by S K Sharp
Detective Scott nods. He seems to think about this for a long time, then puffs his cheeks and blows air and shrugs.
‘All right. After you left, when did you next see Mr Robbins?’
5
Monday 10th June 1985
It’s early, too early for a school day, but I don’t care. I fling open my bedroom curtains and let the sun stream in. There are storm clouds in the sky to the north but all I’m thinking of is Dec, the beads of sweat on his back, his fingers drifting over my skin, his eyes wide and bright with lust. I stand at the window, lost in the memories, all picture-perfect and glorious as though I’m right there again, until my heart starts doing loop-the-loops. It’s like the whole world has changed and everything is brighter, the colours more vivid; but it’s not the world, it’s me. I’m what’s changed. I feel like I could move mountains, walk on water, do anything.
Coming home last night was weird, what with Mum and Dad both there, Dad in the lounge with a policeman, Mum upstairs coming out of the bath. My heart almost stopped when I saw the policeman because at first all I could think was that Mum and Dad had noticed I was gone and reported me missing, or something stupid like that. But I knew I was wrong as soon as I caught Dad’s eye. The air didn’t change. There wasn’t some big sigh of relief. It wasn’t about me at all.
‘Where have you been?’
‘With Kat. It was boring.’ I remember putting on as much fake concern as I could muster. ‘Is everything OK?’
‘Go to bed, Nicola. Your mum’s in the bathroom. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll stay out of her way.’
I wish I was waking up with Dec now, not in my own stupid bedroom, but I didn’t want to be there when Dec’s dad came back home; besides, Mum would have gone mental if I’d stayed out all night, so it’s probably just as well.
I go to the bedroom window, dressed in my pyjamas, and look across the street. The curtains at Dec’s window are open now. They were closed last night when he left so he must already be up. I will him to come to the window so I can see him. I want to be with him. I want to phone him right now and talk to him and know he’s OK and that we’re OK, but that means going downstairs, and I’m not going downstairs until the last possible minute this morning. Grab some food and run off to school before Mum has a chance to ask the inevitable Where were you last night? and Who was with you? and What did you do? and all the rest. I’ll have to face it sooner or later because it’s not like they didn’t notice me come home last night, but I’ll take later, thanks.
Mum slams a cupboard door downstairs, which sets off all sorts of alarms because no way should Mum be up this early. My heart squirms. I’m in for an inquisition and a lecture for coming home so late, I know that, but if she somehow works out that I spent last night having sex with Dec instead of being with Kat then I’ll probably spend the next three years locked in my room. I’ll have to grow my hair long, like Rapunzel, so someone can climb in and rescue me.
I wonder if she already knows, somehow, the way mums do. Then I try to remember what time it was when I slipped in last night. Past eleven? I saw the clock on the mantelpiece, framed between Dad and the policeman as I stood in the doorway to the lounge. Constable Simmons, that was what his badge said; as for the clock …
Seven minutes past midnight.
Oh God! Mum’s going to go mental but, whatever happens next, it was worth it. I want to put on some music, maybe ‘Slave to Love’, which I only got at the weekend and have hardly had a chance to play at all, but then Mum will know I’m awake and come stomping up to yell at me. Anyway, my head keeps going back to that stupid Foreigner song that you couldn’t get away from back at the start of January. ‘I want to know what love is,’ sings Lou Gramm, and I want to tell him that I know exactly what love is, and it’s wonderful.
I stand at the window but Dec still doesn’t show, and Mum’s still clattering and banging around downstairs and it’s obvious there’s no way I’m sneaking off to school without taking a lecture, so I decide I might as well get it over with. I get dressed and go downstairs and then stop as I see Dad’s leather jacket hanging from the coat rack by the door. There are streaks of orange mud all down one sleeve and across the back, which reminds me of the policeman again. I heard him saying something about Dec’s dad, so maybe there was some big drama at the Shelley. I hope so, because maybe that means Mum’s thinking about something that isn’t What time did you get home last night, young lady?
Fat chance. Mum’s at the sink in the kitchen, washing vegetables. The atmosphere as I come in is cold enough to freeze a polar bear.
‘Morning,’ I say, trying to sound like I haven’t noticed.
Mum doesn’t even look up, just moves on to chopping carrots. I drop a couple of Shredded Wheat into a bowl and pour in some milk, thinking that the faster I’m out of here, the better. I start to carry my bowl out of the kitchen, and it’s looking like maybe my luck’s in – but, of course, that’s when Mum rounds on me, banging the vegetable knife down hard enough that I jump.
‘So?’
‘Um …?’
‘What have you got to say for yourself, young lady?’
Young lady. I knew it.
I tell myself to keep acting innocent. ‘That … I’m … going to have breakfast upstairs? You know? We’ve got geography today. I was going to do some last-minute revision.’
‘I don’t think so,’ she says, so I stay where I am, resigned to the inevitable. A silence grows between us, each waiting for the other to speak, until we both start at the same time.
‘What time did you—’
‘Why was there a policeman—’
‘What time did you get home last night?’ She doesn’t look at me and I know she already knows the answer, probably to the exact second.
‘Mum! I’m sixteen and it was only just past midnight! Why was there a policeman here?’
‘Never you mind.’ Her hand moves to her throat. An absent-minded gesture but now I see the dark marks on the side of her neck. They look like bruises.
‘Mum—’
‘Where were you? Because you clearly weren’t anywhere near the Mary Shelley last night or you wouldn’t need to ask.’
I take a mouthful of Shredded Wheat, part of me wondering what on earth has happened while the rest of me tries to think my way out of this. ‘With Kat,’ I say when I can’t come up with anything better. ‘Revising, you know?’
Mum rolls her eyes. ‘Nicola Walker, please!’
‘We lost track of time! Sorry.’
Mum takes a step closer. Her eyes are so narrow you could cut yourself on them. ‘Revising, is it? That’s your story? Funny, because after your dad spent half an hour looking for you, he knocked on the Clarkes’ door on the way home and no one answered. Let’s try this again: where were you?’
‘OK, so we weren’t revising. That party, Mum, it was just so … boring. There was nothing to do. We went for a walk.’ Oh God, that’s so lame.
‘A walk? For two hours? Where did you go? India?’
‘The park, Mum!’
‘You went out into the park. In the dark. For two hours.’
I have a brainwave. I put on my angry face. ‘Actually, since you apparently have to know the exact details, Kat was really upset because of this boy called Gary who keeps bugging her. He was all over her at the Shelley and that’s why we didn’t stay. It’s kind of creepy, actually. He’s well dodgy.’
I expect this to take the wind right out of Mum’s sails but for some reason it doesn’t even make a dent. ‘And do you want to tell me how long you and Kat were in the park together … No, actually, don’t, I don’t want to hear you lie to me again. I’ll ask you one more time. Where were you? Tell me the truth this time, Nicola, or I swear you’ll spend every weekend from now until the end of summer locked in your room.’
I put a careful edge on each word. ‘Why does it matter? What difference does it make?’
‘It makes a very big difference if your walk involved a lon
g detour across the road.’
I almost tell her I wasn’t anywhere near Dec’s house but stop myself just in time. She knows. I don’t know how, but she does; and she’s shaking, she’s that angry, and I’m actually a bit scared.
‘Were you with him?’
‘With who?’
‘You know exactly who I mean. Your father’s going to skin that boy alive.’
‘For God’s sake, Mum, I’m sixteen! I am allowed to have a boyfriend, aren’t I?’ I can’t imagine Dad skinning anyone, but what he will do is turn my home into a prison camp – probably with hired guards and everything to make sure I don’t go anywhere or see anyone that Mum hasn’t decided is OK.
‘Where. Were. You?’
‘Since you apparently already know, why are you even asking?’
WHACK!
I don’t see it coming. I don’t think Mum sees it coming, either; but all of a sudden, my cheek is stinging as the bowl of Shredded Wheat flies out of my hands and smashes against the door frame, and there’s milk and mushy cereal bits all over my top and in my eyes and in my hair and dripping down the side of my face.
We look at each other, me trembling with shock, Mum looking like she doesn’t recognise who I am. We stare and stare and neither of us says anything, and then I turn and leave without a word and go back to my room. Mum doesn’t follow or say anything. I feel tears wanting to come and I can’t quite stop them, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to fall to pieces; and so I take myself back to last night – to Dec, to being with him, to how it felt to have him wrapped around me – until the tears go away. Then I change my clothes and throw the dirties on the floor for Mum to deal with later, and go to the bathroom mirror to assess the damage.
It’s not so bad. The side of my face still has a bit of Shredded Wheat sticking to it and my eyes are puffy, but a quick rub with a flannel and a few dabs of make-up and I look almost normal again. Except … not quite. The face looking back at me seems subtly different, more assured. I feel alert and I suddenly know exactly what I’m going to do. When Dec leaves home, I’m going with him. There’s only another six weeks before school finishes and then we’ll spend the whole summer together, and there’s nothing Mum and Dad can do to stop me. Maybe I won’t come back at all.
It’s too early to be leaving to go to school but I’m not hanging around to have another breakfast thrown all over me and so I go back downstairs and leave the house, slamming the door behind me. I go to Kat’s house and ring the bell. When Kat’s mum answers, there’s a moment like she’s considering not letting me in, but then she stands out of the way.
‘I suppose you can come in.’ She doesn’t sound keen. ‘I take it you’ve had breakfast?’
‘Actually, no.’
She shakes her head and rolls her eyes. ‘Help yourself.’
The air is wrong here too, like it’s wrong at home, thick with tension. I see Kat at the top of the stairs and there’s obviously something she needs to tell me, which is good because I really need to tell her how the two of us and Dec were hanging out in the park last night between ten and midnight, if anyone asks. ‘Mrs Clarke … did something happen last night? At the Shelley?’
Kat’s mum gives me a sharp look. ‘What happened, young lady, was that no one could find you.’ She whips a murderous look to the stairs. ‘Or our Katherine, for that matter.’
‘I went looking for her,’ says Kat, and it’s like she’s reading my mind. ‘We sat in the park for a bit. You know. Because of …’
Kat’s mum turns her annoyance up the stairs. ‘You did, did you? Until nearly midnight? When you knew that Nicola’s parents were looking for her?’
‘We were with Declan,’ I say, because Kat needs to know that part of the story before she goes and says we were on our own. ‘We just sort of hung out for a bit. The three of us together …’ I shoot a glance past Kat’s mum to Kat. ‘We left because of this boy called Gary Barclay, who’s friends with Dec and keeps bugging Kat to go out with him and—’
Kat lets out a high-pitched laugh that sounds more like a cry of alarm. ‘Except it turns out he’s a poof! That’s what Declan said, anyway. Can you believe it?’
I stare at Kat, incredulous that she chose to go with that as her story.
‘And … and I did tell Nicky her mum was looking for her.’ Kat’s staring at me hard, and I’m looking right through them both, thinking What on earth happened last night? along with a good healthy dose of And where were you, Katherine Clarke?
‘Did you now?’ I don’t think Kat’s mum believes a word of any of this, but I nod vigorously, and then I sort of put things together, realising that whatever happened maybe had something to do with Mum and Dad, which is a bit of a shock, and so it’s easy to put on a show.
‘Oh my God! There was a policeman in the house when I got home. Was that …?’
I look from Kat to Kat’s mum and back again, hoping one of them will help me out. Kat obviously doesn’t have the first idea what I’m talking about, but Kat’s mum nods. For a moment it looks like she’s going to tell me but then she changes her mind and shakes her head. ‘Best talk to your mother about that,’ she says. ‘Speaking of which, I’m sure she isn’t keen on you being on your own with a young man two years older than you are, even if he is our Katherine’s cousin.’
I make a face – not keen might be a new World Record in understatement. ‘Dec’s … having some problems at home,’ I say, and I’m ready to say a whole lot more, too, because it’s always good to put in as much truth as you can when you’re making up a story, but then I remember: Kat’s mum and Dec’s dad are doing it, so I’d really better not talk about what I saw last night. ‘That’s why we didn’t come back when Kat found us,’ I say instead. Oh God, again! How lame does that sound?
Kat’s mum sighs as she stands aside to let me through to the kitchen. ‘None of my business, I suppose. Or yours either, I fancy. Go on. Get yourself some breakfast.’
She doesn’t come with me. Kat and I are in and out of each other’s houses all the time, so I already know where everything lives. It’s like having a spare second home sometimes, which is usually really nice, but not today. Today I grab a bowl of Corn Flakes and some milk and gobble it down as fast as I can and then Kat and I leave for school, early and glad to escape.
‘So …’ I just want to get our story straight, but Kat’s having none of it.
‘Did you and Dec do it last night?’ Her eyes are wide and dancing with mischief. ‘You did! Nicky Walker, you slut!’
‘What happened after we left?’ I ask, trying not to go all embarrassed, which is always a dead giveaway. ‘There was this policeman—’
‘I don’t know. I wasn’t there. Anyway, never mind that—’
‘Yes, speaking of which, where were you last night?’
Kat grins and starts dancing from side to side. ‘Dec and Nicky sitting in a tree, F-U-C-K-I-N—’
I elbow her. ‘Shut up!’ She laughs and starts asking all sorts about what Dec asked me to do and where he wanted to put it and things like that, all of which are a bit of a shock because Kat clearly knows a lot more than I thought she did about it, and probably a lot more than I do, and some of it is very definitely not the sort of thing they talk about in J17. And how come she knows all these things unless she’s done it too, because from the way she’s talking, I’m pretty sure she has, which can only mean that Kat has a secret boyfriend she hasn’t told me about even though I’m her best friend.
By now we’re in the park, heading for the path between the woods and the building site where the new Youth Centre is going to go. There’s a bit of a crowd where two huge cement trucks are parked up, and a whole bunch of people have stopped to watch. Mostly it’s kids on their way to school but I see mums and dads there too, and even Mr Crane from the Shelley.
‘Kat …’ I don’t know what to say. I want to tell her about what I saw last night but I don’t know how. ‘Did you know that Dec’s dad bought the school a minibus last year?’<
br />
Kat shrugs. ‘Not until last night.’
‘Did you know he’s one of the school governors, too? Everyone thinks he’s so bloody marvellous.’ But he isn’t. I know that now. After last night, I know all about Arty Robbins.
Kat shivers. ‘Is this about your mum?’
‘My mum?’
Kat looks at me looking back at her, all bewildered. ‘Yeah. Something happened last night at the party, after you left. Mum’s livid about it. Something about Arty and your mum. I wasn’t there either, so—’
‘My mum?’ I remember the bruises, and Arty and Mum arguing at the Shelley. And the policeman, last night …
Kat’s expression turns sour. ‘You’re right, though. You could say Uncle Arty stuck his hand up your dress and it wouldn’t matter. Short of photographic proof of him murdering Jesus or something, everyone would just say Nasty little liar. I keep wondering how much Dad was like him, or whether he was completely different—’
‘That’s what he did?’ I stare at her in shock. ‘To my mum?’ Oh God, is that what happened at the Shelley?
Kat looks suddenly alarmed, like she’s gone too far or said something she shouldn’t. ‘No! No, at least … I don’t think so. I don’t know. I wasn’t there. I’m just saying what it’s like. You know what I mean. But it happened, Mr Wallace! Mr Roberts keeps touching me! And then Mr Wallace says And how short was that dress, young lady? And the next thing you know, he’s calling your parents and it’s all about you and what you did, and everyone thinks you’re the school tart because obviously all the other girls dress like bloody nuns, don’t they?’
I stare at her, waiting to see whether there’s more. I have no idea where this is coming from, although I do know about Mr Roberts, head of the English department. Mr Touchy-Feely, as he’s known.
Kat smiles in a way that’s sort of sad and angry at the same time. ‘It happened to Mum when she was at school, too. Groped by a teacher when she was fourteen. She told me, when she did the talk thing.’ She makes a sour face. ‘That was about it, really. The rest was: Don’t do it, never talk about it, and if you do it with anyone before you’re eighteen, I’ll hunt them down and kill them.’