Simon strides ahead, binoculars swinging from his shoulder. He’s wearing his new Barbour jacket. The tartan inside flashes at me as he walks. I let him go on, so I can swagger by Shane’s house slowly enough to see if he’s at the window.
There’s a twitch in his curtains as I pass. I let out a damp breath, flick my newly Elnetted hair, walk on with a slow swing, hoping he’ll follow.
Simon waits at the lane by the church. His watch slides up his wrist as he reaches for me. I stop far away enough for him not to be able to touch. ‘Come on, then,’ he says, ‘if you’re coming.’
He’s suggested we have an outside tutorial, despite the freezing damp. We can look for birds down at the pools, he says; the fresh air will do us good. But I know he wants to escape Sunday afternoon in our house. Who wouldn’t want to avoid Mum in her pink weekend jogging outfit (which has never been outdoors), the Antiques Roadshow and the Sunday supplements?
Down the pools, a line of wetness forms around my white slip-ons. Cold moisture oozes up from the ground, catching the bare twigs, making them sag.
A dog-walker stands and waits, looking off towards the cooling towers as if nothing’s happening while his pooch bends its hind legs and lets its behind tremble.
‘Here’s the look-out,’ says Simon, pointing at a wooden building that looks like a shed with a slit around it. Inside, the walls are covered with information sheets, telling you what kinds of birds you can expect. Each sheet has the power station’s logo in the corner.
I’ve seen the twitchers down here before. They have all the gear. Huge binoculars, and cameras with lenses like the fashion magazine photographers have, for snapping models. Zoom in, focus, snap. They sit there watching, waiting for their birds, lenses pointing. Primed and ready.
‘What are we doing here?’ I ask.
‘Observing the wonders of nature.’
I sit on the bench and look through the slit at the greyness outside.
‘And you can tell me what you’re doing in history, while we’re at it,’ Simon adds.
Everything’s going dark. The water looks like Simon’s mac: thick and heavy. The branches hang over it like they can’t wait to fall in.
‘We’re doing cholera.’
Simon raises an eyebrow. ‘Tell me about cholera, then.’ ‘You get it from dirty water. You vomit, and you shit yourself at the same time. Then you die.’
‘I see. And what’s this got to do with history?’
‘I was hoping you could tell me.’
He looks blank. ‘Perhaps we’ll come back to it,’ he says. Then he thrusts The Pocket Guide to Birdwatching into my lap. Green cover. Pencil drawings. ‘We’ll do some ornithology instead.’ He taps the side of his glasses and looks pleased with himself. ‘Have a peek in there. You’ll be amazed at the variety.’
I keep looking for Shane through the slit in the wall. But all I see is grey branches and white steam from the cooling towers.
‘I’ll test you,’ I say, opening the bird-watching book.
‘Go on, then.’ He sits down on the bench and nudges me with a waxed elbow. ‘Do your worst.’
Keeping my thumb over the name, I show him a picture of a bird and read out the description. ‘Active, inquisitive and quarrelsome. Distinctive “tsink-tsink” call.’
Simon wraps his mac tightly around him and shivers as he thinks. ‘It’s a tit,’ he says. ‘I know that much.’
I don’t say anything. He pinches his thin lower lip and closes his eyes. ‘A yellow tit. No, wait. A coal tit.’ He beams. ‘It’s a coal tit.’
‘Wrong.’ I remove my thumb from the name. ‘Great tit.’ Simon shuffles up to me so he can see the book over my shoulder. ‘Close enough,’ he says, his breath damp on my neck.
I close the book and shift along the bench, away from him. After a moment, he goes back to his binoculars, twiddling with knobs and dials. Squinting. Dad used to do the same sort of thing with his record player.
I click my Walkman on.
Just as the chorus of ‘Into the Groove’ is about to start, I see something move in the trees, so I turn the tape off. ‘Let’s borrow those a minute.’
‘I thought you weren’t interested in bird-watching.’
‘I changed my mind.’
Simon flicks his fringe and hands over the binoculars. They’re greasy from his hands. I wipe them on my jacket before bringing them up to my eyes. Peering through them, everything goes tiny. Tiny pool, tiny trees, tiny twigs. I look out at a shrunken world.
‘You’re looking through them the wrong way,’ says Simon. He grabs the binoculars and turns them round. I get a big whiff of his expensive-cheap aftershave.
‘Silly girl,’ he says, holding out the binoculars to me. ‘For all that front, I think you’re a bit silly.’ His smile lengthens. ‘In a rather charming way.’
I let him pinch my knee with a cold hand.
‘Do you think Mum’s silly, too?’
He lets go of my knee, snatches back the binoculars. ‘Even sillier than you,’ he says.
Then I hear something weird. Something like ah-ah-ah.
I wonder if he saw me from his window, walking down the road with Simon. I wonder if he noticed I’m wearing the pink pencil skirt, even though it’s freezing bloody cold. I wonder if he noticed I walked behind Simon, so I didn’t have to look at his face, so he couldn’t look at me. I wonder if he followed us, his long legs carefully stepping in the places my slip-ons had been, ducking behind walls and hedges in case I looked back (although I never did).
‘I’m going for a walk.’
Simon lets out a breathy ha. ‘I don’t think you should go anywhere. It’ll be dark soon.’
I touch him then. I let my fingers fall over his hand, and it’s smoother than I expect. ‘I won’t be long.’
He lowers his binoculars, blinks at my hand on his wrist. ‘OK. But I’ll be watching you, silly girl.’
I pick my way through tangled brambles and spiky holly leaves. Mud gathers around my shoes as I stand on the edge of the pool, looking out over the water. I toss my hair back and open my eyes wide. I hang on to a branch and lean over the water, looking for him. He might be hiding behind a trunk, or crouching behind some brambles. He might be watching me, like he did that day on Shotton Hill.
My hand, in its white fingerless glove, starts to freeze on the branch.
Then I hear that sound again. A high-pitched ah-ah-ah. I look all around for a flash of his green parka. Nothing. Smoke from the power station chimneys looks like snow clouds above me.
Perhaps it’s a bird.
But it gets louder, and seems human.
I let go of the branch. I have to grab a bramble to stop myself sliding down the bank and into the pool. Tiny thorns stick through my fingerless glove and into my skin. And then I remember coming here years before, slipping on the mud, grabbing a bramble to steady myself and tearing my palm on the thorns. A line of blood, edged by a flap of limp skin, pumped to the surface. Dad was already in the pool. I stepped forward into the water, and as I went deeper, the slime squeezed up between my toes. I went down. The cold water lapped underneath me – that was a shock, but a good one, I remember. The water licked me right along the place where I pee. I forgot the pain of my torn hand as the pool took me in. When Dad swam over and lifted me I felt like he could balance me on one outstretched palm.
If he was here, he’d tell me to look after myself. To take care. But those aren’t things you can do by yourself. You need someone else to do those things.
Ah-ah-ah.
Then I see someone.
Ah-ah-ah.
But it’s not Shane. It’s Rob.
I look again. There’s another boy. Their jackets move together on the other side of the pool. Rob’s going ah-ah-ah. Half singing, half sighing. I pick my way through a tangle of twigs and holly leaves so I can get a closer look. Then I crouch down and watch, still as a twitcher. I watch. I wait.
Rob is leaning on a trunk right by the water’s edge, and Luke is standing in front of him, very close. They’re staring into each other’s faces as if they’re going to fight. They’re focused, wide-eyed, squaring up to one another, chests puffed out, feet planted on the floor.
I think Rob must be about to make his move, because he twitches his arm. But he moves it so slowly towards Luke I know he’s
not going to make any impact. Not at that speed. Then Rob stretches out his hand and slips all his fingers into the front
pocket of Luke’s jeans. He slips them in, easy, like I slipped into the pool when I’d torn my palm. Luke doesn’t flinch. He
leans back against the trunk, as if he’s relieved, and I see them kiss.
When we get back, Mum says, ‘That boy came round for you.’
He’s never done that before.
‘He stood on the step and just gawped at me. There’s no light on in there, is there? No one’s home.’
‘Who’s this?’ asks Simon, shaking out his Barbour jacket with a clacking noise. Mum raises her voice. ‘That boy. The backward one. You know.’
‘Oh,’ says Simon, with a look at me. ‘Him.’
‘I told him you were out with your boyfriend,’ Mum says. She lets out a tinkly laugh and flings her arms around Simon’s waist, beaming up at his glasses. She’s probably inspecting her reflection in them. Her perm’s dropped out now, but she’s wearing a new shoulder-padded cardigan and full eye make-up. Simon clamps her round the middle and she gives a squeal. ‘Ripe for the plucking,’ he says, winking at me.