Shane isn’t in his shed, so I ring the front door bell. ‘God Save the Queen’ plays three times before Mrs Pearce emerges.
‘Joanna! I haven’t seen you for such a long time.’ Her face looks baggy from sleep. The theme music to That’s Life blares from the living room.
She touches the sleeve of my new black wool coat. Boxy shoulders, square front pockets, stand-up collar. Simon gave me the money for it, folding a fifty, still warm from his wallet, into my palm. He keeps his wallet in the breast pocket of his rainmac. The black leather’s so new it creaks when I open it. Inside, there’s a photo of a woman – not my mum, not me. A neat blonde bob and flat red lipstick. It must be his ex-wife, the one Mum told me chucked him out because they couldn’t have children. I’ve thought about taking that photo, hiding it in my knicker drawer. Just to see what happens.
‘Come in and have a cup of tea, Joanna, love.’
‘Is Shane in?’
She cranes her neck around the doorframe, as if she can spot him from there. ‘He’s in the shed, where he always is. Isn’t he?’
‘No.’
Her mouth makes a round ‘O’ shape and she blinks a few times and yawns. Then she grabs at my sleeve again and holds on. ‘Come in and have a cup of tea.’
‘I can’t.’
‘There’s cake. The Thorn Birds is on in a minute.’
‘But I have to find him.’
My voice must sound urgent, because she nods and lets go of my arm. ‘All right, love.’ She thinks for a minute. Then she says, ‘Oh. I know where he might be. He’s got a new job.’
‘Where?’
‘Down the farm. Plucking turkeys for Christmas.’
As I open the gate, I hear her call out behind me, ‘Have you heard from your Dad?’ But I know she knows the answer.
The farm is on the other side of Calcot. There’s a short cut from the church lane, past the pools and across the fields. Shane won’t worry about walking back this way, even though it’s really dark now. So dark he won’t know where the fields stop and the sky starts. Or where the gap between the bushes down to the water is.
There’s still a light on down the lane. I run my hand along the icy graveyard wall. My fingers are stiff with cold. The wind’s getting stronger. It blows strands of hair across my face, into my mouth. I hook them out and look into the blackness ahead.
That sign will be above me now. Possible Entrapment.
I step off the path and head through the twiggy trees to the look-out where I was with Simon earlier. I can wait for Shane to walk by there.
The place is totally different in the dark. I have to feel along the wall for the entrance, and I snag my fingerless glove on a splinter. There’s a smell of piss that I didn’t notice this afternoon.
The bench shoots cold into my arse cheeks. I sit up very straight. My hands are rammed into my pockets. I listen to every sound. Bare branches click against the wooden roof in the wind. Something plops in the water. There’s a long, low creaking noise somewhere that could be a tree.
I think about Rob and Luke. I wonder if they came in here, after we’d gone. I wonder if they lay on the cold bench together. Half singing, half sighing. Kissing. Their hands in each others’ pockets.
I wonder if Rob would do that with me.
Then I hear his beat.
I sit. Shiver. Wait.
It gets louder.
I step out of the look-out and push through the branches. I’m right in his path. He doesn’t flinch or shout out, even though there’s no way he could have known I was there. He just turns off the Walkman, licks his big lips and blinks, like his mum.
‘It’s me,’ I say.
My heart’s banging. My hands don’t feel cold any more. He sniffs and looks over my shoulder at the darkness that’s the pool behind us. The wind blows the hood of his parka up against his neck. I imagine it getting caught on the patches of stubbly-soft hairs there.
‘I came for you,’ he says.
‘I know.’ I hook the hair out of my eyes and smile at him. ‘I came to find you.’
He starts laughing then. Not his half-hidden laugh. A loud laugh that sounds like a honking goose. He doubles over with it.
‘What’s funny?’ I ask.
‘We’re always – ’
But he’s laughing again.
‘What?’
‘Looking. Looking for each other,’ he says. He honks out some more laughter.
I step closer to him. My hair blows into his face but he doesn’t brush it away.
Then I slip my hand in the pocket of his trousers. It’s not easy to do, not like it looked for Rob and Luke. I have to step in really close so my nose touches his shoulder and twist my wrist round at the right angle. There’s not much room in there.
He stops laughing and swallows. ‘I’ve got a job,’ he says. ‘Turkey plucking.’
‘That’s good,’ I say, digging around in his warm pocket, breathing into the shiny parka material, until I feel what I’m after. ‘That’s good, Shane.’
He goes very quiet. His dark eyes look like glass. The fur of his parka hood brushes against my cheek. I stretch my fingers out in his pocket, circling them round and round on his thigh. With my other hand, I shove my fingers beneath his belt until I find the zip. I open his fly. I don’t look at his eyes. I look instead at the fur in close-up. Strands of it go wet with my breath, get stuck on my lip. I stroke him, and it feels softer than I expected, but also drier.
Shane stands there and lets me do what I want in the darkness.
I want my fingers caught in his little hairs. My hand rising up and down. I want his hand over my head. His hand over my whole
head.
Every night after that, we meet in the look-out, and I open Shane’s fly and dig until I find what I want.
On Shane’s hands there’s turkey blood from his job at the farm. One night he brings a bird’s foot with him. ‘Listen,’ he says, pulling the tendons back and forth. The claw stretches towards me.
‘I can’t hear anything.’
‘Listen.’
He pulls again and the bones inside the turkey’s skin shift and groan. The sound reminds me of the creak of Rob’s not-real leather jacket.
‘Are they dead?’ I ask, ‘when you pluck them?’
‘’Course.’
‘Are they whole?’
‘Headless,’ he says. Then he adds, ‘And bleeding.’
I imagine rows of them hanging up, their necks sputtering gore, their feet creaking.
‘They’re completely dead, though,’ I say. ‘They’re not twitching, or anything.’
‘They’re still warm,’ he says, leading my hand to his pocket.
Sometimes, he brings me back a handful of the prettiest feathers, speckled with brown and yellow, like tiger fur. Not gaudy, though. Fine. On the way home from the pools, I stick them behind my ears, through my buttonholes, in my hair. And at night, in bed, I run them over my belly, my tits, letting the lightness linger on each nipple, and I think of Shane’s hands.