Asked by Ian Fry to do another stint at the pub, Caroline – eager to see Dean and hoping today would be the day he got around to asking her out – was up before Joanna for a change. Elbow-deep in a basin of tepid water, humming the tune about a yellow bird that Ellie played them on her mother’s guitar yesterday, Caroline felt the happiest she’d been for a long time as she slapped a flannel under her arms, across her back and neck. ‘Could grow potatoes there,’ an expression of her father’s between fresh applications of soap, made her scrub harder. The padded linoleum of Dora’s bathroom was sodden, despite the cork bath mat she stood on. She wiped away condensation with the back of her arm and scrutinised her face in the mirror. Found she rather liked the fine spray of freckles that had blossomed on her cheeks. She wasn’t too bad, she decided; better yet if she kept her mouth closed. At least her nose was straight and her eyebrows neat, certainly not like the vicar’s – those were like the tails of the foxes Mrs Hooper fed scraps to. But it didn’t matter what she believed about herself any more. A bright thought skidded into her head: nothing mattered now she knew Dean loved her, and soon they were going to be together. Forever.
Running the cold tap, she splashed her face and wondered if she should cut her fringe as Dean suggested. Reaching this crossroads in her life – no longer the cute little kid her sister still was, but not a fully-fledged woman either – Caroline knew, despite Dean wanting her to be his girlfriend, she wasn’t nearly pretty or interesting enough to join the realm of grown-ups proper. Cutting her fringe might help make her look older, she decided, repositioning the red Alice band Dean said complemented her hair – hair that up to then had only ever been referred to as ordinary brown . She would do it tonight, when Joanna and Dora were asleep: she would do it to please Dean.
Sounds of Dora moving around downstairs. Dropping things on purpose, as if to communicate how busy she was, how much hard work looking after them both for the summer was. Hunting for the nice lavender talc Dora said she could use, Caroline scraped what passed for a fingernail over the grey tide of scum inside the bath she and Joanna were reluctant to sit in. It fell away in flakes like dry skin, and she rewashed her hands, sniffing to check they didn’t smell. Perhaps the talcum powder was on the windowsill, she thought, as she dried herself on a towel. She tugged the chintzy Austrian blind up an inch, careful not to touch the dust-thick pleats, but the state of the windowsill – a graveyard of candied bluebottles – made her drop it again. God, this place was disgusting. The fancy soaps and luxury toilet paper pulled under the crocheted skirts of a round-faced dolly didn’t fool her; Caroline reckoned she’d used cleaner public conveniences.
The hum of the vacuum cleaner propelled her into action, but before she could put on her T-shirt, she must first fasten her bra. Hanging nonchalantly over the wicker laundry bin, she eyed it warily. These two weren’t friends. Uncomfortable with it in the same way she was with those thick pads her mother bought her once a month to put in her knickers, she picked up the bra and rubbed the cornflower-blue polyester that chafed the tender skin under her arms. She must wear it, must get used to it, even if she still didn’t have quite enough to fill the little fist-sized cups; all the girls at school had them, and she needed to show Dean she was all grown up.
Fully dressed and out on the landing, Caroline still wanted the talc. She wondered if it could be in Dora’s room and peeked around her aunt’s partially open door. Stepping inside, she was hit by the vinegary smell of unwashed feet and a vague tang of sweat that, mixed through with Dora’s signature perfume, made her wrinkle her nose on impact. It was as slovenly as the bathroom. The room was exactly as she expected it to be: half-empty mugs of cold tea, one with a bloated custard cream floating in it; dregs of red wine in smeary glasses; unwashed plates daubed with dried-on unmentionables. Clothes that had obviously been stepped out of, heaped on the floor. A pair of jumbo-sized knickers draped over a chair. It was like the bedrooms of school friends, the few she’d been invited into.
A curtain twitched at the window that wasn’t quite closed. The faded material did little to sheath the room from the greenish light pushing in from outside. Tiptoeing over, Caroline looked out on a garden cobwebbed in early mist and dew then, withdrawing into the room again, saw that the jam jar of pretty wild flowers she picked from the woods and thoughtfully arranged for Dora only yesterday had been relegated from the dusty-topped dressing table to the waste paper basket. The indifference of it hurt and, interpreting it as yet another rejection, she rifled through Dora’s ornate jewellery box for something to compensate her. A fleeting thought about the small yet beautiful things already pinched from the pub, from Mrs Hooper’s, from her aunt’s holiday home – a place crammed with so much, she’d convinced herself they’d never be missed. What’s this? She sifted a substantial pendant attached to a heavy gold chain that, once in her palm, she saw had been fashioned into a ladybird. Nice. She smiled, dropping it into her pocket, the weight distorting the shape of her cardigan as she considered the state of the bed. An opulent affair, heaped with pillows, its silk counterpane kicked into a mound at the bottom. Turning away, quietly disgusted, she noticed the convex doors of the huge lacquered wardrobe wouldn’t close over the bulge of dresses and coats. Dora’s clothes had the luxuriant feel of money, with their deep hems and silk linings, the shoes of hand-stitched leather. Not that anything was appreciated, Caroline thought judgementally, stroking a particularly vivid green blouse.
She glimpsed herself in the sliver of mirror inside the wardrobe door. Pale and slight, it was as if someone else entirely was being reflected back at her, and she rather liked her ghostly pallor and wished Dean could see her. Turning sharply, something else caught her attention: a moonstone, blue with cold and larger than a fish’s eye, fastened to the collar of a slinky-sleeved top. A brooch her complacent, lazy aunt had forgotten to remove. She drew it into the limited light for a better look, unpinned it, and dropped it into her pocket, liking the neat little click it made when it joined the fat-backed ladybird. Deciding there could be things she was missing in the bottom of the wardrobe, she crouched for a rummage. Nothing beyond the sea of mismatched footwear and brightly patterned scarves, until something far weightier than a stray shoe thumped against its panelled insides. Holding her breath, fearing she would be heard from downstairs, Caroline dragged it towards her. Hefty as a hammer in a slim leather sheath: a knife. She gasped in awe, tugging it free to inspect the frightening sharpness she needed to hold in both hands to understand its capability.
‘What you doing?’ Joanna barged into the room.
‘Shit. Jo .’ Caroline jumped, hitting her head on the wardrobe door. ‘Don’t sneak up on me like that. And keep your voice down,’ she said, and rubbed where it hurt.
‘I wanna know what you’re doing.’ Joanna’s whispered demand.
‘Look.’ Caroline beckoned her closer. ‘Look at this.’
‘Blimey. Where’d you find that?’
‘At the bottom of here,’ Caroline pointed.
‘Lemme hold it.’ Joanna jigged from foot to foot.
‘No way.’ Caroline tested the blade with the pad of her thumb.
‘Nooo .’ Joanna winced and stepped backwards. ‘Don’t do that, you’ll cut yourself.’
‘It’s sharp enough,’ Caroline agreed with a smile. ‘What’s Dora doing with a knife like this?’
‘I dunno. And I don’t care.’ Joanna persisted with her face pulling. ‘Just put it away, Carrie. Please . It’s dangerous.’
‘What’s going on up there?’ Dora bullied through the floorboards.
‘Now you’re for it,’ Joanna said gloomily, and slipped from the room.
Caroline quickly coaxed the blade back inside its brown leather casing, back under the layers of jumble, still wondering why her aunt would keep such a lethal-looking weapon, and if that black stuff trapped under the cross-guards was blood.
‘You two coming down for breakfast?’ Dora continued to pester from the bruised lighting of the hall. Her top lip – a white smear of Immac – glowed from the shadows.
‘I’m not hungry,’ Caroline lied. And with a grumbling tummy, she stood on the landing and peered into the large framed print of the pale, floating Ophelia.
‘You’re not looking at that again ,’ Joanna groaned as she jostled past and bounced downstairs.
‘Mind your own business.’ Caroline gave her sister a filthy look. ‘She’s beautiful. Can’t you see it?’
The smell of singed toast wafted up the stairs, but Caroline didn’t move, too absorbed by the painting.
‘Carrie … Carrie … ’ Dora, spoiling the moment. ‘You must be hungry. Your sister is.’
‘I’ll get something at the pub … won’t give me the trots, neither,’ Caroline mumbled, sotto voce . And abandoning Ophelia , her mind sprinted ahead to Dora’s tip of a kitchen. Let her feed Joanna: Joanna who eats everything put in front of her; keen to try new things, keen to please.
‘At least have an apple and a glass of milk before you go, I don’t want Liz thinking I don’t feed you.’ Dora, caught in a coil of light at the foot of the stairs, then disappeared into the living room to put a record on.
‘Okay,’ Caroline agreed, knowing she wouldn’t – she hated milk, the film it left behind on her tongue was enough to make her sick.
Dora, without her make-up and tied into what was once a duck-egg blue dressing gown, had woken to yet another sunny day. A damp dishcloth in one hand, she wandered aimlessly around the kitchen trying not to trip over the empty wine bottles, the abandoned shoes, wiping things at random, her eyes gritty behind their lids. Humming along to Beethoven, she watched Joanna through the partially open window. Barefoot with breadboard, following her shadow over the lawn, she scraped her breakfast scraps on to a bird table. Such a kind little thing, Dora mused, brushing blackened toast crumbs off her front. Caroline too, she supposed, although her prickly over-sensitivity – a trait Dora identified in herself – made her difficult to love. Cautious enough around Caroline before ever discovering her left-handedness, when Dora recalled the drill of Latin lessons, and how ‘left’ meant evil and unlucky, her suspicion ratcheted up a notch, and now she secretly thought of her as the sinister child .
Caroline saw Dora tip her head to the creak of floorboards as she made her way downstairs. Descending into Beethoven’s Violin Concerto – stentorian and grand – she had stopped biting her nails by the time she reached the threshold of her great-aunt’s kitchen, and was looking straight at her.
Why d’you keep a knife in the bottom of your wardrobe? Has it got something to do with your old job at the Foreign Office? Questions she didn’t have the nerve to ask fizzed like a sherbet fountain on her tongue.
‘What’s the matter with you?’ Dora, clearly unnerved by her presence, cracked open a new box of teabags. ‘I do wish you wouldn’t stare at me like that.’
‘Hello, love.’ Ian, big and burly, a duster in hand, turned when the pub door swung wide. A smouldering cigarette drooped from his bottom lip. ‘You looking for Liz?’ Dropping ash down his front, he buffed the beer pumps, making them shine like his bald pate under the pendant lighting.
A wary little nod as Caroline’s eyes wandered the Boar’s nicotine-stained interior, the length of dark, oak bar.
‘In the kitchen. We had a few stragglers; she’s only just finished breakfast.’
Missing her own breakfast, Caroline was near collapse, and happily turned her back on the bar with its wooden floors, chalkboard menus and Union Jack-draped boar’s head – a thing so real, she was convinced its eyes tagged her every move.
Liz Fry, her sleeves rolled to the elbows and singing along to Radio 1, was washing out a huge frying pan. ‘You’re early, love,’ she said when she looked up and found Caroline standing in the doorway. ‘Everything all right?’
‘Oh, yes, fine.’ Caroline salivated into what remained of the fried-bacon smells. ‘How are you?’ Caroline liked Liz; in her eyes, she was as pretty as Doris Day in films her mother sobbed through on Sunday afternoons. A twinge of remorse for pinching the pretty blue ring she found by the sink that day. It obviously belonged to Liz, and Caroline knew she shouldn’t have taken it, but at the same time, she couldn’t quite bring herself to put it back.
‘Me?’ Liz hesitated – this clearly wasn’t a question she was often asked. ‘I’m fine too, thanks for asking.’ And she turned the cold tap on so hard, water spurted high as a fountain, soaking the tiled surround. ‘You’re early, love,’ she repeated. ‘I’ve still got downstairs to vacuum.’
‘I can help,’ Caroline offered, wanting to be useful.
Liz heard this, but sensing something else, spun her head in alarm. ‘Bet you’ve not had breakfast again, have you?’
Caroline swayed her response; the detour through the woods to hide the ladybird pendant and moonstone brooch meant she’d reached the end of her reserves.
‘Come on, sit down.’ Liz steered her towards the pine-topped table, dragged out a chair. ‘I’ll sort you something.’ She dried her hands and peered inside the fridge, beyond the shelves of party food made in readiness of Ellie’s birthday tomorrow. ‘Fried eggs do you?’ she offered. Wondering, as she closed the fridge and plugged in the kettle, why Dora never appeared to feed the child.
At this small show of kindness Caroline’s voice failed, and Liz saw a ripple in her neck as she swallowed, trying to gain control. Wiping the damp frying pan with the tail of her apron, she set it against the Aga. ‘You can help me with the chickens after I’ve cleaned the bar,’ she said, her tear-shaped earrings splintering the light.
Caroline grinned into the welcome smells of sizzling lard; it was usually Joanna who helped Liz with her poultry.
‘I fetched these first thing; lovely and fresh.’ Liz, tapping egg after egg against the lip of her pan, stood aside to watch the whites harden. ‘But I’m sure they’ll have laid more by the time we get out there.’ She cut slices from a densely textured loaf and threw them into the hot fat. ‘Sweltering again today, isn’t it?’ She waved her spatula at Caroline’s cardigan. ‘You can take that off if you want.’
‘No,’ Caroline said simply, sweeping it around her like a blanket. ‘It’s all right.’ Shy of the perceived ugliness of her developing body, parting with the cardigan was unimaginable.
‘Okay, love.’ Liz, sneaking a sidelong glance at the child, understood more than she let on. She sang along with Elton John as memories of her own transition from child to woman butted up against Simon Mayo, who was now giving things away. Such an awkward time, she’d hate to live through it again, and dreaded the inevitable complications when Ellie reached puberty. At the moment her child was safe, she could live untroubled; but it wouldn’t be long, children grew up frighteningly fast. Liz struggled to grasp where the last decade had gone. Only moments ago, it seemed as though she was holding her baby girl in her arms, and now she was a thinking, speaking person, with a personality all her own.
‘You’ve got a lovely voice.’ Caroline smiled without showing her teeth.
‘You what, pet?’ Liz, miles away, remembering Ellie as a baby.
‘You’ve a lovely singing voice,’ Caroline tried again.
‘Thank you, love.’
‘Mrs Hooper says I could sing – if only I wasn’t so shy.’
‘Shyness is no good. Mrs Hooper’s right.’ Liz turned the radio down a notch.
‘Ellie says you’re brilliant on the guitar, too.’
‘Well … ’ Liz’s laugh: a spoon tinkling against a jam jar. ‘I’m a bit rusty nowadays, but I used to play in a band, when I was younger – it’s how I met Ian.’
‘That’s nice,’ Caroline said, not knowing what playing in a band meant. ‘Did you teach Dean to play the guitar?’
‘Dean ?’ Liz raised her large, round eyes from the frying pan. ‘No, not Dean,’ she said, giving the impression the idea was distasteful, before adding, ‘but I’m teaching Ellie – she’s getting good.’
‘I know – she played us a song about a yellow bird in a banana tree. Ellie’s good at everything.’
Liz heard the unwarranted bitterness in Caroline’s tone and chose to ignore it. ‘Nice hearty meal, you’re going to enjoy this,’ she said cheerily, distributing eggs and fried bread on two glazed plates.
‘Thanks ever so much,’ Caroline said, wondering who the second breakfast was for. But before there was the chance to ask, there was a draught of warm air on the back of her neck and Dean bounded in from the bar.
‘Ta for brekkie,’ he greeted his stepmother, straddling the chair opposite.
Smelling of engine oil and the popcorn sweetness of whatever it was he smoked, Dean was still in his motorbike leathers and Caroline saw how the creases of the stiffened material followed the contours of his body. It kicked off a fantasy – soon to become reality, she reminded herself – about the pair of them riding off into the sunset. She imagined the kisses he would give her. Kisses that in her dreams were tender and firm, drawing her into him like oxygen. Feeling herself colour, she pressed her fingers to her cheek, then remembering the ugly nails she didn’t want Dean to see, she shoved her hands under the table.
‘I used to bite my nails.’ Liz held the plates with the cuff of her apron and with a caution of ‘hot ,’ positioned them in front of them. ‘It’s a hard habit to break,’ she said, examining her own hands. ‘I know they look all right now, but sometimes when I’m stressed … ’ She pretended to gnaw them, making Caroline giggle and forget herself for a moment. ‘It was Ian who made me stop.’ Liz’s expression hardened as she continued her story. Caroline tracked her annoyance to Dean, who was smacking the bottom of a bottle of tomato ketchup, the redness shooting over the perfectly tasty breakfast she’d taken such care to cook. ‘Bought me Stop’n Grow, I’m sure I’ve still got some – dig it out if you like?’
‘Please,’ Caroline said, gathering her cutlery.
After a couple of mouthfuls, Dean, too warm in his leathers, shrugged free of his heavy bike jacket. ‘Aw, you’ve not cut your fringe?’ he said, as if only just noticing Caroline. ‘And there’s me –’ his bare arm, tanned below the cut-off sleeve of his Pink Floyd T-shirt, seesawed through the air – ‘thinking we was mates, that we understood one another,’ he teased and dragged his mouth south to feign disappointment.
Struck dumb, Caroline stared at him; she’d never seen a boy wear a necklace before, and liked the way it shimmered at his throat. How different Dean sounded from when she rang the pub in the dead of night: groping her way downstairs, dialling the number she knew by heart on Dora’s toffee-coloured telephone. Nine times out of ten it was Ian who picked up. And nibbling what passed for fingernails in the dark, she would listen to his crossness as he coughed his smoker’s cough. But if she was lucky it was Dean: yawning into the receiver, not half as bothered as he should have been about being woken. She knew she shouldn’t do it, making silent calls was malicious – her mother complained often enough. But she couldn’t help it, any more than she could help gawping at him now; she’d risk anything for him, it was something she decided the moment they met.
‘Dora’s got a big knife hidden at the bottom of her wardrobe,’ Caroline announced over the clatter of crockery.
‘A what ?’ Liz yelped from her position at the sink.
‘A knife … well, it’s more of a dagger, really.’ Caroline, pleased to have something to say. ‘It’s got a long metal blade and this weird writing on it … foreign … and one of them famous symbols.’ She pushed the sauce bottles aside, traced the shape of an equilateral cross on the table.
‘A swastika?’ Dean, interested in what this kid had to say. ‘Your Dora’s got a Nazi dagger? Where the hell did she get that from?’
‘She used to work at the Foreign Office, maybe she got it there.’
‘Don’t you go playing with it, will you?’ Liz exhaled her warning, mind racing – that Dora Muller was a bloody liability.
‘I wouldn’t mind cadging a snout.’ Dean restrained a burp with his hand, not sharing his knowledge that Nazi memorabilia carried a hefty price tag in certain quarters, and with the contacts he had, there were plenty he could fence it off to.
‘Yes, well, unless you’re prepared to go and ask Dora yourself, then you’ll have to forget about it, won’t you?’ Liz snapped at him in a way Caroline hadn’t heard her do to anyone, not even the most boisterous of punters. ‘You’re not to make young Carrie fetch it for you, d’you hear? I’m sure Dora didn’t mean her to find it.’
The news kicked in somewhere, it plugged the awkwardness that had dropped between them.
‘Ta, Liz. That was delicious.’ Dean mopped up the last of his egg with a corner of bread. His stepmother barely responded as she tidied the kitchen, bobbing her white-blonde head in time to the music on her radio. Caroline wondered if she was deliberately ignoring him.
Dean gave a satisfied sigh and retrieved a shallow-hinged tin from the pocket of his leathers. He flipped it open on his well-muscled thigh: cool, nonchalant, rocking on his chair in a way Caroline was always being told off for doing at school. She watched him methodically construct one of his reefers from the necessary paraphernalia. Licking the flap of Rizla paper and smoothing it into position, he guided it between his lips and reached for his lighter.
‘Oh, no. Not in here you don’t.’ Liz interjected sharply. ‘Outside with that muck, if you don’t mind.’
Dean unstuck the roll-up from his mouth. ‘Okay, okay.’ He scraped back his chair and was up on his feet, barely making eye contact with his stepmother. ‘You should definitely do it.’ He gestured to his forehead, his heart-stopping gaze dipping close to Caroline’s face, snatching the air from her lungs. ‘It’ll show off your eyes – and she’s got real pretty eyes, ain’t she, Amy?’
Amy Mortmain, with her bounce of jet-black hair, slipped unexpectedly in from the bar and swished past Caroline’s elbow. Her heels: pitter-patter against the ceramic floor tiles. Close enough to smell the tell-tale remnants of a recent cigarette, she scowled into Dean’s compliment while bestowing a small nod of recognition to Liz who, untying her pinnie, swapped her pumps for the larger wellingtons kept alongside Ellie’s little red ones by the door. Caroline may be naïve, but she was perceptive; she could tell Liz was as uncomfortable around this other girl as she was with her stepson and wanted to get away.
‘Aren’t you going to do the vacuuming?’ Caroline asked.
‘Chickens first, I’ll vacuum after.’
‘Can I come?’ Caroline, doing what she was employed to do, gathered the crockery and carried them to the sink.
‘Sure you can.’ Liz sounded pleased to have the company. ‘Dean will load the dishwasher, won’t you, Dean?’ she said, before gliding between the plastic strands of the fly screen and into the pub garden.
‘Yeah, course.’ Dean grimaced and folded his tin away into a pocket. ‘See you later,’ he chuckled to Caroline as she scurried outside. ‘I’m down for the lunchtime shift too – we’re gonna have a right larf.’
‘You shouldn’t encourage her, y’know,’ Amy hissed when Caroline and Liz were out of earshot. ‘Can’t you tell she’s nuts about you?’
‘You’re jealous.’ Dean, playful, sidled up and nuzzled into her.
Amy giggled as Dean’s bristles tickled her cheek. ‘I’m only saying.’ She put an arm about his waist, pushed the stub of her thumb into the belt of his jeans in a way she knew he liked. ‘I don’t think she’s all there.’
‘Aw, come on. She’s only a kid.’ Dean skimmed his lips over her neck.
‘Yeah, but a kid who’s desperate to be a woman, and dangerous because of it.’
Too busy to answer: Dean’s hand, a mind of its own, was under her crop-top, caressing her breasts, making Amy arch under him. His love for this girl had pulled his heart as wide as a sail. She didn’t know it, but for the first time since his mother died, Dean was happy; happy to let the soft, warm breeze of Amy Mortmain blow him along. And on this sea of bliss, riding the waves that made his insides soar whenever they touched, he couldn’t help but extend his joy to others: to his stepmother, to the Boar’s regulars, to the orphan-eyed and awkward Caroline Jameson – by paying her attention and flattering her in a way he would never ordinarily have done.
‘Don’t worry about her,’ Dean breathed through his kisses. ‘She can’t trouble us.’
‘Who’s that girl?’ Caroline asked Liz as she shook out sawdust for the chickens. All glossy and confident, with curves like the women in films – Caroline hated her on sight.
Liz stood up to brush her jeans, pressed a hand to her perspiring forehead. ‘That’s Amy. She’s the vicar’s daughter.’
‘Oh, right.’ Caroline knew all she needed to know about the vicar. ‘I don’t like him much,’ she said, and shook his image away. ‘He stares at me and Joanna all funny.’
Liz laughed. ‘You’re a one, you are.’
‘Am I?’ Caroline fiddled with the straps on her dungarees. ‘How d’you mean?’
‘You aren’t afraid to say it how it is,’ Liz answered, ripping open a sack of poultry feed. ‘And that’s refreshing, especially round here.’ She passed Caroline a heaped scoop of grain. ‘Scatter that – they’ll soon come running.’
And sure enough, from beneath the shady fringes of rhododendrons and wooden henhouses came every variant of fowl. Jerky in feathery jackets, they clucked and hooted into the filmy heat and damp sawdust smell.
‘Isn’t Jo with you?’ Ellie, appearing from nowhere, scattered her mother’s plumy friends.
‘She’s having a piano lesson,’ Caroline answered.
‘Oh.’ Ellie looked at her feet that were waiting for the brand-new roller stakes she’d been promised for her birthday. ‘I’ll see her later, then.’ And spinning round, she skipped away.
Liz decoded the disappointment on Caroline’s face. ‘It’s only because they’re closer in age. She’s shy with you, that’s all – what with you being so grown up. Here, you can help me carry the eggs if you like. Look—’ Liz held out her hands. ‘We’ve got all these.’
Caroline smiled into the compensation Liz forced through her eyes. Silvery and alert, she compared this woman to her sluggish, pale-faced mother, and wished she could swap her city life for one here at the pub. A momentary lapse in concentration and she dropped an egg on her foot. The sickening crack and slide of yellow yolk over her toes, and she began crying out of all proportion.
‘Aw, now. Now .’ Liz looped an arm around her. ‘You don’t need to get so upset over a little thing like that, I’m not angry with you. What a funny little thing you are.’ Liz ruffled Caroline’s hair. ‘Come on, let’s get a drink, eh? The sun’s getting to you.’