by Glass, Lisa
Us in the crowd didn’t know where to look. The sight of them, shivering in the cold sea air. And such brassieres and pants they wore: see-through ones, fluorescent pink ones, black lacy ones. Some of them was even wearing G-strings which didn’t leave nothing to the imagination. But worse was the two of them that hadn’t even put on bras at all - Han went red as the post-box when he saw that. I pretended I hadn’t noticed. Mr Hitchcock looked straight at them. His eyes was the same as when he looked at his watch.
As the models balanced there shivering for the cameras, manoeuvring their stick-thin legs into overalls, a cloud went across the sky and even in my thick t-shirt and tracksuit, I shivered. The wind came up and made the Torbay palm trees shake their speary leaves at us.
The sergeant started up bellowing at the girls again, telling them what they were in for, but it was hard to concentrate.
‘Tonight you will be completing an assault course. Any sap what cries gets fifty press-ups.’
‘You do NOT get to stop, you do NOT get to quit.’
Vega rolled her eyes.
‘Failure will not be tolerated. You will finish or you will be finished.’
At least half of them girls didn’t look they had enough strength to strike a match, let alone do assault courses with rope nets and brick walls and ice-cold puddles.
Then we heard the shouting.
Chapter 10Now there’s shouting and there’s shouting. When you grow up on a chalet site like ours with thin walls and no insulation you get pretty good at knowing the difference between attention-seeking theatrics and when something is genuinely wrong. That lady was frightened out of her mind.
She was what my mum would call a handsome older woman, all high cheekbones, smooth forehead and wild hair. But her face was screwed up with fright. She came racing after one of the show’s bigwigs. “Suits,” the cameramen called them.
‘What are you saying? She’s got to be here.’
‘Edith was eliminated yesterday.’
Edith. I racked my brains. Yes, she was the contestant that a perv in the crowd had said was ‘devastatingly beautiful’. If I remembered rightly she had quite a delicate, old-fashioned, movie star kind of look. Vega, on the other hand, was weird at first glance.
The suit continued, ‘We gave her the money for a First Class train ticket back to Essex. She took her things and left. She seemed fine. A little distressed at first, of course, but handling it like a pro.’
‘She’s seventeen. You didn’t think to inform her mother that you’d sent her packing?’
‘The onus is on the girls to inform their families of contest developments. We can’t be responsible for every –’
‘She’s a child! Of course you were responsible for her.’
‘She signed a fifty page contract.’
‘Don’t give me that. What is wrong with you? Don’t you care? Don’t you feel any shame about what’s happened? It’s disgusting. My daughter is missing and all you care about is covering your own backsides. You people. I should never have allowed her to come here. My gut instincts told me it was the wrong thing to do and now something terrible has happened. I should never have let her convince me.’
‘I’m sure she’s fine – ’
‘She is categorically NOT fine. She calls me every single morning without fail. That was the deal. She knew that. She is not some flighty little madam who would ignore phone call after phone call from her mother. Something is most certainly wrong. I didn’t hear from her yesterday and I haven’t heard from her today. Nothing would stop my daughter from calling me. Nothing.’
All this time Sergeant Mills was trying to figure out what to do. He twisted his wedding ring and looked around the crowd like someone there would step in and help him out. The black-haired Producer lady shrugged, and then moved towards the distressed woman.
‘This is a very important time for the girls. Emotions run high. Any number of things could have happened.’
‘That is exactly why I’m worried. I’m calling the police again. I don’t care what they say. She has not run away. She’s in trouble. I can feel it.’
At this point the woman touched her hand to her head and seemed to wobble on her heels.
‘I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about,’ said Vega, who had stepped forward from the other contestants. She had an annoyingly posh speaking voice, like she’d had elocution lessons at a Victorian academy for princesses.
‘She was upset after the elimination. She didn’t deserve to go home. She really didn’t. She’s so beautiful. But the thing is, and they won’t like me saying this but it’s true, she just didn’t make good enough television. You’ve got to be mad, or hostile, or hugely conceited. The cameras are all over that. But Edith was so nice, that’s why she was kicked off. Too quiet. Not enough drama to make the final cut of an episode.’ Vega shrugged at the Producer, who was shaking her head anxiously and doing throat-slitting motions to tell her to stop. ‘That’s just my opinion, and don’t quote me, but Edith knew she was good, no matter what happened here. She wouldn’t have done anything silly because of an elimination on a little TV programme. She was a clever girl. I’m sure that wherever she is, she’s just fine.’
Edith’s mum didn’t listen. It was like she was convinced that her daughter had been done away with. There’s Mother’s Intuition and maybe that’s what this lady had. I couldn’t help noticing that Edith’s mum was wearing a necklace with hearts on it and remembering that Luke had found a necklace a bit like that in the dunes. Could it have been Edith’s? Maybe it broke during a struggle?
Was this it? Was this the third bad thing? Had the models attracted some sicko serial killer to Hayle?
‘It was only six months ago she was hospitalised for anorexia. Hospitalised. Wires in her arms. Fed through a tube. Frailer than an old woman. Hardest thing I’ve ever had to live through, seeing my little girl like that. I shouldn’t have let her talk me into allowing this. She said this would make her feel better, confident, but how could it? All this competition? All you skinny girls, thin as toothpicks already, wanting to starve yourselves to nothing. I was wrong to hope for the best. This was leaving a junkie in a room full of crack.’
Vega took the woman’s hand, ‘Worst case scenario she’ll be licking her wounds somewhere. How about her boyfriend? Maybe she stopped off to see him before going home? I’m sure she’s alright.’
‘She doesn’t have a boyfriend.’
‘Maybe she just didn’t tell you about him?’
The woman turned away from Vega, obviously irritated by her attempts at reassurance.
‘What about the rest of you? Come on! I want to talk to every single one of you. I’m not leaving until I know what’s been going on here. One of you knows something.’
The girls did not look happy about this and neither did the suits or the guest photographer who was due to photograph them.
Edith’s mum was determined and wouldn’t be fobbed off. The Producer said:
‘We can stop filming for one hour. One hour only. So you can talk to the girls, but then we have to continue. We’re on a very tight schedule. The girls have a photo challenge today as sand creatures. Hair and Make-up are already waiting and we have to catch the light.’
‘Sand monsters? My daughter’s life is more important than some ridiculous photograph. I’m not leaving until I’ve heard what’s really been going on here. There’s more afoot than you’re all saying. I know it. I just know it.’
‘Come with me, I’m sure we can get to the bottom of all this,’ said an assistant with a Mohican haircut, leading the woman away.
So a model had vanished. A girl that I barely even remembered. I wondered if everyone else had the same bad feeling that I did.
At that exact moment, Luke Gilbert walked into the middle of the catwalk queens, loosened the cord on a big hemp sack and turned it upside down.
That was when the screaming started. It wasn’t rabbits Luke had been collecting.
Chapter 11Luke Gilbert was once the night watchman at my school. Some nights, back in the old days, me and Han would sneak in there. Luke Gilbert had a German Shepherd dog then. That dog growled a lot and drooled if anyone had food, but Luke seemed to really love it. The dog went with him everywhere, even on his rounds of the school premises. Mr Hitchcock told me that Luke had to work a night job like that because he had a personality defect that made him unable to get along with human beings.
Since Luke had stopped being a night watchman, he seemed to spend most of his time roaming the dunes and getting weirder by the day.
My mum said Mr Gilbert was best avoided. My dad said Luke Gilbert was misunderstood. Nathan said Luke was a man who had his priorities all wrong, because he was nice to dumb animals but never to people.
It’s true that Luke liked animals; I once saw him pour a bottle of mineral water that must’ve cost at least eighty pence onto a stranded worm crisping up on the pavement. He cared about saving a worm and being nice to his dog, but he never had a good word to say about an actual person.
Luke opened his sack and he said as loud as he could in a preachy tone:
‘You terrorised them so now they’re going to terrorise you,’ and out of his sack dropped a seething tangle of adders.
The tall Swedish-looking model backed up so quickly that she went over on her stiletto heel and fell into the water with a mighty splash, her pink overalls turning dark red in the water. The crowd surged and an old man was toppled into a stack of lobster pots. The red-haired model, caught between a snake and some rough ground miscalculated her step and ended up getting a bite on the ankle. The other girls backed away but Vega being the suck-up that she was went to ginger girl’s aid and called an ambulance.
‘You’ll be fine,’ Luke shouted over to them. ‘No one’s died of an adder bite in thirty years. It might even be a dry bite. No venom.’
‘You stupid bloody freak,’ the bitten girl shouted. ‘I’m gonna sue.’
‘Are you now? Well, you can’t sue an adder, young lady.’
‘You! I’m gonna sue you!’
‘Are you mad? What are you doing?’ I said to Luke. ‘They’ll bang you away for this.’
‘Don’t you talk to me. I remember you. And him. I didn’t recognise him before but now I do. He had blonde hair then, not green. I know what you did.’
I shut up.
Han picked his way through the panicking snakes and people and squared up to Luke.
‘Calm down, mate. It’s alright.’
‘It’s not. I saw them out there in the dunes. Those television people paying boys to kill the snakes. I saw the money change hands. I have photographs. Proof. Protected snakes, not allowed to be touched, killed just to make a few silly girls more comfortable in their tents. They said it was an infestation but it was a healthy population. What they’ve done is unforgivable. It’s an abomination is what it is. It is evil, evil, evil.’
An ambulance from the Convent Hospital just up the road came screaming down the hill and took the lippy girl away, still shrieking that she was going to have the shirt off Luke’s back if that bite left a scar. People from the show were making calls on their mobiles and I knew it wouldn’t be long.
‘You’ve done it now, mate,’ Han said to Luke. ‘Go home and keep your head down. Don’t answer the door. They’ll keep coming back for a few days, but if you don’t answer they’ll give up cos it’s not serious enough to get a warrant for your house.’
‘I’m not going anywhere. I saw it happening. Them disgusting boys were out in the dunes. They had pitchforks and they went at the snakes like mad things. On a murdering spree. Up near Gwithian a pile of adder bodies that’d break your heart. Heaped on top of one another like rubbish. Them boys been skewering ‘em while they was slow and weak, basking, before they’d warmed up enough to slither away. They said they was clearing them so that those girls – those shameless exhibitionist hussies – wouldn’t get bit. They said they was being paid to do it by this bloody menace of a television show.’
As expected, a police car came speeding down the hill. When two serious-looking coppers got out, Han stood in front of Luke, using his body to block the officers’ line of sight.
‘It’s all fine here,’ he said.
‘We’ve had reports of a breach of the peace.’
‘You’ve had reports of snake-killing but you didn’t respond to them! I told you where the bodies were but you did nothing. Nothing!’ This was Luke again, getting purpler by the second.
A skinny blonde spokeswoman for the show came over.
‘This is not what we anticipated when we chose this location to film in. We would never have come here if we knew we’d have to face this level of hostility from the locals.’
‘Whoa there,’ Mr Hitchcock said, planting himself right in front of her. ‘If he’s right then you people are the ones who’re out of line. Have you paid our resident little troublemakers to do away with the dune snakes?’
‘I don’t know anything about that. It is certainly not something that could have conceivably been sanctioned by the show.’
‘Lies!’
Han put his arm in front of Luke to stop him lashing out at the copper.
‘Look, just let him calm down a bit and he’ll go home. Won’t you, mate? You’ll go home.’
The two police officers walked away to confer.
Luke rounded on me with a crazy look in his eye.
‘Why is that young man defending me? I don’t need his help,’ he said.
‘Yeah, you got it all in hand. Clearly.’
‘I know what he’s trying to do. Cover his own arse. You’re no better than those murderous boys. You don’t care about my snakes; you don’t care about anything except yourselves. Not snakes. Just you.’
‘If it’s illegal to disturb an adder,’ I said, ‘ain’t it also illegal for you to stick them all in a big sack and drop ‘em on a quay?’
‘Risk I had to take.’
‘Don’t you have anything better to do? A job or something?’
‘Don’t you?’
‘Don’t I have a job? I’m too young to work.’
‘You could volunteer. Make the most of your time. If you get into the habit of lazing around, you’ll be lazy until the end of your days. Do something worthwhile with your life. Before it runs out.’
‘Steady on, mate, you’re a fine one to talk, walking around with a bag of snakes.’
‘You people. You talk as if snakes are vermin. People round here don’t understand the importance of conservation. If I don’t save these animals, who will? Tell me that. WHO WILL.’
‘Erm, no one? They’re snakes . . . not Siberian tigers.’
‘Just because they’re not pretty like your koala bears or your giant pandas or your ruddy Siberian tigers, that doesn’t mean they don’t deserve protection. Homo sapiens are stupid and cruel. They see something that slithers and they want to kill it without even knowing why. It’s a tragedy and nothing less.’
I looked over to the quay; only two of the snakes remained, cornered by road and crowd, and they coiled and uncoiled, tasting the air with their tongues. The others had escaped into the grass or bushes. Seemed like they just wanted to get away.
Mr Hitchcock intervened.
‘With the greatest respect, Mr Gilbert, a young girl is missing. This Edith . . . anything could have happened to her. And now I come to it, you are talking as if you know nothing of the plane crash. There is a lot of tragedy in these parts of late, and while I would agree that the killing of snakes is terrible, I don’t think it can really compare to human suffering.’
‘Human suffering? It’s all people have been talking about, how could I not know of it? On and on they go talking of that ruddy plane crash, as i
f it was Armageddon. And now this girl has gone missing, people will be talking about her for weeks.’
‘Well, then, perhaps the loss of some local snakes can be treated with an appropriate level of concern?’
Luke looked at him like he was nuts.
‘You are as bad as the rest of them. Worse.’
Mr Hitchcock sighed and went to have a word with one of the suits, asking her not to press charges, I reckoned.
‘Don’t you think the crash was sad?’ I asked Luke. He looked at me with his scary eyes.
‘You do know the world is massively over-populated? They must have taught you that in school, if nothing else. Six billion people, nearly seven.’
‘So what? Doesn’t mean that people dying isn’t sad.’
He shook his head. ‘The planet can only take so much of us. Human beings are a virus. A ruthless, murderous virus.’
‘That’s really nice,’ I said. ‘I hope they never get you on the local News. People would think Cornishmen was well heartless. God help us if that Catwalk lot catch you on their cameras.’
‘That Catwalk lot, as you call them, have their own problems to worry about, believe you me. They are the worst examples of our species that I have ever encountered. They are on a path to their own destruction and no mistake.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘I’ve seen them there in that camp. And I’m not the only one who’s been watching them either.’
‘You’re sounding like a right old creep.’
‘If anyone is a creeper it is your boyfriend. And you too. I saw you back then, creeping, creeping, creeping.’