In the last couple of months of his final term, not having my feelings to consider any more, Kev did his best to make up for lost opportunities where my sister was concerned. It was the same as with Orla: he was scared of her, so he targeted Aidan. He was scared of me (still), so he targeted Allie. And the big shining best of it, from Kev’s point of view, was that Allie was not just a way of getting at me: she was also a way of getting at Aidan.
Killing two birds, that’s what they call it.
There were still constraints on him: namely, the Despot McCluskey, and the fact that I could still kill the wee tosser with my bare hands if he went too far.
So what he did was he got the girls to do it for him. This meant I was worse than useless. Girls outclass boys a hundred times over when it comes to making someone’s life a misery, especially when it’s another girl. Allie was persecuted in the toilets, in the PE changing rooms, anywhere they could get her alone.
It was not that easy to provoke Allie to tears but they managed it quite often. Shuggie would come to get me, but by the time I raced to her aid she’d be standing quietly as Aidan talked to her (the first time), or sitting against the fence with him, their shoulders pressed together (the second time). On various occasions after that, I watched him wipe her face dry with the palm of his hand. I watched him put an arm round her shoulders. A few days later I watched her press her face into his neck and I think she kissed him because his face reddened and his throat jerked with his gulp. Next time I saw his lips touch hers experimentally. After that it all went beyond experiment.
So he was finally making an effort. Finally taking advantage. The tosser.
From then on he’d hold Allie’s hand, but only when he thought I wasn’t around. Was he scared of me, or was the big cowboy considering my feelings?
Didn’t matter. When I was around and he did not take her hand, she would ostentatiously take his.
By the first week of the next school year, Aidan and Allie were firmly and finally an item. I seethed. The age gap! But I looked at her and realised over the summer she’d stopped being my strange little sister. She was starting to be beautiful in a grown-up sort of way. And how could I say anything anyway? He was there for her when I wasn’t. It was Aidan she went to, always Aidan.
It was four months since the incident with Shuggie, four months since I burned my boats with Kev. Allie was just into her second year, Aidan his fourth, and I’d stayed, to McCluskey’s horror, for a fifth.
‘Geddes,’ he greeted me as I sloped in on my first morning. ‘Oh, the joy of it.’
‘I’m touched, Mr McCluskey. It’s nice to see you too.’
He clasped his hands and closed his eyes. ‘Dear God. What did I do in a past life?’
‘Were you some kind of evil fascist dictator, sir?’
‘Aye, and I shot the likes of you for sport before breakfast. Get lost, Geddes.’
‘I missed you too, sir.’
The way his scowl was working and twitching, he was either livid with rage or he was trying not to smile. I couldn’t quite tell as I slouched off in the direction of the science block.
I’d been afraid I might hate being in school when I didn’t have to be, but what happened was quite the reverse. The atmosphere without Kev was different. The worst of his gang had gone with him, and the ones who stayed, like Sunil, discovered they didn’t have quite the same aura of menace without him and anyway to a large extent they’d lost interest. Maybe we’d just started to grow up. I was still Billy Nae-Pals, but English and my Science subjects were shaping up to be kind of interesting and the teachers treated me with – well, not exactly affection, but at least a bit more respect. I was there from choice and once they got over their shock they seemed to appreciate that. I think things might have turned right around if Kev hadn’t still been haunting the place.
I reckon he was missing school a bit, missing his easy work-free life and his status as large shark sniffing round the blood trails in a smallish pond. Partly, of course, he was showing off: his souped-up car, his manky big-label fashion choices, his superior wee I’m-a-grown-up sneer.
McCluskey got bored of telling Kev to go away (though not in those words), but there was a limit to what he could do about it. He couldn’t prove Kev was flogging cannabis to first years, though I knew fine he was. I think, given time, McCluskey would have got the better of Kev, but he never did get time. None of us did. Aidan Mahon’s time, of course, ran out altogether.
Allie should have come to me. She should have come to me, but she never did. That’s why I’m alive and Aidan isn’t.