by Phoebe Locke
The ride starts, their elephant coasting gently down towards the ground before beginning its journey up. Amber laughs her strange, flat laugh. She takes photos: of the crowd below, of the skyline ahead, of the two of them together, her face close to Greta’s again. After a couple of rotations, she grows bored, her phone slipping into her lap. Instead she looks out, a hand, with its new purple acrylic nails, clutching the grey edge of the carriage. She smells of perfume and fake tan and something metallic.
Greta looks out at the park too. Endless buggies and mouse-eared balloons, the organ music that drifts up to them carrying with it laughter and wheedling child voices; a smell of burnt sugar and suncream. She thinks again of Tivoli, with its bronzes and its blues and reds, the sharp-edged air and the mechanical chug of the rides. And she thinks of her brother in his buggy, a fat fist pressed against his cheek as he slept. Now he is tall and wiry and far away.
‘You’re difficult to read,’ Amber says, conversationally. ‘I never really know what you’re thinking.’
‘Yes, I’ve been told that before.’
Amber glances at her. ‘I like that about you.’
Greta watches a man hoist his small daughter on to his shoulders so she can watch as Cinderella passes. It occurs to her that people in the park may recognise Amber, even without a camera trailing after her. She thinks of the way the old man forced his way past her and Luca earlier in the week, his finger right up close to Amber’s face. Devil child. Devil. Leave this place.
The ride slows, the music stops. They drift down to the boarding platform and the bar on their carriage is released by an attendant. Amber looks at Greta.
‘Let’s go and get a drink,’ she says.
They sit outside one of the restaurants beside the lake, two misty glasses of beer and a plastic basket of fries on the table between them. Greta leans a cheek against her shoulder, the skin there hot and taut. Burnt, after days of being so careful. She edges her chair further into the shade and glances at her watch.
‘This time tomorrow, we’ll be in London,’ she says.
Amber reaches out and takes a chip, trails it through a pool of ketchup on the wax paper. ‘Yeah,’ she says. ‘I guess we will.’
‘Do you have friends there?’
Amber shrugs. ‘Yeah. People . . . I don’t know. I know people.’
‘Are most of your friends still at home?’
‘No. Most of them went to uni. Jenna’s at home, though – like that’s a surprise.’
Greta takes a sip of her beer, the fizz electric on her tongue. ‘And will you go and study now?’
‘I dunno.’ Amber’s phone buzzes with yet another notification and she glances at the screen. She shifts in her chair and then fixes her gaze on Greta again. ‘What will you do after this is over?’
Greta looks away, out at the lake. Her nose is burnt too. ‘I’m not sure. It will take us a while to finish this project. To put it together.’
‘What happened to the other kids?’
Greta looks back at her. ‘Which other kids?’
‘From My Parents Are Murderers. What happened to them after the film came out?’
Greta thinks of the three of them: Otis, Danny, Hayley. Hayley used to call her all the time, at least once a week, her voice husky and shy. The boys would send messages sometimes, or write, at first at least. A card at Christmas from Otis and then from Otis and his wife and then, the final one, a third name, a baby.
‘They still live in Texas, I think,’ she says. ‘I think they try to keep things normal. They’re happy.’
‘They’re famous.’ Amber twists her beer on its paper mat. ‘You think people still recognise them in the street and stuff?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe. But . . .’ She trails off; drinks more beer in the hope of pushing the sentence back down.
Amber raises an eyebrow. ‘Yeah, I know. It’s different, right? They didn’t do anything wrong. They didn’t kill anyone.’
‘That’s not what I was going to say.’ (It is.)
‘It’s all right, Greta.’ Amber sinks back in her chair, tilts her face up to the sun. ‘I can look after myself,’ she says, eyes closed.
Greta watches the big steamboat waddle across the water, two gangly-limbed kids on its deck waving furiously. She thinks of Otis and Danny again, the Miller boys. Fifteen and thirteen, that first day on set, eyes hard and distrusting. Hayley with her soft small mouth and the ratty twists of her hair, ends all soggy where she sucked them constantly, her feet in their scuffed white sandals edging always back and forth. Her damp hand always seeking Danny’s – and then, a week in, always Greta’s.
‘So, you like Tom then?’ Amber asks. A solitary wisp of cloud slips harmlessly beneath the sun.
‘What?’
Amber rolls her head lazily to the left, eyes sliding open with a smile. ‘Oh, come on. You lurve him.’
She thinks of Danny Miller, leaning close to her on the back step of his family’s house, a smudge of chocolate at the corner of his mouth, his tongue working at a wobbly tooth. You’re real pretty, Greta. Otis and his wife. Hayley, sucking a twist of hair.
‘Don’t worry about it,’ Amber says. ‘He likes you too. I can tell.’
17
2016
After they had sex for the second time, he fell asleep. Amber gently lifted herself into a sitting position and watched him. He had his arm thrown up over his eyes (often he slept with his face covered in some way) but she traced the curve of his jaw, dark with stubble, and then the fainter lines which fanned out from the corners of his mouth and nose. They gave her a strange, tumbling feeling in her belly. He was ageing. A man. It was hot.
She didn’t actually know how old he was. She’d asked him a couple of times; he always seemed to find a way to avoid answering. He’d say: Age is just a number, baby or You’re as young as the woman you feel, Peachy and he’d say these things in a cheesy, pervy uncle voice and then kiss her, in a twin effort to end the questioning. It wasn’t that she cared. He was at least thirty, maybe closer to forty, but she didn’t mind. It was a bit weird when she thought that he could be older than her dad, though Miles looked young, younger than he was, even considering he was only four years older than Amber was now when she was born. Sometimes, lying awake at night, she tried to imagine herself holding a baby four years from now. It was too alien, she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t believe Miles had – and alone. Alone and studying for a degree at the same time. It was incomprehensible to her. He had given up his whole life to look after her, and she had spent her whole childhood feeling lucky, feeling relieved. But now that she was old enough to understand what the world had to offer someone – what he had given up – she only felt guilty. That was why she kept smiling and agreeing to his lame ideas, why she never missed a curfew, never let him realise when she was drunk. That was why she tried to make his life easy.
At least now he had the thing he had been waiting for all along: Sadie. She couldn’t hold him back from that.
And now she had Leo.
She had met him a couple of weeks before, at the club in a neighbouring town where nobody cared about ID if you showed some skin and turned up early enough. The cheap sign outside (Comic Sans) said ‘The Box’ but it was known locally – universally – as The Pox. It had sticky carpets and woodchip walls, and a balcony ran around the dance floor so that there was always a good chance someone slumped against it up there might drop a bottle on your head. But the prices were low and the music all right, and there were usually at least a couple of sixth-form boys hanging around. On this particular evening, though, the club had been fairly empty. That was OK; she had had Mica and Jenna with her, and they’d drunk a bottle of wine as they walked there and then a couple of shots at the bar and so they’d danced and messed around on the tacky pole at the centre of the dance floor.
She’d realised he was watching her in the mirrored walls. Sitting at a table alone, a bottle of beer in front of him, a plain blue shirt open at the collar. He s
aw her looking and so she smiled, Jenna bumbling drunkenly into her.
Later, he came up behind her and put a hand on her back. Taller than he’d seemed at the table, his body long and lean. ‘Can I buy you a drink?’
At the bar, she held the vodka and Coke he bought her and she let him type his number into her phone and press ‘Call’. ‘Can I take you out some time?’ he asked, and she smiled in a way that said ‘Maybe’. At the end of the night, she let him queue up for her coat and then she let him kiss her, Mica and Jenna giggling on a sofa behind them. And then he disappeared into the crowd and she didn’t hear from him again until a week or so later, when he called her out of the blue and asked her to meet him for dinner.
It wasn’t as if she hadn’t been on dates before – though she wasn’t sure if a Saturday afternoon trip to the cinema with Mica’s cousin counted. It wasn’t even as if it had been her first time going further either, although admittedly it was different when you weren’t cramped in the bathroom at a party or trying to find a secluded spot in the park with your friends sniggering over at the swings. She’d been worried that she would feel out of her depth with him; that she wouldn’t have the power she did over boys her own age. It frightened her and yet somehow she was surprised to find herself doing it anyway.
He was hardly the perfect boyfriend. She got the impression often that he wasn’t listening to her, that his mind was elsewhere – until, of course, she removed her clothes and then his eyes were fixed on her, their cool blue gaze unflinching. He forgot or didn’t bother to reply to messages, rolled his eyes when she mentioned Facebook or Snapchat or Instagram. Rolled his eyes often, in fact, at most things she said – once even pressing a finger to her lips so that she was shocked into silence. But she liked him. He hardly seemed to sleep, and though he was bad at messaging he liked to call, liked to talk in whispers though only she had people at home to hear her. She liked to watch him move – the smooth way he went from room to room, his steps even and light, and the unexpectedly delicate way he ran his fingers over her skin. The way he picked through his food so slowly, slithers of meat nipped out with chopsticks and delivered into his thin-lipped mouth. And best of all, the fact he had his own flat – a small, soulless place, yes, but a place where Amber could be in charge again.
He turned on to his side beside her, the sheet slipping down over his pale skin, his long, slender torso. She slid a hand under the pillow carefully and retrieved her phone. A message from Billie: How’s it going? Did you wear the new top? I’ve eaten a whole tub of Phish Food watching all three Toy Story DVDs J Amber wrinkled her face. So lame. Billie was cute with it, though, and Amber liked having her as a sort of apprentice. She liked the way Billie hung off her every word without yet seeming to feel the fear Jenna did around Amber. Sure, Jenna did her best to hide it, but it was always there, under the surface. Amber scared her, and she didn’t enjoy it like she used to. Especially now that her other friends seemed to be distancing themselves too.
Who can blame them? she thought bitterly. Your mother hears voices and you may or may not be cursed. Super appealing BFF material.
A message from Jenna popped up then, as if Amber had summoned her. Do u want to borrow my black dress this wkend? xxxx
On second thoughts, maybe being slightly scary did have its benefits. It was definitely better than the way she felt around Mica and Alisdair now. Better to be someone to be scared of than someone to feel sorry for.
There was a text from Miles, too, asking what time she’d be home. He’d stopped doing that so much since Sadie had turned up – not because he didn’t care, or at least she didn’t think so. Even though Amber knew she was the third wheel now, in the way of their grand romantic reunion, Miles had gone out of his way to do little things to reassure her. Taking her for hot chocolate and a muffin on a Sunday morning, the way he always had. Saving certain sections of the paper for her while he read the rest. Asking her to chop the vegetables for a stir-fry, because she did it better than he did. All of these routines and traditions that they’d saved up over the years, all the things that had made them – the two of them – a family. And yet he had also managed to leave space for Sadie to try and claim some part of things for her own. Suggesting that she and Amber walk together to pick up some mysteriously forgotten ingredient for dinner. Busying himself with work so that Sadie was the one available for lifts and pick-ups. He’d gone out of his way to make sure everyone felt at home, that everyone had a role and a place. Even though it was quite clear that they – Miles and Amber – already had all of the roles covered, he had tried.
So, no, it wasn’t exactly that he didn’t want her around. It was just, she’d realised, that he worried less. When Sadie had been gone, the idea that Amber might disappear had been the single worst thing that could happen to Miles – and it had probably seemed all too possible, too, given his wife had gotten up and walked out in the middle of the night, without leaving so much as a note. But then Sadie had come home again, and Miles had been free to be his optimistic, glass-half-full self around the clock, instead of being seized with anxiety whenever any kind of possible crisis even suggested itself. And even though she wasn’t as confident as he was that Sadie would stay, Amber wouldn’t be the one to take that security away from him.
She typed a quick reply to him – Before midnight, promise xxx – and wondered if she’d get away with that blatant flaunting of her 11 p.m. curfew. It would depend on whether or not Sadie had persuaded him to share a bottle of wine.
Leo stirred again beside her, starting to wake properly now, so she slid down the bed and turned on to her side so that they were face to face. His eyes fluttered open and she smiled at him sleepily.
‘What time is it?’ he said, and it was totally gross but his hot breath felt so great on her face.
‘Nine,’ she said. ‘I have to go soon.’
He pouted and pulled her closer. ‘Nope.’
‘Yep.’ She snuggled into him though she knew she’d get up in a second. She would get home early, make Miles happy. She’d have to tell Leo she was meeting a friend; going for drinks; coursework – whatever tripped its way to her tongue most naturally.
He ran a hand right down her side, shoulder to knee and then up again, put his face close to hers.
‘You’re amazing,’ he whispered, words warm against her neck. ‘Special.’
And she almost felt sorry for him.
The light clicked off in the hall, footsteps slinking past the door. Sadie hugged the unfamiliar pillow to her chest. Helen and Marie’s parents were finally going to bed. Justine reached over and gripped her hand, her sleeping bag shushing them even as she spoke.
‘It’s almost time,’ she said, her breath warm and sweet in the dark. ‘You ready?’
‘Yes,’ Sadie said. The darkness didn’t scare her. She knew he wouldn’t visit her here, not with all of them together. The Tall Man had his special girls and his time with them was special too, it was not to be shared. He sought them out when the moment was right, when they were alone. She and Justine both knew this. It wasn’t their fault if the others weren’t ready for him yet.
She felt under her pillow for her torch. ‘What if we get caught?’ Helen whispered.
Marie was already up, carefully packing things into her backpack. ‘We won’t get caught if you keep quiet, numpty. Stop breathing so loudly.’
‘I can’t control my breathing, Marie. Why are you so mean?’
‘Shut up.’ Justine pulled a sweatshirt over her head. ‘This is important, guys. We have to do it right.’
‘If we get caught, we’re going to get in so much trouble.’ But Helen was out of bed too, pulling thick socks over her pyjama bottoms.
‘We won’t get caught,’ Sadie said. She knew they wouldn’t. He would keep them safe.
They opened the door and sat close together beside it, listening. There was the creak of the mattress and then silence. Marie poked Helen in the ribs. ‘You’re still doing it,’ she hissed, but Sadie couldn�
��t hear Helen breathing. She could only hear the thud of her own pulse.
It seemed to take for ever until they heard the rumble of Helen and Marie’s dad snoring. Marie stood up. ‘OK, let’s go.’ She led the way into the hallway and down the stairs, showing them which step halfway down creaked, Helen almost stumbling as she tried to avoid it. Sadie felt something bubbling up in her like laughter. An urge to scream or sing, to run out of the door and spin around under the black night sky. They were actually doing it. They were going to the woods to find him.
The streets looked different in the dark. The houses sleeping, cars silent in drives. They stole down the side of the estate and on to the footpath that led across the fields and towards the river, the woods. Once they were in the shelter of the trees, they turned on their torches and Sadie felt she could breathe again.
‘Tell us again what we have to do, Justine.’ Helen hurried to keep up with them. She had had to put on her school shoes and her fluffy slipper socks bulged out of them, her dad’s sweatshirt hanging down over her pyjamas. She looked like a child and Sadie was embarrassed for her. ‘Will it definitely work?’ She sounded breathless though Sadie couldn’t tell if it was excitement or fear or asthma.
‘It’ll work,’ Marie said, smiling at Justine. ‘The boy who lives next door to Justine’s nan told us about it.’
Sadie had seen the boy before. Sandy blond hair and freckles, shell-suit trousers and filthy T-shirts. Sometimes when they went round to call for Justine he would watch them from a window. She hated that house anyway, with its dusty yellow net curtains, the smell of cabbage that always flooded out when Justine’s nan opened the door. Helen had told her that Justine had to live there because her mum was in prison, but Helen often got stories wrong and so it was not always a good idea to listen to her.
