TAINTED LOVE

by Anna Chilvers

  It went on for about a year I think. It was then that it became obvious which of his parents Peter took after. The soft down on his baby legs grew thicker and he kicked hard at his blankets, crawled towards any door that opened to the outside air. Everyone knew it couldn’t go on.

  One day she packed her bags and left. Peter and his dad went with her to the airport and they hugged and kissed and promised undying love. She went back to her homeland where she lives in a white house with the doors and windows open and sweet warm air wafting down from the mountains. He sold the house in town and moved back into the hills with baby Peter. But they visit Greece all the time, his dad even more than Peter. His parents are still in love.

  I thought about my dad singing at the sink and wondered what it was like to have two parents who both loved you, even if they had to live in different worlds.

  I hoped Peter would come soon. I wanted to ask him how you spoke to a mother who wasn’t there for you, who never tied your shoelaces or kissed the top of your head in the school playground or made you cheese on toast after school. How did Peter deal with resentment? Did he even have any? He never spoke about his mother with anything but affection.

  The day after the party by the canal I’d been for a walk with Richard. We were looking for a girl he’d met because we’d learned some information she might like to know.

  At Jimmy and Suky’s that night, Smith and Jeannie had got quite talkative. They were looking for this girl called Ali. I hadn’t seen her, nor had Jimmy and Suky, and Richard said he hadn’t either. She’d stolen some money from them.

  ‘It was Jeannie’s fault,’ Smith said. ‘If she hadn’t taken Ali’s ring we wouldn’t be in this mess.’

  Jeannie grinned. ‘It was an impulse.’

  ‘Yeah, and your impulse got us into this situation.’ He turned back to us. ‘The police raided our place, but Ali was nothing to do with that. She just crashed there, and she ran when we all did. That would have been it if madam here hadn’t taken fancy to something shiny as she ran past.’

  ‘Silly bitch shouldn’t a left it there. I dint take it on purpose. I didn’t think.’

  ‘That’s your problem, you never think.’

  I looked up to catch Jimmy’s eye. I knew he’d be loving this story. But he had his arms around Suky and wasn’t looking my way. It was Richard that grinned at me.

  ‘So what happened?’ he asked.

  Smith continued. ‘It turned out that Ali was very attached to this ring, and she got the police onto us. I don’t blame her. She’s got no reason to be loyal, and she wanted her property back. She put up a proper fight, didn’t she Jeannie?’

  Jeannie pulled the neck of her top aside and there were some ugly red marks, like burns.

  ‘Almost garotted me in the process, the cow. It hurt like hell.’

  ‘It’s your own fault,’ Smith said, but he put out his hand and touched her lightly on the back of her neck and she smiled at him as though he’d given her a compliment.

  ‘Anyhow, I legged it out the window in just me kecks and the police were all after me, except the ones that stayed to arrest Jeannie. Ali decided to go through me stuff. I’d have done the same. She was mad at us and she didn’t take everything she found either. Just some money.’

  ‘Is that why you’re after her, to get the money back?’ I asked. ‘Was it a lot?’

  Smith shrugged. ‘No, not that much. About two grand.’

  I opened my eyes a bit wider. It seemed a lot to me.

  ‘It’s not the cash. It’s a pisser to lose it, but not the end of the world. It’s just that there’s something written on one of the notes.’

  ‘What sort of thing?’ Richard asked. We were all sitting forward, listening. ‘A message?’

  ‘No, a code. It’s a deal I was doing – that’s why the police were after me in the first place. They think I’ve hidden the stuff, but actually I haven’t picked it up yet. I need this code and it’s written on one of those notes. That’s why I need to find her, the stuff’s worth a hell of a lot more than two grand.’

  ‘So if you got the code, you’d let her keep the money?’ Richard asked.

  ‘Why, d’ya know where she is?’ Jeannie asked staring at him.

  He shook his head. ‘I just wondered.’

  ‘I want the code,’ Smith said.

  ‘I want to slap her fucking face,’ said Jeannie.

  They told us they’d followed her this far, but lost her when they got to Hawden.

  ‘She left a trail as wide as an aeroplane. But she’s gone to ground here.’

  We asked them lots of questions, and they told us what they knew about Ali, which was not much really, except that she was ‘a nice kid’. They wouldn’t tell us what it was they needed the code for, but I supposed it was drugs. Eventually we exhausted the subject, and by then the MDMA had kicked in and we lost interest in talking quite so much.

  It was getting light when I went home. Richard walked with me.

  ‘I know where Ali is,’ he said

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The girl those two were talking about. She was at the party last night, but she saw them and ran away. I talked to her. I know where she’s staying.’

  ‘You’re joking!’

  ‘No. It’s true. I’ll walk up tomorrow and tell her about the code. Do you want to come?’

  So the next day I met Richard in the square and we walked along the canal, then headed up through the valley.

  ‘There’s a house up here called Old Barn,’ I said to Richard. ‘It’s where my mum grew up.’

  ‘That’s where we’re going,’ said Richard.

  He walked on a few steps before he realised I’d stopped.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘I can’t go to Old Barn. My aunt lives there and she hates me.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know. She’s never met me really. She hates my dad too, and my mum. Most likely Mr Lion as well. I think she hates most people, but especially us.’

  ‘Maybe it’s time to make up.’

  ‘I don’t think so. She’s crazy.’

  But he took my arm and tugged gently, and grudgingly my feet shuffled along the loose stones on the path.

  ‘She might not even be there.’ I didn’t know if he meant the girl or my aunt.

  We didn’t see either of them. We knocked on the front door at Old Barn and waited. I was about to suggest we went round the back as nobody uses their front doors round here, when it was opened by a man. He was a big man, fat and tall, but he stood right back in the gloom of the hall holding on to the door. We had to peer to see him.

  ‘What do you want?’ he said, and his voice was deep but thin.

  Richard took a step forward and the man backed further away.

  ‘We’re looking for Ali, is she here?’

  ‘She’s gone.’

  ‘Do you know when she’ll be back?’

  ‘She’s taken her things and gone. You won’t find her here.’

  He started to close the door, but Richard leaned forward into the gloom.

  ‘Where has she gone?’

  ‘I’ve no idea.’ This time he succeeded in closing the door in our faces.

  ‘Who was that?’ asked Richard. I could see myself reflected in his sunglasses.

  ‘I haven’t got a fucking clue.’

  At school, in history, we learned about white witches who knew the lore of plants and the doctrine of signatures. I thought about the witches as children playing in the woods. How when they hurt themselves they heard the wild comfrey offering its leaves as a bandage. How they knew which berries were safe to eat and which herbs would kill a cat. Which was the poisonous part of a yew tree and how much you needed to make the teacher sick.

  I knew that marigolds and nasturtiums didn’t really get on, an
d delphiniums found lupins irritating. I liked to listen to the plants in my garden. The roses whispered, wishing the others would all be quiet. The vegetables sang songs of soup and frittatas. The onions told dirty jokes which made the cauliflowers laugh. The roses blushed and the runner beans tutted and turned away. But my favourite was the herb garden with its secrets of light and dark.

  I grew plants for the pot and plants for healing. Most of them could be dangerous in the wrong amounts. Some would give you the runs, a rash, or hallucinations. Some could kill a person. I knew them all, they talked to me. They told me their powers.

  Someone was coming up the path, but it wasn’t Peter. As he came nearer I recognised the footfall and the soft sound of Richard’s boots on the hard ground. I shrank back behind the stone so I was hidden from sight. The brambles hissed in my ears. I didn’t want to give away this place, didn’t want to share it with anyone except Peter.

  I thought about Richard’s mother, Meg, with her Porsche. She wasn’t a run-of-the-mill school playground sort of mum. I bet she never took him to a toddler group. And where was his father? His home life wasn’t very ordinary either.

  I waited until he was almost out of sight, then I slipped out onto the path and ran after him.

  He heard me as I approached and stood back to let me pass, leaning into a rowan tree which shivered its branches.

  ‘I was running to catch you up,’ I said, ignoring the rowan.

  ‘I was taking the short cut up to Heath.’

  ‘Do you mind if I walk with you?’

  ‘I would be delighted.’

  I looked at him, but I didn’t think he was taking the piss. It was hard to tell when you couldn’t see his eyes. Sometimes his language was just a bit odd, a bit old for him. I supposed it was because he’d lived in different places.

  15. Peter

  Peter was in the lab when he heard her whistle. Even though it was two miles away and there was a massive hill in the way, his ears picked up the sound. He turned off the light generator and laid a mirrored sheet flat on the desk.

  ‘I have to go,’ he said to his teacher.

  She looked up from her marking. His equipment was spread out across the workbench where Year Twelve students would need to sit in the morning.

  ‘I’ll come in early and tidy up,’ he said. ‘Sorry, it’s urgent.’

  She didn’t mention that fact that his phone hadn’t rung, that he hadn’t even looked at it, that no one had come with a message. Nothing had happened to disturb the still afternoon air of the laboratory. She just smiled.

  He went straight across country, skidding down steep slopes between birch trees, leaping streams, bounding through heather and bog on the tops. The black mud spattered his haunches. He didn’t always answer her whistle. If he was very far away, or in the middle of something, he’d text, catch up with her as soon as he could. But Cassie was back in town, living in the house where Lauren had spent her first few months of life. The mother she hadn’t seen since she was a tiny baby. He knew Lauren was upset.

  It couldn’t have been more than twenty minutes since the whistle when he got there. The stone was empty, though still warm in the middle where she’d sat. He heard voices and looked down towards the main path. The leaves of the wych elms were quivering, and he wondered what they were saying. Lauren wasn’t listening to them. She was walking away and Richard was walking at her side, wearing his long black coat, his shiny hair the blue-black normally only found on crows and goths.

  He heard her laughter dancing across the surface of the pond. The ducks swam through it, ruffling their feathers in the sunshine.

  16. Lauren

  I lifted the knocker and then let it quietly down again. She probably hadn’t seen me yet. I could just walk away and forget about it. I didn’t have to do it. Winter jasmine was growing in the front garden but it was quiet. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, then knocked on the door.

  The sound was thin and I wondered if it would carry through the house, if she would hear it. She might not open the door to just anyone, she might check who it was first from behind the curtain at the upstairs window. It was possible she was up there looking at me now wondering who I was. I was a baby last time she saw me.

  The door opened.

  She was older but she was still the woman from the photo. Her hair was tied back in a pony tail and she wore jeans with a dark blue jumper. Our eyes met and I knew that she hadn’t been looking out of the window and that seeing me standing there was a real shock to her. Neither of us said anything. After a moment she stood back and opened the door wider as an invitation for me to come into the hall.

  I stepped in to what was once my family home. I hadn’t been inside since I was a baby. She closed the door behind me and leaned against it for moment as though she needed support. Then she straightened up. ‘Come on through,’ she said.

  I didn’t recognise her voice. I followed her into the room.

  She was very tense. She stood near the window and I looked at the room. On one side was a bookcase which stretched half the length of the wall and reached up to about waist height. The top of it was covered in framed photographs and they were all of me.

  They weren’t arranged in chronological order, but they covered practically the whole of my life. All of my school photos and others too, familiar photos from holidays with Dad and Mr Lion, me holding an ice-cream on the beach at Whitby, me spinning a hoop round my waist in the garden, me wearing a cycle helmet and grinning from ear to ear next to my bike that I’d just learned to ride. Even one of me waving a piece of paper in the air which had my GCSE results. That one was taken last year.

  I looked at her.

  ‘Your dad sent me the pictures. I’d asked him to.’

  ‘He knew where you were?’

  ‘He sent them to a post office box. He knew the town, that was all.’

  I thought about that. He could have gone there and looked for her. It might have been like looking for a needle in a haystack, especially if it was a big town. I suppose it would have been a bit stalker-ish as well, and if she didn’t want him then his pride would have stopped him. But he might have done it for me. She was obviously interested in her daughter, which was a whole lot more than I’d expected. It was a bit freaky to think this woman had been watching me all these years from afar, watching me grow up in still pictures. That she was so familiar with my face, when I knew her from just one photo.

  I went over to the bookcase and picked up the picture that was in the middle, sort of like a centrepiece. It was of my mum and my dad and me. I was a baby and I had a grimace on my face. My mum was holding me on her lap and Dad was sitting with his arm round her. She was looking at me and he was looking at her and their eyes were shining. They were the perfect family.

  I couldn’t say anything but I had loads of questions buzzing through my brain. How could you have this and throw it away? I wanted to shout it. Why did you have to hurt Dad so much? How is it I’m nearly eighteen years old and I don’t even know you?

  She stood next to me and looked at the photo.

  ‘We were very happy,’ she said.

  I swallowed. I didn’t want my voice to break when it came out. I wanted it to be strong and steady and I had to wait a moment before I was ready.

  ‘We’re happy now. Dad and Mr Lion and me. We’re a good family.’

  She looked me in the face, her eyes intent, watching me.

  ‘Andy is a good man,’ she said. ‘A lovely man.’

  I thought she was going to say more but her voice was unsteady too.

  I noticed the way her face moved as she breathed and swallowed, how when she blinked little lines appeared for a second around her eyes. How the emotion she was feeling had made her flushed and she gave off a faint pleasant smell of sweat mingled with perfume. The picture of her above our fireplace did none of these things.

 
; ‘I have to go,’ I said.

  She didn’t try to stop me. I slammed the front door behind me, and then I ran, right across town to the park where I found a bench in the rose garden and sat on it with my head in my hands and my heart racing.

  If anyone asked me, I’d have said that I wanted to get to know her and talk to her. But really I wanted to be angry with her. I’d gone there with confrontation at the back of my mind and hoped that I’d find evidence of her badness. I was so angry already, I wanted something to bolster that, to justify and feed my anger. But she’d just seemed scared. Scared of what I might say and more than that, that I wouldn’t like her. She wanted me to like her. I didn’t know if I could cope with the evil queen suddenly turning out to be an ordinary woman after all.

  There were a few straggly late blossoms in the rose garden and the warm autumn sunshine released their perfume into the air. I listened to their murmurings, pressed my fingers against my eyelids and breathed in.

  ‘What’s up chick?’ Jimmy sat down on the bench next to me. He put his hand over mine and squeezed it. ‘You ok?’

  I shrugged.

  He smiled at me and I looked at his face. It was familiar in the way that my mother’s wasn’t. I knew what every movement of his eyes or mouth would do to the muscles in his cheeks and jaw. I could tell if he was happy or sad from tiny movements at the edge of his mouth and the light at the back of his eyes. I snuggled up against him and he put his arm around me.

  ‘Do you miss your mother?’ I asked him.

  ‘Mum? Oh I don’t know,’ he said. ‘It’s years now since she passed on. I used to miss her a lot, but it’s kind of become normal now, her not being around. I don’t think about her that often.’

  ‘But you’ve got good memories of her.’

  ‘Good and bad. She was ill for years and she was a whingey old bag a lot of the time. But she was a sweetie too.’

  A woman came into the garden with a pushchair. She’d just come out of the post office which was right next to the entrance to the rose garden, and she was carrying a large brown paper parcel. She was struggling. She carried it under one arm and was pushing with the other arm, but the pushchair wasn’t going in a straight line. She crouched down and looked in the tray beneath the child’s seat, but it was already full. She tried moving the stuff about, but it was a waste of time because the parcel was too big to fit there even if it was empty. She walked round to the front of the pushchair and spoke to the child.