by Kate Hamer
I stand very close to Phoebe. ‘I have something for you.’
I crunch the notes in my hand and deliver them in her palm squashed up into a ball, like they don’t matter, like I was stealing something that has no meaning to the likes of Phoebe and me.
The glint in her eye tells me the fundamental untruth of this. ‘Well, we can have some fun now. What do you say?’
I nod.
‘Good girl,’ she says and mock-pats me on the shoulder and swings off. I know it should infuriate me. She’s patronising me and she’s using me but I don’t care. It feels painful now, the idea of not seeing her automatically every day; I can’t even think about it. Her existence is like sharp bright berries that I feast upon greedily. I want to stain my mouth with them.
Any guilt about stealing the money has faded in the light of the importance of the project. I’ll do it again, soon. I’ll give her anything she wants.
I wander off, feeling so lonely it’s like it’s got me by the throat. Teachers wait in their doorways and make people line up so they will enter classrooms in an orderly fashion. I see Grace in the corridor. I think about approaching her but I change my mind. You never know what reaction you’ll get and today she looks so white her lips stand out the colour of a bruise, her eyes large and startled in her thin face.
She’s cut off all the hair that’s grown out; actually, it looks more like she’s shaved it off. It’s so short you can clearly see the scalp beneath, so pale, the colour of a pearl.
15
Grace
I shouldn’t be here.
I’m sure I look weird. I feel like I’ve gone into some sort of shock or something, and the noises in the school corridor are muffled like I’m walking underwater. I had to get away, though. I couldn’t think in that flat. I could only creep around Mum as she lay on the bed, dried blood under her nose, and then go out of her room and silently scream on the balcony. Eventually I plucked up the courage to clean the blood away with a damp flannel. All night I kept peeking around Mum’s door, terrified at what I might see. Then I checked again this morning before I left.
She’s alive, just.
What a bitch-coward I am coming into school of all things, I tell myself. I must be crazy leaving her like that, but on the other hand being away means I have to start calming down because if I break down blubbing here, then everything will be lost.
‘Are you all right, dear? You look terribly pale.’ The head, Mrs Reid, stops me in front of the lockers. She’s always asking me that; it’s a pain really and especially so today when somebody being kind could just about tip me over the edge.
I swallow, nod.
‘Well, the door to my office is always open, you know that, dear.’ Then she’s off, squeezing my arm lightly, because she’s distracted by some commotion around the corner that she swiftly moves to take charge of, while I stand there dry-swallowing over and over again.
Around me my fellow pupils look so strange as they surge to their classes. Shovelling crisps into their faces, braying out honking laughs, wallowing along in massive pillowy trainers. Actually I know it’s me that’s the strange one, the alien, the ghost among them.
Three, four, cross that fucking floor. The parquet floor to the school office to tell the secretary I won’t be staying for the rest of the day, which is our system.
Then I’m outside, blinking in the bright sunshine, ready to face anything I have to face.
16
Phoebe
What is a witch?
I go looking for them to distract me from thinking about him. I believe they might give me clues too on how to feel better and stronger than I do.
I find them inside the Internet. There are thousands of them flying around in there.
I wait until lunchtime when it’s quiet. The school library’s old dial-up connection takes an age to get going. It beeps and clicks and I wait as it creaks along like some ancient contraption being fired up.
I start to get excited.
I can feel them all gathering in there, massing darkly and then feeding their way down the tubes to find me.
Then the old screen lights up with a crackle. It doesn’t take long to find them. I feel my blood rising when I do.
I realise that I will never forget what I’m learning. That the facts of it will carve new pathways in my brain and these creatures appearing on the screen will all be huddling inside my head forever.
I stand up. Shake myself down and go on looking.
They do not just feature in silly children’s stories. I learn that they perform ‘unnatural acts’. They fly. Not always on broomsticks either. They use anything to hand – branches or cooking forks or a goat with horns. Sometimes they fly in hordes, sometimes alone. They congregate. A witches’ sabbath. I can almost hear a crystal ping inside the computer like they’re landing inside the screen, battering against it with their forks, trying to escape into the room.
They make flying ointment. It’s almost sweet, like little girls mashing up plants and thinking they’re making magic. It reminds me of our wishing bowl and the messes we’ve made in it, mud slopping over the side and splattering our ankles. Though their ointment has hemlock in it, other herbs too. Sometimes creatures caught for the purpose. They use the blood of animals; moles caught at midnight. Witches know all the charms and tricks. They have all the philtres and poisons. They like to make stinks. They like everything to be backwards. Sometimes I too have a longing to invert, for everything to be made upside down or inside out. If I could fly, I’d swoop up to the top of a tree and hang off a branch by my toes. Smile at passers-by, which would appear to them as a grimace.
They kiss the devil’s arse.
Sometimes these women are old and ugly. I see the words hag and crone. Harpy, harridan, scold, targe, drab, Fury, weird sister, necromancer. An old woman so envious of others she eats her own heart in fury. Munches and sucks on it.
Sometimes they are young and beautiful. Siren. Succubus. Harlot. Bitch.
I hear my breath in the room as I read on.
They have the ability to start fires; flames crack open from the ground where they’ve just walked. They chew glass. They are penis snatchers.
Their feet point backwards.
There’s the three weird sisters from Macbeth of course. How scared Macbeth is of them. How drawn to them he is. They’ll do anything to carry out revenge. ‘In a sieve I’ll thither sail,’ they say; they can do that, across the seas using their brooms for oars. They whisper things to Macbeth that are the end of him. They are the thoughts you should never listen to but do, and I know what that’s like.
It’s not fair. Macbeth wants their power even though he’s disgusted by them. He wants to take their visions of what’s to come and use them for his own ends, and not give them anything in return. He should leave them alone and not try and take what’s theirs and get on with his own life. He’s not a tragic hero; he’s a thief. That’s what makes him so evil.
Of course I won’t tell Mr Jonasson I think that. I know he likes being the expert in these matters and I don’t mind him thinking he is, I really don’t. Every time I remember our beautiful kiss it shudders right through me.
He was right about one thing, though. The witches were hated and rounded up. Murdered in droves. No wonder they keep everything that makes them safe around them like I do with the pointing knives and scissors at home. They need these things, these creatures. There are favoured animals, friends almost: little scurrying creatures that do their bidding, carrying out wicked deeds under cover of rustling leaves and night. Hares, pigs, cats, weasels, dogs. A favourite is a yellow bird that hops from tree to tree and is a friend and lookout. Toads too, the bigger the better. Skinwalkers, they take the form of animals and walk in their fur on all fours.
There’s always something that gives witches away, though. Some mark or token on their bodies. A bruise or teat or fold of skin. They go looking for these, the accusers. They poke around the women’s bodies like they were putty,
searching out what they are determined to find. Then it’s the trials. That’s when all hope is lost. That’s the point where there’s nothing you can do about it any more. All the ointments and witch sabbaths disappear like mist in the glare of it. The questions are overwhelming; they surge over you like a tidal wave and flatten all the ramparts you’ve spent years and years building.
I get up and pace around the empty room, feeling upset.
The trials remind me of being with that counsellor woman that Mum made me see – pussy-cat face. How she ran after me; even though she was on her leather chair and I was on the red sofa the whole time, I knew I was being chased by the slimy smiling witch finder. Tick-tock went the clock, sometimes fast and sometimes slow. When she caught up with me, which happened more and more as time went on, she conducted a thorough search. Having your mind searched is the very worst sort of intrusion. Sometimes I managed to shut the proceedings down: I’d put up a roadblock and feel pleased with myself that I’d somehow managed to outwit her. More often than not my roadblock didn’t work. I’d turn to flee, giddy with escape, and there she was. She’d got round it somehow and was simply waiting as the clock ticked out. Tick-tock. By the end of the session I was nearly always skewered, a beetle pegged out on pins for view. I’d go home. ‘How did it go?’ my mother would ask. ‘What did you say?’
I drink deeply from a bottle of water and sit down to read more about the trials.
Many didn’t realise they were witches. Is it possible to be a witch and not know? Yes. It can be driven out of you. Also, we cannot drown. However hard they try to drown a witch, she keeps getting right up out of the water, like getting up out of bed. If she drowns and her prone body floats up, lifeless, to the surface, that’s the only way you tell she was innocent.
A real witch will keep getting up.
Then, all that can be done is to burn or hang her.
I touch my own throat delicately.
The youngest I find that was hanged was five years old.
*
Mr Jonasson doesn’t arrive at school till after lunch. I hear his voice murmuring in the staffroom. What excuse is he giving them, I wonder? Does his absence mean he’s trying to avoid me? Perhaps he’ll skirt around me the next few days and then disappear off into the summer like nothing ever happened. Or, is it because he’s in such a ferment he’s had to take the morning to become steady? I linger in the corridor and try to hear but his voice is too low for me to pick out the words. I bite at my fingers. I’m tempestuous with not knowing, my feelings roiling and churning inside me. Looking for witches was supposed to be a distraction but I think it might’ve just made things worse. I’m so het up I want to scream out loud. At the end of the dark corridor is a window and the day glitters outside. A group of boys come round the corner and I can no longer stand there listening because all their eyes are on me as they approach. I make off before they pass me with their loud voices and their eyes, always querying, seeking out, looking for vulnerabilities, inching towards what stays hidden. I run towards the day, the bright window and clatter downstairs, and stand in the sun, the light breaking around me into shards.
*
As I’m taking my coat off the peg at the end of the day Mr Jonasson slides up to me. Even though this is what I’ve been waiting for, imagining all day, somehow I feel disappointed when I see him. I’m exhausted from all the time spent trying to catch a glimpse of him, trying to hear what he’s saying, trying to guess what’s happening and what he’s thinking. It might be just tiredness but he’s not as gilded as he appeared last night. Somehow the Swedishness of him looks awkward and plodding in the sharp light from the row of windows above the coat pegs. Yesterday it was strange and fascinating in princely white and blue, his blond lashes like feathers. Today his eyes are shot through with red like he’s been drinking and the collar of his blue shirt cuts into his neck and his pockets sag.
Out of one of his saggy pockets he takes a cheap mobile phone. ‘Here,’ he says.
I turn it over on my palm. ‘What’s this for?’
‘So we can talk over the summer. I might not get another chance before we break up. See, I have one too.’ He slips another identical phone out of his pocket to show me, then drops it back. ‘So we’ll both have an extra phone that we use only to talk to each other. Quick, put it in your bag.’ He looks over his shoulder, uncertain and nervy. ‘You want that, don’t you?’
His saggy pockets and red eyes fade and what I saw last night hoves into view again. His eyes lower and I want to kiss the lids and feel the delicate skin on my lips. I nod so fast I think my head’ll drop off. ‘Yes, yes, of course.’ I let the phone drop into my bag among the books and orange peelings. My stomach turns over at what we are doing.
‘Can you keep it hidden?’ he asks. ‘I won’t ring – let’s text to make it easier.’
He’s clearly never met my mother but I’ll have to worry about that later. I’ll have to find a hiding place she’d never think of. Even as he’s standing there I spin through the possibilities: under the floorboards in the shed; high up in a tree; burial in a glass jar.
‘Easily,’ I say quickly. I don’t want to let onto him how scared I am by all of this. How it sets my heart off ticking frantically with the fear and excitement. I need to be as adult as he’s being about it all.
At the sound of approaching footsteps he turns on his heel and strides away. I stay where I am, calming down, for an age. Now he’s not actually in front of me, now he’s just an idea, the summer opens before me like a golden flower. I smile into the coats and close my eyes and rest my face among them and breathe in their fetid smell.
Outside, Orla is waiting for me.
‘Hey, she says. ‘I thought we could make some plans for the summer before I go. D’you fancy going to see a movie next week?’
‘Only Americans say “movies”, Orla.’ I know I sound harsh but I can’t stand it, the way she’s trying to cling onto me. Especially now I have this golden flower.
‘It’s just …’
I wave my arms about in what seems like an unnecessary fashion but it serves to make her back away. ‘Look, I might ring you sometime,’ I say. I want her to go away so I can gloat over what’s just happened.
Her face looks so hurt and broken I nearly retract but she walks off before I have a chance. The feeling of having been nasty stays in my chest like there’s some poison there. I take the phone out of my bag and hold it in my pocket all the way home. Concentrating on that makes the feeling go away.
17
Grace
I do not think and I will not think. I will simply act.
If I can order everything in this flat it will be as a citadel against the outside world.
I can put everything into place bit by bit and ignore the tightly knotted tangles inside; if I pretend they don’t exist they will cease to be eventually. I shouldn’t have gone back to school today. That was pure selfishness, wanting to take my miserable-little-bitch hide out of the situation for a few hours, but I hardly stayed and I do feel clearer for it. I know what needs to be done now.
First off, I have to think about who might come here and discover what’s happened.
It begins with the carers. I caught them this morning and managed to talk my way out of them coming up. I look up the number in our phone book, the lettered indexes grimy with handling. Certain letters are dirtier than others, the C for Carers for instance.
I feel almost faint with nerves as I wait for the agency to pick up.
‘Hey, is that Debbie?’ Does my voice sound high and tight? I think it does.
‘Speaking.’
Relief blooms in my chest. Debbie is extremely vague. I always double-check that she’s written everything down or put it into her computer when I call. I don’t trust her to do it otherwise.
‘Just to let you know we won’t be needing anyone for the next fortnight.’
‘No?’
‘No. Mum’s going away, I mean we’re both going away. We’r
e staying with her sister, which is so great because she’s brilliant at doing everything. Bed-washing, turning, everything. And they’ve got a massive house – a bungalow, in fact – so it makes everything brilliantly easy, and there’s loads of people there – relatives I mean, all relatives – and they cook lovely meals all the time and everyone helps out.’
My mother doesn’t have a sister.
‘Sounds good.’ Debbie yawns at the other end of the phone.
‘OK, bye then.’
‘Bye.’
‘Debbie?’ I panic as I’m about to ring off. ‘Have you put that into the computer?’
‘I will do.’
I hang onto the telephone receiver like I’m drowning and it’s a fucking life-saving device. ‘Can you do it now? I mean while I’m on the line. Sorry. Then I know it’s done, that’s all.’
She sighs. ‘Yeah, yeah.’ There’s the clicking of computer keys and she comes back onto the line. ‘Satisfied?’
I lean against the wall and close my eyes. ‘Thank you. Thank you so much for that, Debbie.’
The line goes dead with a blip and I take a minute before I put it back onto the cradle. I hold it tight against my cheek and jam the earpiece into the bone.
‘Shitting hell.’ I wipe my forehead. ‘Shit me to hell,’ I whisper. ‘Mum?’ I yell down the hallway. ‘Mum?’ The walls bounce my voice back to me but there’s no reply. She’s asleep, I tell myself. That’s all it is. Now stop being a shithead and get on with doing what you have to do.
I put on a load of laundry. The pee-stained stuff that is starting to infiltrate the flat with its smell. I hesitate, then add an extra dose of conditioner after the wash has started. I take out the tins and packets from the cupboard and assess what we have, stacking them into groups for meals. Tins of sausages and beans that will go with instant mash. No, this is no good. I know it’s no good yet it’s hard to know what is. We’ve been living on this stuff for years. No, no – think, you know what is good. You are not an unintelligent person. You just need to focus and start to think in a different way. I begin a list: oranges; almond oil for massaging feet; nettle tea because Mum talks about having that as a kid and how good it is for you, if you can even buy it; vitamins; vegetables; chicken breast; cotton wool; Radox.