The Betrayals: The Richard & Judy Book Club pick 2017

by Fiona Neill

  ‘Maybe he thinks you’re too busy,’ I said, trying to be helpful.

  ‘Correct,’ said Barney, nodding so fast that his chins quivered. He frowned at the magazine. ‘Whose turn is it to cook supper? I haven’t eaten all day.’

  ‘It should be Dad’s,’ I explained. ‘But he ended up cooking the other night when it was meant to be you because of the … the … situation.’ There was a long silence. My stomach rumbled and I realized that I hadn’t eaten since breakfast either. ‘Did you know that a ladybird consumes an average five hundred aphids during its lifetime?’ Dad always said that the best way to deal with an awkward silence was to fill it with a good solid fact.

  ‘Are they back yet?’ He didn’t mention Dad and Lisa by name but I knew he was talking about them. He rested the magazine on his stomach and put the glass on top, making me feel nervous because it was obviously going to tip over and then Dad would get angry with him for messing up the sofa.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ I said, knowing whatever I said it wouldn’t be enough. I tried to think what Mum would say in this situation. ‘Maybe they can’t find any Cromer crabs in Cromer.’

  I felt uncomfortable without understanding why, which is probably the reason I so eagerly agreed to his next suggestion to go to the fish and chip shop.

  ‘Then we’ll have dinner on the table when everyone gets back,’ said Barney, heaving himself out of the chair. ‘Come on, Max. You can go in the front if you like.’

  I realized as soon as we went into the driveway where Mum and Dad’s car was parked that Barney wasn’t in a good state. I had to show him how to unlock the door and then he kept miscalculating when he tried to put the key in the ignition.

  ‘Are you allowed to drive Mum and Dad’s car?’ I asked politely when really I wanted to ask him if he was seeing double.

  ‘We share everything,’ Barney said emphatically. ‘Everything.’ He turned the key too far in the ignition so that it shrieked in protest.

  The car lurched into action, and we shuddered up the driveway. As we turned left into the narrow country lane the wing mirror clipped the edge of the gatepost and drooped from its socket – like my arm did when I dislocated it playing football.

  ‘Oops,’ said Barney.

  I started to giggle. Barney turned to me and gave me a wicked smile and punched the air with his fist. He put on the music at full volume and unwound all the windows, even though it was pouring with rain. Mika thumped out of the speaker: ‘Relax, Take It Easy’. I hoped the words would have a positive effect on him.

  ‘See. Your dad’s even got the CD I gave to Lisa!’ shouted Barney.

  He pressed his foot down on the accelerator and the car groaned as it swept ever faster down the lane. He drove through puddles as if he was in a speedboat and the spray came in through the window, soaking the inside of the car. I put my arm out of the window and the rain on my hand felt as hard as hailstones.

  ‘Can you see round corners?’ I asked, leaning towards Barney when he swerved left, like I’d seen Jeremy Clarkson do on Top Gear.

  ‘Sure,’ said Barney. ‘Don’t worry. You’re in safe hands.’

  Even though I was only ten and pretty much believed anything adults told me, I realized everything he’d just said was an untruth but I was too worried he might think I was rude if I challenged him. As we raced past a field I saw some cows sheltering from the storm beneath a tree and wished I could get out and lie down beside them because they looked so sensible and Barney had obviously gone mad. For the first time ever I hoped Daisy was performing some of her magic spells to protect me. It occurred to me for a split second that perhaps she really could do witchcraft and this was what she had been trying to save me from. I closed my eyes and felt the wind and spray from puddles lash my cheeks. When the car weaved round another corner I opened them again.

  ‘Barney, I feel a bit sick,’ I shouted over the music. ‘Please could you slow down?’

  ‘Let’s live a little!’ Barney shouted.

  I wished I hadn’t said anything because he turned towards me instead of looking at the road ahead and a sour cloud of alcohol and cigarettes enveloped me. If only Mum hadn’t gone back to London I wouldn’t be in this situation. Somehow thinking of Mum reminded me to put on my seat belt. Barney gripped the steering wheel, crunched down a gear and pressed hard on the accelerator. He sang, loudly and out of tune, as if Mika had done something personally to offend him. The engine wheezed in protest. I watched as the speedometer rose, pleased to have something to distract me so I didn’t have to look at the way the hedgerow outside the window had blurred into green and brown smudges. I retched silently and managed to swallow down the acidy bile without Barney noticing.

  ‘Barney, if you don’t mind, I need to get home to finish picking up my ladybirds. Today is a very big day for me,’ I said, worried that he had actually forgotten I was in the car with him. ‘It’s the final day of my experiment.’ My voice got caught on the bad taste at the back of my throat and I felt panicky that I was going to start crying.

  There was a black and white blur outside the window as we passed another herd of cows.

  ‘Stop staring at me like that!’ Barney shouted out of the window at the cows. ‘Cows are always so bloody judgemental, don’t you think, Max?’

  I nodded in agreement even though I didn’t understand what he was talking about. ‘Did you know George Washington’s dentist made him false teeth out of cows’ teeth?’ I asked.

  Barney turned towards me and started laughing. He shook his head from side to side so his cheeks wobbled and gradually slowed down until I could see each individual ripe blackberry in the hedgerow and a tractor ploughing the field beyond. It was a miracle.

  ‘He also made a set out of hippopotamus teeth,’ I doggedly continued. ‘A lot of people assumed they were made of wood, but that is completely wrong. He drank too much Madeira wine and that’s why they were stained brown.’

  Barney swerved into a gap on the side of the road where there was a little stall that sold Cromer crabs. Something had shifted.

  He turned off the engine and kept laughing and shaking his head without releasing his grip on the steering wheel. Then he made a strange noise like a reverse sneeze and his shoulders started shaking. He bowed his head and I thought he was about to start praying but instead enormous teardrops began to fall from his eyes and on to his lap, adding to the spots on his swimming trunks. Apart from in films, I had never seen a grown man cry before. Barney’s sobs got louder and more forceful so that the car actually shuddered. I swear the tears came from his belly not his eyes. This was even more alarming than what had come before. I couldn’t find any useful facts to fill the space between us. I thought about telling him how the fourteen spots on a ladybird’s back represented the seven sorrows and seven joys but it didn’t seem right in the circumstances. His sorrows definitely seemed to outnumber his joys.

  ‘I’m sorry, Max,’ he started saying, over and over again. ‘I’m not a good person.’

  ‘It’s fine, Barney,’ I said, unsure why he was apologizing. ‘Nor am I.’ I wanted him to ask me why because at that precise moment I would have told him. Instead I ended up living with my secret for the next eight years.

  ‘I didn’t mean to frighten you, Max. You’re such a good kid. Ava says you’re a complete original.’

  I wasn’t sure what this meant, but it was enough to discover Ava thought about me when we weren’t together.

  ‘I wasn’t scared. Well, maybe a bit, but you’re a good driver. Not as good as The Stig, but you know how to take a tight corner on two wheels. Better than Dad does anyway.’

  This was completely the wrong thing to say because the tears fell harder and faster until there was a large wet patch in his lap that was the same shape as Australia. I wondered if this qualified as a good fact and was about to tell him but pulled back at the last minute because he might think I was weird for looking at his crotch.

  ‘It’s all fine, Barney. Nothing lasts forever.
It will pass and everything will get better,’ I said, stitching together phrases that Mum used with me when I was upset. Worried my words sounded a little rehearsed, I said them again with more feeling and put out my hand to touch his forearm.

  He took my small fingers in his soggy fist and gripped them so tightly that I thought he was going to cut off their circulation. I tried to breathe through my mouth so I didn’t have to inhale the air around him.

  ‘You’re a good kid, Maxi,’ he said, and for a moment I almost believed him.

  ‘Do you think we should forget the fish and chips, and get some crabs instead?’ I suggested, remembering Dad wanted to cook crab pasta.

  He pushed a crumpled twenty-pound note into my hand and I got out and negotiated a good deal for four cooked crabs so I could give Barney as much change as possible.

  ‘They don’t have any predators, apart from human beings,’ I said as I got back into the car and took one of the crabs out of the bag so I could admire its glassy black eyes. ‘Do you think human beings are born destructive or become destructive, Barney?’

  ‘You’ve got an old head on those young shoulders, Max,’ Barney replied. His nose was running and he wiped it on his T-shirt. ‘Think that might be one for your dad to answer.’

  I liked the way he thought Dad had answers to the difficult questions, because sometimes Dad seemed pretty boring compared to Barney.

  When we arrived home, everyone apart from Rex was waiting for us in the driveway in the pouring rain. I was really pleased to see Mum had arrived, because she was good at diagnosing situations and coming up with treatment plans. But instead of Mum, Dad steamed towards the car, his mouth a straight line of anger. I got out quickly, assuming he was annoyed with me. I had done a bad thing that day and part of me was hoping someone had discovered so I could be properly punished. But instead he threw his arms around me and crushed me tight to his chest, which seemed a bit over the top because I had been gone all of an hour, whereas he had spent most of the day at the shops.

  I watched Barney get out of the driver’s seat and sway towards them, holding the plastic bag of crabs. He swerved into one of the flower beds that Dad had weeded and didn’t seem to notice when his flip-flop stayed behind in the mud. Lisa went over to take him by the arm but he shook her off. Dad released me and took big threatening strides towards Barney.

  ‘What were you thinking?’ asked Dad, his voice all heavy. ‘Taking risks with Max like that.’ His hand hovered just above Barney’s shoulder.

  Barney turned his back on Dad. I couldn’t see what Barney had done to deserve this reaction when he’d been the only adult who even noticed me and cared that I was hungry that day.

  ‘We went to get crabs, Dad,’ I said, unravelling myself from Mum’s arm to put myself between Dad and Barney. I couldn’t believe that Dad and Barney were about to get into another argument. They were beginning to remind me of the male water buffalo fighting over females in David Attenborough.

  ‘We were hungry and you and Lisa had been gone so long that we thought you might never come back. You’re the ones who should be in trouble.’

  ‘The problem is Barney is over the limit,’ said Mum, leading me away by the hand to the flower bed where Barney’s flip-flop lay on its side in the mud. She bent down on one knee until she was at my level and held both my hands. She only did this when she had something serious to say.

  I looked over her shoulder and saw Daisy and Ava standing by the front door, watching us. It was the only time that I saw them alone together on that holiday. Even then, Ava was detached. I envied her indestructibility.

  ‘Over what limit?’ I asked impatiently.

  ‘Over the alcohol limit,’ said Mum calmly. ‘It means that you can’t drive safely because your reactions slow down. Barney shouldn’t have risked driving, especially with you in the car.’

  ‘It’s called drink driving,’ said Dad, sounding suddenly exhausted. ‘He could have easily had an accident and you could have been hurt, Max.’

  ‘Daisy had done all her magic spells so that was never going to happen,’ I said cheerily, hoping that everyone would just calm down when they saw how unaffected I was.

  Mum looked confused. I glanced over at Daisy for backup but she stared back at me, flat-eyed. Butterflies started fluttering in my chest.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ asked Mum.

  ‘Daisy tries to keep us safe,’ I tried to explain. ‘It’s hard work. Like a part-time job.’

  ‘Look, he’s crashed the bloody car,’ said Dad, lifting the wing mirror and then dropping it so it flopped pathetically against the bonnet.

  Lisa came over to Dad and touched him in that sensitive part on the inside of his elbow. ‘Don’t be too hard on him, Nick,’ she said.

  At last, someone was defending Barney but he would never realize because he’d gone inside the house. ‘What Barney needs is a hug,’ I told everyone. But instead of going after him, Mum and Dad hugged me instead.

  Assuming there would be no dinner after all this drama, I dawdled up to our bedroom, tummy rumbling, feeling sorry for myself, stopping every few steps to collect up dead ladybirds from the stairs. I was completely behind schedule now. I thought about starving children in other countries and how they sometimes went for days without food, whereas at least I had eaten two pieces of toast with peanut butter for breakfast. And if I got really hungry I had my dead ladybirds with me. There’s a lot of protein in insects.

  I found Daisy sitting upright on the top bunk. When she saw me she put her finger to her lips to indicate she didn’t want any interruptions and continued tapping the wall beside her in a triangle, over and over again. At the end of each set she muttered, ‘Three is a good and safe number.’ I felt embarrassed, as if I had caught her doing something private like going to the loo or dealing with her period. The butterflies started fluttering in my chest again until they were all I could feel.

  I put the ladybirds on the bookshelf and distracted myself by picking up the photo of my grandparents that had sat there ever since I could remember. It had probably been taken soon after they were married. They stood stiffly, dressed in formal clothes that were at odds with their smooth skin and easy smiles. I wondered if all adults made their lives more and complicated until, in the end, this is what killed them. After all, Mum said Granny had died from complications.

  ‘Everything will be fine, Maxi,’ Daisy said firmly as she climbed down the ladder.

  I jumped, wondering if my sister could read my mind, in which case she would realize what I had done that morning. I waited for her to say something but when I looked at her face there was nothing in her expression that made me confident anything would ever be fine again. She was so pale that her skin looked almost see-through. There were still bruise-like smears of black eye make-up on her cheeks and a remote look in her eyes as if she was somewhere else. It was a trait I would get used to over the years that followed.

  ‘Actually, there’s something I have to tell you, Daisy …’ I began, but she was already halfway out the door.

  ‘Actually, you say actually too much, Maxi.’ For a second she sounded so like the old Daisy that I wanted to cry. ‘But I can’t stop now. There’s a couple of things I need to do.’

  Twenty-one things actually because I knew she was heading for the knife drawer. What would I have said to her? That it was supposed to be a joke? That I never meant for her to take it seriously? I assumed she would notice right away that the cream-coloured paper with the red lines came from the notebook where I kept my records about the ladybirds. I thought she would get angry with me for using her favourite purple pen. I imagined that when she discovered she would wrestle me to the ground, tickle me until I begged for mercy and we would roll around laughing like old times.

  Why did I do it? I have asked this question of myself many times over the years but it is difficult to remember the thought processes of my ten-year-old self. I thought it was funny. I wanted to wind her up for making me feel uneasy. I did
it to test how much she really fancied Rex, assuming she would be put off by his full-frontal proposal. I did it because I wanted to put a stop to Daisy humiliating herself in front of him and everyone else. I had lost too much of my sister already that holiday. Maybe I subconsciously did it to please Ava.

  After all, the line came from one of the films that I had watched with her. When she had explained what it meant we both fell around laughing. We used it as a catchphrase when no one else was listening to describe anything exciting. It sounded particularly funny when Ava said it. Ice cream makes me hard. It felt innocent and deviant all at the same time, which is a heady combination.

  If I tell you it took me less than three seconds to take a decision whose consequences would reverberate down the years, maybe you won’t be so hard on me. I never thought that her reaction would be so cataclysmic. But I knew as soon as I saw her face that the person who went to the beach wasn’t the same person as the one who came back and that this was all my fault.

  Looking for something to distract myself from the butterflies, I found my rucksack and began packing up pants, T-shirts, random pieces of Lego, my Super Mario games and a piece of paper with Ava’s favourite quotes from Friends that she had handwritten for me. Usually I felt sad at the end of our summer holiday in Norfolk but this time I wanted to go home so that everything would just go back to normal.

  Mum called me down for dinner. I didn’t deserve to eat. I waited until she shouted again and then went downstairs. The mood in the kitchen was weirdly upbeat, as if nothing had happened earlier. Mika was playing and Rex and Ava were using a baguette as a microphone. There was much discussion about how the plague of ladybirds had stopped just as the storm had started, as if the two events were connected.

  ‘It’s got nothing to do with the weather,’ I kept saying, but no one wanted to listen to my theories about how the Coccinellidae must have eaten all of the aphids. I thought Barney at least would be interested but when I pulled at his sleeve, he shook me off like a dead ladybird.