Filching a last chocolate, I raised my eyebrows apologetically at Ming. As I headed for the kitchen door, I heard his chair scrape out behind me. The two of us had set the table, and cleared it afterwards, so it was perfectly fair to walk away even though Griff was stuck by the sink with a dishtowel. Still, the look on my brother’s face told me he didn’t think the parents should be letting Ming and me wander off together.
Ming caught me up and cornered me in the hall. ‘Cass, I need to talk to you.’
He had one hand on the banister and one on the wall, so that his arms were stopping me going anywhere. I gave him a wary look, and he blinked.
‘Sorry,’ he said, and snatched his hands away, backing off a couple of steps.
My thudding heart calmed a bit. ‘So talk.’
‘No. Not here.’
‘The ghost wood, then,’ I said. ‘We’ll go out.’
He looked over my head, pressing his lips together, then back at me. ‘You’re joking, aren’t you? I don’t think I ever want to go back there.’
That’s when it hit me for the first time. I realised what we’d done, what we’d corrupted – what I’d corrupted – and I felt an awful swamping sadness. I put my hands over my mouth.
‘Ming,’ I said. I swore and tears sprang to my eyes.
‘Sh, shut up, Cass!’ He glanced anxiously towards the kitchen, but we could still hear the clatter of crockery and the relentless political bitching of the parents. ‘Don’t panic, for crying out loud!’
‘I’m not panicking!’ I squeaked.
‘You bloody are! Cass, stop it.’ He took hold of my arms, but quite gently. As his fingers tightened I looked down at them, then back up at his face. It struck me that his spots were not that bad; as a matter of fact they were almost gone and you could tell how beautiful he was going to be. That’s a strange word to apply to a boy but it’s true. I don’t want you to think I’m shallow or anything but I’ll tell you, he wasn’t making me claustrophobic any more.
Almost involuntarily I touched his hair; in fact I took hold of it and pulled his face a bit closer. Then, tentatively, I kissed him. He tasted like Mum’s cooking, like home. His mouth was a little cold from the ice in his Coke, but I was pleased when he stopped being surprised and his tongue caressed mine. I didn’t mean to tense up but I did, and I gave another little squeak.
He pulled away. ‘Whenever you’re ready,’ he said, and smiled sweetly.
‘Sod,’ I said. ‘Tease.’
His thumb rubbed my arm manically. ‘Cass, we need to talk properly. About...’
‘Don’t touch her!’
Ming let go of my arms like he’d spotted anthrax spores. Griff was glaring at him, his eyes hard and cold.
‘Griff, what d’you think you...’ I began, more shocked than angry.
‘Talk about what? What do you want to talk to her about?’
‘School. That’s all, Griff, honest. I need to borrow her notes.’
Why he was indulging Griff’s little family-honour routine I couldn’t imagine, and I was suddenly furious with both of them. It wasn’t as if Griff gave two hoots what I did any more.
Maybe it was just that my chastity was all he had left to be proud about...
Boy, did I feel like a piece of dirt for that thought. I felt my ears burn scarlet, and thanked any passing deity that I hadn’t spoken it aloud. I swallowed hard.
‘You talk to her too much,’ said Griff, his eyes still locked on Ming.
Well, that neatly killed off all my guilt and sympathy before it had time to get out of hand. Calling them an unpleasant name – they could draw lots for who it was aimed at – I shoved past the pair of them and barged out of the front door.
I meant to go just to the end of the road, to stand there on my dignity and fume until someone followed and begged my forgiveness. But as soon as I got to the gate I had the most insane urge to turn right, go into the countryside and head for the haunted woods and the river. I’m not the kind of person who fights my urges (which is why my teachers bang on about the peril of my immortal soul) so I lurched unevenly on.
I don’t know why I wanted so much to go back to the scene of our... I suppose crime is the only thing to call it. It wasn’t as if I was mad keen to see the Bishop again. Maybe I was just so angry with Ming I wanted to do something childish and defiant, but I hadn’t got halfway to the forestry track when I heard running steps behind me. Ming, rot him, caught me up before I could come to a haughty yet elegant halt. That made standing on my dignity a little tricky, so I kept limping on.
Deliberately I glared ahead and folded my arms as he fell into step beside me.
‘Well, don’t be mad at me,’ he said, when the silence grew uncomfortable.
‘Why not?’ I snapped. ‘Indulging my control freak brother. It’ll be honour killings next.’
‘Don’t exaggerate.’ His genuine annoyance gave me a sharp pain below my breastbone. I wasn’t used to Ming being cross with me. The irritated-and-slightly-superior role in this relationship was mine. ‘He’s only looking after you,’ he said.
‘I don’t need looking after. Quit talking down to me.’ I stopped. A car swept past, religious trance music thumping from its open window, and we both took an automatic step back towards the verge.
‘Watch your foot,’ said Ming, then nipped his lip, as if afraid he’d get his head bitten off for looking after me. On the edge of the tarmac was my Disney rabbit, right where I’d left it. I’d nearly put my foot in it. Story of my life.
‘Hello,’ I told it, then glanced at Ming. He was grinning, his eyebrow eloquently tilted.
‘See, talking to dead rabbits is not a good sign.’
I didn’t laugh. ‘I killed it.’
‘Did you?’
‘Its spine was broken. A car... a car hit it.’
Maybe I’d looked like that, I thought. Maybe I’d looked helpless and hurt, big Thumper eyes begging to be left alone. Nobody came along and hit my neck with a stick, did they? Sick and dizzy, I put my head in my hands. I wanted to cry, but I couldn’t. My eyes and my throat were blocked, my whole head hurt as if my brain had swollen to twice its size and was pressing against my skull. Belated shock.
Back, you voices, back.
‘Are you okay? Cass!’ Ming’s hands were on my head and he was stroking my hair and my temples with his thumbs. He looked so alarmed, his face peering into mine, that I felt better straight away.
‘Course I am.’ I curled my fingers round his and took them down from my face. I had such an unbearable longing to kiss him, right there on the road, I had to almost fling his hands off mine to avoid making a public trollop of myself. You really didn’t want the wrong people to spot you snogging a boy, so I focused on the dead rabbit again, and after a moment Ming did too.
It didn’t look much different for its few days as a corpse. Its body sagged in the middle but its fur was intact, right down to its cute little scut of a tail. A line of ants marched officiously back and forth under its belly, though, and it didn’t have Thumper eyes any more. It didn’t have any eyes. Who was it got his eyes put out because of somebody else’s guilty conscience? I’d have to ask Dad.
Or maybe, on second thoughts, not.
I knew Ming was thinking what I was thinking: there was something comforting about that rabbit. Apart from the eyes and the busy little troop of ants nothing had changed. Perhaps there was another corpse not a million miles away that wasn’t changing, preserved in its silent cool cave like Tutankhamen. If you didn’t think about why the ants were there, and what became of most of Tutankhamen, you might think nothing changed, ever. The rabbit-pelt was sleek and soft, silvery and black-tipped, lifting gently in the breeze. Bishop Todd should have had a fur coat, I thought with a twinge of pity, as a bluebottle buzzed onto the rabbit’s empty eye socket.
‘It looks fine,’ said Ming, ‘but when you look underneath there’s probably nothing there.’
Suddenly I thought, what if that’s how we end up, me and Min
g? What if we seemed fine right now but beneath it all everything was rotting and dissolving? He nudged the rabbit’s limp back leg with the toe of his boot, distaste in his eyes. What if one day he looked at me with the very same expression? I’d die of it.
No. He was Ming the Merciless, Pirate King of the Galaxy, Commander of the Great Orc Armies of Riverworld, and he was strong and ruthless. A little thing like the illegal concealment of a Very Important Corpse wasn’t going to faze him. I rubbed my arms and shivered.
We heard the thump of the car’s stereo before we heard its engine. It was coming back towards us, more slowly now, and a muscular arm was leaning on the sill, fingers tapping on the bodywork. It drew to a halt right beside us, so close we should have stepped further against the verge for the sake of our toes. But Ming was staring at the driver’s smirking face through the windscreen, and staying resolutely in place, and he wasn’t letting me move either, his fingers locked round my arm.
‘’S’okay,’ he muttered without moving his lips.
He didn’t actually have to tell me that, and nor did he have to hold onto me. I’d rather lose my toes than move an inch. I folded my arms and curled my lip as the driver leaned out of the window, young and brutishly handsome. He looked even more brutish than usual because there was a dark dry-blood cut on his lip, and an ugly yellowing bruise between his temple and his eye socket, and that eye was very slightly closed. Just as well I hadn’t flung myself at Ming.
‘Hello, Jeremiah,’ I said.
‘I thought it was you two,’ he said, a slight unpleasant smile twisting his mouth. ‘Cassandra and the Minger.’
‘Gosh, Jeremiah,’ said Ming, deadpan. ‘How d’you think them up? No-one’s ever thought of calling me that before.’
Jeremiah Maclaren’s sneer faded, revealing something more frightening in his face that I couldn’t quite define. He stared at Ming, then his eyes slewed to me.
‘Do up your buttons, tramp.’
I felt Ming’s muscles freeze but I found myself involuntarily checking my perfectly modest white shirt. Sure enough, that annoying button had come adrift again. Little devil, I thought, irrationally furious with it. I could see the tiny bow at the top of my bra, just peeking out of my practically nonexistent cleavage. So, obviously, could Jeremiah.
I might have been furious with the button but I was even angrier with myself for checking it. Jeremiah didn’t intimidate me, I told myself. So why had I let myself look?
Ming turned me towards him. ‘Allow me,’ he said, but his sweet smile was aimed right at Jeremiah.
Ming gave me a fleeting wink and with slow deliberation, fastened the offending button. His fingertips brushed my ribcage as he did it. Something rippled through my skin and in that moment I hated him. Truly I did.
‘You dirty Godless infidel,’ began Jeremiah. Opening the car door, he clambered out.
Bishop Todd smiled piously at me from the printed photograph on Jeremiah’s t-shirt. The ground beneath me tilted. I stared at the text beneath the photo, trying to get my composure back. Our anger is righteous, our motives are holy.
Ming’s grin was becoming a rictus. ‘On your own again, Jeremiah?’ He peered past him into the empty car, his teeth now clenched into that ferocious smile. ‘Want some more?’ Brusquely he let go of me and turned to face Jeremiah.
They eyed one another, but I took a breath, because Jeremiah had nearly put his foot in my rabbit. He must have noticed my movement because he followed my gaze.
Taking a step back, he deliberately placed his heel over the rabbit’s eyeless head and crushed it, grinding it into the tarmac. As I watched it crumple, I felt sick. With most of my brain I knew the rabbit couldn’t feel it. But in another small part of my mind I winced.
‘Watch yourself, Minger,’ said Jeremiah, very softly.
He climbed back into the car and gunned the engine. The car squealed away, its tyres kicking up dust.
‘Jerk,’ said Ming, when the car was gone and the scream of protesting gears had faded.
‘Damn right you are,’ I yelled, shoving him away.
He was so shocked he stumbled back and nearly fell. ‘Cass...’
‘Don’t use me as a prop in your little power games,’ I snarled.
‘That wasn’t... I... ’ Recognition and remorse dawned on his face. ‘I didn’t mean to, Cass. Really. I’m sorry.’
He knew he’d gone too far and he was sorry, but I was too angry to forgive him right then. And it’s hard to explain, but I was upset about my rabbit. I couldn’t look at it or at him as I clutched my shirt – the button having popped again – and ran away from him down the road.
‘Cass!’ he yelled.
I turned, running awkwardly backwards for a few steps. I felt an awful twinge in my hip and half-stumbled, but I teetered and kept my balance.
‘Sod off, Ming,’ I yelled. The harder I yelled, the easier it was not to cry. ‘Just sod off.’
Oh, my hip hurt. But even though I was listing badly, I ran. I kept on running so that he wouldn’t try to catch up, so that he’d know with perfect clarity that I didn’t want him to.
• • •
That night I dreamed I was in the vestry. I stood there on the worn rug, delighted, because my old angel-rainbow was back, spilt across the floor by summer sunlight. I looked up at the window but of course the stained-glass wasn’t back at all. The plain ugly leaded panes were still there, but St Michael himself was outside and he was all the colours of the rainbow. He was so beautiful, him and his jewel-coloured angel-face, but his expression was twisted with terror, his mouth open in a silent scream, and he was hammering hard on the glass. I wanted to let him in but I was too afraid, I was afraid that pack of howling Maenads would burst in behind him. I put my hands over my face so I wouldn’t see his desperate terror, so I wouldn’t see him as they dragged him down. Their faces were masks of hate. One of them was Mum. She grabbed St Michael by the hair and tore him to the ground but I could still hear his fists hammering, hammering on the glass. I crouched on the floor with my arms over my head but Maenad-Mum shouted for me. Get up, Cass! Get up!
‘Get up! You’re late, Cass!’
And I blinked and opened my eyes, just before they ripped him apart.
7: Looking For Clues
The vestry was locked, but what’s the point having a One Church cleric for a father if you haven’t got the nous to know where he keeps his keys? My heart was slamming so hard as I pushed open the vestry door I thought it would fracture a rib. If Dad caught me he’d be cross, but after losing it yesterday he’d be treading on eggshells where I was concerned, and I’d just have to hope nobody else walked in. I didn’t even have an excuse lined up, since I couldn’t think of one. My only plan was not to get caught.
What was I looking for? I didn’t even know that myself. Something was niggling at me, that was all.
A lot of things were niggling at me. So many things they’d ganged up and turned into a permanent headache. But the vestry seemed as good a place as any to start. What happened to Griff had happened here, I was sure of it. I felt surrounded by ghosts, and I shivered.
It was so gloomy I had to fight an impulse to turn on the lights. I was afraid to look at the diamond-paned window in case a rainbow-face started hammering on it and screaming, but when I did look, of course there was nothing there: just the dull distorted grey of the clouds through a latticed prism of glass. I chewed my lip. The window was recessed deep into its gothic arch and I couldn’t think how someone had managed to break it. You’d almost think it was deliberate except that no-one would dare vandalise a church, not with the religious militias prowling the streets. And I knew it had been broken from the inside because months afterwards I’d still been finding shards of glass in the flowerbed outside, the light gone out of them as if they’d died.
Dad used to have this staple metaphor for his sermons: stained glass was like his religion. He said if you were standing outside it looked meaningless and dull, obscuring everything. If you�
�d just walk inside you’d see the colours and the beauty and the whole picture and the sense it made. Standing there on the inside, I wondered who’d look into the light and see the beautiful elaborate design, then want to shatter it into a million pieces.
Well, the window was gone and it was only ever going to come back to me in horrible dreams about mob killings of archangels. And Dad had not preached about stained glass for a while. He hadn’t talked about much except injustice and corruption and a lapdog media, ranting on till half the congregation began to wriggle and mutter and the other half sat with their faces frozen in fear for themselves, and maybe for him too.
I frowned as I ran my forefinger across the dented panelling, feeling the roughness where splinters had been sanded down. Something stirred at the back of my brain, something tried to scramble out of the clamour, so for once, instead of beating it back down, I shut my eyes to concentrate. No. Reaching for the thought made it slip away like a fish. I stared up at the light fitting above the mahogany table where the Wardens held their meetings, then at the tops of the bookcases. Up there were stacked old papers and broken books and boxes that no-one would ever need to see again.
Gripping the back of one of the mahogany chairs, I dragged it across to the bookshelves. I could get one arm up on top if I stood on tiptoe and hung onto the shelves with my other hand, so that’s what I did, fumbling around, finding little but dust and dead spiders. So long as I didn’t find a live one, I’d be fine. I wished I hadn’t decided to do this, but now that I was here, now that I’d started, it’d be stupid to give up. At least I’d be able to tell myself I had a look, I tried, there was nothing there, so don’t worry about it. Clambering down off the chair, I shifted it another couple of feet, blowing cobwebby dust out of my eyes and reaching up yet again. This was really stupid. Carrying on, I decided, was actually stupider than giving up.
That was when I found a Live One. I upended a shoebox and must have stuck my hand right in Shelob’s Lair, because eight repulsive feet stalked across the back of it.
Bad Faith Page 7
