The Second Life of Amy Archer

by R. S. Pateman

  ‘Yes,’ I say without hesitation.

  Harding and I look at Libby. She’s got her arms folded and her eyes narrowed.

  ‘Libby?’ Harding’s eyebrows arch.

  ‘Agreed,’ she says reluctantly. ‘If Esme says she’s okay with it.’

  ‘I’m sure she will.’ Harding gives a reassuring nod of his head. ‘She seems keen to sort this out once and for all. Ingrid will have a chat with Esme on her own to put her at her ease. If she’s still okay with it, we’ll go from there.’

  16

  She’s a tall, large woman. Not fat. Just big-boned. She fills the shorter stretch of the L-shaped sofa in the interrogation room, her oatmeal suit and russet blouse complementing the orange sofa cover. Wide brown eyes peer from behind large round glasses, her broad face made broader by mousy hair pulled back into a thick bun speared with a silver pin.

  She’s a mix of wise and watchful tawny owl, and sturdy, no-nonsense brick wall. Esme will never get past her.

  Esme sits on the longer stretch of the sofa, smiling and cooperative, seemingly oblivious to the danger she’s in. I pull my chair closer to the screen. Brian does the same. The hand he puts in mine is hot and sweaty. He’s like an earnest student, eager to please. Ready to suck everything in. To become a stronger believer. I let go of his hand.

  ‘Ready, Esme?’ Ingrid says.

  Esme nods.

  ‘Good girl. Okay. Make yourself comfy.’

  Esme lies stretched out on the sofa and pulls a cushion under her head. Ingrid clears her throat and shuffles closer to her.

  ‘I want you to imagine you’re on a giant leaf on a lily pond. Like a big frog, sitting in the middle of the water, nice and dry, nice and safe . . . Feel the sunshine warm on your back . . . Hear the water lapping around you . . . See the little flashes of sunlight on the water.

  ‘Now, let the flashes merge together to become one great dazzling blaze of light. And as they do, you feel yourself drifting away . . . very slowly. You’re moving closer to the light . . . nice and slowly.

  ‘You’re surrounded by the light. It’s warm and bright – so strong you feel you could walk upon it . . . I want you to stand up and step off the lily pad and on to the light. You feel safe and happy. You’re walking slowly . . . into the past. And when you get to somewhere you want to stay, sit down and rest, breathing gently . . . gently . . .

  ‘Now . . . tell me what you see . . . what you feel and hear.’

  I’m sitting on a swing in the playground – but I’m not swinging. Just using my feet to rock backwards and forwards. Dana’s on the swing next to me, getting higher and higher.

  She says she likes All Saints more than the Spice Girls and reckons they’re better and prettier. As if.

  ‘You’re only saying that because you’re jealous of me for being more like Baby Spice than you are,’ I tell her. ‘You’re too ugly and clumsy to be in any girl group, let alone my one!’

  I shouldn’t have said that, I know. She’s my friend. My best friend. I just wish she didn’t have a grandad. But that’s mean, as I have a grandad so why shouldn’t she? Mine doesn’t do what hers does, though. He’s not a Grey Wolf.

  It’s not Dana’s fault. Or mine. Dana says it’s just the way it is. The way it has to be. I suppose she’s right but I really wish she wasn’t.

  I’ve been on at her again about telling someone about the Grey Wolf. He’s coming to pick us up a bit later on so I can have a sleepover at Dana’s. We’re going to stay up late and watch the fireworks on the telly. We might even see them from her balcony as her flat is on the tenth floor! And we’ll get pizza and Coke and sweets. All that’ll be great . . . It’s what happens after that I don’t like. It’s . . . horrible and . . . and it hurts.

  I don’t want to go there . . . I want to tell someone to make it stop. It’s Millennium Eve and Miss Clapton said that whatever you’re doing on Millennium Eve sets the tone for the rest of the year. If I don’t tell someone about the Grey Wolf tonight, I’ll be doing what he wants for the whole year. For the next thousand years.

  Dana jumps off the swing. She says she’s going to start her own girl group and it will be better than mine. She’ll be on Top of the Pops, she reckons, and I’ll just be watching on telly.

  She couldn’t get a group together. Not enough people like her.

  ‘People only play with you because you’re with me.’ I shouldn’t have said that either, but it’s true. ‘And even if you did get a group together, it wouldn’t be as good as my group because I won’t be in it.’

  She says that’s why hers will be better and that she never wants to see me again.

  ‘Suits me!’ I say. I jump off the swing and start walking out of the playground.

  Dana calls out after me.

  ‘Amy, where are you going? Stop! We’ve got to wait here for Grandad.’

  ‘I’m going home,’ I shout. ‘I’m not coming to yours tonight.’

  ‘But you have to! It’s all been arranged. Your mum and dad are going out.’

  She’s right. But if I tell them about the Grey Wolf they won’t go to the party and will stay in with me instead. Maybe they’ll tell the police about Dana’s grandad and have him taken away.

  ‘I’m never coming to your house again. Ever!’

  I hear Dana laugh.

  ‘Yes you will. Tonight. You’ll have to. Your mum and dad will make you.’

  I turn back to look at her. She gets back on the swing again and sways gently.

  ‘See you in about five minutes, Amy,’ she says in a sing-songy way. ‘I’ll wait here. Don’t be long. You know Grandad doesn’t like waiting.’

  I stomp off home. I take the short cut through the railings instead of going all the way to the gates closest to my house. The lights are on at home even though it’s not dark yet, so Mum must be doing her cleaning. She likes to see she’s got every little bit of dirt up. I fumble in my pocket for my front door key, then remember I didn’t take it with me. No need. Mum and Dad would be in tomorrow when I got back from Dana’s.

  I ring the bell and wait . . . Maybe Mum’s got the radio on. I ring again. Longer. I put my head against the door and listen. I can’t hear the Hoover. Or a radio. I lean on the doorbell. One long ring then five short ones. I peer through the letter box and call out to Mum. I see her coming down the stairs. She’s got her dressing gown on and her hair wrapped up in a towel.

  When she opens the door her skin is glistening and there are wet footprints on the carpet. She looks surprised. She asks me if I’ve left something behind, says she thought she put everything I needed in the overnight bag she gave to Dana’s mum earlier.

  ‘I’m not going to Dana’s,’ I say.

  I brush past her, head for the kitchen. Tell her I need a drink. I open the fridge and ask if I can have a Coke and something to eat.

  Mum stands in the hallway, halfway between the kitchen and the front door. She pulls her dressing gown around her, does up the belt.

  ‘What do you mean, you’re not going?’ she says. ‘Are Dana’s parents ill or something?’

  No, I want to say, her parents aren’t ill but her grandad is sick. The sickest man in the world. But I can’t tell her. I’m not brave enough. She just won’t believe me. She won’t.

  ‘We had a row,’ I say. ‘I don’t want to be anywhere near her.’

  She asks what we rowed about and laughs when I tell her. It’s not a proper laugh though. It’s the same sort of laugh she has when I tell her I’m too tired to help do the dishes or go to Tesco. Like a snort. A bit angry.

  She walks down the hall and comes into the kitchen. She takes a can of Coke from the fridge, hands it to me and closes the fridge door.

  ‘You’re eating at Dana’s tonight. Her mum’s got everything in. And me and your dad are going out.’

  I open the can of Coke.

  ‘I’ll be okay here. I’ll be good. I’ll just watch the telly.’

  She tells me I can’t stay here on my own.

 
‘I’m ten years old!’ I say.

  ‘Exactly.’

  She puts her hand on my shoulder.

  ‘Off you go, love,’ she says. ‘Hurry up back to the playground or you’ll miss Dana.’ She looks out of the window. ‘It’s not dark yet, so you’ll be fine. I’d take you over there myself but by the time I get dressed, Dana’s grandad will have gone.’

  ‘Good,’ I say.

  She tries to steer me towards the front door. I push back against her.

  ‘Amy, come on!’ she says. ‘I don’t have time for this. My bath’s getting cold and I’ve still got stacks to do around here, including getting your dad’s dinner, wherever he is . . .’

  ‘No, don’t make me go. Please.’

  She says I have to. I can’t go mucking people about. All the plans have been made. Dana’s mum has bought food especially. The cab to the party is booked and they can’t not go as it’s too important to Dad’s business. And how often does she get to go out anywhere these days?

  ‘You could find someone to sit with me,’ I say.

  ‘Oh, I see,’ she says. ‘You expect people to drop everything at the last minute on the biggest party night of the year? Of the century? And all because you’ve had a tiff over the Spice Girls? I don’t think so, Amy. I didn’t bring you up to be selfish.’

  She’s about to open the front door. I put my foot against it . . . Tell her I don’t want to go. She says I’m going, like it or not. Tantrums don’t cut it with her. I’m old enough to know better.

  Her mouth is all tight and her cheeks are twitchy. If I tell her about the Grey Wolf now she’ll feel sorry for me and be angry with him instead. I won’t have to go to Dana’s.

  ‘But he touches me,’ I say in a whisper. ‘The wolf. Her grandad.’

  She steps away from me. Quickly. Like I’ve hit her.

  Suddenly she doesn’t look like my mum any more. Her face is all long and stretched and her mouth is just a big ‘O’, like the winners on Stars in Their Eyes when they can’t believe they’ve won.

  When they can’t believe it.

  ‘What did you say?’ Mum says. Her voice is shaking as much as her hands. I’ve never seen her so upset. ‘No. This . . . this can’t be happening.’ She puts her hand to her forehead. Looks at me. She’s dazed and blinking, like she’s just woken up. ‘It . . . just can’t. Not again. That’s . . . not fair. What have I done to . . . Why me?’

  Maybe the Grey Wolf has been touching her too. Or maybe she just means why has a good mum like her ended up with such a nasty, naughty girl like me, who’d upset her so much just so she can get her own way.

  ‘I didn’t mean anything, Mum! Really,’ I say. ‘I just made it up! To get out of going to Dana’s.’

  Mum turns away from me mechanically and walks quickly up the stairs. I hear the bathroom door slam, the click of the lock.

  She’s always got mad at me for lying, but never quite this bad. I feel stupid for telling her. Why would she believe me? It sounded so silly when I said it. It sounded like a lie.

  I’m standing at the bottom of the stairs. I don’t know what to do – go to the park or go up to her and say sorry for lying and making her angry. I tiptoe up the stairs and stop on the landing.

  I hear a crunch in the bathroom. Like a glass or something breaking. I hear her crying and muttering something about lies and not being a good girl.

  ‘I hate you,’ Mum says, over and over again.

  There’s a tinkle of broken glass. It can’t be the toothbrush mug, as there’s only one in the bathroom and I’ve already heard that break. It has to be the mirror.

  I’m too upset to cry. My mum hates me. I shouldn’t be here . . . she doesn’t want me to be. I don’t want to be either . . . not if she doesn’t love me any more.

  I go back down the stairs. Mum’s words get louder. Her tears get louder too, so it’s hard to make out everything she’s saying. But I catch bits of it. There’s something about Sunday school, the love of God being painful and wrong. About history going round and round. About vicious circles.

  I open the front door. I remember the way Mum’s face looked as we stood on this exact spot just a few moments before. It wasn’t like the winner of Stars in Their Eyes . . . It was more . . . more like she’d seen a ghost.

  I run across the road, slip through the gap in the park railings and leg it as fast as I can to the playground.

  Dana isn’t there. No one is. It’s just me.

  I don’t want to go to Dana’s. I can’t go home. If I’d been clever I would have grabbed my key from the table in the hall and let myself in once Mum and Dad had gone to the party. Too late now. Maybe I’ll go back later and see if they’ve left a window open or something. You never know.

  I sit on the swings for a bit, thinking about Mum. She was so angry with me. Her and Dad have rows sometimes but she never looks like she did just now. Mum and Dad never seem to really make up when they argue. I hope me and Mum can. And I hope she doesn’t tell Dad about me lying about Dana’s grandad, or he’ll kick off at me too. There’s enough arguing in our house as it is, usually Mum and Dad rowing about me.

  Sometimes I wonder what they were like before they got married. I know they worked together making up adverts. Mum did the drawings and Dad the words. Like the people who wrote the picture books I read when I was younger. If they’d written a book, Mum would have drawn a princess in a fairy castle looking out for a prince. And Dad would write a story where they fell in love for ever and ever and had a wedding with white horses and a glass carriage.

  Once, Mum showed me where she lived before she married Dad. It was a flat above a launderette in Finsbury Park. I didn’t like it much. It was grey and dingy. Mum said all she could smell when she lived there was soap and steam but that didn’t mean she felt clean.

  We used to pass Dad’s old flat on the way to the cinema in Brixton. It was really cool. It was a fire station before it became flats, and it had big windows and glossy red drainpipes. Dad told me he had a blue flashing light in the front room and a doorbell that sounded like sirens. Mum called it a lad’s pad. Dad looked sad whenever we went past it.

  He looks sad a lot – most of the time actually. When we play draughts or watch television or when Mum goes on about me changing schools and how they have to push me harder.

  Even if I do well she seems disappointed. No wonder she went mad just now. Me lying to her, on top of everything else, like only getting seventy-nine per cent in my end-of-term maths test. Only. I was top of the class! She always wants more. It’s the same with her cleaning the house – there’s no pleasing her. Things can always be whiter or shinier.

  She makes me go to every class and activity going. They’re meant to be fun but sometimes I reckon she just doesn’t want me around. It’s like a different kind of detention. She says she wants me to be exposed to as many influences as possible. Broadening my horizons, she calls it. She says that her job as a mother is to make me the best I can be. Which doesn’t include making up lies about my best friend’s grandad so I can get out of doing something I don’t fancy doing and mucking up everybody else’s plans while I’m at it.

  I shouldn’t have said anything. Dana was right.

  I get off the swings and climb up the slide. My feet make the metal squeak.

  There’s a dog!

  It dashes out of the bushes and runs towards me. It’s a black and white bull terrier and it’s wagging its tail but not in a happy way. I can see its teeth as it barks. They look sharp and shiny.

  I sit at the top of the slide and growl back at the dog. That makes it angrier and it tries to climb the slide. I look around for the owner but no one’s around. It’s just me and the dog. It sits at the bottom of the slide. I shoo it away but that just makes it bark again. I can’t outrun it. I have to wait.

  It’s getting darker. I’m getting cold and scared. I can see car headlights through the tall hedge along Camberwell New Road. And a number 36 bus. Its windows are all misted up. I wonder if the peo
ple on the top deck can see me even though I can’t see them. I wave, and that makes the dog start barking again.

  If Dana hadn’t been so horrible . . . if I hadn’t tried to be clever and tell Mum . . . if she’d believed me . . . I wouldn’t be here now. Trapped and alone. On New Year’s Eve. On Millennium Eve. This is how it’s going to be for the rest of my life.

  There’s someone in the alley leading to the One O’Clock Club, but it’s dark and I can’t tell who it is. They move into the glow from a lamp post and stop. It’s a man. He’s got a woolly hat on and he’s eating chips from a Kentucky Fried Chicken bag. The dog looks up and sniffs.

  ‘Help me!’

  He walks towards the slide and smiles. He’s got greasy lips.

  ‘Hello, Amy,’ he says. ‘Looks like you’ve found a new friend there.’ He points at the dog and walks closer. ‘Looks like you need the help of an old one.’

  He takes his hat off. It’s Mr Palmer from the mobile library, one of the Grey Wolf’s friends. He’s the one who likes me dressed in a tutu but with no tights or knickers on.

  ‘I’ll get the dog away from you,’ he says. ‘My car is just around the corner.’

  It’s too cold to wait for the dog to move, and even if it wanders off it might come back. Mr Palmer can save me. Save me from a year – a thousand years – of being alone and angry.

  The dog growls as he gets closer. Mr Palmer waves a piece of chicken, then throws it to the far end of the playground. The dog chases after it and Mr Palmer walks to the slide. He puts his arms out.

  I lean towards him, but he drops his arms and turns his back to me. He tells me to get on his shoulders and wrap my legs around his neck. Quickly! The dog’s nearly finished the chicken, he says. I mustn’t scream or shout or I’ll only get the dog excited again.

  I do as he says, like I always have. It’s better that I do.

  He tells me to grip my thighs tight around his neck and takes my wrists. I look back to make sure the dog isn’t following us. It’s still snuffling around, looking for more chicken.