Too Close to Home

by Aoife Walsh

  ‘And I will make you fishers of men,’ Selena said absently.

  ‘And they straightway left their nets, and followed him,’ Franklin murmured on the other side of Minny.

  They all looked at him, Selena sticking her head past her sister and squinting. ‘It’s “at once they left their nets and followed him.”’

  ‘OK.’ He shrugged.

  ‘There are different translations,’ Minny pointed out.

  Selena looked furious. ‘No, there aren’t.’

  ‘There are, Selena.’

  ‘No.’ She ran off ahead. By the time they got to the playground she seemed to have stopped being sulky and was dangling from the monkey bars like a normal seven-year-old. Aisling could never resist swings. Minny found herself sitting on the metal fence with Franklin.

  ‘How come you know Bibley things?’ she asked after a while.

  ‘I used to be into that stuff. Last year.’ He shrugged. ‘I stayed with some people for a while that were like a community – a religious community, you know?’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘They were OK; they were nice. I always sort of liked going to church anyway; it’s chilled out. But it was a bit weird staying there, sort of too much. They didn’t really have room anyway.’

  ‘So you went home?’

  ‘Yeah. Not really, that’s when I came here.’ He seemed fairly comfortable perched on a narrow metal cuboid.

  Minny shifted a little. ‘So how’s it really, being at Granny’s?’

  ‘It’s OK, honestly. There’s plenty of space and everything, and it’s quite nice having someone checking if I’ve done my homework or had breakfast before I leave.’

  ‘I bet she fusses around you like anything.’

  He looked thoughtful. ‘She’s not too bad really; she leaves me alone as well. I think she’s afraid I might run off if I get annoyed.’

  ‘Would you?’

  ‘No. I haven’t got anywhere else to go.’

  ‘You couldn’t go home?’

  ‘Not for now. My social worker set up a deal to keep me out of trouble. I’m not meant to live with my mum again.’ They watched Selena on the obstacle course. ‘Course, I’ll be sixteen this time next year, so I can do what I want then. But I won’t want to go back to my mum’s.’

  ‘You don’t miss it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘How about school, is it OK?’

  He shrugged. ‘You tell me. No, it’s good. It’s different here – I don’t know – you don’t get the feeling that you’re just stuck here. For life. There’s loads of morons, but that’s just like all over. And I’m the new kid, so I’d get nonsense anywhere.’

  ‘What, are they picking on you?’

  ‘Nah. Do you think if I get Selena an ice lolly she’ll like me better?’

  ‘I think if you get Selena an ice lolly she’ll follow you home.’

  They got down from the fence and strolled towards the café. It wasn’t as festive as the ice-cream van by the river but it was cheaper. ‘It’s not bad for me, really,’ Franklin said. ‘I reckon if Aisling can put up with it there, I’ve got nothing to complain about.’

  Minny stopped to look at the menu on the wall outside. ‘Is it bad in class?’

  ‘For Aisling? Yeah.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know, they groan whenever she says anything. And laugh and stuff. There’s some name-calling. And no one ever speaks to her unless they’re taking the piss, you know?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Minny’s heart was heavy.

  ‘The teachers just kind of ignore her, it’s like they don’t want to have to think about it. Not all of them, but some.’

  ‘And what’s she like, is she … is she distracting, or what?’

  ‘No, not really, that’s the thing. It’s like they only pick on her because they know she won’t deal with it, not because she’s done anything to annoy them. She just sits there quiet most of the time. She ticks a bit sometimes, but that’s pretty much it.’

  Minny ordered two strawberry splits and a lager-and-lime lolly for Aisling. ‘And – what do you want?’

  ‘I’ll get a strawberry one too, but I’m paying.’ They wrangled for a bit and split it, so that Franklin could tell Selena he’d bought hers.

  ‘Does anyone … touch her or anything?’ Minny asked as they left the café. ‘Get physical?’

  ‘I’ve seen a bit of pushing and shoving. You know, some people will do it to any girl they can, only most girls know to stay clear, you know?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘She doesn’t know when it’s coming, that’s all. It’s not the end of the world, Minny. She might be miserable now, but you know, people are going to grow out of this crap eventually.’

  ‘Not all of them.’

  ‘No, but it’ll get easier to avoid.’

  He wouldn’t come back to the house with them; he said he had a lot of work to do because he was going off back to North London tomorrow. Minny thought she might as well break the habit of a lifetime and do some homework too, even though it was Friday, not that she had any plans for the weekend. She looked over at Aisling, trudging beside her. Selena had run ahead. ‘Franklin says people pick on you in class,’ she said. ‘And the teachers don’t do much about it.’

  ‘Yes, sort of.’ Ash sort of wriggled, as if she was trying to shake off the question.

  ‘You know that shouldn’t happen, right? You know you’re not doing anything wrong?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why don’t you ever tell Mum about it?’

  ‘I’m not good at saying things.’ It’s what Ash always said when you asked her that. She had learned to say it years ago; she had a set of stock phrases that she had learned placated people.

  ‘You don’t deserve that kind of crap.’

  ‘Mum says this stuff happens. And I just have to put up with it for a while longer and it will get better.’

  ‘It doesn’t mean you have to put up with absolutely everything. Without saying anything. You can … not let them away with everything.’

  ‘I’m not good at talking about it.’ She struggled. ‘I don’t want to think about it when I’m at home.’

  ‘Oi, you two,’ Nita called from the doorway. ‘Are you coming in? Because Raymond is mounting a bid for freedom here.’ The baby was three-quarters hanging out of the front door. Selena’s head appeared underneath her mother’s arm.

  ‘Did you get my lunch box off Franklin?’

  Minny looked at her impatiently.

  ‘Did you get my—’

  ‘Yes, Selena, I’ve got your lunch box. Jesus.’

  Minny couldn’t get her head out of worrying about Aisling. In the middle of the night she woke up and found herself still doing it. Not only could she not forget about how miserable things must be for her almost all the time at school, she suddenly found herself considering what was going to happen to Ash afterwards. She couldn’t see her in a job, or living on her own, or with anyone else. It was all very depressing. It also meant she didn’t protest when Nita said that she was taking Ash shopping for ‘a few bits and bobs’. Even though Minny’s own trainers had holes in the bottom and she hadn’t had any new clothes in ages. Her mother looked a bit startled when Selena didn’t complain either. She’d been quiet for a few days, but she cheered up when Nita reminded her she had a birthday party to go to that afternoon. ‘And what are you going to do, Minny?’

  ‘Don’t know.’

  ‘Not meeting Penny?’

  ‘No.’ Her mother looked over at her, eyebrows raised. ‘I might go to the park. Some people from school said they were.’ Now that she was almost avoiding Penny, she found herself hanging out a lot more with girls from her form who also did not have boyfriends.

  ‘What about Franklin?’

  ‘He’s seeing his … mother today.’

  ‘You know,’ Nita said, still sorting washing, ‘you ought to invite him round for dinner. He hasn’t eaten here yet. I think maybe he feels shy ab
out staying. And it would probably be good for him to feel he has somewhere to go – you know, a nice, normal family like us. You should invite him properly.’ She saw Minny’s face. ‘What’s wrong with that?’

  ‘Nothing. Only the food we eat isn’t nice and normal. I mean, it’s nice, but …’

  ‘OK, I see what you mean.’

  ‘Babi would be bound to cook brains, or something.’

  ‘Well, how about we choose an evening when I’m doing the cooking, and I’ll promise not to serve brains? Or offal of any kind?’

  ‘…’

  ‘You can choose what we have, how’s that? Within reason.’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘So what will you choose?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Minny shuffled her feet. ‘I don’t know what he’d like.’ You’d want to choose something sophisticated enough that you didn’t look like a hillbilly, but on the other hand you wanted him to be able to eat it. He might not like fancy stuff; he might not have been exposed to it or whatever. Oh God, she sounded like such a snob even to herself.

  Her mother gathered up the bundles of clothes. ‘Oh, come on, Minny, he’s probably not that fussy. He’s been living with Judy and he hasn’t starved to death.’

  Minny had always known that her mother didn’t have a great deal of respect for Granny’s cuisine. Her father hadn’t either. She hadn’t particularly understood it as a child, when a meal that wasn’t actually smoking or black didn’t seem overcooked and when Granny served up stuff they never had at their house – roast dinners at weekends, and thick heavy puddings with custard or ice cream, or during the week pale chips glistening with fat from an actual chip pan and delicious ‘Southern Fried Chicken’ that came out of a packet wearing the brown coating. They weren’t allowed it at home because their chicken had to be free-range. They hardly ate meat at all in those days, funny to look back on. Her father was a vegetarian. After he left there had been this evening when Nita was cooking veggie sausages and the pan caught on fire. Minny didn’t suppose veggie sausages were particularly more flammable than meat ones; it had probably been an old disgusting pan that hadn’t been cleaned properly because her mother was a bit crazy at the time, or else she had the heat up too high. The smoke alarm had gone off and Nita had literally thrown the pan into the sink with a cloth over it and then whacked it with the wooden spatula until the spatula broke. By then they were all crying and she gathered Selena, who was only four, into her arms and swept Minny and Aisling in front of her up to the shop on the corner and bought three packets of pork sausages and cooked them. They were eating cold sausages all the next day. After that she started cooking completely different sorts of things – Czech food like Babi’s, and other things she said her dad had taught her: big meaty curries and stews and dumplings. They even had meatloaf, and one kind of meat stuffed with another sometimes – it was usually delicious but really wrong at the same time. She said quite often that they should cut down again, that it was environmentally irresponsible and they were all going to die of bowel cancer.

  ‘You could ask him what he likes,’ Nita suggested.

  ‘No, I don’t think I can. That would just be weird.’

  ‘Well, give him a choice. How about, the next time you’re talking to him, you say, “My mother says why don’t you come round to tea on Monday?” And if he says yes, say, “Would you rather have spaghetti and meatballs or chicken satay and noodles?”’

  ‘Hmmm,’ said Minny.

  She went to the park in the end, because she was bored in the house on her own after Babi had taken the baby out, and she knew that people from school were gathering there, friends other than Penny, from her maths set, whom she didn’t normally see outside school. It was still so hot that she wore a dress. The park was full of adults sunbathing, some of them even in bikinis, as if the word had gone out that this was the sunniest park in England today and busloads had been driven in from Margate or Blackpool. One woman was topless.

  They were all sitting in a big clump at the edge of what was the rugby pitch in winter, and the muddiest bit of the whole park, but it was nice and verdant now. There were at least twenty people, all watching a handful of boys kick a ball over the rugby posts. Minny shuddered, particularly when she realised that one of the boys, all well-built and tanned, was Jorge. Penny was sitting with Emma Daly, who was there because Juliet was going out with one of Jorge’s even more Jorge-like friends. Sophie and Marta, whom she’d been planning to meet, were about a metre away from them. Minny considered just going home before they saw her. On the other hand, she and Penny had been on the verge of a row all week; only serious defensive manoeuvres had prevented endless conversation about Jorge, his issues and his qualities versus Franklin’s; and if Penny saw her before she got out of sight, it wouldn’t be good.

  ‘What are you sighing about?’ She turned and Franklin had sauntered up behind her, his hands in his jeans pockets.

  ‘What are you doing here? I thought you were going home.’

  ‘Yeah, I didn’t. I bumped into your mum and Aisling near the station and they said you were in the park.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Meeting that lot?’

  ‘Sort of.’

  ‘Mind if I come too?’

  ‘Sure.’ They went up the path rather than cutting across the pitch, because the rugby ball was still flying about. ‘I hate rugby.’

  ‘Yeah, I can see that.’

  ‘I hate anything to do with balls.’

  ‘Right.’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘I’ll remember that.’

  Minny saw Emma look at them and say something to Penny while they were still a way off; Penny turned round and watched them coming. They’d been joined by Linnea Jessop, who was the most womanly looking girl in their year and had very long thick straight hair. In Year 7 Minny had accidentally set it on fire in chemistry.

  ‘Penny doesn’t like me,’ Franklin said.

  ‘Oh, pay no attention. She doesn’t like anyone except Jorge at the moment.’

  ‘Hello,’ Penny said as they came up. ‘I didn’t know you were coming.’

  ‘Well, here we are.’ She sat down. ‘Do you know Emma and Linnea?’ she asked Franklin. He was still standing up, and she had to shade her eyes to look at him.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why don’t you sit down? This is Franklin,’ Penny announced, to everyone within a few metres. ‘He’s just started at Raleigh.’

  ‘Do you like it?’ Linnea asked, looking at him.

  ‘Yeah, it’s OK.’

  ‘Are you in our year?’

  ‘No, he’s Year 10.’

  ‘Where’s Aisling?’ Penny asked.

  ‘Out shopping. Why?’

  ‘I just haven’t seen you without her for a while, that’s all.’

  Jorge had stopped messing about with his ball and now threw himself down beside Penny. ‘And she’s hard to miss, isn’t she?’

  Minny looked at him frozenly.

  ‘I mean … she’s got a big personality.’

  ‘How come you’ve moved school now?’ Emma asked Franklin, her nose twitching the way it did.

  Jorge rolled over against Penny, grinning. ‘Oh, you got expelled, didn’t you, Franklin?’

  ‘Really?’ Linnea breathed.

  ‘Well, that’s what he told us. Drugs, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Remind me, Jorge,’ Minny said, pulling up grass, ‘didn’t you get asked to leave your last school because your marks weren’t up to scratch?’

  Penny glared at her. ‘No, that wasn’t the situation, actually, Minny.’

  ‘Yeah, I got kicked out for having marijuana on me,’ Franklin said, much more loudly than he usually spoke, ‘but that was a while ago. I’ve just moved here – that’s why I started Raleigh now.’

  ‘Well, I think that’s brave,’ Linnea said.

  ‘Oh, shut up, Linnea,’ Penny snapped, echoing Minny’s thoughts.

  ‘I’m going for a smoke,’ Franklin said, getting up abruptly.

 
; ‘You can smoke here.’ Linnea pressed her elbows together and patted the ground next to her thigh, but he was already walking off. They watched him go.

  Penny said, ‘I guess he feels he can’t.’

  ‘Maybe it’s what he’s smoking,’ Jorge said, getting up again to get the ball.

  Minny wished she had gone with Franklin, but he hadn’t even looked at her. She couldn’t go and join a different group now. She lay on her back with her eyes shut instead. Emma started talking to Penny.

  ‘You’ve been going out for a while now, haven’t you?’

  ‘Three months.’

  ‘And is it … serious, would you say?’

  Jesus, Minny thought, not again.

  There was a lot of mumbling and giggling. ‘I did actually go round to his house for dinner last night,’ Penny admitted. ‘His mum’s so nice. She’s really pretty as well. And she’d made this lush meal, it was the best salad I’ve ever tasted.’

  ‘I suppose it had gold in it,’ Minny said, without opening her eyes. Not very mature, admittedly.

  There was a pause. ‘What’s that, Minny?’

  ‘God, Penny, you’re becoming a parody of yourself. The best salad you’ve ever eaten? What are you talking about?’

  ‘What’s your problem, Minny?’ Penny looked ready to stamp. ‘This is all Franklin.’

  ‘No, it’s really not. If anything it’s Jorge – you don’t like Franklin because he doesn’t.’

  ‘That’s not true.’

  ‘You don’t even know him, Penny. You don’t like him because Jorge doesn’t, and Jorge doesn’t like him because he’s poor.’

  ‘Oh, that’s a good one. As if you don’t only like him because he’s poor.’

  ‘Just like you like Jorge because he’s rich.’

  Emma and Linnea were trying to shuffle away without actually getting up.

  ‘I can’t believe you’re saying this,’ Penny said.

  ‘Well, I am, so.’ She jumped up. ‘And now I’m going. I need a smoke as well.’