V for Violet

by Alison Rattle

  The further away from home she gets, the faster Mum starts walking. The park’s right up ahead now. She starts to run, in little bursts, but then she checks herself, rolls her shoulders back and walks at a more dignified pace. She’s desperate to get to where she’s going, that’s for certain.

  It’s easy to get closer to her, now we’re in the park. I slink into the trees and weave in and out of the shadows. I’m getting good at this private detective stuff. I even hear her panting a little as she hurries along the pathway towards the bench. I knew she was coming here. Stands to reason they have their own little meeting place, away from prying eyes. A secret tryst for secret lovers.

  He’s already waiting for her. I flatten myself against a tree, then I take off my glasses and polish them on the sleeve of my anorak. I don’t want to miss a thing. The man stands up as Mum walks towards him and he holds out his arms to her. She walks right into them and he folds them around her. I forget for a moment to even look at him, I’m so stunned by the sight of Mum melting into the embrace of another man. But then they move apart, and as they turn to settle themselves on the bench, I see his face for the first time.

  Bloody hell! I was expecting someone like Dad. Someone grey and battered around the edges. Someone old. This man’s not old. Not Dad old, anyway. He’s got a thick dark beard and dark hair that’s all messy and touching his shoulders. He’s got so much hair in fact, that there’s not a lot of face left to see. But I can tell he’s younger than Mum. Old people are blurry, smudged-out versions of their younger selves, but this man is solid and clear. He’s all shiny and bright like the front cover of a magazine. He’s not dressed like an old person either. He’s wearing a black donkey jacket and a pair of blue denim jeans.

  They sit close together, like they did the last time, with their heads almost touching and their fingers entwined. I wish I had a listening device like a proper detective, so I could hear what they are saying to each other. Are they planning on running away together? Does he know about Dad? Does he know about me? And who is he anyway? Where the hell did Mum even meet him? She never goes anywhere.

  Suddenly, I hear voices. I turn round, and there’s a couple with a pram walking along the path towards me. I step away from the tree. I don’t want to look like some weird Peeping Tom. I bend down quickly, pretending to look for something in the grass. The couple don’t even notice me. They’re too intent on babbling and cooing to the baby in the pram. I don’t recognise them. They’ve never been in the shop at least. Lucky for Mum, I think. How would she explain it if one of our customers saw her canoodling with another man in Battersea Park? I can’t understand why she meets him here. It’s not exactly hidden away.

  I stand up again and peek around the tree. The couple with the pram are a way down the path now and Mum and the man are hugging each other again. At least, Mum has her face pressed against his shoulder and he has his arms around her. It looks like he’s comforting her or something. I’ve got that strange feeling again. I know it’s my mum over there, but this is the first time I’ve ever really seen her.

  I shouldn’t be spying on her, I know that much. She’d die of shame and embarrassment if she knew I was here. I feel grubby. I want to go home and fill the sink with warm water and scrub myself all over with a flannel. And I want to get home before Dad wakes up. For some reason I don’t want him to be on his own when he finally stirs and grunts and opens his eyes. He deserves a cup of tea at least.

  I steal a last glance at Mum. She’s dabbing her eyes with a hankie now. I’d love to know why she’s crying, but I can’t exactly ask her. Instead, I creep away, back towards the entrance to the park. There are more people milling around now. I nervously check their faces, hoping I don’t recognise any of them. Not for my sake, but for Mum’s. Luckily there’s no one familiar.

  I can’t stop wondering why Mum’s crying though. I think about it logically. There can only be a certain number of reasons.

  1. She’s told Donkey Jacket Man that it’s all over between them, and she’s saying a painful goodbye.

  2. She can’t cope with the guilt of cheating on Dad.

  3. She’s agreed to run away with Donkey Jacket Man and she’s crying at the thought of having to tell me and Dad and Norma.

  4. Donkey Jacket Man has told her it’s all over between them, and she’ll never see him again.

  Whatever the reason, none of it looks too good for Mum.

  I trudge the rest of the way home. I can’t believe that now, finally, when something so crazy, awful, exciting and terrible has happened, I’ve got no one to share it with. Now, when my life has been shaken up, stirred and turned completely upside down, there’s not one single person I can talk to about it all. A secret like this is a horrible thing to hold on to. It’s a life-changing secret; too big for one person to carry. I can already feel it filling me up to bursting point. I imagine myself growing bigger, my skin stretching as the secret inside me grows bigger. I imagine my head ballooning and my lips growing tighter and tighter as I struggle to keep the secret inside.

  When I get home, Dad’s already awake. He’s sitting at the kitchen table sorting out his betting slips. ‘Where’ve you been?’ he asks. ‘And where’s your mother?’ He flicks his ash into a saucer and takes another drag on his fag.

  ‘I just went out for some fresh air,’ I say. ‘And I think Mum did too. ’Spect she’ll be back in a minute.’

  Dad laughs. ‘Fresh air?’ he says. ‘What, in Battersea? You’ll be lucky.’ He pats his slips into a neat little pile and places them in the middle of the table then he grinds his fag out in the saucer. Mum’ll go mad. She hates it when he does that. It’s not like there isn’t a perfectly good ashtray on the windowsill. Dad yawns loudly and stretches his arms above his head.

  ‘Want a cuppa?’ I ask.

  ‘Yeah, go on then, love. Why not?’ he says.

  As I fill the kettle, I picture Mum walking back up the road. I imagine she’s dried her eyes properly and taken a good few deep breaths. She’ll be dragging her feet, not wanting to come home but knowing that she has to. She’ll be preparing herself to tell Dad the terrible news. She might have her case packed and ready and hidden under the bed.

  Or maybe not. Maybe she won’t say anything. Maybe she’s hoping that Dad’s still asleep, and she’s got a cover story ready just in case he’s not. I hope she doesn’t tell him she’s been to the shops. I hope she’s realised by now that was a stupid thing to say on a Wednesday.

  I fill the teapot with boiling water and put it on the table to brew. Dad likes tea you can stand a spoon up in. I fetch his cup and the sugar bowl and put them in front of him. ‘Thanks, Vi,’ he says. He smiles and winks at me. He can be nice, Dad can, especially when it’s just the two of us. But I wish he wouldn’t be nice now. It makes this, waiting for Mum to come home bit, even harder. I feel like I’m waiting for a catastrophe to happen, for a bomb to explode in the middle of the house. I feel like all our lives are about to be blown to pieces and scattered all over Battersea.

  But nothing happened. No explosion. No tears. No shouting, no screaming. Mum just walked through the door, took off her coat and scarf and poured herself a cup of tea. Dad didn’t even ask her where she’d been. For a moment I thought I’d imagined it all. Or that perhaps it was me that had been asleep in Dad’s armchair and I’d dreamed the whole thing. It didn’t seem possible, that after all I’d seen in the park, Mum could just stroll back into the house and pour herself a cup of tea as though the fact that she’d just met up with another man was the most ordinary thing in the world. She even yelled at Dad. ‘Frank! What have I told you about putting out these disgusting things in my saucers?’ She’d tut-tutted and stomped around the kitchen emptying Dad’s fag ends in the bin and rinsing the saucer under the tap.

  And now, I’m standing behind the counter in the shop, slapping a piece of cod onto some newspaper and wondering what the bloody hell is wrong with my parents.

  It’s busy for a Wednesday evening. Sometime
s it goes like that. For no reason at all it’s like every other person in the neighbourhood suddenly fancies a fish supper. There’s a queue of customers snaking out of the door and as fast as Dad can fill the hot cupboard with freshly fried fish, I’m wrapping it up and handing it over the counter. Halfway through the evening, the demand starts to beat us and I have to apologise and tell everyone there’ll be a ten-minute wait. I rush out the back to grab another bucket of chips while Dad mixes up another batch of batter. Nobody seems to mind. A couple of customers wander outside for a smoke while the rest shuffle around chatting amongst themselves. I fill the chip fryer again and take off my glasses to polish the steam off with the bottom of my apron.

  And that’s when I see him. At least I think it’s him. I quickly put my glasses back on and push the loose wisps of hair off my face. It’s definitely him. He’s standing outside, at the back of the queue, leaning casually against the window. My stomach does a small flip and begins to sizzle, like the pieces of cod that Dad’s just dropped in the fryer.

  I knew he’d come back. I just didn’t know it would be so soon.

  I begin to serve again and as the till rattles with shillings and sixpences, the queue begins to move. He’s in the shop now, and I serve people as fast as I can, until eventually he moves closer and closer to the front of the queue. ‘Hey. Violet,’ he says, at last. ‘Remember me?’

  I nod, stupidly. How could I forget?

  ‘I wanted to settle up,’ he says. ‘And to say thanks again. You know. For the other night.’

  I shrug. As though giving away free chips is something I do all the time.

  ‘Anyway,’ he says. ‘Here’s what I owe. And another sixpence for tonight’s supper.’ He presses two coins into the centre of my palm. They’re still warm from where they’ve been in his pocket.

  I clear my throat and begin to measure out his order. ‘Open or wrapped?’ I ask.

  ‘Open, I reckon,’ he says. ‘I’ll eat them while I’m waiting for you to finish, shall I?’

  I’m not sure I’ve heard him right. But I feel my cheeks colouring anyway and I keep my head down as I douse his chips in salt and vinegar and fold the newspaper into a cone.

  ‘I’ll only wait if you want me to,’ he says.

  I want to be all cool and nonchalant, as though boys asking to meet me after work happens all the time. Bloody cheek, I want to say. But instead, when I look up to give him his cone of chips, all I can manage is a croaky, ‘Yeah, okay.’

  He grins at me and takes a bite from one of his chips. ‘Later, then,’ he says. His quiff flops into his eyes as he turns to walk out of the door and my heart flops around in my chest, like there’s nothing left to hold it in place any more. ‘Oh,’ says the boy, just before he disappears out the door. ‘My name’s Beau, by the way.’

  I quickly glance over at Dad. He’s too busy refilling the hot cupboard with freshly cooked fish to notice who I’ve been serving. Which is just as well. He’d have a fit if he knew what I’d just agreed to do.

  The last half-hour of the evening takes for ever to pass. But eventually, the final customer leaves and when I’ve finished wiping down and after I’ve locked and chained the shop door, I tell Dad I’m nipping round to Jackie’s. He won’t know any better, and Mum won’t care less. She’ll be too busy mooning over Donkey Jacket Man.

  I run upstairs and change into some clean slacks and a jumper. Then, because I haven’t got anything better to wear, I grab my old anorak from the coat hook before slipping out of the kitchen door. I can’t believe I’m doing this. He won’t be there. He won’t have waited this long for me. He’ll have just been having a laugh with himself. I bet he does this all the time; teasing girls like me and then leaving them to wait like idiots for him.

  It’s quiet out on the street, and cold. The air is fizzing with frost. It’s a clear night with a sixpence of a moon and the seven stars of the Plough twinkling like a newly scrubbed saucepan. I walk to the end of the road. My chest is tight with anxiety. It’s hard to breathe. I’ve never been this brave before and I don’t know if I can go through with it. But my feet carry on walking anyway and then I’m round the corner and there he is, waiting for me, leaning against his motorcycle, blowing smoke at the moon.

  ‘Didn’t think you’d come,’ he says. ‘But I guess you’re not as good a girl as you look.’ He pats the seat of his motorcycle. ‘Fancy getting out of here for a while?’

  I nod dumbly. I want to pinch myself, just to check I’m not dreaming.

  He climbs on to the motorcycle and indicates with his head for me to climb on behind him. ‘You’ll need to zip that up,’ he says, pointing to my anorak. I swear it’s going in the bin tomorrow and on Saturday I’ll go to the market and buy myself a proper jacket, just like the one he’s wearing.

  I slip easily on to the seat and find a place to rest my feet, then as he revs up the motorcycle’s engine, I realise I’ve put my arms around his waist. And it feels like the most natural thing in the world.

  There’s a roar, the smells of oil, leather, smoke and heat, and then the world as I know it disappears in a blur of colour and sound and light. It’s just as I imagined it would be, only a million times better. The rush of speed takes my breath away and the rush of wind tears the cloak of worries and cares from my shoulders. I feel lightheaded and free.

  We head north, leaving the streaks of Battersea’s streetlights far behind. We sail over Chelsea Bridge and I see the moon quivering on the surface of the Thames. As we speed along the black roads, the cold air makes my eyes sting. I press my face against the back of his jacket and I hear his heart thrumming as loudly as the motorcycle’s engine. We pass the grand entrance to Victoria Station where some late travellers are humping suitcases into waiting taxis. We ride through Belgravia with the gardens of Buckingham Palace on our right and rows of posh five-storeyed houses on our left. Hyde Park Corner flashes past. We cross over Oxford Street and skirt around Regent’s Park. I’m holding on to him so tightly, I can’t feel my fingers any more. I close my eyes and it’s like riding the Big Dipper. I’m ten years old again and I want to scream with fear and excitement.

  We speed through St John’s Wood and past Swiss Cottage, then, just as I think I’m about to lose my grip and be thrown back on to the road to break every bone in my body, the noise of the engine deepens and slows and the battering wind dies down to a breeze.

  We’ve stopped, but it’s a minute before I can move. All my muscles have locked. I wriggle my fingers and straighten my back, then I manage to slide from my seat and put my feet back on solid ground. I’m freezing and my legs are all wobbly. I watch as he climbs from the motorcycle and props it up against the nearby wall. He shakes out his hair and his quiff bounces back into shape. I don’t want to even think about what my hair must look like. As he fiddles with his keys and a chain of some sort, I pick at my hair, trying to pull it back down around my face where the wind has frizzled it into stiff little tufts. I wipe my eyes and straighten my glasses. He turns around then and grins at me.

  ‘Come on,’ he says. ‘What are you waiting for? Wanna see something really cool?’

  ‘Yeah … Yeah. All right,’ I say. As he walks off into the shrubby fields in front of us, I hear Mum’s voice in the back of my head. ‘What the bloody hell do you think you’re doing, Violet? You’re in the middle of nowhere with a complete stranger, you stupid girl! You haven’t got the sense you were born with!’

  I ignore her and hurry after him anyway. He’s striding ahead easily and his denim jeans are so tight around his legs that I can see the muscles flexing in the back of his thighs. If I look any further up, I swear my eyes will literally pop out of my head. God, Violet, I think. Get a grip. I swallow hard.

  ‘Where are we?’ I yell at him. ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘Hampstead Heath!’ he shouts back. ‘Parliament Hill. You ever been here before?’

  ‘No!’ I yell. ‘What’s so special about it?’

  ‘You’ll see. Come on. Keep
up!’

  I traipse after him. But it’s harder to go faster than a determined walk because it’s almost completely dark, the ground is lumpy and muddy and there’s a tiny part of me that’s actually a little bit worried. He could be an axe murderer after all. But it’s too late now. I have to stick with him, because I have no idea how the hell to get home, and I don’t want to get lost on my own all the way out here.

  The ground’s getting steeper, and I’m hot now, even though my breath is coming out in little puffs of toy train steam. I unzip my anorak. ‘Is it much further?’ I sound like a whining little girl.

  He stops for a moment and when I catch up with him, he takes my hand. ‘Need a little help, I reckon,’ he says. And just like that, there’s me, Violet White, hand in hand with a gorgeous fella. I wish there was someone here to see it. He pulls me up the hill, higher and higher and higher. His hand is all warm and soft. After what seems like an age, the ground starts to flatten out. We walk out into a huge open space and suddenly it’s much lighter. The sky is like an enormous, glittering blanket wrapped around us.

  ‘Close your eyes,’ he says.

  The hair on the back of my neck prickles. If he is an axe murderer, it’s too late now, so I might as well do as he asks. I flinch as he puts a hand on my shoulder and then I do as he says and close my eyes. But there’s no whoosh as the axe slices through the air towards me and there’s no agonising pain as the sharp blade thuds into my neck. Instead, he just spins me around and around and around.

  ‘There,’ he says eventually. ‘Now, open your eyes.’

  I slowly inch my eyelids open. ‘Wow!’ I breathe, and I steady myself against his arm.

  ‘Told you it was cool,’ he says.

  He’s right. It is cool. Really cool.

  It’s like we’re floating high above the city. It’s all spread out below us. Dark shapes of buildings; office blocks, tower blocks and churches. There’s so many lights; red, white, orange and yellow. They’re flashing, twinkling and blinking at me.