by Emlyn Rees
I turn to face Joe, amazed at how thick-skinned he is. ‘I don’t think we’ll be seeing much more of Fred,’ I say cautiously. ‘You know that he’s getting married tomorrow?’
Joe frowns. ‘To that woman?’
I nod.
‘She’s horrible.’ He screws up his nose.
‘Well, Joe, we don’t know that,’ I say reasonably. ‘And whether she’s horrible or not doesn’t matter. Fred loves her.’
‘I don’t see how –’
‘It’s not up for debate,’ I say shakily. ‘The thing is that Fred’s got a new life now. One that doesn’t involve us.’
‘Oh.’ Joe sounds crestfallen as this finally sinks in.
He puts the penknife down and seems to shrink as he puts his hands in his pockets and, for a moment, I hate Fred. I hate him for coming into our lives and then vanishing again. I hate him for making me feel like such a fool. And I hate him for letting Joe down. I knew all along he was dangerous, yet here I am floundering once more, scuppered on the same rocky emotions, only the second time around it feels much, much worse. I’m responsible for shipwrecking myself and Joe this time.
I turn away to the sink, looking up, so that my tears don’t fall. Joe doesn’t take the hint. I hear him coming up behind me.
‘Mum?’ he asks. ‘Would you get married again?’
I turn back round and attempt to smile. ‘What a ridiculous question,’ I bluff, but Joe’s not put off.
‘Would you?’
‘Well, nobody’s asked me, Joe. You can’t just decide to get married. You have to find someone to get married to.’
‘But say there was someone. Someone like Fred …’
I swallow hard. ‘I don’t know. It would change everything. I mean, we’re all right as we are, aren’t we?’
To my surprise, Joe smiles sympathetically at me and it’s obvious that it’s useless trying to hide how I feel from him. He walks towards me, looking so confident and wise that I feel like crumpling, as if I’m the child and he’s the grown-up.
‘I wouldn’t mind, you know,’ he says, giving me a hug. I lower my lips to the crown of his head as he rests his cheek against the front of my jumper. ‘I just want you to be happy, Mum, that’s all.’
I want to reply that I am, except that I can’t because my tears are falling into his hair.
My heart felt as if it were going to burst. I didn’t care that it was cold, or dusty, or that we were on the hard ground. As far as I was concerned this was the most perfect place in the world and we were floating on the softest feather mattress. As Fred lay gently on top of me and I wrapped my arms round his neck, overwhelming relief flooded through me and I closed my eyes for a second, savouring the feeling of being safe, of being held by the one person who meant more than everything. I was here, finally, and nothing else mattered.
I’d spent so long imagining this moment, but now that it was here, it was nothing like the picture I’d had in my mind. I’d been terrified that my plan to meet Fred wasn’t going to work out, that I’d get caught on the way out of Rushton, that Pippa wouldn’t be a safe alibi, or that Fred wouldn’t be able to get out to meet me.
Then there’d been the problem of what it’d be like when we saw each other. I’d been worried that I wouldn’t know what to say, never having been near someone whose dad had died. I’d thought in my worst moments that Fred would be distant and cold, that maybe he’d have gone off me, or simply withdrawn and wouldn’t want to be close. But now all my fears seemed ridiculous in retrospect and the angst I’d felt for the past few weeks lifted off me.
I’d been going out my head worrying about Fred. All I needed to know was where he was. I’d guessed Louisa would probably have sent him back to school and I longed to know that he was all right. Without being able to talk to him, Miles’s death had seemed a thousand times worse. Every emotion I felt seemed to be multiplied by two, as if I were experiencing the shock, anger and fear for Fred, too. In his absence I’d felt each remark from people at my school and the outrage of my parents like a body blow, as if Miles had been my father and it’d all been personally directed at me. Now that we’d talked about it, I felt as if I’d come off the tightrope I’d been teetering on and fallen down into a safety net. It didn’t make things normal, but at least in telling Fred what had happened, the facts – however horrific – had lost some of their terrifying edge.
The rumours that Miles was a murderer had made living at home terrible. It hadn’t seemed to matter that there’d been a horrific death on our doorstep. All people had been concerned about was the discovery of a body at Clan. In an attempt to come to terms with having known and lived in proximity to someone who could have done such a terrible thing as murder, Miles’s supposed crime had become more brutal than even the newspapers would have had us believe and his victim, an unknown stranger, had been endowed with more fictitious qualities than he could ever have possessed in reality.
The thing I hated most was the way everyone had taken Miles’s death as an opportunity to plump up their own egos, to prove how non-murderous, non-cowardly and non-deceitful they were compared with him. Scott had told me that in the Gordon Arms, people had avoided the seat that Miles had used to sit in. They’d talked in whispers, embellishing the times that they, themselves, had got an inkling of his violent, uncontrollable temper. Instead of remembering his good qualities and – however sporadically – that he’d been a member of our community, everyone had taken to talking about him as an outcast, a bad sort who, with his flash car and fashionable clothes, had never fitted in. Even Louisa’s Bible meetings were now seen as a superstitious plan to notch up celestial Brownie points in her attempt to protect herself against her tyrannical husband.
I’d felt sorry for Miles and it had seemed as if I was the only person in the whole world who mourned for him. I’d seen with my own eyes how scared he’d been, how he’d nearly outwitted the police. I’d wanted nothing more than for him to come back and stick up for himself, and tell the inhabitants of Rushton to go to hell. Loops of sagging police tape still hung around the charred oak tree at the bottom of the Avenue where Miles had crashed, and every time I’d passed I’d wanted to cry. I’d never known anyone who’d died before and my dreams had been haunted by the sight of his Porsche, crumpling like tin foil against the solid tree. The smell of burning had seemed to be inside my nostrils and I’d felt on edge the whole time. Every day I’d woken up panicked that the feeling of being alive would drain away from me at any moment if I wasn’t vigilant enough.
Whether Louisa felt the shame her old neighbours assumed she must I didn’t know. All I’d seen was that the house next door had gone up for sale. The place that had once been my home from home had taken on a deserted, ghostly aura; a place that kids in the village now told spook stories about, and dared each other to run up to the windows. I’d woken up a few days previously to discover that someone had spray-painted the word ‘murderer’ on the front porch and I’d felt outraged, as if I’d personally been tattooed in my sleep.
But worse than all of this, for me, had been that in the aftermath of Miles’s death, Fred had never been mentioned. He hadn’t fitted conveniently into the scandalous saga of Miles’s demise, the popular myth which had been talked about so much, that it’d been moulded and carved into a thing, almost as tangible as a totem pole. Fred had been lopped off the side, as if he hadn’t belonged to the story.
If that hadn’t been bad enough, the reality that Fred and I had ever been together had vanished overnight. My parents, who’d never really acknowledged the feelings I’d had for Fred, now blankly denied that there’d ever been any. Even at school, Fred and I – the ‘us’ that everyone had previously been so interested in – had become erased by the ‘them’ – the scandalous Ropers.
That was why, since I’d seen Miles crash in the car, I’d needed to show Fred that I still loved him. I’d needed to tell him that I didn’t judge him, that to me he was still my Fred, whatever had happened. But above all, I’d
needed to be physical with him. I’d felt so contact-starved, so in need of a hug, that now, as we lay on the ground, I was insatiable.
Fred’s face flickered in the shadows. ‘Am I squashing you?’ he whispered, shifting to take more weight on his elbows.
‘No,’ I whispered back, wrapping my legs round his as tightly as I could. ‘I want all of you.’
‘I want you too …’ he murmured.
I pulled back, holding his face in my hands, his nose almost touching mine. ‘Fred … I want to do it …’
Fred looked startled for a moment. ‘Are you sure? I mean, don’t you want to wait?’
I pulled away from him, to get a better look at his face, worried that he didn’t share my feelings. ‘Wait until when?’ I asked.
Fred looked deep into my eyes, stroking my hair. ‘Oh, Mickey?’ He sighed. ‘Everything we planned …’
‘It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. Only now,’ I whispered, nuzzling my face into his neck, letting my nostrils delight in the smell of his skin. ‘I don’t want to wait any longer. Do you?’
‘Of course I don’t. God, Mickey –’ he said, reaching round to hold me even tighter. I closed my eyes, feeling my body respond to his, as we started kissing again. I eased his jumper up, as we rolled on to our sides until Fred pulled away, smiling.
‘We’ve got too many clothes on,’ he panted.
‘I know.’ I giggled. ‘I’ll race you.’
Frantically we knelt up, ripping off our clothes, flinging them away from us. I could feel the chill air on my skin, but inside I was burning up. Naked, we knelt up opposite each other.
Fred’s face was soft in the candlelight, his skin pale, almost luminous. ‘Look at you …’ He sighed, his hand reaching out to stroke my breast.
I couldn’t believe how amazing he looked naked. I’d known his body all my life, but now it was like seeing him as a real man for the first time. I reached out and touched the firm muscles in his arms, letting my eyes roam over the smooth skin on his hard stomach.
Any embarrassment I thought I’d feel simply wasn’t there. Instead, it felt as if we were the only people on the whole planet, as if what we were doing had never been done before. Kneeling before Fred, under the angels, I felt impossibly romantic, overwhelmingly primeval. This was nothing like anyone had ever described at school. This wasn’t like I’d even imagined it to be on holiday in France in a sleeping bag. ‘You’re gorgeous,’ I whispered. ‘Oh, Fred, Fred, I’ve missed you so much.’
He silenced me with a kiss and we pressed our bodies together, kissing each other’s skin, our fingers exploring, tentatively at first, then with more confidence as our bodies found each other. Fred wrapped his arms round me and laid me back down, and planted kisses on every inch of my skin. I arched towards him, my fingers grabbing his hair.
‘You’re beautiful, Mickey,’ he murmured, between kisses.
Eventually, I pulled him up towards me and we stared into each other’s eyes. My heart was pounding more than ever.
‘Will you love me in the morning, Fred Roper?’ I asked with a smile.
‘I’ll love you in the morning and every morning for the rest of your life. Whatever happens, I’ll always be yours, Mickey, I swear it.’
Then I felt him press against me and into me. My eyes opened. ‘I love you, I love you, I love you,’ I sobbed repeatedly, kissing his face.
‘You’re perfect,’ he gasped. ‘Oh, Mickey –’
‘Roper!’
The gruff sound of a man’s angry voice fell like an axe blow. Yelping, I jerked my head away, protecting my face from the unrelenting beam of light, freezing like a convict on a fence. I felt Fred rip away from me as, frantically, he grabbed the dust sheets and pulled them round us.
‘I told you,’ I heard another voice say, laughing.
‘Clarkson!’ said Fred.
I squinted over the top of the sheet and saw a boy with a long dark fringe, folding his arms and leaning on the doorway.
‘That’s enough, Phillip,’ said an older man, as he patted Clarkson on the shoulder. Clarkson pointed his finger at Fred, a horrible taunting expression on his face, before pulling himself away and sloping back out of the door, flicking his fingers through his fringe.
I curled up in a ball, as the older man spoke again. ‘Make yourself decent, Roper,’ he told Fred. ‘I’ll see you and your … friend … outside. Immediately.’
The door slammed behind him and the draft blew out half our candles.
Fred’s face was a mask of anguish. He clawed at his hair as he knelt up. ‘Oh, God.’
I sat up and scrambled for my clothes. I felt humiliation freeze me to my bones and my teeth started chattering.
‘Oh, Mickey,’ Fred said desperately. ‘I’m so sorry. I’m so fucking sorry.’
‘Is there another way out of here?’ I asked, frantically pulling on my pedal pushers. ‘Surely –’
‘No. That’s the only door. We’re trapped.’
I stared at him as we got dressed, biting my lips together, feeling the intimacy we’d shared only moments ago shatter and evaporate into the cloud of dust around us. My knees were shaking as I pulled on my trainers, my body still in shock. Without saying anything, I watched as Fred stamped out the candles angrily before holding out his hand to pull me up. He stood for a moment, squeezing my hand in the darkness, neither of us able to find words. I closed my eyes, wishing I could beam us away, but it was too late.
The door opened again and the torch filled the room with cold light. ‘Come on. Get on with it,’ commanded the older man, who was obviously a teacher. I stumbled after Fred into the sterile light that lead us to the door and to our fate.
The journey back to the boarding house was horrible. The housemaster, who told me his name was Mr Pearce, had his car parked on the driveway near the gate. There was another master waiting there. Fred was told to get into the other master’s car and then I was told to get into the back of Mr Pearce’s car with Clarkson. I shrank away from him into the corner of the seat as the car crept along the gravel drive towards the school buildings, feeling his stare boring into me.
The school was much bigger than I’d imagined and looked eerily dark. A large clock in a tower above the imposing entrance chimed midnight as the two cars came to a halt on the edge of the drive.
Mr Pearce got out and opened the door next to me, but I sat, rigid, not daring to move. ‘Come on,’ he said.
Without looking at him, I stepped out on to the drive.
I could hear the other car stop and looked up to see Fred getting out of the passenger seat. His eyes locked with mine, but we couldn’t speak as he walked towards me.
‘We’ll go to my house, Jerry,’ Mr Pearce said to the other master, who nodded.
Clarkson slammed the passenger door and came round the back of Mr Pearce’s car, as Fred and the other master walked towards us. ‘I’m impressed, Roper,’ he said to Fred, before whistling through his teeth. ‘She’s not bad –’
Fred let out a guttural yell, lunging at Clarkson, his fists raised.
‘Whoa! Big fella.’ Clarkson laughed, ducking out of the way, mimicking Fred’s flailing fists as Fred was pulled back by the other master.
‘I’ll kill you!’ snarled Fred, as the master yanked him away, pulling angrily at the shoulder of his jumper.
‘Tut, tut,’ sneered Clarkson. ‘I’d have thought what happened to your father would have put you off that sort of thing.’
‘Enough!’ said Mr Pearce to Clarkson. ‘That will be all. Now go to your room.’
Clarkson smiled and winked at me, before walking off to the large building, putting his hands casually in his pockets as he whistled. I could see Fred shaking as he watched him go and I felt my pulse racing. I wanted to pound Clarkson into the ground.
‘Let’s go and sort this out,’ said Mr Pearce, nodding his head towards the other master who stood close to Fred. For a second, I contemplated making a run for it and I knew that Fred would follow, but Mr Pear
ce seemed to read my thoughts and steered me towards the door of a large house.
Desperately, I looked over my shoulder at Fred, biting back my tears.
I followed Mr Pearce through the front door into a warm, panelled hallway. There was a large wooden rack with umbrellas and coats, and several pairs of boots. A Labrador raised its head sleepily from where it was lying on a rug at the bottom of the stairs.
‘If you’ll come this way …’ Mr Pearce said firmly, leading me by the elbow towards a door on the left. He opened it and directed me into a small study.
‘But –’ I said, as I realised Fred wasn’t following.
Mr Pearce nodded at the other housemaster who lead Fred up the hallway and before I had a chance to say anything else, Mr Pearce walked into the study after me and closed the door. He was tall, with a bushy brown beard and alert blue eyes, and younger than I’d thought, probably even younger than my parents. ‘You can sit down,’ he said, walking behind the large, leather-topped desk.
I stood defiantly where I was, looking around the room. Most of one wall was covered in framed photos of school sports teams, the other two in floor-to-ceiling bookcases. There was a green glass reading lamp on the large leather-topped desk, which Mr Pearce clicked on.
‘Where’s Fred going? I want to see Fred,’ I demanded, trying to stop my chin quivering as I narrowed my eyes at him.
‘I’m afraid that’s out of the question,’ he said, throwing his keys down on to the desk.
‘You can’t stop me,’ I raised my voice, choking.
Mr Pearce exhaled deeply, before fixing me with a serious stare. ‘I’m afraid I can,’ he said and I felt rage rear up in me.
‘No!’ I shouted, lunging for the door.
In a second Mr Pearce was round the desk and his arm slapped high on the door, holding it closed.
I pulled desperately at the porcelain door handle. ‘Let me go!’ I shouted. ‘Let me go!’
Mr Pearce increased his force on the door and I couldn’t make it budge. Hot, angry tears burnt down my face.
‘Please … just stop it,’ he said, pulling my shoulder. ‘It won’t do any good.’ He turned me round, held my shoulders and bent to look in my face. ‘Just calm down, OK?’
