hear him, I could see and hear Esme . . . and the duck – the fucking duck was there too, in the siren at the start of the dodgem car ride.

  Soon as it sounded, Esme was after me. Her dodgem hit me again and again and again, the shunts forcing the breath from me and making my neck whiplash. Esme laughed all the while . . . laughed and laughed and laughed.

  She laughed on the roller coaster too. She got in the car right at the front with Libby, which meant I had to go in the one behind, all on me own, or so I thought, until this nervous, nerdy-looking man gets in and squeezes up to me . . . I tried to get out but the safety harness was locked tight.

  We chugged up the tracks to the top, way above the ground, and the car sat there for a moment, like it was scared and weren’t gonna go no further. Then it tipped over the other side. I screamed. Esme laughed and held her arms above her head as we zoomed around the track.

  ‘That one next!’ she said when we got off. It was a tall tower with seats around each side, like a skirt. The seats shot up to the top in one go then hopped back to earth, bit by bit. I couldn’t face it and told them I’d watch, but that was almost as bad as being on it meself.

  When the safety harness clamped Esme in, all I saw was Amy trapped in the arms of the Grey Wolf. I heard him snorting in the whoosh of air that shot her to the top. It was Esme’s mouth that opened wide but it was Amy who screamed out . . . over and over and over . . .

  I ran away and left her dangling at the top of the ride. I had to get out but the clown at the gate wouldn’t let me . . . He was rolling around, laughing like he was gonna burst, and each time he rocked forward I thought he was gonna reach out and grab me.

  I held me breath, waited for a hen party to go by, then slipped out under cover of kiss-me-quick hats and tinsel angel wings.

  R is for roller coaster. A gut-wrenching ride where there ain’t no way out.

  S is for . . . sandcastle.

  They might call it the Golden Mile, but I tell you, Blackpool Prom weren’t shining that day. Nor was the sun neither. The wind had blown over the buckets of plastic windmills outside the shops and the ice-cream counters was closed. Some of the shops had pink sticks of cock-shaped rock in the window . . . I ran as fast as I could and ended up on the beach.

  The tide was so far out there was nothing for miles but wet sand and scummy puddles. Me legs got tired from running but I could still hear the clown laughing so I kept going. Only I couldn’t outrun it . . . it was in me head . . .

  In the end I had to stop . . . I was knackered. I crashed out next to a breaker to catch me breath. Libby called me a few moments later, wondering where I’d got to. She said Esme thought I’d gone off for a go on the giant teacups. Like hell she did. She knew what she was doing all right . . . what she was putting me through.

  But it turned out it had all got to her too.

  ‘Esme’s feeling a bit spaced out after that last ride,’ Libby said. ‘We’re gonna have a sit-down on a bench on the prom for a bit. We’ll come and find you later.’

  I told ’em to take their time.

  There was a knackered old spade half buried in the sand, right beside me . . . like someone had left it there just to give me something to do while I waited. I picked it up.

  I weren’t really thinking what I was doing, just wiggling the spade into the sand, but before I knew it, I’d made a fucking big hole . . . big enough for Amy’s body but nowhere near big enough for mine. I filled it in, burying her again, just to be sure . . .

  I chucked the spade away and ran down the beach a bit. I was too scared to stop and too out of breath to keep going, but I just couldn’t run no more. So I started walking, straight on at first . . . at least I thought I was, but I was just going round in circles, smaller and smaller circles, getting tighter and tighter till I ended up like a bullseye in a target.

  Me legs gave out and I went down on me knees . . . not to pray . . . there weren’t no point in that . . . no one was gonna listen or help, especially not God.

  For once I was glad I had big hands. They was as good as spades and in no time I’d built a wall around me and a moat. I sat there for ages . . . didn’t budge even when the tide turned and the water got closer and closer.

  That’s where Libby and Esme found me, all cold and wet and on me knees. />
  S is for sandcastle, which ain’t no place to hide.

  T is for . . . time.

  Amy had everything . . . looks, brains, clothes, you name it, she was at the front of the queue. She was dead patient too, had to be with me around her all the time and needing her to show me how to do this and that and everything.

  So Esme weren’t in no rush to get me. She was having too much fun playing games . . . asking me to take her out places . . . help with her homework . . . go over her lines for the school play. But when I said no and stayed in me bedroom, she got all stroppy.

  ‘What have I done?’ she said, all innocent like.

  ‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘It’s just me being silly. Not your fault at all. ’

  She said her teacher had told her that just because something ain’t your fault don’t mean it can’t be your responsibility.

  ‘Not for causing it, but for sorting it out.’

  She weren’t offering to help or call off the chase . . . She was threatening me.

  As time went on, Esme got stroppier . . . kept saying I weren’t really her friend no more and that Libby weren’t her real mum. The flat got smaller and darker . . . the shadows on me bedroom wall got bigger and blacker.

  After Esme’s ninth birthday, the shadows were everywhere. She’d be ten next, the same age me and Amy was when she died. Amy never made it to secondary school, whereas I just wished I hadn’t.

  When Esme’s teachers said she had a shot at a scholarship at Manchester High School for Girls, Libby was made up and went on and on about it being a real opportunity.

  ‘They don’t come around very often,’ she said. ‘You don’t throw them away when they do. Like I did.’

  But Esme weren’t really bothered. She said even if she passed the entry exam she didn’t think she’d actually go there.

  ‘Something will stop me,’ she kept saying. ‘I can just tell.’

  Libby thought she meant the scholarship wouldn’t come off or the school would be full, but I knew she meant something random . . . something bad . . . Me and Esme both knew who was right.