by Anne Cassidy
“Quick,” Carol said, getting into the front of the van, squashing Jennifer in the middle. “Let’s get going.”
Danny turned the ignition key and the van spluttered but didn’t start. He tried it again a few times and Jennifer felt her mum’s leg and arm stiffen on the seat beside her. Danny turned and looked at Carol and she gave him a glowing smile, her perfectly lipsticked mouth opening to show a row of straight white teeth.
They hadn’t taken much from the flat. Just their beds, a couple of chairs and small kitchen things, towels and clothes. Perry was out at work and unaware of the move that was taking place. Jennifer was sorry about this. She liked Perry. He was only twenty-four but he’d been nice to her. He’d chatted to her a lot and opened tins of Heinz tomato soup for her when she got in from school on cold afternoons. He was a StarWars fan and had a cupboard full of his childhood toys. Her mum was always trying to get him to sell them. They’ll make a few bob, she said, running her long fingers over Darth Vader, but Perry wouldn’t part with any of them.
That’s why her mum decided that they had to go.
“He’s a complete waste of space,” she’d said, when the letter came about the new house. “We don’t want the likes of him weighing us down.”
So Danny drove them to Berwick.
“I didn’t realize it was this far,” he grumbled, pulling the van up half on a grassy verge and half off.
There was a road sign attached to the garden wall of the end cottage. Water Lane, it said. Carol got out and walked towards the middle house. In her hand was a pair of keys with a cardboard label attached to them. She turned and looked back at Danny who was still sitting in the driver’s seat.
“Come on! There’s a lot of stuff to shift!” she said with mock righteousness.
Jennifer heard Danny sigh and then turn off the ignition.
The three of them stood by the front door, exhaling small clouds of hot air. Around their feet, on the icy grass, were holdalls, cases and black plastic bags full of stuff that had been hastily packed that morning. Jennifer saw Danny zip his jacket right up to the neck and glance at his watch as her mum fiddled with the keys. When the door opened on to a dark hallway she picked up a couple of bags and followed her mum in.
The cottage was tiny, smaller than she thought from outside. Her mum seemed to take up all the space in the hallway in front of her. Jennifer felt the bags that she was carrying scraping along the walls and when she looked around Danny was ducking to save hitting the light bulb.
“Is the power on?” Danny said.
“Midday. That’s my official moving-in time,” her mum said.
A door opened and the three found themselves in a dark living room. Her mum walked over to the window and pulled back a pair of dusty curtains. A faint wash of light made the room seem bigger and colder at the same time.
“Not too small,” her mum said. “It’s big enough for us, right Jen?”
Jennifer nodded. Just the two of them again.
“Freezing in here!” Danny said, looking a bit put out. “I’ll need some warming up, Carol.”
He threw his arm round her mum’s shoulder and her mum wriggled out of the hold. She kept her smile but her voice was dripping with cold.
“Everything in good time, Danny. Let’s be patient. There’s furniture to put up and then we’ll see what we can do to warm the place up a bit.”
Later, when the beds had been reassembled, the bags and cases unpacked and the two armchairs sat side by side in the living room, the power came on. The bulb in the living room gave off a blur of light which did nothing to brighten the room up. After a while, though, Jennifer could feel the gentle thrum of the central heating. She took her coat off and sat on the edge of one of the armchairs. On her lap was Macy, her favourite doll that she had owned for years. Macy wasn’t a toy. She didn’t play with her. She just liked to have her near and touch her hair. From upstairs she could hear the murmur of her mum and Danny’s voices and the sound of things moving around, scraping against the floor. The tiny television sat on the floor in front of her armchair and she wondered if Perry would be angry that they had taken it, and what he would say when he realized that they were gone. She’d heard him call her mum a thief before, but they’d made up afterwards, spending all afternoon in the bedroom while she watched her video of The Jungle Book.
After a few minutes, when the voices from upstairs had died down, Jennifer got up and walked into the small kitchen and looked out of the window over the sink into the back garden.
It was long and uneven. The grass was overgrown and there were clumps of bushes here and there that sat hunched against the grey sky. A shed sat halfway along, its door hanging off, and by the side of it a couple of upended buckets sat like tiny seats on the ground. A few flakes of snow floated past. She smiled. It was their first ever garden. She looked over the fence to the adjacent garden which was very different. It looked longer and wider, as if someone had got a bulldozer and rolled it up and down and flattened it out. There was a small play area, with swings and a climbing frame. A girl appeared and ran out towards the swings. She was about her own age, ten. She had jeans and a zip-up jacket with a hood which was lined with fur. She ran to the very end of the garden and touched the fence, turning to run back as though she was in a race with some invisible person. Looking back towards the houses the girl suddenly stopped and looked in her direction. She’d noticed the lights, perhaps, and then Jennifer’s face at the window. The girl threw her hood off and shook her head, and her thick ginger hair sprang out. Jennifer wasn’t sure what to do so she lifted her hand from Macy’s head and raised it for a wave, but the girl shot off and disappeared back into her own house.
Afterwards, when she’d been alone in the new living room for a long time, she put Macy back into her rucksack and went quietly upstairs. The door of her mum’s room was closed over but not shut. She could hear sounds from inside, a little laugh and then the low voice of Danny, a couple of words then him clearing his throat loudly. Her mum shushed him and there was a small creak, the bed moving. Jennifer knew the sound of that bed creaking. She knew what it meant. She had had to share her mum and Perry’s bedroom and had lain listening to it many times. Sometimes she’d turned round and watched the figures moving under the covers. Once there had been no covers and Jennifer had narrowed her eyes so that she could only see little bits of what was going on. It had made her feel horrible for days afterwards.
Jennifer stood by the door, looking in through the gap. She couldn’t see much, just the wallpaper. She could hear Danny, though, his breath coming in great mouthfuls, the bed groaning under his weight. She should go away, she knew that, but her hand reached up and gently pushed the door so that it moved back a few centimetres.
They were lying sideways across the bed, her mum’s jeans on the ground, Danny’s trousers in pools around his ankles. Danny’s huge backside seemed to tremble and then slump, his shoulders sinking into the bed. Somewhere, underneath him, was her mum. Jennifer hoped that she wasn’t getting squashed.
“What the hell?” Danny’s voice made her jump.
The man was half sitting up, his arms pulling at the waistband of his trousers, his money making clinking noises in the pockets.
“What’s she doing in here!”
Her mum got up off the bed kicking her jeans to one side. She reached over and took Jennifer’s arm and marched her out of the room.
“I told you to stay downstairs!” she said, lightly, pulling the room door closed behind her.
Jennifer looked at her mother’s thin body, her tiny breasts inside an old black bra, the rose tattoo on her shoulder, her flat stomach and skinny legs. She was tall, especially in her high heels, but her body was light as a feather.
“I’ll tell you what,” her mother said. “You go downstairs and I’ll get rid of him. We’ll get a takeaway for lunch. How about that?”
Her mother disappeared back into the room and Jennifer walked down the stairs. At the bottom was the black
bag that her mum had been carrying out of the flats just before they left. She picked it up and took it into the living room. Heavy footsteps sounded on the stairs and then Danny shouted Bye. She didn’t answer. She waited until the front door slammed and then she unzipped the bag. Inside was a single plastic figure. Luke Skywalker.
Her mum had stolen it.
Alice opened her eyes suddenly and remembered where she was. On the train, pulling out of the station before hers. Had she fallen asleep? Or just been daydreaming? Lost in her own thoughts? She saw that the train compartment had emptied a little. No one was standing and people were looking easier, nestling back in their seats, their faces serene, looking forward to going home.
A feeling of loss took hold of her. Just for a second. She saw her mother’s face breaking into a laugh when she asked her about Luke Skywalker. That bloody toy! she’d said dismissively.
How long had it been since she’d seen her? Four years? Five?
It seemed like a lifetime.
The detective’s name was Derek Corker.
Alice found this out a week later, when she met Frankie at his college bar for an end of term celebration. The exams had finished and the students were getting ready to go home. Frankie was moving back to Brighton, where his parents lived.
Alice saw the man’s name printed on a small card that was pinned to the Student Union noticeboard. Derek Corker, Private Investigator. Beside it was a copy of the photograph that had been in the newsagents. MISSING GIRL it said. Parents are distraught. Please contact with any information. Cash reward.
It didn’t upset her. She felt strangely detached when she looked at it, as if it wasn’t a photograph of her at all, but of some other person she used to know.
“What’s this?” Frankie said, slipping his arm round her waist and hooking her towards him.
She shrugged.
“Oh, that guy. He’s been hanging around college for a couple of days. Looking for some missing girl. He’s got wads of cash. Keeps buying drinks and flashing his money.”
He pulled her towards the bar and she felt lightheaded with relief. The photograph meant nothing to him. The face of the girl in the picture was not that of his girlfriend. She squeezed his arm with pleasure and went on tiptoes to kiss his cheek. He turned towards her and, ignoring the surrounding students, he bent down and gave her a fierce kiss on the mouth, sending a wave of desire through her.
Was this love?
The day before he’d bought her a present, a thin gold chain with a flat heart hanging from it. On the back of the heart was the word Alice, engraved in italics. She had never owned anything like it.
“Thanks,” she’d said, bewildered by her feelings. She was on the brink of tears.
“You’ve got a lovely neck,” he murmured, lying back on her bed. “You should wear things that show it off more.”
They’d been in Rosie’s flat for a couple of hours in the afternoon. Frankie had spent the day packing up his stuff ready to transport it all home to Brighton the following weekend. He had turned up unexpectedly at Rosie’s door, dusty and fed up. The others in his flat had used up all the hot water and he needed a shower. Plus he’d decided he wanted to give her the gift. Just like that. She sorted out some towels for him and turned away in embarrassment when he stripped his clothes off in front of her and marched off towards the bathroom laughing, the towel hanging down on to the floor as he walked.
She put the gold chain on and gazed at herself in the mirror. Her cropped hair made her face look small and her neck was long and thin. How pale and serious she looked. What did Frankie find attractive about her? When he came out of the bathroom he had the towel tied loosely round his waist and she had a shiver of desire for him. He sat beside her on the bed making no move to get dressed.
“This is brilliant,” she said, holding the chain out.
He slipped his hand up the back of her T-shirt and stroked her skin. Then, taking hold of her bra strap, he pulled her gently back on to the bed so that she was lying beside him.
“I’m talking about the chain,” she said, breathing in the smell of soap and shampoo from him.
“Mmn,” he mumbled, his mouth on her shoulder.
She laid her head back and allowed herself to be kissed and touched, her back arching with pleasure. When Frankie moved across to lie over her she raised her head and started to back off.
“Not here! Rosie might come back.”
Frankie let out a long exasperated sigh. He sat up, his shoulders hunched.
“Not here because of Rosie. Not at my place because of my flatmates! Where then? Are you trying to tell me something? Don’t you love me any more?”
She sat up at this. The word love had been dropped casually in. He often called her love and she had signed notes and emails to him with love. But love in the big sense, with a capital letter? That kind of Love hadn’t been mentioned.
“Hey, you’re my number one,” she said, trying to lighten the tone. “It’s not you. It’s me. Truth is. . .” she said, deciding to be honest for once. “The absolute truth is I’ve not done anything like that before.”
His forehead wrinkled up and he gave a jokey look.
“You’re a virgin?” he said.
She nodded.
“But you’ve had other boyfriends.”
She nodded. Now she needed to lie again.
“And you’ve never. . .?”
“No.”
“Well,” he said. “You’re right. We should wait for the right moment. It’s got to be really special.”
He stood up and pulled the towel tightly round himself.
“But right now,” he said, “I need another shower. A cold shower.”
She heard him mumbling to himself as he went towards the bathroom and she straightened the bed, picking up his dusty clothes and laying them flat. The intercom buzzed and it startled her. Her first thought was of Rosie returning and Frankie in the shower. But Rosie had her own key. She picked up the receiver.
“Alice? It’s Sara here. From downstairs? I got this package that was delivered earlier today. I took it in because Rosie was at work. I only just noticed that you were back. Could you take it, only I’m going out soon.”
“I’m coming down,” Alice said.
She looked round to see that the bathroom door was shut and the shower was running again. She went quickly down the stairs and opened the front door. Sara was holding an oblong cardboard box that had Rosie’s name and address on it.
“Thanks,” Alice said. “No school today?”
“I’m having a stress day. I’ve had enough of badly behaved kids to last me a lifetime,” Sara said, giving an exaggerated sigh.
Instead of turning to go she stood still, with a pleasant smile on her face. She had a pair of dark glasses propped on top of her head and a large canvas bag on one shoulder. She looked lopsided. Alice wanted to close the door but felt awkward about it. She was Rosie’s new friend. She looked at Sara’s cut-off trousers and a flowing top. She had an air of the beach about her, as if she were on holiday.
“Right,” Alice said, edging the door shut.
“How are you feeling?” Sara said, moving closer, her foot over the doorstep. “Only Rosie said you were a bit out of sorts the other week.”
“I’m better now,” Alice said.
“You’re so thin! I was saying to Rosie how unfair it is that some people are so skinny. Me? I’m always a stone or so overweight. You’d think I’d be thin with all the running round I do. In the classroom, I mean.”
“Well,” Alice said, making a determined turn towards the stairs, “I ought to go.”
“Right. Tell Rosie I’ll give her a call.”
Sara gave a bright smile and turned away towards her car that was parked a way up the road. Alice backed into the hallway and closed the door. She took the stairs two at a time and once in the flat she put the cardboard box on the kitchen table.
Frankie appeared at the bedroom door dressed. His hair was still wet a
nd it was making the back of his T-shirt damp.
“Got to go!” he said.
He leaned down, put his hands on her shoulders, and kissed her lightly on the mouth, his tongue flicking past her teeth.
“See you tomorrow,” he whispered.
The Union bar was packed with small groups of students making their last farewells. Frankie held her hand and they threaded through the crowds and found a couple of his mates at a table over in a corner. The table in front of them was full of empty pint glasses.
“Hiya Ali!” Frankie’s flatmate said.
She nodded and smiled at the other couple of lads sitting, looking bleary-eyed from too much beer. Frankie went off to get a round and she sat, looking round the bar, repulsed by the sticky floor and the smell of drinks and cigarettes, and yet oddly pleased to be there.
“Are you a student?” one of the strange faces said.
“No. I’m starting at uni in September,” she said.