by Cj Flood
The kitchen gleamed white. If you made toast at Matty’s house, you had to get the toaster out of a cupboard, and then – before you’d even taken a bite – you had to return it, and wipe the crumbs from the surface. If you really wanted to make Donna mad, you just had to leave the toaster out, or eat without using a plate.
The back door was open, and a bright line of sequin- and diamanté-studded flip-flops waited beside it: glamorous boats at the pontoon. Matty dropped ice and slices of lime into a jug, filled it with ginger beer, and I listened to the fizz rising. She got three glasses and put everything onto a tray.
‘Carry that out for me?’ she said, stepping into her flip-flops, and before I thought to ask why she didn’t take it, I was following her with the loaded tray into the garden.
Donna was sunbathing. ‘I-ris!’ she called. ‘Perfect timing with the fizz!’
I set it down on the white patio table.
‘Come here, you,’ she said, like I was her long-lost daughter. Her body smelled of orchids and was smothered in oil, and I tried not to feel uncomfortable in the heat radiating from it as I leaned down to kiss her cheek.
‘What have you got on?’ she said. ‘Matty, go and find Iris something decent – she’ll swelter like that.’
‘Oh, I’m fine,’ I said. ‘I only burn anyway.’
‘No. Off you go. I can’t bear looking at you!’
I thought of Trick waiting in the field, and how it would only take ten minutes to get there if I ran, but I followed Matty up to her bedroom. It was like a wasp spilling pheromones to an ant; as soon as I was anywhere near her I lost all initiative.
‘Sorry,’ Matty said, as she rifled through drawer after drawer. ‘She just worries about you.’
‘I’m fine.’
Matty passed me a pair of sunset-covered Bermuda shorts. They slouched on my hips, ending below my knees.
‘My uncle brought them back from Florida,’ she told me. ‘They look good.’
I raised my eyebrows at her. ‘I look like a beach towel.’
She laughed. ‘Everything else still has the tags in.’
In the last few months Matty had shot up six inches – an average willy size, as Donna liked to say – so Donna had bought her a whole new wardrobe.
‘Take those home with you,’ Matty said.
‘What? You don’t want them?’
Back in the garden, Donna lay on her sunbed doing a crossword. She put her pen down, and frowned at my shorts.
‘You are a measly host, Mats,’ she said, laughing. ‘At least let Iris have your lounger.’
Matty shifted to the grass between us. The floral padding was damp from her sweat.
‘So . . .’ Donna prompted, her brown eyes full of mischief.
Up close, her liquid eyeliner was wonky. Black crumbs were scattered in the creases under her eyes. I lay back, remembering what Mum had said about not having to answer people’s questions.
Noises came from the gardens that surrounded us: a lawnmower, a metal bin lid crashing shut, cutlery scraping a plate. A bunch of kids somewhere shrieked.
Trick would be in the cornfields now, or swimming in the lake. He’d have given up waiting for me. I imagined introducing him to Matty, bumping into her as the two of us wandered through the village, chatting away like we had since we first met. Trick would be friendly but detached, perking up whenever he spoke to me . . .
Matty prodded one of my sunsets. ‘Iris. Donna’s talking to you.’
‘I said, how are things?’ Donna repeated. ‘Dad all right?’
‘Yeah, he’s fine, thanks.’
‘Still drinking at The Stag?’
‘Yep.’
‘And he’s all right, is he?’
‘Yeah, fine. Thanks.’
‘And he’s got enough work on?’
‘Yeah, he’s got a big job on at the minute. A load of dying elms, somewhere out by the Peaks.’
‘Oh wonderful!’ she said. ‘One less thing to worry about. And how about your bro?’
She watched me over her glass as she sipped.
‘I love his hair long,’ Matty gushed. ‘D’you think he’ll keep growing it?’
I took a swig of ginger beer and shrugged.
‘Saw him a few nights ago. With that awful big lad, he was,’ Donna said. ‘That one whose mum’s in the madhouse. You know. The one with the daft name.’
She squinted, trying to remember, and I thought Punky, Punky, Punky. She gave up.
‘Sam’s not in with him, is he?’ Donna said.
I shook my head so they’d both stop examining me.
‘Bad lad, that one. Does your dad know?’
I nodded automatically. I hated the way Donna acted like my dad was the only parent in the world who didn’t know everything his kids got up to. As soon as Matty got a boyfriend she planned to have sex with him so she could be the first girl in our form to do it. Did Donna know about that?
She got up and refilled our glasses, and she obviously couldn’t read minds because she said, ‘Mats’s got a new boyfriend, haven’t you, doll?’
Matty sat up, enthusiastic suddenly. ‘Oh Iris! It’s that boy from the pet shop. I told him I loved fish!’
I pulled a face at her.
‘I know! I panicked. You’ve got to help me. I said I loved the little freaks. He works in the aquarium section. He’s sixteen!’ She whispered the last two words in case they blew my mind.
We lay there like this until all the ginger beer had vanished, and when Donna brought out tuna sandwiches I felt a familiar pang because she’d cut the crusts off, and shaken crisps onto each plate, and I had to tense my stomach for a few seconds to make the ache go away. I focused on Trick jumping into Ashbourne Lake, and his tanned body drying off on the bank beside me, and the cornfield stretching out blondly for miles all around.
When the plates were washed and dried and put away, and the sides wiped down and the tea towels hung on the rail to dry, me and Matty went upstairs. She experimented with bright blue eye make-up and went on about how fit the pet-shop boy was, and all the things he had done that made her think he really liked her, and I lay on her bed, staring at the leftover Blu-Tack on the ceiling. I remembered the day we’d stuck neon plastic stars there, last December. Matty had bossed me about, rearranging each one I touched.
‘The thing about you, Iris, is that you haven’t got any flair,’ she’d told me, and I’d gone to sit by her window, looking out at the snow, wondering where I could get some.
I thought of Trick’s expression when I’d shown him the azure damselfly, and I wondered what he was doing precisely this second. He would know I wasn’t coming by now.
‘Iris!’ Matty said. ‘You’re rubbish today . . .’
She swung around to face me, almost singing as she repeated whatever it was I was supposed to be listening to.
‘What should I say if he asks what I feed my fish?’
I sat up. Her mouth was open as she waited for me to answer.
‘Why did you invite me round today, Matty?’
‘Huh?’
‘Why did you invite me round?’ Propped on the edge of her bed, I forced myself not to look away. One of her brown eyes was ringed with a sparkling blue, and it made her look vulnerable somehow, like a panda dressed up for a disco.
She shook her head, laughing at me. ‘Iris . . .’
‘I just wonder.’
Her amusement was turning to hurt. ‘We’re friends, aren’t we?’
The sun through the window made her silky black hair shine, and she gathered it up in her hands, brought it to rest on the opposite shoulder.
‘We’ve been best friends forever . . .’ she said, sounding less certain.
‘Then why did you give me these horrible shorts?’
‘Because you were hot!’ she said.
‘And why do you always tell me what you think of my clothes? And my personality. My family, even. Why d’you think you can do that?’
She stood up. ‘God. What�
��s wrong with you today? You’ve been rude all morning . . .’
‘I’ve been rude!’ I gasped, and I was about to launch into a rant, but I stopped myself. I didn’t want to argue. I just wanted things to change.
‘Suppose it doesn’t feel much like best friends to me any more.’
Matty came to sit beside me on the bed. Her eyes were soft now, and I wondered if I’d made a mistake, because she could be so nice, and gentle, but then she said, in her softest talk-show voice, ‘Is this because of your mum?’ and she looked so sympathetic I wanted to punch her in the face.
‘It’s nothing to do with my stupid mum, Matty. God! That isn’t the only thing that’s ever happened to me, you know.’
She widened her eyes. ‘Soz, Iris, no need to go mental.’
‘Maybe I’ve got a boyfriend,’ I said. ‘Can you even imagine that?’
‘What?’ she said, and then her eyes narrowed to slits. ‘Who, that gypsy? Iris.’
‘You don’t know anything about it,’ I said.
I started pulling my jeans back on. ‘And you can have your weird shorts back and all.’
‘Where’re you going?’ she called after me, but I didn’t answer because I was taking the stairs two at a time, then I was out the front door, tearing down her road, adrenalin rushing through me.
I leaped up and grabbed a handful of sycamore leaves, disturbing a pigeon by mistake. Its grey wings beat the air as it flew into the cloudless sky, and I felt something inside me taking off with it.
Six
The next morning, I went out early. By the time I’d got to the corn den after Matty’s yesterday, Trick had gone and I wanted to see him. I couldn’t resist stopping at my trusty alder to spy on his family. Across the ditch, his dad stared into the fire, finishing off a cup of something.
The sky was still pale, and his squat shadow fell onto the caravan behind him. There was a bandage on the knuckle of his right hand, and his thick neck and shoulders were sunburned, and I would never admit it, but he scared me. What would he say if he saw me, watching him like this? I didn’t dare move.
I could hear the brook, and I willed Trick’s dad to turn his back for ten seconds so I could run. I wanted to be there and safe, in the mud and wild garlic of the bank, and the moss of the stepping stones, feeling the cool air by the water. He tipped his cup out onto the grass and walked into the caravan, and I made a run for it.
Sunlight stabbed through ash and willow to make a spotlight on the stepping stones, and I basked there for a moment, catching my breath and warming my face. Two chub slid beneath the surface of the brownish water. Minnows scattered. An emperor dragonfly bobbed above the surface.
I ran through the corridor to the corn den. Thick green stalks brushed my shoulders, and I crossed my fingers, nervous in case Trick was or wasn’t there.
‘Iris,’ he said, lifting himself on his elbows.
‘Eh up,’ I said, and relief tingled the back of my neck. I dropped down cross-legged, and pulled a sweating bottle of pop from my rucksack. I’d bought it on my way home from Matty’s with the money Dad had given me for chips. It had been in the fridge all night. The bottle gasped open, and I took a big drink then passed it over.
All around us the corn made a grinding, shifting sound, and I settled on my side, temple on palm, thinking of all the insects drinking and feeding around us.
‘Where were you yesterday?’ he asked, and I apologised.
‘Had to go to my stupid friend’s house. I came here after, but you’d gone.’
He passed the pop back.
‘Ever had a friend who made you feel like a dickhead all the time?’
Trick lay back without answering.
‘You in a mood with me?’ I said, and started explaining how I hadn’t wanted to go to Matty’s in the first place, but he shook his head.
I stared beyond our feet to the corridor, and the bamboo-like maize stems, and the different shades of green, but still he didn’t say anything, and so I asked if he went to the lake, like we’d planned.
‘Nah,’ he said. ‘Couldn’t be arsed.’
He relaxed into his usual position – flip-flops off, hands behind his head – but he seemed different, and after a while I realised why: his feet were tapping the air constantly, as if he had itchy bones. Usually, he lay lizard-still.
I asked him if he was all right, and he nodded, but I knew he wasn’t telling the truth.
‘It’s me da . . .’ he said, finally. He sat up, wrapped his arms round his knees, and focused on a bunch of ragwort near his toes. ‘He found out that I haven’t . . .’
He pulled at his top lip, and the field was so quiet I heard the kissing sound it made as it suckered his gums.
‘What?’
He glanced at me, then back at the ragwort. ‘He found out I haven’t been going to school.’
I was confused. Of course he hadn’t been going to school, it was the summer holidays.
‘I mean, he found out I’ve been chucked out of school.’
‘Oh. But you said—’
‘I know,’ he said, meeting my eyes properly for the first time. ‘Let me tell you what happened.’
I plucked an ear of corn because my heart was thudding against my chest and I needed something to fiddle with so I could listen properly.
‘Me da wasn’t bothered about me going in the first place, he wanted me to go to work with him – thinks school’s a waste of time after a bit.’
The corn felt cool and unfamiliar as I passed it between my sticky hands. Trick seemed nervous and defensive – completely unlike he’d been before – and I couldn’t work out if it was because of what he had to tell me or because he was lying.
‘It was okay for a bit,’ he said. ‘For ages, actually. Just normal. People left me alone, or were friendly; I liked it. I played footy at break, it was all right. Then this lad, my year, got attacked by someone. Gypsy, he said, and the way he acted, you’d think it was me who did it. Matt Dunbar. A big, blond, sporty bastard. Him and his mates started shouting at me at break, trying to get me to fight.’
I saw Year Tens doing this kind of thing to younger boys all the time, but it was hard to imagine Trick as the victim.
‘In the end, I got angry because he kept saying it was . . .’ He stopped talking, but his feet kept tapping, left then right, and I wanted to put my hands on them, to make them stop because they were distracting me.
‘Go on,’ I said.
I dismantled the corn on the cob, making a food pile for the pheasants.
‘Well, Matt Dunbar’s giving it backwards pikey scumbag and all that, and none of the teachers notice, or give a toss, and I’m not too bothered neither, till he starts calling me a pussy. Says pikeys only fight when they know they can win, as if I wouldn’t dare fight him! And every time I refuse, it gets worse. So one day I just have enough, and when he asks me for a fight, I punch him straight in the eyes.’
‘Well, yeah,’ I said. ‘So what?’ I knew people like Matt Dunbar, and the only thing that made them stop was a smack in the eyes.
‘But I shouldn’t have, Iris, that’s the thing, because I know how to fight. I’m not being big-headed or nothing, but I was bred for it. Me da taught me, and I kind of hate it but . . .’
‘Bred for it?’
I felt as though a curtain had been pulled back to reveal a whole world I didn’t know about, right here in England, in this little town. In my back garden.
‘He used to be a bare-knuckle fighter, for years – you should see his hands, they’re a holy mess, fat bendy sausage fingers . . .’ He pulled a face, as if the sausages were coming for him. ‘Hates them now he’s stopped, they won’t do what he wants, but he used to be over the moon. They were his pride and joy when I was growing up.’
‘Is it legal?’
‘Nah, but no one cares. Rozzers leave us to it. Me da was one of the big boys, no one beat Paddy Delaney. I wanted to be just like him. I started to have my own reputation at the old camp. But I got fed
up of it too. It never ends! I don’t see the point. I don’t want to fight any more, but it’s like I don’t have a choice. I tell my ma, it comes for me, I swear! But I should never have fought a gorgia. Not the way I did. No offence.’
‘So what happened?’
He looked at me, pulling at his top lip. ‘He was a big lad, you know, Iris, hardest in Year Ten . . .’
‘Trick.’
‘I punched him and he went down, and his face smacked on the tarmac – school tarmac, no less – and knocked his front teeth out. I gave him a bit of a kicking, you know, then I ran off.’
He didn’t sound proud or sorry as he spoke, just matter of fact. I wondered how I would do in a fight.
‘I hear later he had to stay overnight in the hospital. Concussion and all that. He’s all right now, though,’ he added quickly.
‘So how d’you know you’re expelled?’
He looked puzzled.
‘They can’t expel you without asking for your side. At least. Kids at my school stay on for worse than that.’
‘Trust me, Iris. I wrecked it. And now me da says it’s work with him. Don’t come crying to me, he said . . .’
‘And you did?’
‘Course I friggin’ didn’t, but he found out anyway – he finds out everything – and now he’s spitting because he told me what’d happen, told me not to get mixed up with . . .’ He stopped, but it was obvious what he’d been about to say.
‘I just thought if I waited till the new term, everything’d calm down, and they might let me back in, and I wouldn’t have to tell him, or you, or go to work. It doesn’t really matter cause I’m gonna work for myself, but I don’t know. I liked it at school.’
He ran out of words, and he looked so dejected that I couldn’t help reaching out to him. I stroked his knee, as if he were a pet that had just come back from an operation.
‘Matt Dunbar sounds like a prick,’ I told him. ‘I’m glad you beat him up. You should have told me though. I tell you everything.’
‘I know,’ he said, and he smiled at me, full whack. ‘That’s why I like you, Iris. I can talk to you about anything.’
I shrugged because I couldn’t trust myself to speak.
