‘Come in, if you’re coming in.’
Martha doesn’t look round from where she’s wielding her hair straighteners. She has long hair and it takes her ages. She has to do it every morning. She sets her alarm an hour early just to get ready for school. One of the things that make me glad that I’m not female. Everything takes so long. I don’t know why she does that to her hair. Mum reckons it’s bad for it, making it thin. Martha was having problems with that a while ago, around the time of her GCSEs. The doctor put it down to stress. It seems all right now, although I prefer it when she leaves it curly. So does Mum, but Martha doesn’t take any notice of us. She thinks I’m clueless and that Mum just wants her to stay a little girl.
‘Whatever it is, make it quick. I’ve still got my make-up to do and the girls will be here in a minute for pre-drinks.’ She puts down the straighteners and rummages through her make-up case.
‘I was just wondering. . .’ I wander in and start looking at stuff on her table, squaring up her books.
‘Leave it! Don’t touch! Sit!’ She orders me about as though I’m still six. There’s only a bit more than a year between us, but she acts like she’s the only one who has grown up. ‘You were wondering what?’
‘You know that girl, the one they call Caro? She’s got a tattoo here.’ I reach round and touch my shoulder. ‘Shaped like a star with squiggles in it.’
‘If you mean Vanessa Carrington, then yes, I know her. And that’s not a star. It’s a pentacle and those aren’t squiggles, they’re sigils. You’re such a dick!’
I don’t know what sigils are but I’m not about to ask her and prove I’m even more stupid and ignorant than she believes me to be. I look the word up later – an occult symbol or device supposed to have magical powers.
‘What about her?’ Martha doesn’t look at me. She is applying mascara in careful, slow, upward sweeps.
‘Well, what’s she like? I mean . . .’
‘Why do you want to know?’
‘Oh, um, me and Cal saw her in the Rendez.’
‘And?’
‘We were just . . .’ I shrug. ‘You know . . . interested.’
‘Cal? I thought he’d got a girlfriend. Insufferable Sophie.’
‘Well, yes . . .’
‘He doesn’t want another one, surely? I thought they were in lurve.’
‘They are. He thinks, anyway.’
‘So, it’s you, then. You are the one who is interested.’
‘Er, yes. I guess. I was just wondering. I mean, didn’t you two used to be friends?’
‘Long time ago. Not any more, we aren’t.’ She puts down the mascara and swings round to face me, one eye big, the other one small. The effect is disconcerting. ‘So if you were wondering do I have her number in my phone, the answer to that is . . . no. Sorry to disappoint you, little bro. Don’t even think about going there. That girl is seriously bad.’
‘Really? She looked all right to me.’
‘You can’t tell by looking, can you?’ She starts on the other eye. ‘Not what you’d be looking at, anyway. She’s a real troublemaker – involved in some pretty bad stuff.’
I’m even more intrigued, but she doesn’t go into exact details about what that ‘bad stuff’ might be. She’s keen to tell me something else. ‘She’s just been chucked out of school.’
‘Really? What for?’
‘For being an über bitch and über slag, quite apart from all her other misdemeanours, that’s what for.’
‘What’d she do?’
‘Had an affair with one of the teachers, who’s since been sacked. She’s got a thing for older guys. She’d eat you up, and not in a nice way.’ She smiles at herself in the mirror, as if that idea amuses her. She turns her head this way and that to judge how her make-up is coming together. ‘Now, how do I look?’
She stands up, shimmying her hips to release the flimsy, shiny material of her dress. She’s got good legs. Long, slender and a golden brown colour. She’s been at Mum’s fake tan again. She’s not wearing so much make-up since her skin cleared up. I like that. The natural look. Suits her better.
‘Great!’ I smile at her. Not that there is a choice, but I do mean it. ‘You look pretty good.’
‘Pretty good! Is that all you can come up with!’ She turns back at herself in the mirror. ‘I look bloody fantastic! That’s the bell. It’ll be the girls.’ She’s trying to put in earrings and get into her heels at the same time. ‘You get it. Send ’em up. I’ve got some voddy, no, you can’t have any, and don’t stare at their tits when you let them in, or any other parts of their anatomy. Girls know what you are doing and it’s embarrassing.’
It’s hard not to notice. They are dressed for going out, which means low-cut and very short, but I manage to let them in with eyes averted. They’ve been to the corner shop on their way and come in supplied with half-bottles of Smirnoff. Martha’s best buddies. Melissa, Sally and the other one, whose real name is Letitia but they call her Lee. She’s a recent addition. Part of Martha’s outreach work. She’s quiet, not as flamboyant as the others. She’s wearing ballet pumps and jeans, a white top and almost no make-up. The other two are tricked up like Pussycat Dolls.
They all go upstairs and Martha shouts down orders for glasses and ice and cranberry juice. I go to the kitchen and fetch what’s needed: a bowl of ice, tall glasses, orange juice, cranberry and Coke, in case anyone wants a different mixer. I even find the packets of nuts, crisps and corn chips left over from the barbecue last weekend and shake them out into little dishes. I stack the lot on a tray, fold a tea cloth over my arm and mount the stairs.
I’m happy to play barman and waiter. I want to know more about this Caro and if Martha won’t tell me, I’m betting one of the others will – especially after the hefty vodkas I’ll be pouring for them tonight. I consider going to get a baggie from the stash Rob kindly bequeathed to me and rolling a spliff or two, but decide against it. Might be too much with the vodka. I don’t want anyone passing out on me.
I’m not wrong. It doesn’t take them long. All I have to do is say her name and they’re off. The girls love to gossip and it seems that she has given them plenty to gossip about. Besides, they like having me around. They think I’m kind of cute, but more important than that, I’ve got male friends. That’s enough for Mel and Sal.
Mel starts. ‘Van the Maneater? She’s left our school. I thought she’d gone to yours. She missed her A levels, so she’ll have to repeat a year.’
‘I haven’t seen her about.’
Mel shrugs. ‘Haven’t heard anything from Joss and the others, come to think about it.’ A lot of girls from their school transfer to ours. ‘She’s unlikely to have slipped under their radar. Maybe she dropped out. She doesn’t like school.’
‘Excuse me.’ I pretend to be insulted. ‘Sixth form college.’
‘Same difference. Why do you want to know about her, anyway?’
‘Just interested.’
Martha gives a snort, but doesn’t interrupt.
Mel takes a quick draw on the cigarette she’s holding and blows a thin stream of smoke out into the evening air. She and Sally have lit up and are puffing out of the window. I don’t know why they bother. Smoking is a pure waste of money and they don’t even do it properly. Martha doesn’t like this. She clicks her long polished nails on the desk. She doesn’t approve of smoking and she’ll be thinking Mum will smell it. Mum’s out right now. Gone to a barbecue with Jack, her partner. Martha is worried she’ll know. She can pick up smoke of any kind. They could use her at the airport, instead of sniffer dogs. That was one of the sources of friction when Rob lived here. He was always in trouble for lighting up in the house.
‘You watch yourself with her.’ Mel takes another quick puff. ‘They don’t call her maneater for nothing. She did for Charlie at school.’
I look blank.
‘Just-call-me-Charlie Hands, the Art teacher.’
I think I know who she means. He was part-time at our school for a while. Thirty-something but going for mid-twenties. Hair receding, what there is left in a bit of a fin, beard half a centimetre longer than stubble. Thinks he’s pretty alternative. Wears combat and T-shirts to school and gets away with it because he’s an Art teacher. Normal rules don’t apply.
‘So what happened?’
‘Well, he’s been sacked and she’s been expelled. Should have got rid of her ages ago, if you ask me, after she was suspended for wagging school to go on that demo –’
‘Day of action,’ Martha corrects.
‘Whatever.’ Mel carries on, eager to continue the gossip. ‘Anyway, the Head saw her on the news wearing a riot helmet and jumping all over a police van.’
‘And what about when she sprayed anarchist signs all over the language lab wall?’ Sal adds.
‘No one proved that was her,’ Lee points out.
‘Who else is it gonna be?’ Sal sneers back. ‘Banksy?’
‘What happened with this Charlie guy?’ I ask, trying to get them back on topic. That’s the story that interests me.
‘Well . . .’ Sal leans forward, eager to share. ‘She was shagging him and – ’
‘He deserves sacking,’ Martha says, ‘and she deserves expelling. Little slag!’
‘She’s not the only one,’ Mel points out. ‘Remember that girl – what’s-her-name Bridges? Went to Goldsmiths? He was doing her for years. Still is. Goes to see her in London. Her sister told me.’
‘Why didn’t he get the sack for that?’ I ask.
Mel shrugs. ‘That time no one found out.’
‘This time?’
‘There was no hiding it,’ Mel continues. ‘There was this student teacher. Don. Gelled hair. Taught Geography. Fancied himself. He was hot for her as well. Hands totally lost it. They had a fight. A real brawl. In the dining room. Rolling about on the floor. Tables tipped up, plates flying, water jugs ditto, custard all over. The lot.’
Mel’s eyes gleam at the memory.
‘I missed it! I had netball practice.’ Sally expresses real anguish.
A fight between members of staff in the dining room? I don’t get why they dislike this girl. Members of staff fighting over her? At our place that’d be enough to make her legend.
The other one, Lee, pipes up. ‘That wasn’t how it happened,’ she says. She’s not as gobby as the others. Not shy, just contained inside herself. ‘Caro wasn’t doing anything with that student. He fancied her, that’s all.’
‘That’s not what we heard,’ Mel and Sal say together. Lee is deviating from the script, spoiling the fun.
‘Caro didn’t even fancy him. The student, I mean, and she knew Charlie out of school. They were putting on an art show.’
That sets Sal and Mel spluttering their drinks.
‘Yeah, right! Getting it on, more like!’
‘But it’s all just gossip, isn’t it? That’s the trouble with our school.’
‘So what were they fighting about, then?’ I ask Lee.
I’m intrigued by why she’s on Caro’s side while the others dislike her. She looks at me from under her lashes. She’s wary, wondering what my motive might be. I smile back, open-faced, innocent and friendly. Just chatting, that’s all. I want her to go on. I want her to tell me more.
‘The Geography student said something about her. Hands threw a jug of water over him. That’s how the fight started.’
‘And how do you know that?’ Mel looks unbelieving because it just might be the truth.
‘The other student, the one who teaches History, told me. She likes Caro. Doesn’t think it’s fair what happened to her.’
‘The dykey one who wears a Stop the Cuts badge? Maybe she fancies her, too.’ Mel smirks. ‘Maybe she’s another one of her conquests.’ Her grin grows wider. ‘Hey! Van the Muffeater!’
The others shriek and fall about, although it really isn’t all that funny. Lee isn’t laughing. She throws back her drink and reaches for Mel’s pack of ten.
‘Can I have one?’ she asks, although she has already helped herself.
She lights the cigarette as a blind. She takes a long drag, taking the smoke down.
There’s more to this one, I think, as she sucks on her cigarette and leans on the windowsill. The sleeve of her top slips a bit as she reaches forward to flick the ash. I don’t see all of it, but I see enough to recognise the shape and colour on the white flesh of her shoulder: the dark burnt mark of the five-pointed star. She finishes her drink and Mel pours her another.
‘Weren’t you part of her coven?’ Mel stubs her fag. ‘Weren’t you lot, like, doing black magic?’ She says the words with a shudder and rolls her eyes, pulling a face like a drama mask. ‘Putting spells on people?’
‘It was nothing like that.’ Lee is keen to play down the possibility. ‘Just messing about, mostly. Don’t believe everything you’re told.’
‘They say that Caro used powers,’ Sal insists. ‘That she put spells on people. Like Louise Simpson.’
They all nod as if they know the name.
‘What happened to Louise Simpson?’ I ask. They are losing me now.
‘She ended up in hospital.’
‘Louise was anorexic.’ Lee shakes her head. ‘She’d had problems for years. Nothing to do with Caro, or anybody else.’ She stubs out her cigarette. ‘That was ages ago, anyway. Caro’s into other stuff now.’
‘Yeah,’ Martha wades in. ‘She’s swapped her tarot cards for placards. Caro the activist. Her politics are fake. Like everything else. She just wants everyone to talk about her, like we are now. She doesn’t believe in anything except herself.’
That puts a stopper on the conversation.
They go out, leaving me alone in the house. I don’t mind. I would have gone out with Cal, but he’s otherwise occupied. Also, I’m skint. I’ve spent all my allowance and my summer job hasn’t properly started – like I haven’t been paid yet. I clear up in Martha’s room and open the window wide. I take the bottles downstairs and put them in the recycling, under a pile of other stuff, so Mum won’t notice.
I like having the house to myself. When I was a kid, I used to mooch round and round, going into rooms, poking into drawers, trying to discover the parts of people’s lives that they kept secret from me.
Mostly, I was looking for my dad.
He was in the Army. He went out one day on exercise when I was three, wearing a Bergen that was bigger than me, and he never came back. Killed in an incident involving live rounds. An accident. I don’t remember much from the time when it happened. I don’t remember anything much about him at all. Just that I associate him with the wardrobe, for some strange reason. Mum kept his dress blues in there. After it happened I remember climbing in and seeing the uniform hanging there, all swathed in plastic. Scared the life out of me. I thought it was his ghost. Maybe that’s why the wardrobe makes me think of him. His hat was on top, in a box that I was told never to touch. I used to wonder if that was where his head was kept.
Mum got rid of it all years ago. There’s no trace of him in her room now, except for the medals he got in the First Gulf War. She keeps those in her jewellery box.
Rob used to go round the house wearing them. He remembered Dad better than I did. He used to tell me stories about him, about the battles he’d been in, the action he’d seen. I believed every word until I began to watch movies and read books for myself. Rob gave Dad the hero role in every book he’d read and film he’d seen, from Andy McNab to Black Hawk Down. That was the first chink in my hero worship. I couldn’t figure out why he did it. I was bound to find out sometime or other.
My brother joined up as soon as he was old enough, following in the family tradition. Grandpa, Dad, then Rob. His room hasn’t changed that much from when he went off to join his regiment. The walls are still plastered with Army posters, Page 3 totty, Girls Aloud and pictures of different models of guns, broken into parts and assembled. There are photos of him and his mates. He’d pin new ones up every time he came back from a posting. They all look the same wherever they are in the world. A bunch of guys standing about in combats, posing in their Wiley-X shades, holding guns, swathed in rounds, meaning business; either that or they are in a bar on R&R in Cyprus or somewhere, dressed in shorts and T-shirts, or bare-chested, pissed and sweating, red eyes glaring, grinning with arms round each other, clutching a bottle or a glass or a girl. The colour has faded in some of the photos, the corners curled; others have fallen off the wall. I thought Mum would be straight up here with the stepladder and paper stripper as soon as he moved out, but no. She’s left it just as it is. Maybe she secretly hopes he might come back. Fat chance of that.
He lived here for a bit after he was discharged from hospital, but only for a little while. Being at home got on his nerves. He couldn’t stand Mum fussing over him. It wasn’t his leg and the help he needed with that. It was the nightmares. He’d shout out in the middle of the night, wake up screaming. He didn’t want us hearing; it made him look weak, vulnerable, and he didn’t like us seeing that. He didn’t want Mum going in, trying to soothe him, like he was a little boy again. He used to have nightmares back then, but these were of a different order. In the end, he seemed to give up on sleeping. I’d hear him padding up and down, prowling about the house. The creak on the stairs, the squeak of the laminate when he was trying to be quiet were more disturbing than the shouting.
He couldn’t take Mum worrying, talking about therapy. He’d had that and it hadn’t done anything. He had his own way of dealing with it, involving the stuff he grows and cans of Carlsberg Special. In the end he moved in with Grandpa where he was freer to do things his own way. Grandpa’s deaf as a post and even if he did wake up, he’d say nothing. He understood. He had nightmares of his own.
I grab a beer from the fridge and head out on to the patio. We live on an estate, like lots of others that border the town. The houses are set about in little closes at angles to each other so they all have their bit of private space. A new section gets bolted on every few years. Like Legoland. The estate looks bare, unfinished. This was all fields not that long ago. The trees and hedges that were here before have been replaced by spindly little saplings and shrubs. Mum tries to grow things up the fences and has planted out the borders, but the garden is like a green box. The houses are bright brick, unweathered.
It’s a nice night. The barbecues are on the go. It makes me hungry. I go in and fix myself a bacon sandwich. Come back out to eat it. People are in their gardens. I hear the snatches of conversation, the clink of glasses, bursts of laughter.
I stay out for a long time. The lights die all around me, there’s just the distant street glow. It’s fully dark now. A clear night. The air is still warm and soft as velvet. I look up into the blackness dotted with specks of light. Grandpa had a telescope up in his attic. We used to look at the stars together. I remember the constellations. He taught them to me. I see a shooting star, like a golden pin scratch, then another. I watch out for more, my mind drifting. I see the star tattoo on her shoulder. The pattern of tiny freckles, like constellations. I wonder what her skin would feel like under my fingers. I try to conjure her. I see her profile in close up as she looked over her shoulder; caught in the mirror as she looked from her own reflection to her mother. I re-run those moments again and again, taking in the dark sweep of her brow, the liquid gleam of her eye, the tilt of her nose, the curve of her lip, the shadow under her cheekbone, the fall of her hair. I open my eyes and look up at the sky. A song comes on to my iPod shuffle. I’ve heard it, even liked it, but the words have never meant that much to me before. Now they do.