by C. J. Skuse
A tiny part of me wanted to say it; to unload the sack of crap I carried around. I had thought that seeing Fallon again would force it out in the open so everyone would finally know. It would have been a relief, for a while. But however bad things were now, they didn’t come close to how bad they would be if I told the truth. It was better left buried, inside me, where it couldn’t hurt anyone else.
‘I’m sorry you’re worried about me. But there’s nothing to worry about.’
‘No, I’m sorry,’ he said, kissing me gently on my mouth. I kissed him back and held the back of his neck with my fingertips. I could feel his body heat beneath his T-shirt. I wanted to take it off. Reading my mind, he ripped it off over his head and flung it across the floor.
‘I love you so much, Ells,’ he whispered.
‘I love you too.’
Max pressed his whole body against mine and we lay down and stayed like that for the longest time, just kissing, just holding. Just being warm beneath the duvet together.
Then I felt him between my legs.
‘NO,’ I said. He rolled off and sighed, banging the mattress with his fist.
I felt around for his other hand and held it in the darkness. He was just lying there, eyes to the ceiling. He moved his head to look at me. ‘Always something in the way, in’t there?’
I couldn’t look at him.
‘Just Snuggly Duddlies then?’ he said, at last.
‘Yeah,’ I replied, turning over so he could spoon me properly. Before he did, he put one of the small square sofa cushions between us. ‘Just Duddlies.’
He planted a kiss on my neck.
‘Are we OK, Max?’
‘Yeah, I think so,’ he whispered back. Moments later, his breaths become slower; I felt his body go heavy and I knew he was asleep.
Somewhere outside, the eerie trill of a cat’s miaow echoed around the whole street.
‘So even your dad didn’t know?’
13
Up To Mischief
Tuesday, 4 August
Nobody knew, apart from Fallon. Dad would have made me go to the police. He would have made me talk about it. Gone round to JoNeille and… actually, I don’t know what he’d have done. Dad wasn’t like me. He never raged. Even when his cancer came back the second time, he just got on with it. He took his tablets, got nuked with chemicals every other fortnight until his hair fell out and his appetite never made it past crackers, but I never once heard him moan. Even when Mum ran off to Greece with the guy from the kebab shop. In fact, the day she left, I heard him wish her all the best on the driveway. I was the one in the hallway, holding the house brick I was about to launch through their windscreen. Dad paid for the new glass. He even apologised. I never did. I never would.
Looking Dad in the eye and saying those three words, saying what Neil had done to me, was impossible. How could I do that? If he missed an episode of MasterChef he went into shock. He wore half-moon glasses and hoarded all this junk in the garage, like he was storing breaths before going under water. No, it had to be kept locked in my head where only I had the key. I couldn’t put him through any more. I wasn’t her.
The next morning, while I went round to Pete’s for training and a quick go on the bag, Fallon did the boys a fry up and then they went into town to get provisions for Operation: Zane. We made plans to meet outside Subway later on. Just as I was dozing off in front of Loose Women, I felt a breeze on my face. Dad was home.
‘Hello, Sleepy Girl,’ he said as I came to and stood up to greet him, nuzzling into his bobbly green jumper. ‘Had a good time without me?’
I felt his warm hand on the back of my head and swallowed down the sob caught in my throat. ‘Not really.’
‘How come?’
‘I just missed you, that’s all,’ I said.
‘Aww, that’s nice.’
‘How’s Matthew?’ I said, still breathing in the familiar coffee scent of his jumper.
‘Very cute, if noisy.’ He chuckled. ‘He’s got Jack’s big brown eyes too. They’re both besotted. They want you to go and visit.’ He pulled away and headed into the kitchen. ‘Do you want a brew?’
‘No, I’m supposed to be meeting Max in a bit in town. Oh… no.’ I’d told Fallon I’d clear up the breakfast mess when I got back but I’d forgotten. Instead, Dad was faced with a bombsite of cracked eggs, greasy coils of kitchen roll, empty packets and toast crumbs. I followed him in. ‘Sorry, I meant to clear it up after my shower.’
Dad filled the kettle. ‘Have some friends over last night, did you?’
I busied about, clearing it all up. ‘Yeah. Sorry.’
‘It’s all right.’ He smiled. ‘I’m glad. You should have friends over. Leave it for now. Let’s have coffee and chew the fat for a bit. I want to know your news.’
‘I haven’t got any news.’ I slid up onto a stool at the breakfast bar as Dad pottered about, recycling used tea bags and putting tins in the yellow box and bottles in the green. ‘How did your book signing go?’
‘Oh all right. Sold about forty books in the end. Squeezed in some visits to a couple of local WI groups while I was up there and sold a few more. Did you do the cooking then?’
‘No, Fallon did. She’s a good cook.’
‘Fallon. Fallon,’ said Dad, pouring me out a coffee in my Regulators tour mug. ‘I know that name. There was a Fallon at school, wasn’t there?’
‘It’s the same one,’ I said. ‘We’ve got back in touch. And Corey from number three down the road. He’s been going through a tough time. His cat went missing and we helped looked for it.’ I saved him the details about Mort. He didn’t need to know that. ‘What are you smiling at?’
‘I’ve missed my little girl, that’s all.’ It was a rare moment. He didn’t smile that often but the break from me had obviously done him good. He looked proud and I smiled back at him, for once not wishing he was someone cooler or stronger like Chris Pratt or Tom Hardy.
I gulped down some hot coffee and let it burn the back of my throat. I couldn’t say it back – I missed you too – it was a bridge too far. I knew I’d just blub all over him and he didn’t need the stress.
‘Did Max stay over last night?’
‘Yes. They all did. We stayed in the caravan.’
He nodded. ‘Has he started work at the garden centre yet?’
‘No, he’s having the summer off before he starts work, I’ve told you before.’
‘Waste of a good brain there.’
I could almost recite his speech along with him, I’d heard it so many times. ‘What can I do, Dad? Yes, so he got all As and Bs in his exams, and he’s predicted all As in his A levels but he doesn’t want to do anything else.’
‘It’s Neil who doesn’t want him to do anything else,’ said Dad. ‘Max wanted to be a policeman for a bit, didn’t he? What happened to all that?’
‘Uh, he was eight?’
‘You’ve got to ask yourself whether a boy like that with such low expectations of life, of himself, is worth the effort.’
I felt my grip on my temper slipping away from me.
‘I hope you’re both being careful.’
I gasped. ‘Dad!’
‘Well, it has to be said. Sex isn’t something to take lightly, Ella. I don’t want you wasting your own career because of a lazy mistake.’
I couldn’t believe how frank he was being. He had never talked to me about it before. ‘Where did this come from?’
‘David asked about you and I said you and Max were still going strong.’
‘You and David were talking about me and Max?’
‘He’s just worried, that’s all. So am I. You’re so close to a tremendous career and we don’t want to see anything getting in the way of that…’
Before he could say another word, I had stomped up to my bedroom and slammed the door, as hard as the high carpet pile would let me. I only started crying when I saw a small Boots carrier bag on the end of my dressing table. Inside were a brand new tube of aloe vera ge
l, a box of non-drowsy antihistamines – and a box of fourteen latex-free Durex condoms. How crushingly embarrassing that he’d remembered I was allergic to latex.
How dare he talk to David about me? How dare he worry about me getting pregnant? I was so embarrassed, I wanted to bury myself in my duvet and suffocate. It was just like when he caught me sniffing one of Mum’s scarves in his closet. I’d had a moment of weakness when I’d needed that sense of her around me. A hug. It was the nearest I could get to one – wrapping one of her old scarves around my neck. Taking in big nose-fuls of her perfume. And Dad sat me down and made me talk about how much I missed her. I hated that.
And I hated this. I wished he would bugger off to Manchester and live with David and Jack like they wanted him to. Or to Romania with that woman from cookery class I’d heard him on the phone to, giggling like a moron.
I sat on my bed and just let the tears come. He wasn’t a moron. The last few days the house had been so empty without him, cooking up one of his curries from his class or the tapping of his keyboard in his study as he wrote. But him mentioning that was just so wrong. I remembered one time I’d flooded my bed with blood when I was thirteen. He bought me sanitary towels and sorted it all out but it was still mortifying, having to tell him. By the time I got home from school that afternoon, I had a fillet steak waiting for me – for the blood loss – and a brand new mattress. That’s how we dealt with things. Stuff happened, he cleaned it up and we never mentioned it again.
I saw this quote posted on Flickr once – ‘Do you realise there was a moment when your mum or dad put you down as a child and never picked you up again?’ I thought about that quote a lot. I missed being held up off the ground where nothing could hurt me. I missed him reading me stories to get me to sleep. I missed him calling me Little Fish.
By the time I came back downstairs, he’d shut himself in his study and I could hear the keys tapping out the latest instalment in his Jock of the Loch Chronicles, The Lady of Glencoe’s Lover.
The kitchen was clear. We’d argued, he’d cleaned up and we’d never mention it again.
*
For the next few days, Operation: Zane was our main reason for being. In between lunches at Subway and jaunts down to the beach to drink Acid Rain in the sand dunes – well, the boys did; me and Fallon paddled in the surf – we plotted, planned and primed our target. Fallon and Corey were in charge of Stage One: Stalking. Working out Zane’s movements, making sure exactly who was going to be at his house and when. As expected, he was a creature of habit. Every day was the same – an early shift at Lidl, then a cycle ride to the gym on the retail estate. After the gym, he went to The Wallflower – the same pub Max’s dad Neil drank in, at the end of his terrace of houses on the seafront.
Zane’s mum and sister weren’t to be affected by what we were doing, which made things tricky but not impossible – and meant we had to work out their movements too. Zane’s mum owned one of the hairdresser’s in the High Street. Every day she left at eight and came back about six – later if she did Tesco. And his sister was only three, so she was in nursery.
Then we struck. Corey had read books on real crime and watched far too many episodes of CSI so he knew exactly how to get inside Zane’s house. He’s, like, a master at this kind of thing; he made sure we didn’t leave any fingerprints or anything. A window at the back with a faulty catch was a big help too. Anyway, the idea was to make Zane think he was going mad, not to actually burgle him.
We started with stupid, annoying stuff. Max took all his left trainers. I was in charge of the remote controls for his speakers and his TV and DVD player – I had to hide them all – plus emptying all his aftershaves down the sink, and Corey hid an old cat alarm clock of his – which made a very spooky meowing sound – in Zane’s room, programmed to go off every night at 3 a.m.
Then the best bit: Corey had this invisible ink that he got ages ago, from this spy mail order catalogue. It doesn’t show up for forty-eight hours, so when Zane first got back home, his carpet would have looked the same as he left it. But first thing in the morning, all these weird black patches would have appeared all over it. Black patches that kind of look like cats.
We hadn’t even ruined his carpet or anything; the ink disappears completely in seventy-two hours. It was developed by NASA, Corey said, although why they’d want invisible ink I didn’t know. I hugged the knowledge of our secret to myself as I held the bag for Pete during our next sparring session; then as I punched it like nobody was watching me.
‘Woah, you’re getting stronger, girl. I pity the fool who finds themselves on the receiving end of those.’
I looked down at my shivering fists, water running down my forehead in little rivers.
At the end Pete undid his hand wraps, stepped away from the bag and walked to the mini fridge to grab us both an isotonic.
‘Who are you thinking about when you’re hitting that bag?’
I just smiled and hoped that was enough of an answer.
*
The plan for the masks was put into operation late that afternoon, after training. This part of it was Corey’s idea – he’d seen some animal masks in the big Hobbycraft store on the retail park when he and Fallon had been looking for a découpage set – they wanted to cover an old set of drawers at Fallon’s house for the nursery. Anyway, we bought four plain white cat-shaped masks – not découpaged – and then we followed Zane. One by one.
In the Lidl car park, as Zane finished his shift, Fallon stood in the bushes as he walked towards his car. She was dressed in black and stock still, just the mask staring out at him.
‘But he definitely saw you?’ I asked her. ‘Saw the mask?’
‘Oh yeah,’ she said. ‘He did a proper double-take and everything.’
Later, when he was coming out of the pub and saying goodbye to his rugby mates, he crossed the road and there was Corey, sitting on the sea wall, wearing his cat mask. Zane tried to cross the road for a closer look but by the time the traffic had passed, Corey had simply disappeared.
On Friday morning, I appeared at the bus stop wearing my mask as he sailed past on his bike. He stared at me, clearly alarmed, and the bike swerved to avoid a pedestrian. I heard the screech of brakes as I nipped down a side alley and out of his sight.
Then, at 6 p.m. that Saturday evening, me and Corey followed him to Sweat Dreams Fitness Centre on the industrial estate by the garden centre, and found a spot in the flower bed beneath the two main windows. I crouched beneath one window, Corey beneath the other. Then we donned our masks. On the count of three, we slowly stood up, clocking Zane Walker on the other side of the room, pumping iron for all he was worth on the pull-down machine. He caught sight of me first. Then Corey. He lost his grip on the bar and it flew upwards, bringing the weights back down with a hard CLANK which we heard from outside.
He swore through the single-pane glass. Fear at last. He got up off the bench and ran as Corey and I escaped around the side of the gym and over the low wall. We ducked down, waiting breathlessly, hearing the front door creak and bang followed by quick footsteps on the tarmac. I peered over the wall. Zane was scanning the area like the Terminator, a dark patch of sweat blooming on his grey vest, murder in his eyes. He did a 360° then went over to the flower beds under the windows, frowning at the ground as though we’d melted into it.
‘I’ll have you!’ he shouted out. Only his echo replied.
Corey nudged me. ‘Get down. He’ll see you!’
‘I don’t care,’ I said, stifling the little giggle caught in my chest. ‘He’s bricking it, look!’
The adrenaline surging through my limbs was tremendous as I watched Zane trudge back inside the gym, still looking round.
‘He’s gone.’
We collapsed into laughter. We had got to him. We were David, beating the crap out of Goliath with our teeny tiny rocks. When we’d caught our breaths, we stood up, taking off the masks.
‘Brilliant!’ I cried. ‘His face, Corey! You should have
seen his face!’
‘He’s rattled, isn’t he?’
‘Don’t mess with the Fearless Five,’ I laughed, still panting furiously.
I wanted to cheer and whoop. I felt like I could run right the way up Brynstan Hill in one go then fling myself down the other side. I was volcanic in all the right ways. I didn’t know if it was the revenge thing or the boxing or just the fact I was friends again with Corey and Fallon and they were my way back to who I really was.
Maybe it was all three.
Maybe the revenges were helping me come to terms with what had happened and that part of my brain was clearing out so that I could now invite other thoughts in. Like me and Max. Maybe I could start thinking of Max that way now too. Despite what Pete had said about revenge being bad in the long run, I couldn’t deny this new power I felt. This new confidence. And if it was going to help me get over what I needed to get over, who knows what else it could do for me? For us.
‘So, was that it for the revenge against Zane, then?’
14
A Shock for Max
Oh no, I didn’t want to leave it there. I don’t think the others did either, if they were being honest. We had to go further, push him to the edge. Dangle him over it, if we had to. Over the next week, we each saw Zane out and about at his usual haunts. His gym had a special offer on for new mums called the Postnatal Package, which included a crèche, discounted massage treatments and aqua aerobics, so Fallon arranged a trial.
‘He just looked weirded out,’ she said when we met up for double chocolate muffins and full cream lattes in Costa. Well, she had a muffin and a latte – I had no-added-sugar apple juice and a pot of chopped fruit. I’d been so bad with my eating lately, I knew needed to reel back on my bad sugar.
During the night, Corey drew a mahoosive chalk cat outside the entrance to Lidl. The next morning, Max spied on Zane from the car park opposite.
‘He stopped, looked at it, side-stepped it and went inside the store.’
