‘But we won!’ Mikey insists.
‘Yeah, you won.’
I have watched my brother stand in the makeshift goal between the plum trees and leap dramatically for every ball Mikey sends his way. I have watched him shake his head and slap his leg and roll his eyes as one shot after another flies past him. He’s OK, Kit. Sometimes.
Other times, he’s a pain.
‘What d’you think, Paul?’ Kit asks now. ‘Are you Celtic or Rangers? Green or blue?’
Paul puts down his sketchbook. ‘I’ve told you,’ he says. ‘I’m not into footy. Celtic, Rangers, it makes no difference.’
‘You must like one or the other,’ Kit insists.
‘Why must I?’ Paul asks evenly.
‘Because everyone does,’ Kit shrugs. ‘You lived in Glasgow, you have to have an opinion. Football runs in the blood up there.’
‘Not for me.’
‘I get it. You’re into Queen of the South.’
‘No. I’m just not into football, Kit,’ Paul says slowly, spelling it out.
‘Sheesh kebab!’ says Kit. ‘Sorr-ee!’ He doesn’t sound sorry at all.
Paul Slater is an alien species as far as Kit is concerned, but he’s struck a deal and he won’t go back on it. He’s helping Paul to settle in because Joey asked him to. And, with Joey at least, he is making progress.
He can make her laugh, he can make her blush and he can even make her stand around on the sidelines watching him play footy in sub-zero temperatures. Grim, especially when Paul and I end up huddled either side of her, wondering which will come first, death by frostbite or death by boredom.
‘Don’t encourage him,’ I warn Joey. ‘He’ll think you mean it. We’ll never get shot of him.’
‘Aw, but it’s funny’ Joey responds. ‘He’s funny. And – well, it’s kind of flattering to know that he likes me. It’s cool.’
‘He doesn’t give up easily’ I tell her, and Joey just smiles.
One day, we go swimming after school at the pool in Kirklaggan, Joey and Paul and Kit and me. Paul surprises everyone by being a brilliant swimmer. He’s not into splashing around in the shallows like Joey, who screams every time someone threatens to get her hair wet. He doesn’t want to chuck a ball around or practise underwater handstands like me. He’s not even into waiting for the lifeguard to turn his back so that he can do a running depth-charge jump like Kit.
Paul’s long swim shorts have seen better days, and he doesn’t bother to take off the sweatbands on his wrists, but he slips into the water like he belongs there. He swims length after length of smooth, fast crawl, with occasional lazy lengths of breaststroke or backstroke.
‘That’s some speed you’ve got there,’ Kit says. ‘You’re good.’
‘Think so?’
‘Totally. You’ll have to tell Mr Thomson, the sports coach. He’ll put you in the team, no hassle.’
‘Nah,’ says Paul. ‘I just swim because I like it. I don’t want to be in a team. I don’t want to compete.’
‘But you should!’ Kit exclaims. ‘Seriously! Our swim team is rubbish – they need you. It’s a waste to just do it for fun.’
‘Nah.’
Later, the lifeguard asks him if he’d be interested in training with the local swimming club, but Paul just shrugs and smiles and shakes his head.
‘Sheesh. Such a waste of talent,’ says Kit as we sit in the cafe in Kirklaggan later, smelling faintly of chlorine. ‘Crazy.’
Paul just smiles and sips his milkshake.
‘Have you ever swum for your school?’ Kit wants to know. ‘Or been in a swimming club? I mean, how did you get to be so good?’
‘I just like it,’ Paul says. ‘When I was little, we lived on an island. It made sense to know how to swim, so Mum taught me – in the sea.’
‘Hey, we swim in the sea too!’ I tell him. ‘The beach behind your cottage is really safe and clean. There are some strong currents further out, but it’s fine if you stay by the shore.’
‘I don’t swim in the sea any more,’ Paul frowns.
‘Not at this time of year,’ Joey laughs. ‘There are probably whole icebergs out there right now.’
‘Not at any time of the year,’ Paul says. ‘The sea is dangerous. You can’t trust it. It’s way more powerful than any of us know’
‘Scaredy-cat,’ Kit says, grinning. Paul just shrugs.
‘Where was the island?’ I ask, stirring my milkshake with a straw. ‘You know, where you lived when you were little?’
Paul is silent for a while, like he doesn’t want to answer. His eyes are kind of faraway.
‘It was Mull,’ he says softly, after a while. ‘We lived in a cottage not far from the sea, just me and Mum and our cat. Splodge, she was called.’
‘What happened?’ Kit asks. ‘How come you ended up in care?’
There’s another silence, and Paul lets out a long, low sigh.
‘Mum went away’ he tells us. ‘She’d been depressed and she just went away one day, and never came back. I waited and waited, but she never came. Then a neighbour found me and called the social services and that was that. I’ve lived in three different foster homes and four different care homes since then.’
I’m biting my lip so hard I can taste blood.
‘Oh, Paul,’ Joey says. ‘That’s awful.’
‘Sheesh,’ says Kit. ‘Sorry mate.’
‘It’s OK,’ says Paul. ‘It’s just the way it is. She was depressed, or she’d never have left me, I know that. She’ll come back one day. Any time now, seriously. So you don’t have to feel sorry for me, OK?’
Joey is looking down at the table top, tracing patterns in a patch of spilled sugar. Kit rakes a hand through his pool-damp hair, teasing it into spikes. Nobody can meet Paul’s gaze.
‘What happened to Splodge?’ I make myself ask. ‘What happened to the cat?’
‘Dunno,’ says Paul. ‘I never saw her again.’
CHAPTER 5
My mum is not a cat person. Kittens are bad news, she says. They claw the furniture and climb up the curtains and do unspeakable things in the corner when you’re not looking.
‘You are not having a cat,’ she says firmly. ‘I’m sorry the poor thing was dumped, but you found it and rescued it and it has a good home now, with the Donovans. There’s no way it’s coming here.’
‘Mu-um!’ I appeal, but resistance is futile. Mum grabs a fluffy yellow duster and a can of furniture polish, and dusts her way around the living room, polishing away all traces of imaginary kitten.
‘No, Hannah,’ she says as she works. ‘Really. No.’
Dad, hiding behind a newspaper, raises one eyebrow and shrugs, and I know I’m on my own here. I will not give up, though. I love Krusty and Krusty loves me, and one day we’ll be together, I just know it.
Kit, of course, thinks differently.
He is out of bed at nine thirty on a Saturday morning, crunching along beside me through a light fall of snow towards Joey’s house. Normally, earthquakes, volcanoes and full-on asteroid showers cannot part him from his quilt on a non-school day.
‘You’ll never get to keep that scabby cat,’ he says sweetly. ‘No chance.’
‘Well, cheers, Kit.’
I used to think Kit was the coolest big brother in the world. He could do ollies and kick-flips on his skateboard, wheelies on his BMX, score shedloads of goals on the footy field. All that, and he was nice to me too. He’d ruffle my hair, share his bubblegum, help me with my maths homework, sneak into my bedroom at midnight to tell ghost stories, eat jam sandwiches and invent crazy games with my fluffy beanbag rabbit.
All that stopped when Kit turned twelve. Overnight, he decided that cool meant snotty. If I tried to say something funny, his smile was sneery and sarcastic. The last time he helped me with my homework, I got every single sum wrong and see me scrawled across the bottom of the page, and just last week I walked into my bedroom to find my ancient fluffy rabbit hanging from the window latch, its head in a noose.
‘You could stick up for me about Krusty,’ I suggest.
‘I could,’ Kit agrees, in the same tone as if he were announcing that pigs might fly. ‘What d’you make of this Paul kid, anyway?’
‘He’s cool.’
‘Flaky though,’ Kit says. ‘I can’t work him out. The lads at school don’t like him much.’
‘Why?’ I ask, anxious. ‘What’s he done?’
Kit drags his glove along the top of a wall, collecting a handful of snow. He cradles it in his palms, making a snowball.
‘He hasn’t done anything,’ Kit says. ‘That’s the trouble. He won’t play footy, he won’t come to the skatepark with me and Murphy and Fergus and Tom…’
‘He can draw, though,’ I point out. ‘He’s brilliant at it. And he’s the best swimmer I’ve ever seen!’
‘That’s another thing!’ Kit huffs. ‘Murphy’s on the swim team – he tried to talk Paul into joining up, but he’s just not bothered. That’s pretty selfish, when you think about it. You’d think he’d try, y’know? You’d think he’d want to fit in.’
Kit hangs back, supposedly to tie a lace that’s come undone. When I turn to see how he’s doing, it’s too late. The snowball hits me slap in the face, hard enough to make my eyes water.
Then I suss that there are more snowballs coming, and I turn and run all the way down the lane to Beachcomber Cottage. There’s snow in my hair, making my scalp tingle, dripping icily down my neck.
As I skid in through the gate, I see that the entire Donovan family are outside. Jed is shovelling snow off the driveway while Joey, Paul, Mikey and Eva are building a snowman. Already it is a Donovan-type creation, with fir cones for buttons and twigs for arms.
I flounder over to them, calling for a united attack on Kit.
‘Snow war!’ yells Joey, letting the first missile fly. It catches Kit on the kneecap, and he laughs, ducking behind a bush. We pelt him until he’s caked with snow, hair dripping, ears scarlet.
‘Snow massacre, more like,’ Eva says. ‘I’ll go and put the kettle on for hot chocolate.’
‘D’you surrender?’ I shout, and Kit calls back that he’ll never give in, not while there’s breath left in his body. He retreats to make more snowballs, and Mikey, the traitor, runs off to help. Paul and Joey and I swoop about, scraping up more snow, piling up missiles.
‘Now!’ Joey squeals. ‘Go for the kill!’
Joey’s first snowball hits Kit in the stomach, but he runs forward and grabs her by the waist, whirling her round and round. Paul pelts Kit with a quick volley of snowballs, while I sneak up behind him and manage to shove a snowball right down the back of his hoodie. Kit roars, dropping Joey into the snow and shoving me down.
I fall hard, winded, and lie still for a moment, catching my breath. When I haul myself up, face stinging with the cold, Joey is getting to her feet too, brushing the snow from her clothes and hair, trying to hold Mikey at arm’s length.
A few feet away, Paul lies pinned to the ground while Kit sits astride him, crumbling snow on to his face.
‘C’mon, Slater, you muppet,’ Kit pants. Tight back! You’re meant to struggle!’
‘It’s OK. You win,’ Paul says breathlessly. His hat has come off and his hair is matted with snow, but his cheeks are glowing. His long lashes are crusted with snow.
Kit lowers his last snowball and stands up, brushing down his jeans.
‘Muppet,’ he says, shaking his head. ‘C’mon, let’s go in.’
Eva’s made hot chocolate for everyone. She and Jed go through to the workshop, and Mikey follows, leaving us alone in a steamy kitchen, our wet shoes and coats lined up by the Aga.
Joey’s favourite Good Charlotte tracks roar out from a CD player perched on top of a huge, scarlet fridge. Jed says the fridge is fifty years old and he found it in a skip, and I believe him.
Once, Jed was driving Joey and me into town when we passed a skip by the side of the road, overflowing with cruddy bits of furniture. Jed stopped and made us get out to help drag big, ugly cupboards and bookcases into the back of the van. A month later, Jed had stripped the dark wood back to pale oak, made new handles from twisty driftwood sticks and stuck rows of larch cones along the edges of the bookcases. It all looked mysterious and elegant, like something a hobbit or an elf might own, and he sold the lot at a craft fair in Carlisle for hundreds of pounds. He’s clever like that, Jed.
He and Eva make a living from the sea. They pick up driftwood, shells, seaglass, rope, and turn it into something new, something beautiful. Maybe a chair, a bench, a stool, or maybe a mirror, a treasure chest, a mobile. Weird, like Kit says, but wonderful too.
I feed the kittens. They can lap milk from a saucer now, and wolf down little servings of mashed-up tinned meat. Krusty climbs up my body like she’s sealing Everest, then curls softly round my neck like half a fur collar. I can hear her low, rasping purr as she drifts into sleep, and feel her tummy stretched tight as a drum, soft as silk.
Joey and Kit are playing chess. She’s winning, but sneakily, trying to look baffled when Kit makes a good move, pretending to think hard when really she has the whole game boxed off. When you first play Joey at chess, you think you’re winning. Then you think it’s an even match, and finally, as she mashes you to a pulp, you realize you never had a hope. Kit hasn’t got to that stage yet. He’s taking it seriously, showing off.
Paul is curled up in the window seat, sketching. Behind him, falling snow patterns the windowpane like lace. He keeps glancing over to the chess game, then back down to his sketchbook, totally absorbed.
‘What you drawing, Muppet?’ Kit asks.
‘Miss Quinn reckons if I do lots of sketches of real people, my cartoon figures will get better, stronger,’ Paul explains. ‘So I am.’
‘Aren’t you a bit old for cartoons?’ Kit asks, which is a bit rich coming from someone who still buys the Beano every week.
‘Comic-book art is cool,’ Paul argues. ‘It’s what I want to do, what I care about.’
‘OK,’ Kit shrugs. Just asking. I mean, you’re not into the usual S2 stuff, are you? Footy, skateboarding, music, girls.’
‘Leave him,’ Joey says, sweeping Kit’s queen off the chessboard. ‘We’re all different, aren’t we?’
‘Some of us are more different than others,’ Kit says darkly. ‘So, Muppet, gonna show us your sketches?’
Paul throws the sketchbook down on the kitchen table. There’s a sketch of Jed in his workshop, and Eva slumped in a driftwood chair. There’s one of Mikey playing with his cars, me feeding Krusty with an ink-dropper, and Joey, hair sticking out at right angles, in her outsize blazer and frayed skirt.
‘Not bad,’ Kit admits. ‘What about today’s one, though? You were drawing us play chess, weren’t you?’
‘At the back,’ Paul says quietly.
At the back of the sketchbook we find today’s drawing of Kit looking down at the chessboard with big, dark eyes, his hair still mussed up from the snow war. It’s better than the other drawings – softer, warmer, stronger. It makes Kit look almost beautiful.
‘Wow,’ I breathe.
‘Don’t like it,’ Kit says. ‘You’ve made me look girly.’
‘I don’t think so,’ Paul says.
Over the page there’s a quick sketch of Kit in footy boots and games kit. Another, of Kit looking dreamy, his hair gelled into perfect spikes. A fourth, of Kit smiling, his whole face lit up from inside.
‘Whoa,’ says Joey.
Kit slams the book shut and chucks it across the table. It bounces off the chessboard, dislodging some pieces, then falls to the floor.
‘What are you, some kind of stalker?’ Kit demands. His voice is cold and hard, but it’s shaking a little, and I know he’s really angry.
‘They’re just sketches,’ Paul protests. ‘I like drawing.’
‘Yeah, sure. Sketches of me. Well you can stop it right now, Muppet-boy. I’ve had enough.’
‘I
didn’t mean –’
‘You didn’t mean what?’ Kit flashes. ‘Stay away from me. I mean it. No more drawings. OK?’
‘OK.’
Paul picks his sketchbook off the floor, yanks open the Aga’s fuel door and chucks the book inside. It’s gone almost instantly, in a quick burst of flames, before anyone can protest. He sits down at the kitchen table, looking shell-shocked.
‘Good riddance,’ Kit says harshly. ‘I’m bored with this place – I’m going up to Kirklaggan. Might get the bus to Dumfries. Anyone coming?’
There’s a silence. Joey picks up the fallen chess pieces, trying to rearrange the board.
‘I’ll come, if you like,’ Paul says.
‘I’m not asking you, Muppet,’ Kit snaps. He drags on his boots, his coat and gloves.
‘I will, then,’ Joey says casually. She pulls on an extra pair of stripy socks, slips on the biker boots, and grabs her hat and coat.
Joey you can’t,’ I tell her, although she can, of course. I am not her mother; I am not her sister. I can’t tell her what to do. She wouldn’t listen anyway.
‘What about the snow?’ I say. ‘It’s really heavy now. You can’t just go off in a blizzard. What will I say to Jed and Eva?’
Joey laughs. ‘Tell them I’m learning to live a bit,’ she says, and then she’s out of the door, Kit’s arm round her as they trudge up the garden path.
CHAPTER 6
Jed and Eva are not happy.
‘She can’t have gone to Dumfries, not in this,’ Eva says, frowning. She rubs her hand across the windowpane as though it might help her to see better through the swirl of snow. ‘She wouldn’t She wouldn’t just go, without saying something.’
I think of Joey’s parting shot, about learning to live a little, and press my lips firmly shut.
‘They might turn back,’ Paul says hopefully.
‘I don’t understand why they’ve gone in the first place,’ Jed says. ‘Kit came over to see you, Paul. Why would he just take off with Joey?’
‘We had a fight.’
‘A fight?’ Eva looks at me as though I am somehow responsible for keeping Kit in line. As if that were ever an option.
Driftwood Page 3
