A is for Apple

by Kate Johnson

  She inspected the graze on my arm and checked my eyes with a light and felt at the bump under my hair. Luke, however, continued to feel up my leg, his caress becoming less medical by the second.

  “Well,” Karen said eventually, after what felt like a full medical, “you’ll live.”

  “Really.”

  “Take her up to the hospital,” she said to Luke, who pulled his hand guiltily away from my naked thigh, “get some X-rays of that.” She pointed to my leg.

  “Oh, you think my leg might be broken?” I said with heavy sarcasm. “I wish you’d told me that before I ran around half of Manhattan on it.”

  “Head X-rays too,” Karen said calmly to Luke.

  “My head is fine.”

  Sensibly, they both ignored that.

  “And when you come back, I have some work for you, Four.”

  Great. Writing up a report, no doubt. She must know how much I love reports.

  “Look,” I said, “why don't you tell me now? It’d stop me making two trips…”

  She sat down at her desk and Luke handed me my leather jeans, which I pulled on as elegantly as I could. I was aiming for Darcy Bussell-esque grace. I think I hit the mark somewhere around Dumbo.

  “Don Shapiro,” Karen said, once I was dressed and seated, Luke in the chair beside me. “His body was found this morning—about five a.m., New York time—drifting down the Hudson. Impossible to tell how long it had been dead. At least, so far. The autopsy will reveal more, I hope.”

  I glanced at Luke, but this appeared to have been news to him too.

  “His family have been alerted. It’s particularly bad timing for his son, Marc-Paul, who is starting school tomorrow. Sophie, your job is to watch him.”

  “Okay,” I said cautiously. Why did I have a bad feeling about this?

  “He left his former school in a blaze of glory,” Karen went on, rolling her eyes. “And in the absence of anywhere else, has re-enlisted in his local comprehensive, where he was until the age of…” she checked her notes, “…until year eight, when his parents divorced and he was sent to boarding school instead. This will be his final year—year thirteen, is it now?”

  “Upper sixth,” I said helpfully.

  “Thank you, Sophie, for those of use too old to understand this new-fangled system,” Luke said with a reasonably restrained amount of sarcasm. Of course, he went to public school, where it’s all lower fourth and prefects and casual sodomy. “Back in my day we did A levels in the sixth form, but I suppose they’ve renamed those, too.”

  “Nope,” I said. “They’re still the same—unless Marc-Paul’s doing a GNVQ or something, Karen?”

  “No. He is taking A levels in Art, Drama, and English.”

  All the subjects you take when you don’t know what else to do. I know, ‘cos I did them too.

  “I understand you have a background in these subjects?”

  I nodded warily. “Bad A level grades in all of them.”

  “Excellent.” She flashed me a rare smile. “If you play your cards right, you might be able to retake them.”

  I was starting to feel slightly sick. “I might what?”

  “Of course, you hopefully won’t be there that long.”

  “Won’t be where that long?”

  “Longford Grammar. Of course, it’s not a grammar school any more, it just keeps the name… Sophie?” She got out a pen-light and aimed it at my eyes. “Are you sure you’re not concussed?”

  I felt physically sick. As she checked my pupils, Karen told me all the details—I’d be a student in Marc-Paul’s registration class, we’d take the same subjects, I’d shadow him as closely as I could, become his friend…

  I had to go back to school.

  Out in the bright, clean air of the morning I felt like I’d woken from a really horrible dream. I was always having nightmares about going back to school. They’d come and get me and tell me that the break was over, I’d had my fun playing at being a grown-up, and now it was time to go back. It wasn’t over.

  I’d wake up in a cold sweat, terrified it was real.

  Well, here it was no nightmare. Term started tomorrow. I was Sophie Green: Teenager once more.

  “Oh God,” I said to Luke as he half-carried me out to the car. “Oh God, oh God.”

  “You’ll be fine,” he said, but he was grinning too hard to make it plausibly reassuring.

  “Fine? Luke, do you remember being at school?”

  “Sure. When I was a prefect, I got to wear my own waistcoat.”

  “Oh, fuck off,” I snarled half-heartedly. Luke’s parents, who died when he was small, had been very rich and sent him to Eton. From there he joined the RAF, then the SAS, and then SO17.

  I went to a bog-standard local high school, principally because Chalker was there and my friends were going there—I really do have absolutely no direction of my own—for seven years and by the end I really couldn’t bear it. People who say your school years are the best of your life should beware they’re upping the teenage suicide rate.

  Luke had eagerly asked Karen if I had to wear a uniform, because he thought that as my colleague he ought to help me buy it and make sure I was wearing it right, but we both shot him filthy looks (even in shock, I can control my sarcasm) and Karen explained that sixth formers at Longford didn’t have to wear uniform. The dress code stipulated “office wear” with no leather or denim or training shoes; heels of less than two inches and a single pair of earrings could be worn. Ooh, how grown-up.

  Luke had looked disappointed. I was mildly relieved. Even if I’d have to take out some earrings.

  “But why do I have to do it?” I’d begged. “Can’t one of the others do it?”

  They both stared at me.

  “Sophie,” Luke said, “Maria and I are both the wrong side of thirty. And Macbeth—”

  He broke off. He didn’t need to say that Macbeth had never been a teenager.

  By this point I was breathing heavily and Luke took me outside for some air. He had in his hand a sheaf of paper—letter of induction (Longford obviously thought it was more important than it was), timetable (I’d never get the hang of it), dress code (at least there weren’t makeup guidelines like Ace had, but otherwise it wasn’t far short of the mark) maps (eek!) and a whole load of other crap. He sat me down in the car and bobbed down between my knees on the pavement.

  “You okay?”

  I shook my head. “I hated school.”

  “Why? I loved it.”

  “Because you were posh and you probably actually learned stuff. At my school if you learned something that meant you were brighter than the teachers. So they hated you.”

  “Can’t have been that bad.”

  I closed my eyes in recollection, and an image of my seventeen-year-old self swam before my eyes. I’d been a skinny little girl, but in my teens I somehow acquired puppy fat. And spots. And my lovely wispy blonde hair darkened into a sludgy, lifeless non-colour that hung fine and shapeless around my round cheeks. I was sarcastic and bored and a little too clever, and I knew it. I was never really unpopular, but I sure as hell wasn’t popular, either. My school was small—a hundred or so kids in my year—so everyone knew everyone, and everyone knew who was cool.

  I was most avowedly not cool.

  When I opened my eyes I was looking at Luke, and I just knew that at seventeen he’d been having the time of his life—gorgeous, athletic, smart and rich—well, who wouldn’t?

  “Trust me,” I said, “it was that bad.”

  Luke took me back to my place, where I took a grateful shower and fed Tammy, who was very disgruntled with me. She has one of those automated feeders for when I forget to come home, but I never remember to fill it.

  Sitting on the sofa with my head in a towel, wrapping up my feet (which had been bare at the office, for lack of time) with plasters, I watched Luke look through my school photo box. It was a bit unnerving—that box was my life. Or at least, my life from the age of eleven to eighteen. I had all
the family photos in my flat. They were in shoeboxes on top of my wardrobe, and Luke had laughed to see them all neatly labelled, I guess because they’re the only thing in my house that falls into any kind of order.

  “Wow,” he said, coming up with a picture of me giving the camera the finger, a typically charming pose. I’d always really wanted to be one of those Princess Diary girls who just has to pluck her eyebrows and cut her hair and she’s gorgeous. But it took years of acne medication and bothersome dieting and expensive highlights to make me look this good.

  And honey, sometimes I look really good.

  Right now, wrapping tape around my feet to hold the plasters onto the ugly red and white weals all over my feet, I was less attractive. Not as bad as manky Sophie in the pictures—I mean at least my skin was okay and I wasn’t wearing chunky loafers—but I could have looked better.

  “What’s this?” Luke held up a picture of me covered in plaster of Paris, sculpting a hideous wobbly statue.

  “Expressive Arts.”

  “Which is…?”

  “One of those cop-out GCSEs. They were always asking for back-up work, which I never did, so I just got Evie to take pictures of me aiming Modroc at stuff.”

  “…okay.” He pulled out another picture. “Is this them?”

  I looked at it and grimaced. Ella and Evie were my friends from about sixth form onwards, when we discovered we had things in common by virtue of being deeply uncool. Also because we didn’t really have too many other friends. Evie was bullied mercilessly because of the backbrace she wore to stop her spine from curving, and Ella was a manic-depressive who brought alcohol into school when her parents split up. Although they’re pretty cute now, they matched me in the attractiveness stakes at school.

  “Yep,” I said.

  Luke looked at the picture a while longer. “You must really have hated school,” he said thoughtfully.

  The insight of man.

  I made him come shopping with me for new clothes (he wasn’t to know I still had a lot of the stuff I wore at school. I’m not stupid) and things for school. A new bag, obviously. A pencil case and ring binder and paper. (Luke was amazed that the school didn’t give us exercise books, until I reminded him that it was a state school, and therefore penniless.) I fretted a while about art stuff. I mean, presumably the school had some art equipment, but if it was anything like the stuff they’d had at my school, it wouldn’t have taxed a four-year-old.

  And then I remembered that I had a whole load of stuff at my parents’ house, decaying gently in the damp garage. All my old artwork, which doubtless the school would want to see. And when Luke heard about it, he wanted to see it too.

  “I bet it’s really good,” he wheedled.

  “If you bet that you’d be really poor.”

  “Come on, Soph. I know you’re creative,” he said suggestively, and I blushed. “Wow, that really clashes with that top.”

  I scowled at him. “Other than my skin tone, is it okay? Do I look seventeen?”

  He shrugged. “You look hot. No one will care how old you are.”

  Very sweet of him, but I needed something more useful. “What about this?” I grabbed a micro mini. “Tell me truthfully, will my bum look big in this?”

  The truth was that my bum would hardly have been covered by the thin strip of material, but Luke covered up diplomatically by saying, “It’ll show up that bruise on your leg. And you don’t want to have to explain that.”

  I sagged. “Bollocks. So I’ll have to wear trousers. And long skirts.”

  “Make up for it with low-cut tops,” Luke suggested eagerly.

  “Are you trying to get me chucked out of school? For all I know Marc-Paul could be a total…greebo who only likes girls with dreadlocks.”

  Greebo? I hadn’t even thought that in years. Dear God, I was regressing already.

  Luke was looking at me critically. “I don’t think you’d look good with dreads.”

  Good grief.

  It was late when we left the mall, the only place I could think of that was open on Sundays and had more than one shop available, and on the way home I called my mum, who doesn’t understand text messaging or how to work her voice mail, and asked her if she knew the whereabouts of my old artwork.

  “In the garage, I think.”

  Since the storage space in their garage is roughly equal to the living space in the house, this wasn’t much help.

  “I just thought I’d get it out. Keep it at my place.”

  “Oh, good idea. Your dad and I have been meaning to clean up the garage for a while.”

  “Is it okay if Luke and I come over to look for it?”

  There was a pause while I imagined my mother smiling fondly at the idea of her daughter finally pairing off with someone. More likely she was getting misty-eyed over the someone himself. She’s incorrigible, my mother.

  “Why don’t you come for tea? We thought we might have a barbecue. Make the most of the nice weather.”

  Uh-oh. Two nights of the parentals in a row? This might kill Luke.

  Ah well. He’s strong. And my mum makes really good potato salad. And I needed some comfort after the horror of the Going Back To School bombshell.

  “Sure,” I said. “We’ll be there in an hour.”

  I dumped all of my new shopping on my bed for Tammy to make a nest out of, shoved some food in her bowl and looked in my cupboards for something to take up to my parents’. But the cupboards were bare. Old Mother Hubbard would have to take herself off to Tesco.

  Luke backed out of supermarket shopping with me, which was a relief as I didn’t really want him to see me piling in the pore strips and packets of Oreos which were an essential but hidden part of my life.

  I got home and changed into jeans with trainers and thick socks, a T-shirt and sweater and my fleece, just in case. My dad has a thing about sitting outside to eat during the summer, despite that it’s almost never warm enough to do it properly in England. Consequently whenever Mum announces that tea is ready in the summer, we all rush to get sweaters and shoes so we won’t freeze to death while we eat. Today had been warm, but not very warm, and there would be no heat left in the evening.

  I picked Luke up and drove him the couple of miles to my parents’ house on the edge of the village. It wasn’t the house where I grew up, that was a Sixties Lego brick in the middle of the village. My parents moved here not long before I moved out, first to go to university, which I hated and only stuck at for a couple of months, and then into my flat, which used to be my grandmother’s and is now owned by my mother. I go back there a lot, because my mother can be bothered to cook properly, and because the place is full of comforting things, and because I actually quite like my parents.

  My God, I’m a freak.

  Both their cars were outside, clean and dripping from a recent wash. The grass had been recently mown and the smell of barbecue hung in the air, a last clinging memory of summer.

  “Looks like they’ve already started,” Luke said, and I laughed and shook my head.

  “What, are you kidding? Dad won’t start the barbie until about an hour after everyone’s stopped saying they’re hungry. That’ll be the neighbours, eating at a normal time.”

  Sensibly, Luke said nothing, but followed me through the open front door.

  “Hola!” I called.

  Nothing.

  “Hello, burglars? Come to nick your telly!” I looked up at Luke. “Well, might as well get the hi-fi while I’m at it. It has surround sound.”

  Norma Jean, Chalker’s beautifully stupid blonde dog, padded in and made a noise at us that sounded like a car revving.

  “Some guard dog,” Luke said as I bent down to her and she licked my arm.

  Someone called my name from the back garden, and I snapped my fingers. “Damn, foiled.” We walked through to the back garden, which was looking damp from a recent watering, thriving and green and lovely. I was always teasing my parents that gardening was a really middle-aged thing to do,
but I had to agree it looked good.

  Mum was sitting at the garden table with a glass of wine and the Sunday papers. She grinned and ran her gaze over Luke, who was looking lush in a blue shirt that matched his eyes. I’d teased him about being a tart and doing it on purpose, but he’d kissed me until all my lipgloss came off and I had to admit, tart or not, he looked damn good.

  “Sophie, there’s some white in the fridge,” Mum began.

  I waved Ted’s keys at her. “I have to drive.”

  “Oh. Well, there’s some water there too. Luke, what do you want to drink?”

  “Whatever you have,” he said politely.

  Mum and I looked at each other. “Wine?” She gestured to her bottle of red. “There’s white in the fridge, too.”

  “Any beer?”

  “Lager or bitter? I’m not sure if there’s some Guinness, too.”

  “Or you could have a vod and tonic,” I said.

  “It’s in the freezer,” Mum said. “With the gin.”

  “Or just a Coke,” I finished. “Or maybe some Orangina?”

  Luke looked mildly stunned.

  “Dad works for a brewery,” I explained.

  “And he keeps the entire stock here?”

  “No, we’re happy little alcoholics.”

  “Ah. What’s the bitter?”

  “Directors.”

  “Sounds good.”

  He followed me into the kitchen, which I’d bullied my parents into letting me help them design, and I opened the fridge. I found the water, but no cans of anything.

  “It’s in the garage,” Mum called through.

  I poured my water—not as prison ration as it sounds, for Mum to think about getting bottled water in for me shows thoughtfulness on her part since she knows I can’t stand the local limescaley tap water—and led Luke through the house to the garage. The thump of a bass beat came from the corner where Chalker had his little studio, full of band crap and girlie posters and CDs. I listened for a while.

  “So he got the ‘Phonics CD too?”

  “How can you tell?”

  “When you grow up with Chalker you get to recognise anything by its bass line. Or drum beat. Or sometimes a chord change.”