‘Violet! Enough’s enough!’ I hear Dad saying. ‘How many of those have you had?’ And then somehow I’m in bed and my pillow is the softest thing in the world. I close my eyes and the world inside my head spins round and round. Jackie and me are riding the Big Dipper in Battersea Park. We’re holding hands as the wooden train rattles along the rails. It climbs higher and higher until our heads touch the clouds then it plunges us down, faster and faster, and we shriek and yell in delight until our voices get carried away by the wind. Then suddenly, Jackie’s hand slips out of mine. I reach out to grab it again, but she’s too far away. ‘Violet!’ she screams. ‘Violet!’
I lean over the side of the wooden train and I watch her falling. I watch her growing smaller and smaller and then I close my eyes and clench my fists as the thud of her hitting the ground jars my bones and I wake up suddenly, to the early-morning gloom of my bedroom and a pain in my heart like the devil himself is sitting on my chest.
There are three thoughts in my head.
1. It’s my fault that Jackie’s dead.
2. Joseph lied to the police last night.
3. I need to find Beau.
Mrs B and Chuck Berry
Jackie’s made front-page news. There’s a picture of her sitting on the front doorstep of her house. Her hair is scraped back into a ponytail and she’s wearing her school blouse. It’s open at the collar and her tie is hanging loosely around her neck. She’s laughing into the camera. Her face is full of sunshine and hope.
I know where they got the photograph from. It’s been sitting on Brenda’s mantelpiece these last few months. Brenda got her camera out on the day we finished school for the last time. I was in the photograph too, but they’ve cut me out. If you look closely you can just see my shoulder resting against Jackie’s.
Her body was found in a piece of overgrown scrub, just behind the funfair. Another dog walker found her. She’d been raped and strangled. The same as Joanne and Pamela. I’m glad they found Jackie so quickly. I’m glad she didn’t have to lie there all alone for days and nights like poor Joanne.
The police are appealing for witnesses to come forward. Anybody who might have seen Jackie at the Roxy and afterwards.
Norma and Raymond have come round. Norma gave me a hug. I don’t think she’s ever hugged me before. ‘Oh, Vi. Oh Vi,’ she sobbed. ‘I don’t know what to say.’ Mum cooked us all breakfast, but only Raymond’s managed to eat anything. ‘I can’t believe it,’ Norma keeps saying. ‘It’s like a nightmare.’ She blows her nose and wipes her eyes again. ‘It could have been you, Violet. It could so easily have been you.’ That sets Mum off wailing again.
There’s two of me sitting at the kitchen table. One Violet is looking around at her family, listening to the horrified silence and the tears and the murmurs of disbelief. This Violet is crying too. This Violet has a scream inside her that won’t come out.
The other Violet feels hollow, like someone has scooped out her insides. This Violet needs to get out of the house. This Violet needs to go and find Beau. And this Violet can’t look at her brother Joseph because every time she does, a creeping fear wraps itself around her brain.
I’ve told everyone that I need to go for a walk and be on my own for a while. They tried to argue with me. But they couldn’t stop me. I had to promise not to go anywhere the park. As if I’d want to. As if I’d ever want to go near that place again.
There’s not many buses on a Sunday, so I have to wait a while for one to come along. I don’t mind. It’s better out here in the fresh air. It’s easier to breathe, and doing something, even waiting at a bus stop, helps to ease the pain that’s been gnawing at my stomach all morning. I sit on the top deck and huddle down into my jacket. It’s weird, watching the world go by; watching people going about their business as though nothing has happened. It’s weird that the sun is shining when it should be raining. It feels like I’m watching life happen through a television screen.
I get off at Chelsea Bridge. They’re all here, like I knew they would be. ‘Hey, Violet!’ Beau calls me over when he sees me walking towards him. ‘Nice surprise,’ he says, as he drapes his arm across my shoulder. ‘Hey,’ he says. ‘What do you reckon?’ He points down at his bike. ‘Cool, hey?’ he says. ‘Got me new engine at last.’
‘Yeah, cool,’ I say.
‘Took me months to save for that,’ he says. ‘You can’t beat a Triumph engine. It’s the dogs! Take you for a spin, if you like? Buy you a beer?’
I nod. ‘That’d be good,’ I say. ‘That’d be really good.’
We stop at a pub called The Royal Albert. I sit outside on a bench while Beau goes inside to buy the drinks. He brings me out half a bitter while he has a pint. I sip the froth off the top of mine and laugh at Beau when he takes a big gulp of his pint and leaves the froth on his top lip.
‘You never told me what you do,’ I say to him. ‘I mean for work.’
‘Electrician’s mate,’ he says. ‘Work for the Board. I don’t mind it. Pays for me bike, anyway.’
‘And you never told me where you live, either,’ I say.
He laughs. ‘Why do you want to know all this boring stuff?’
‘Dunno,’ I say. ‘I just do.’
‘Well,’ he says. ‘I got a bedsit. Not far from your chippie, actually. Been there four years now. Ever since me old mum died.’
‘Sorry,’ I say. ‘About your mum.’
‘S’all right,’ he says. ‘She’d been ill for ever. So I was pretty used to being on me own anyway.’
We sip our beer and I think how he’s like a book that I really want to read. He’s got an interesting cover. It’s beautiful and flawed all at the same time. He’s not a complicated book, he’s open and easy to read and if I want to turn another page I know that he’ll let me.
So I tell him about Jackie. I tell him all about it and I don’t cry once. But my face goes all stiff from trying not to. His face goes all funny too and I think how nice he is for caring so much when he didn’t even know her. He buys me another beer. Then I tell him about the police and how they want to eliminate him from their enquiries, but I couldn’t give them his surname because I don’t know what it is.
He laughs at this. ‘Never told you that either, did I? It’s daft really. There’s me mum giving me a real fancy first name like Beau when we had the most common surname in the world. Smith,’ he says. That’s me. Beau Smith.’
He tells me not to worry about the police; that we’ll sort it out right now. ‘They’re always bothering us lot,’ he says. ‘Just cos we dress in leathers and ride motorcycles. But I’ve always kept me nose clean, I have. Squeaky clean.’ He rubs it against my nose. ‘See? Squeak. Squeak.’
We pull up outside Battersea police station and we go inside and ask the desk sergeant if we can speak to someone about the Jacqueline Lawrence case. He looks bored and he shifts his eyes from Beau to me and back again as if he can’t quite see the connection. I tell him my name and about the visit yesterday from Detective Inspector Gordon. He sits up straight then and he writes something on a piece of paper and tells us to wait just a minute please. We sit on the hard wooden chairs and Beau makes me laugh by doing an impersonation of the desk sergeant’s nervous tick.
After a minute, the door next to us opens and the red-haired policeman from yesterday walks into the room. ‘Miss White,’ he says. ‘Detective Sergeant Jones. We met yesterday.’ He nods at Beau. ‘And this is …?’
‘Beau Smith,’ says Beau. He stands up to face the sergeant. ‘We’ve come here cos Violet says you wanted a little chat with me.’
‘Indeed,’ say Sergeant Jones. ‘If you’d like to come this way, please.’ He indicates for Beau to follow him back through the door. I stand up, ready to go with them, but the sergeant motions for me to sit back down. ‘If you’d like to wait here, Miss White.’
Beau winks at me as Sergeant Jones leads him into the back of the station. As I sit and wait, I pull the zip of my jacket up and down up and down. The desk sergeant
glances up at me and shakes his head slightly. I read some of the notes on the notice board. There’s a two pounds reward for a missing cat called Charlie and a poster warning people to lock their car doors and windows. I watch the clock on the wall and the minute hand slowly moving around. I remember that a group of policemen is called a posse and a group of thieves is called a gang, but I don’t think there’s a word for a group of murder victims or corpses. If there was I think it should be a sorrow of corpses.
I’m beginning to wonder if Beau’s ever going to come back. Maybe they’ve arrested him for something and stuck him in one of their cells. Would Sergeant Jones even bother to come out and let me know? I’m about to interrupt the desk sergeant, who’s filling out a crossword puzzle, when the door next to me opens and Beau comes striding out. ‘All sorted,’ he says. ‘Come on. Let’s go.’
‘Why were you in there for so long?’ I ask. ‘What happened?’
‘Nothing much,’ he says. ‘Gave him my name and address. Told him I gave you a lift home Friday night, then went home meself, then we were talking engines. Turns out that copper’s a bit of a motorcyclist himself.’ He grabs hold of my hand. ‘Anyway, come on. Fancy seeing where I live?’
He pulls me down the steps of the police station and I hear myself laughing. I hear blood pumping through my veins and I feel the emptiness inside me filling up. Being with Beau is like nothing else. He stops my heart from hurting. He makes the world carry on turning.
He drives us to a street with red-brick houses on one side and the remains of a bombsite on the other. He pulls up outside a house with snowy net curtains and a polished front step. I’ve been on this street before, I think. I picture two girls with liquorice-black tongues skipping home from the sweet shop. I see them stopping at the bombsite to flash their knickers at the boys who are charging through the rubble with guns made of sticks. Two little girls. Now there’s only one left. I push the memory away and follow Beau to the front door. He turns to me and puts his finger to his lips. ‘You’ll have to be quiet,’ he whispers. ‘Can’t let Mrs B know you’re here. She’s funny like that.’
‘Who’s Mrs B?’ I whisper back. ‘Thought you lived on your own.’
‘I do,’ he says. ‘Got me own room and everything. Mrs B’s just the landlady. She’s all right about most things. But she’d have fifty fits if she thought I’d brought a girl to me room. She likes everything proper you see.’ He winks at me. ‘Don’t look so worried. Come on. It’ll be fine.’
He opens the front door and I tiptoe in after him. He points to the stairs in front of us and motions for me to go up. There’s a door at the bottom to the left of the stairs and as we walk past it he shouts out, ‘Only me, Mrs B!’
I freeze and look at him in horror as I imagine the door opening and a stern-faced Mrs B, all steel-grey hair and threatening bust, catching me in the act of creeping up her stairs. But instead, a wafer-thin voice calls back, ‘All right, love! Don’t forget to have a look at me wireless, will you? Can’t get it to change programmes!’
‘No worries, Mrs B. I’ll pop in later!’ Beau shouts backs. Then he playfully pushes me up two flights of stairs and through a door at the top of the landing.
‘What will she do if she catches me here?’ I ask. ‘Will she chuck you out?’
‘She won’t catch you,’ he says, closing the door behind us. ‘There’s no way she’ll climb those stairs. Don’t worry, now you’re in here, we’re perfectly safe.’
‘Well … if you’re sure …?’ I say.
‘Sure as sure can be. Come on. Relax. Let me show you my little hide-away.’ He spreads his arms wide.
There’s not much to look at. The room’s no bigger than my bedroom at home. There’s posters all over the walls, most of them of motorcycles, and one advertising Chuck Berry, playing in person at the Palladium. Beau catches me looking at it.
‘I was there,’ he says proudly. ‘Saw him for meself.’
There’s an old fireplace at the end of the room with a one-bar electric fire in the grate. There’s some socks draped over a drying rack next to it. On one side of the room there’s a bed and on the other, a small kitchen area. There’s a tiny brown-stained sink, a table-top cooker and a single chair.
‘Sorry I didn’t make the bed this morning,’ he says with a grin. ‘I didn’t know I was going to have a visitor.’
I realise I’m staring at his bed; at the rumpled sheets and the dented pillow and the blanket that’s half on the floor. Blood rushes to my face. ‘It’s all right,’ I manage to say. ‘It’s only a bed.’
‘It’s good to have some company,’ he says. ‘Next time you come, I’ll make sure I tidy up first. Might even put some flowers in a jam jar!’
‘It’s nice,’ I say. ‘It’s a nice room.’
‘Yeah, well. It’s home, I guess,’ he says.
We both stand there, an awkward silence prickling the air between us. I wonder what Jackie would say if I told her I was alone with a fella in his bedsit and all I could think about was kissing him again. Then, suddenly, it’s like I’ve been punched in the stomach, as I remember all over again that Jackie’s gone. She’s dead. She’s been murdered. My knees buckle and I just make it to the bed before they give way completely.
‘Violet?’ Beau’s voice is soft and full of concern. ‘You all right? Didn’t think my place was that bad!’ He crouches down next to me. ‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘Shouldn’t joke. They’ll catch him, you know. They’ll catch whoever did this to your friend.’ He gets up and sits next to me on the bed. ‘It’s shit, I know,’ he says. ‘When someone you love gets taken away from you.’ He puts his arm around my shoulder and pulls me in.
I lean against him and wait for the waves of sickness that are rolling up and down my stomach to pass. ‘The first weeks are the worst,’ Beau is saying. ‘The pain’s so bad you think it’s going to kill you. And there doesn’t seem to be any point in getting out of bed in the mornings. And you always think it’s your fault. That there’s something you could have done to stop it happening. And even if you couldn’t have stopped it from happening, you could have at least been nicer to them. You could at least have told them how much you loved them.’ He pauses. ‘But it gets better. I promise you it gets better.’ He pulls me in tighter.
I twist around and turn my face up towards his. ‘When?’ I say. ‘When will it get better?’ He leans down towards me and his quiff brushes my forehead. Before I close my eyes, I notice how red his mouth is and that there’s a tiny white scar in the centre of his bottom lip. He puts a hand on the back of my head and then we’re kissing again and he’s pushing my mouth open with his tongue and his lips are so warm and the stars are bursting inside my head again. He slides his hand around and under the front of my jacket and then puts it right on my left boob.
I freeze. I’m not ready for this. I haven’t even got my head around kissing him yet. Then, it’s like he’s read my mind. He moves his hand and strokes my back instead. Then he pulls away.
‘You okay?’ he whispers.
I nod, and press my face back into his shoulder. ‘Why me?’ I ask. ‘Why would you want to kiss me? My sister told me that boys never make passes at girls who wear glasses.’
He laughs. ‘You’re all right, you are, Violet. I like you.’ He pushes my glasses to the top of my head. ‘It’s not true what your sister said, you know. I think girls in glasses are dead sexy. Even Marilyn Monroe has to wear them.’ He slides my glasses back down on to my nose. ‘You’re smart,’ he says. ‘And funny. And you’re not like all the others. You never judged me. I reckon we’re the same, you and me. We’re not like everyone else. We’re misfits. I knew we’d get on, as soon as I saw you in the chippie the first time. And you knew it too, didn’t you?’
‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘I suppose I did.’
He laughs. ‘It’s all right to be different,’ he says. ‘In fact, it’s bloody brilliant. We can do what we like, because we’re invisible. Everyone likes to pretend that we don’t exist.’
<
br /> It’s like he’s crawled inside my head and read my thoughts. Except I didn’t know that was what I was thinking. I lean closer into him. We might not fit in with everyone else, but we fit into each other. I don’t ever want to go home. I want to stay in this room for ever. I’d tidy it up when Beau was out at work. I’d be as quiet as a mouse all day, and when Beau came back from work I’d make him beans on toast for his tea and we’d snuggle up together on his bed. He could bring me some books and I’d read to him when we got bored of the wireless. I could fall asleep with him next to me and every night he would promise me that things would get better.
But after a while, Beau says he should go and sort out Mrs B’s wireless and that I should get home before Mum and Dad start worrying about me.
I don’t tell him that I want to stay here for ever, that I’m amazed and bewildered by him, but also scared to death that it’s all just some horrible joke the world is playing on me.
All the way home, I have to bite my bruised lips so the memory of his kisses stays with me.
‘We need to go and see Brenda,’ Mum says, as soon as I get home. ‘See if there’s anything we can do. Let her know we’re here for her.’
I don’t want to go. It’s too soon. I don’t know if I can bear it. What if there’s a pair of Jackie’s shoes still at the bottom of the stairs where she last kicked them off? Or a scarf on the back of a chair? Or a tube of her lipstick on the kitchen table? How can I bear to see these things and know that Jackie’s never coming back for them? And what if I feel the ghost of her? What if she’s there, waiting for me? Waiting to take her revenge on me for leaving her at the Roxy and for tearing off our friendship chain and throwing it at her feet?
But I know it’s the decent thing to do. I know Jackie would want us to look after her nan and I know that however bad it is for me, it must be a million times worse for Brenda. So I help Mum to pack up a pudding basin full of chicken soup and I carry it carefully around to Brenda’s with Mum walking slowly at my side as though we’re already part of a funeral procession.
V for Violet Page 15
