IT WASN’T LIKE COLLEEN TO sleep in. Usually, by now, their mother would be dressed, with her face done and radio on. But today her mother was dishevelled, having slept in her makeup so her mascara had dried in Alice Cooper streaks, her hair a mess.
So, Trevor had hurt her again.
As Ava came in, with her offering of tea held out like the Holy Grail, she said nothing. Ava knew that any word uttered in the next few minutes could tripwire Colleen’s full detonation.
Colleen, however, wasn’t in the mood for confrontation: she appeared defeated.
‘Oh, you are lovely,’ said Colleen, hand outstretched. She gave Ava a cursory glance. ‘How are you?’
‘I’m all right,’ said Ava. Should she brave the big question? Her mother’s answer might be a smack or a sigh. The trick was to stand out of Mom’s retaliation zone because Colleen had the reach of an orangutan.
‘Are you all right, Mom?’
A long pause then a tight-lipped, ‘Yeah, I’m all right, bab. Have to be, don’t I, ay?’
Ava didn’t respond. Colleen didn’t want responses, she didn’t want advice and she certainly didn’t want to hear anything negative about Trevor. Telling her the problem was Trevor wouldn’t end well. But, Ava knew, the real problem with Colleen was Colleen. She was proof that being beautiful bestowed a woman no advantages whatsoever. Her mother’s sadness was her own fault and Ava observed it from afar, with indifference, as if watching Dresden burn through binoculars from a Lancaster Bomber cockpit. Colleen had made her bed and was now lying in it.
* * *
An hour later, Colleen was dressed. The curtains were open, the bed was made, and Rita lay across it, flicking through Woman’s Own magazine. Colleen took money from her purse and handed it to Ava.
‘Go the shops for me,’ Colleen said.
Veronica asked to go with her, so they both surged out into the blustery morning. As they reached the curve of the road, they peeked into Deelands Hall, with its squat drabness and train of over-spilled rubbish bags.
‘Avie!’ said Veronica. ‘Look!’
Tied to the post outside the Small Shop was Starsky, Mickey’s dog. Both girls stopped in their tracks. Not so long ago, they would’ve waited until Mickey had left the shop before going in as it wasn’t worth the hassle. They’d halted out of habit, as if Mickey was still alive. Ava marched towards the dog and the Labrador greeted her like an old friend, his tail wagging. Veronica joined in the petting and the dog twisted around them, pleased to be with young humans again.
‘Oh, he loves that he does,’ said Mr Grant as he stepped out from the shop, smelling of wet pennies and nicotine, newspaper under his arm. The girls stopped pampering the dog, but Mr Grant smiled at them. Ava thought the smile didn’t show in his eyes. ‘No! Carry on! Don’t mind me!’
Mr Grant had always been polite and jovial. A round-faced man with a paunch, lately the skin hung off his bones in folds, as if he’d melted and set like the sagging clocks in a Salvador Dali painting Ava had seen in one of her father’s art books. He looked haggard: a man not yet forty-five who looked twenty years older.
‘We’re taking him up Cofton Park,’ Mr Grant went on. Ava felt his yearning like a cartoon creeping vine.
‘Oh, lovely,’ said Ava. The man’s lip trembled, and Veronica took a step back.
‘Well, you know . . .’ Mr Grant swallowed. ‘My son Mickey used to take him . . . ’ He sighed hard, emitting a small sob.
A car horn beeped and Mr Grant turned. An Allegro pulled up to the kerb. He was obviously relieved to escape. He took Starsky’s lead and the girls watched them both climb into the waiting car.
‘Poor man,’ said Veronica.
‘Yes,’ said Ava.
‘He’s nice. You wouldn’t think he was Mickey’s dad,’ said Veronica.
‘No,’ said Ava.
In the Small Shop, as the girls perused the back aisles, they heard other people enter, big boisterous people – young men. Ava’s hackles rose. She loathed encountering local kids – they were unpredictable and prone to arbitrary savagery. She heard the boys talking to the manager.
‘What’re we getting again?’ Veronica murmured.
Ava relayed the items in the order of importance. ‘Cigarettes, bread, matches, margarine; a sweetie mix-up if we’ve enough change.’
Veronica snapped her fingers and did a little dance around her sister, chanting: ‘Ciggies! Bread! Matches! MARGE! A 10p mix-up if the change is LARGE!’ They giggled. ‘Could we get liquorice pipes?’ she asked, as she looked at the sweets in the glass cabinet below the cash till.
‘If we’ve enough, maybe,’ said Ava, who knew they wouldn’t.
The shop was suddenly busier. The stacked shelves were taller than Ava and she couldn’t see over them, but she knew there was somebody there, listening. It wasn’t the manager – she could hear him talking to one of the young men outside – Karl Jones. The pressure in the air was bent like a fist pushing down on a pillow. Ava touched the blue pencil in her pocket.
Veronica held up a loaf of bread. ‘Green Sunblest?’
Ava frowned. ‘No! It smells of feet and goes stale in ten seconds. Get the blue Mother’s Pride.’
They approached the counter. The cigarettes were on display behind the till, a wall of colour in cardboard pixels. As they waited for the manager to return, Ava caught movement in her peripheral vision. She relaxed when she saw who it was – Nathaniel Marlowe.
Browsing the cold drinks fridge, he pulled out a bottle of pop. Had he been listening to them? He smirked at Ava as they formed an awkward little queue. The girls stared at him.
‘How’s your neck, Lady A?’ he asked, obviously referring to the injury she’d sustained from Brett punching her.
‘Much better now, thank you,’ she said, politely. Trevor had gleefully insinuated the bruise on her neck was a love bite. Her mother had gone to slap her until Ava had lied about bumping her neck on a shelf at John’s granddad’s house and she could ask him to verify this. Mr Cadogan knew what had really happened and would stick up for her even in this lie.
The positive outcome from Nathaniel’s intervention was now Brett Arbello left her alone. His avoidance of her was temporary, but she would enjoy it for as long as it did. She’d always be grateful to Nathaniel, and John, for coming to her aid.
Nathaniel did a comical bopping dance and whistled Veronica’s shopping tune. ‘So, Sunblest smells of feet and goes off in ten seconds,’ he said, nodding as if seriously contemplating her opinion. ‘Good to know.’
‘You shouldn’t be listening,’ said Ava. Her tone was just a little bit strict and he Groucho’d his eyebrows at Veronica, whose face suddenly glowed red, stricken with the double-barrel blast of a shotgun crush.
‘Yeah, well, you were loud as a crowd,’ Nathaniel said. In the wan overhead light that made everyone look jaundiced, his eyes were large black pits, his distinctive eye colouring obliterated by the pupils.
The manager bustled in. The change Ava received was barely enough for a mix-up to share, certainly not enough for the liquorice pipe Veronica really wanted. They took the full bag and left the shop, Ava seizing Veronica by the shoulders so she couldn’t sneak a backward peek at Nathaniel. Outside, they chewed their meagre sweets.
‘Oy! Lady A! Hold on!’
The sisters turned to see Nathaniel striding towards them, his shirt tails billowing. The sunlight had made his pupils contract so his incredible eyes were obvious. He held out two liquorice pipes, pointing one at Veronica, who, in Ava’s opinion, was close to swooning like a ditzy skirt from a Victorian melodrama.
‘Bodie or Doyle?’
‘Doyle,’ said Veronica because he was her favourite agent from The Professionals.
Nathaniel pointed a liquorice pipe at Ava. ‘Bodie or Doyle?’
‘Bodie,’ said Ava because Lewis Collins was Lewis Collins.
‘Right answer, Lady A!’ he said, and gave Ava the liquorice. His gaze switched to Veronica’s fallen face, and he bopped her on the nose with the other pipe then handed it to her. Both girls were wary as they thanked him.
‘Why?’ asked Ava, and Veronica gasped. Ava wasn’t usually so brave around Really Big Kids.
‘Why what, Lady A?’
‘Why’re you being nice to us? People aren’t nice to us . . . usually,’ she added.
Nathaniel shrugged. ‘People aren’t nice usually.’ He hadn’t answered her question, but he smiled when they did. ‘How’d you get your scar, Lady A?’ he asked, indicating the old white mark on her lower lip.
‘I fell on a desk,’ said Ava.
‘Yeah, I fall on desks too,’ he murmured.
She’d spoken the truth and he’d used her truth as his own euphemism.
‘You have heterochromia iridum,’ said Ava. Nathaniel was the ultimate science textbook example.
He stared at her.
‘I do.’ His odd eyes narrowed. ‘You know what it is.’
‘Yes,’ she said. It was like there were two different people looking at her from the same face. ‘Which is your favourite side?’ Ava asked.
‘Which is your favourite side?’ he threw back.
‘Both,’ said Ava.
‘Right answer, Lady A,’ said Nathaniel, and grinned.
Veronica, feeling left out, tugged on her sister’s sleeve.
‘We’ve got to go,’ Ava said.
‘Yeah, so have I.’ He jerked his head in the direction of his bike, War Horse, with its large, covered trailer full of groceries ready for delivery, and began to back away from the girls. ‘See you around, Lady A.’
As the sisters resumed their journey home, Veronica said, ‘He calls you Lady A!’ Ava said nothing. She could feel her sister’s envy spike, and she didn’t want Nathaniel Marlowe to be used against her in a future bickering contest.
Veronica tried again. ‘I think he’s nice.’
‘Obviously,’ drawled Ava, and her sister blushed then shoved her. Nice was not a word she’d use to describe Nathaniel Marlowe. She suspected nice was too fey for the likes of him.