by Jane Bidder
“Kayleigh?” he said, though it was less of a question than a statement. “Hi. Marlene’s told me all about you.”
Then he actually took her hand and kissed it. She thought she was going to die! Not in an awful way. But in a D.H. Lawrence way or even a Roger McGough one.
“Really?” she squeaked. “That sounds like a line from a book I’m reading.”
Quite why she said that, she didn’t know. Instantly she felt really stupid. But Frank – ‘Call me Frankie’ – seemed to think she’d just said something really, really clever.
“You didn’t tell me your mate had brains as well as beauty, Marlene,” he said, sliding into the tiny back seat behind her so that his leg pressed hers. Kayleigh didn’t know where to look or what to say.
Instead she just closed her eyes and knew that she’d remember this day for the rest of her life. A bloke actually fancied her! Not the kids with spots and gelled-back hair who were always yelling out names on the estate.
Ging-ger! Freckle-face! Skinny tits!
But a really good-looking bloke who was a proper man. Someone who’d sort out Ron.
He was saying something to her now in the back. “I can’t hear because the roof’s down and there’s too much noise from that lorry,” she wanted to explain. But it wouldn’t look cool. So instead she nodded and hoped that was the right thing. It seemed to be, because he looked quite pleased.
“The trick with boys,” Marlene was always saying, “is to make them feel good about themselves. Then they stay with you.”
Right now, Kayleigh wanted that more than anything. She might only have just met Frankie, but already there was something about him with that quiff of black hair, soft Irish accent, and dancing green eyes (the same colour as hers!), that reminded her of a hero in some poem that Mr Brown had read out loud in class.
Mr Brown! Oh my God. They were passing the school gates now and there he was. Walking in, books under his arm, in charge of a group of younger kids. Even from this distance in the car, she could see that he was frowning in her direction. He’d recognised her. Knew she was bunking off.
Too late to tap Marlene’s boyfriend on the shoulder and ask him to stop. Pete was already shooting off – surely too fast – and was soon on the dual carriageway leading to a place she’d never heard of.
That was the thing about living in a city without a car. You didn’t get out much. Mum was always going on about that. As the road spread out in front of them with hills sprouting up on their side, Kayleigh’s excitement took over from that nagging worry about letting down Mr Brown.
“There’s nowhere to bleeding park!” Marlene’s boyfriend didn’t look as annoyed as his words suggested. “Tell you what, we’ll drop you two off here and find you later.”
But Kayleigh hardly heard him. Instead, her eyes were fixed on the turquoise blue line in front of them. The sea! Far, far away in her dim memory, she could remember walking along the beach with a man holding her hand. Had it been her dad? Mum refused to talk about him, apart from declaring every now and then that he’d been a “waste of bloody space”. But just the thought that this might have been the place where she and her father had been, made her jump out of the car with excitement.
“Someone’s eager,” said Frankie grinning.
He was older than she’d thought. Not just eighteen or nineteen. More like twenty-something. She could see that, now that they were walking side by side. Suddenly Kayleigh felt really nervous: especially since Marlene and her bloke had just driven off in the car and left them. She hadn’t expected that. Why hadn’t her friend said goodbye?
“What time will they be back?” she asked, her mouth dry as Frankie reached for her hand. It felt warm. Firm. Grown up.
“When they’re ready.” He looked down on her. “Don’t worry about that. Just enjoy yourself.” His admiring glance and smooth way of talking almost made her feel attractive.
Drunk with gratitude, she gripped his hand as they walked past a mum with a toddler in a pushchair. The woman was quite old. Nearly as old as her mum who was thirty-nine next month. Kayleigh had been sworn to secrecy on that one in case Ron found out. He thought she was only thirty-two.
“Do you want kids?” she suddenly blurted out. Why had she asked that? How bloody stupid.
Frankie threw back his head and laughed. She liked that. It made her feel warm and good about herself; not stupid the way she usually did when someone laughed at her. “Why? Want one, do you?”
A hot flush spread over her face. “Not yet. But one day maybe.”
He shrugged. “Might be OK, I suppose.” He pulled her down onto a bench where an older woman was eating a sandwich, scattering grated cheese all over her lap while seagulls strutted, hoping for crumbs. In the distance, she could see surfers bobbing in the sea. It felt like she was in another world. Hardly daring to breathe, Kayleigh felt Frankie’s hand slowly creeping round her waist and cupping her left breast. The woman eating the sandwich made a tutting noise, got up, and walked off, leaving the gulls to scatter in disappointment.
“Silly cow,” commented Frankie laughing. Then his hand went down towards her waist.
She stood up, remembering the girl at school who’d got into trouble on her thirteenth birthday. “Not yet. It’s too soon.”
Appalled by her words, she waited. You’ve got to please a bloke, Marlene had instructed. And Marlene knew what she was talking about. Wasn’t that why Kayleigh had been so flattered when she’d been chosen as her ‘special mate’ at school. Yet here she was now, breaking all the rules she’d learned.
Frankie would go now. She’d lost him.
“Too soon?” he repeated, breaking out into a broad grin. “You’re a one, aren’t you? Marlene said you were different. Don’t remember what you said in the car, then?”
Kayleigh flushed. “I couldn’t hear you. So I just said yes because I didn’t want to look daft.”
Something crossed over his face. “I get that. Respect counts for a lot, doesn’t it?” His Irish lilt made her want to hang on to every word. It was like recognising a song you didn’t know you knew until you heard it. “I like you, Kayleigh. Know that?” His hand reached out and automatically she flinched in case he was going to hit her like Mum or Ron.
But instead, he stroked her hair, twisting it gently round his fingers. “I’ve never gone for gingers before but yours is different. More like a pale-red gold. Goes with your emerald eyes.” He was so close she could smell the beer on his breath. Kayleigh closed her eyes in ecstasy. A real man! Just what her father would be like; whatever Mum said. In fact, she wouldn’t be surprised when she found him (as she would one day) that he was a prince or someone famous. Didn’t Callum always say that she was different from the rest of them?
“You’re something else, aren’t you?” The soft Irish accent stroked the air between them. “But you know what, me darling? You need something to help you relax.”
Darling? No one else had ever called her that before! It sounded so smooth. So amazingly American, like she was in a film. Then Kayleigh felt Frankie pressing something into her hand. A small white pill: a bit smaller than an aspirin. “Knock it back,” said Frankie lightly.
She hesitated, remembering that stuff that Callum had told her about tablets and not letting any bloke buy you a drink. “You’re too naive, sis,” he was always saying. “Christ knows why, in this place. Maybe you do it to block the rest of us out. You don’t belong here, know that? Should have been born somewhere posh where people read the kind of books you’ve always got your nose in. Still, you don’t have to worry about anyone hurting you. Not while I’m around.”
Then he had gone, leaving a hole in her life that even Mr Brown and her dreams of finding an absent father, couldn’t fill.
“Go on.” The voice beside her was urgent, extracting her memory from the past. Before she knew what was happening, Frankie had picked the small white pill out of her palm, put it on the end of his tongue and kissed her.
His mouth was
so warm. So soft. Yet hard at the same time. Really different from that horrible wet sloppy mess from the kid on the corner who then told all his mates they’d had it off when they’d only snogged. It had been horrible anyway. Their noses had kept colliding.
So this was what it should really be like! The wonderful realisation made her feel both powerful and weak at the same time. When they finally drew apart, she could feel something go down her throat. Not just the saliva. But something else. Something small and hard.
“What will it do to me?” she asked, nervously.
“Chill you out.” His hand was reaching into his pocket and she saw he was popping another pill out of a silver foil sheet and knocking it back himself. A woman gave him an odd look as she walked past, carrying a kid with a bucket and spade.
“Mint,” he said out loud. “Want one, anyone?”
Kayleigh found herself bursting out into loud peals of laughter. Frankie was right. Already the magic tablet was making her feel more relaxed, although that might have been psychological. That was another word which Mr Brown used a lot. For a moment, she had a flash of his disappointed face as they’d driven past school. Then it went. Her legs felt light. It was like walking on air.
“Tell you what,” said Frankie, squeezing her bottom. “Why don’t we take a walk.”
The world had suddenly become a nicer place. Green one minute and pink the next. At least, that’s how it seemed. A great sense of peace came over her as they sat on a bench. At least she thought they did. But after a few minutes, it felt like they were hovering over it like a seagull. Then down again.
“I want you to kiss me,” said Frankie from a distance.
So she did.
“Not like that.”
Then he took her by the hand and they floated towards a hedge. A blonde woman with a dog was staring at them. She’d do anything to be blonde instead of ginger, Kayleigh thought.
“Nosy cow,” said Frankie’s voice. It tinkled like church bells. Trust the bleeding council to put us near the bleeding Catholics, her mother was always saying.
He told her what to do. It should have been disgusting but it wasn’t. Was she doing it right? He was just standing there, looking away but then his body began to judder.
“Stop,” he said urgently.
Then he laid her gently down on the grass. He smelt of cigarettes and sweat. Suddenly, a memory of the morning shot into her head. “Ron,” she whispered, feeling her throat close with panic.
Frankie paused above her. “Was he your old boyfriend?”
“No. He’s my mum’s. And he scares me. He tried to touch me this morning.”
Her words came out like swollen stones, reminding her of that numb feeling at the school dentist.
“I promise you, me darling,” said Frankie stroking her hair, “that if you are nice to me, this Ron will never be able to hurt you again.”
Chapter Three
The whole town was talking about it. Even though she had lived here for years, Alice still found it hard to accept how parochial this place could be, compared with London.
The smallest things seemed to make it to headline status in the local paper. The other week, there had been half a page about a child’s trike being stolen from outside the library.
Now it was much more dramatic.
“Flagrant display of al fresco sex in local park”
That was how the Seaway Herald put it. It didn’t just make the front page. It carried on to the Letters column where the word ‘disgusted’ was used in abundance. They must have worked fast to get it into print. It had only happened two days ago.
“Weren’t you there at around that time?” asked Daniel, who never usually read the local paper. He lowered his new glasses: a cutting-edge design which he had spent ages choosing; stuck in middle-age denial over fading eyesight. “Amazing that you didn’t see anything.“
This would have been the time to tell him! But for some reason, Alice, who was topping up the marmalade pot at the time, dropped the teaspoon which Mungo of course, immediately dived for. And in the confusion between mopping the floor – something she was quite fastidious about as she hated that sticky feeling you got if your shoe picked up something mucky – she didn’t actually contradict him.
Afterwards, of course, it was too late. It would look odd, she told herself, to say, ‘By the way. I forgot to tell you that I saw a couple having sex in the park. Before we went out to dinner. That’s why I picked at my food in the Italian and we came back early. It wasn’t because I had a headache at all. It’s because I couldn’t sit there and make banal conversation after seeing that. Surely you understand that, more than anyone else.”
But instead, Alice remained silent; paralysed by guilt and shame.
Embarrassingly, when she went to Book Club that evening, they were all talking about it. “Unbelievable that anyone could do such a thing in broad daylight,” declared Monica, a thin, sharp-forehand player from the tennis club, who was also in the book club crowd.
Janice, who was the nearest that Alice had to a best friend since moving down here, dug her in the ribs. “Probably just jealous! Can’t see her having it off much, can you?”
Alice had prickled with discomfort. Sex, in her view, was something too private to discuss. A bit like money. Yet perhaps this was one thing she should have mentioned. It would have been so easy. Something casual, like “Actually, I saw it”. Or maybe “You’ll never guess but …”
Yet she had let the moment slide, just as she had done with Daniel; fearful of all the questions and the blushes on her part. Perhaps it was just as well, she told herself. A revelation at book club might get back to Daniel. Besides, there were some – maybe like prickly Monica – who might even think she’d made it up, to get in on the act.
The following day, Alice tried to hide her ‘should she have said something or shouldn’t she?’ angst with work. Mentally, she’d already put aside this week to repair a delicate early Victorian cup which had been dropped, causing the pink and green handle to become brutally separated from the main body. “Do you think you can do anything about it?” its owner had pleaded, after finding Alice through her advert in the parish magazine.
Alice had started mending china soon after Garth had started secondary school and found that the day needed filling with more than tennis or reading or walking the dog. It went some way towards filling her creative frustration at having dropped out of her Fine Art degree so many years ago.
Then a chance workshop on china restoration, advertised on the noticeboard outside an art shop, changed her life. The tutor, a friendly woman favouring ankle-length floral skirts and a rather messy birds’-nest hair style, had filled her with a passion she hadn’t known possible. “I see it as restoring a piece of history,” she had told the class, which – Alice noted with relief – was dominated by women in her own age group, each searching for ‘something to do’.
The history reference had struck a chord. At school, she’d had a teacher who had spoken fervently about “us all having a piece of the past inside us which could, in turn, shape the outcome of the future”. Perhaps this was her chance!
She also, as she discovered, had what the flowery workshop leader described as a ‘real knack’. To her surprise and delight, Alice’s fingers proved quite adept at gluing the missing piece into place. Janice, who had gone with her for company before dropping out, hadn’t been so impressed. “What a performance! I simply don’t have the patience.”
But it was this quality, combined with a sense of purpose, that had encouraged Alice to practise on her own grandmother’s rose-patterned china and then, after a few months, to quietly take on commissions.
Three nights after the park incident (which she was just beginning to put out of her mind, thank goodness), she was just sealing the broken handle to the cup when there was a knock on the door.
How annoying. Alice hoped it wasn’t one of Daniel’s cronies from the Parish County Council. Another custom, which she still found hugely
irritating, was the frequency with which locals simply turned up on the doorstep instead of ringing to see if it was convenient.
“I’ll get it,” called out Daniel, amidst Mungo’s enthusiastic barking.
She bent down to open the top right door of the Aga to check on the fish pie that she’d made earlier, using salmon from the harbour shop. The cheesy top layer was bubbling nicely. Hurry up, she thought, listening to the voices at the front door.
“Alice.”
Daniel’s voice had various tones to it – most of which she had learned to read during their married life. This one had an edge to it, which normally accompanied a discovery of an unpleasant variety. The time when he’d discovered a rolled-up cigarette in their son’s bedroom, just before Garth had embarked on the second gap year, had been a case in point.
“Alice, there’s someone here who wants to talk to you.”
Daniel’s voice preceded his entry into the kitchen. Someone was behind him. A tall man with neatly cut dark hair, wearing a uniform. Alice’s mouth went dry as she took in the helmet under his arm. For a minute, she was eighteen again.
“Don’t you dare call the police,” her mother had said. “Don’t you dare.”
The visitor was holding out his hand for a handshake. “Sorry to bother you in the evening. My name is PC Black. Paul Black. I wonder if I might have a word.”
Horrified, Alice glanced at Daniel who showed no sign of leaving. Any possibility of pretending that this was a parking offence of some kind or even a potential client (might a policeman be interested in mending broken china?) was hopeless in his presence.
“What’s all this about, Alice?” asked Daniel, in a low voice.
“I’m not sure,” she said faintly, desperately hoping for some last-minute reprieve. Perhaps he really was here for a parking misdemeanour, although she couldn’t recall one. Once, Alice had been caught parking on a double yellow line for all of two minutes while she’d nipped into the chemist to get something for a teething Garth. The resulting ticket had shamed her into never doing it again.
