Wishbones

by Virginia MacGregor

  ‘Of course you are. You’ve been training like crazy and you’re the most determined person I know, you’re bound to make it.’

  ‘Even against Amelia?’

  Amelia’s a girl who represents North London in my age category. We always come up against each other in the final.

  ‘She won’t even come close,’ Jake says.

  I slip my arm under his and lean my head on his shoulder.

  ‘I wish Mum could have reacted better when she saw the flier. She knows how important the competition is to me.’

  Jake doesn’t answer. He and Steph are really close, so close that I sometimes wonder whether she tells him stuff I don’t know about. Stuff about Mum. Like why they had that row at Christmas.

  As I look out at the Lido, I think about the picture of Mum in the back pocket of my jeans. As soon as Dad’s out on a job, I’ll go and dig out that box in the garage. Who knows what else I’ll find out about Mum and Dad and what life was like before she stopped leaving the house?

  My eyes go hot and stingy and every cell in my body feels tired.

  Tired of trying to help Mum and getting it thrown in my face.

  Tired of trying to persuade Dad that he has to get on board.

  Tired of fixing things between Mum and Steph.

  Tired of hoping that maybe this century I’ll find a guy who’ll actually like me.

  And tired of spending my life looking for a goat.

  I sit down on the edge of the Lido.

  ‘Hey, it’s going to be okay,’ Jake says, sitting down beside me and putting his arm around my shoulders.

  I stare down at a couple of leaves chasing each other along the dirty tiles.

  ‘Do you think that someone can go from loving something to hating it so much that they won’t go near it?’ I ask Jake.

  ‘Like what?’

  I take a breath and pull out the old photo of Mum and put it in Jake’s hands.

  He holds the photo up to his eyes.

  ‘Wow, the whole village is in the pool!’ He looks up at me. ‘Who took this?’

  My throat goes tight. ‘I don’t know. Dad, I suppose. I wasn’t meant to find it.’

  He waits for me to continue.

  ‘You know Mum and Dad,’ I say. ‘How they’ve always said they don’t have any photos from when I was little because they couldn’t afford a camera and because they thought memories were better kept in our heads rather than on paper…’

  ‘Yeah, I remember the speech…’

  ‘But everyone takes photos of their kids, right? It’s just what parents do. Even parents who aren’t into taking photos. And it’s not like they couldn’t have found a cheap, second-hand camera.’

  ‘Where did you find the photo?’ Jake asks.

  ‘In this old box in the garage.’

  Jake traces his fingers over the bit of the photo where Mum’s sitting on the edge of the Lido. It’s hard to make her out because it’s full of kids and mums and dads splashing around, and there are balloons and banners because it’s Willingdon Day – but I’d know that long, shiny hair anywhere. And that smile.

  ‘Dad once said that every man in Willingdon fancied Mum,’ I say. ‘I thought he was just trying to make Mum feel better about being overweight, but I guess he was telling the truth.’ I take the photo and point at Mum’s legs dangling into the water. ‘And look, she’s totally okay with the pool.’

  Jake goes quiet again, so I go on:

  ‘And Mum doesn’t even let me talk about swimming, even though she knows it’s one of the things I love most in the world and that every time I take part in a competition I swim harder because I want to make her proud, which is just stupid because she won’t ever see me.’ The words tumble out.

  My vision goes wobbly. I sniff back the tears.

  Jake draws me in tighter and maybe it’s because I’m too tired to move or maybe it’s because of the shock of finding out about Mum, but I drop onto his shoulder and start sobbing.

  ‘I’m sure there’s an explanation,’ Jake says. ‘Maybe you should talk to your mum. Ask her right out.’

  ‘No. She’d just freak out.’ I straighten my spine and sniff back the tears. ‘Could you ask your mum?’

  Steph would have known about Mum going to the Lido and being happy when she was younger – which means she’s been lying to me too.

  ‘It’s complicated…’ Jake says.

  I stand up. Whenever I think that he’s going to help, that he understands, he says something to undo it all.

  ‘I’d better keep looking for Houdini.’

  We walk back to The Green without saying a word. Then Jake gasps and points at Rev Cootes’s front garden:

  ‘Look! Over there!’

  Houdini’s right in front of Rev Cootes’s house. His white fur is covered in soil, his jaw’s grinding from side to side and his pink tongue’s chewing the life out of what looks like a pot plant.

  And behind Houdini, Rev Cootes stands on his front doorstep, staring right at me.

  16

  On Sunday morning, after an early morning training session with Steph and Jake at the pool, I stand on Rev Cootes’s doorstep, holding a Fuzzy Deutzia.

  When I dragged Houdini home from Rev Cootes’s garden the other day, I yanked what was left of the plant out of his mouth and took it to The Willingdon Seed. One of the gardeners at the shop poked at it and then spent ages looking it up on the internet. It’s got these delicate star-like flowers – it’s not really the kind of plant you’d imagine Rev Cootes picking out. Anyway, the guy ordered me another one and I went to collect it yesterday, only he didn’t warn me how expensive it was and by the time he’d wrapped it up and put it through the till, I didn’t feel I could ask him to send it back. So I had to eat into my savings for Mum’s gastric band – and all the other things that are going to help her get thinner. I’ll definitely have to get a job now.

  I knock on the door because Rev Cootes doesn’t have a buzzer, and pray that Clay answers. He hasn’t been at school for days, so I haven’t been able to spend time getting to know him.

  The other reason I hope Clay answers is because it would mean I didn’t have to talk to Rev Cootes. No one goes to see Rev Cootes out of choice. Besides the walk between the vicarage and St Mary’s and the gardening he does in the cemetery, Rev Cootes doesn’t go out. And he doesn’t have Mum’s excuse of not being able to walk on his own. I reckon he just doesn’t like human beings very much. And, judging by how he yells at Houdini, he doesn’t like animals either. He probably doesn’t like anything alive. Poor Clay.

  I clench my hands to stop them from shaking.

  Squeaky footsteps walk towards the front door. Then it opens, just a crack; the security chain is still on.

  ‘What do you want?’

  It’s definitely not Clay. Clay’s got an American accent. And his voice doesn’t sound like it would graze your skin if you got too close.

  I thrust the Fuzzy Deutzia into the gap above the security chain so Rev Cootes can see it.

  ‘It’s a new plant. To say sorry.’

  A pause.

  ‘What am I meant to do with a plant?’

  My heart hammers against my ribcage. I should just go. But then I think about what Mum’s always saying about how being brave is one of my defining characteristics.

  I take a breath.

  ‘It’s the same one. I checked. I thought you could put it back in the earth. And you don’t need to worry about Houdini digging it up again: Dad’s got him on a double padlock.’

  ‘I don’t need another plant.’

  ‘Okay.’ My mouth feels dry. ‘I’ll put it down here then, in case you change your mind.’

  I place the Fuzzy Deutzia on his doormat and turn to go.

  I’m halfway down Rev Cootes’s driveway when I hear the click and drop of the door chain.

  ‘Feather?’

  I turn back round.

  ‘Do you like tea?’ he asks.

  ‘Eh – yes.’

&n
bsp; I’m more a hot-chocolate-with-squirty-cream-and-marshmallows kind of girl, but I don’t want to say anything that might trigger Rev Cootes’s temper.

  He opens his door wider, picks up the Fuzzy Deutzia with one hand and does this weird over-the-shoulder gesture with the other, and starts walking down the hallway.

  I don’t move.

  He stops and turns round again. I look at him under the dim light. I wish Clay would come out of his room.

  Rev Cootes’s black cassock fades into the dark of the hallway, which makes him look like his head’s floating in the air without a body.

  ‘Are you coming in, then?’ he asks.

  The other day, Miss Pierce told us how it’s the people you least expect who end up doing all the crazy stuff in the world. That most of the time, crazy mean people are in disguise, like dictators who make people think they’ve come to save the world but end up blowing it to pieces instead; like your neighbour who wears a dog collar but spends his free time chopping children into little pieces and storing their pickled body parts in jam jars in the basement.

  ‘Yes, I’m coming,’ I say.

  I take a breath, walk back up to Rev Cootes’s front door and follow him down the hall.

  However you imagined the inside of Rev Cootes’s house (shotguns, axes, stag heads dripping with blood), you’ll have been wrong.

  The house is dark, sure, but that’s because Rev Cootes has angled the shutters to keep out the sun. Once your eyes adjust to the dark, you’ll see the pink roses and white birds and a blue sky painted on the walls; you’ll notice the blossom-pink walls and the pieces of furniture with spindly legs – and you’ll lose count of all the china ornaments: fairies and dancers and squirrels and hedgehogs. And weirdest of all, you won’t be able to stop staring at the easels scattered around the open rooms, holding half-painted canvases, splashed with pastel paint.

  ‘I didn’t know you were an artist,’ I say as I follow Rev Cootes into the kitchen.

  He shakes his head. ‘Oh, those are Rosemary’s.’

  Rosemary?

  ‘She likes to have several projects on the go,’ he adds.

  As far as I’m aware, Rev Cootes has always been single. But then I glance at his left hand and spot a thick, yellow band clamped onto his wrinkly finger. I guess I’ve never got close enough to see it before.

  I strain my ears to see if I can pick up the sound of Clay moving around in one of the rooms, but the house is completely quiet.

  When we get to the kitchen, Rev Cootes puts the Fuzzy Deutzia on the table and stares at it for a minute.

  ‘They’re Rosemary’s favourites,’ he says, brushing the white star-like flowers with the pads of his fingers.

  Then he picks up a tray from the counter and carries it over. It’s got a big teapot on it with pink roses growing up the side and china cups with the same roses growing up them too and a silver sugar bowl with silver tongs and silver milk jug and silver teaspoons and a silver tea strainer. The silver things are so shiny you can see your wonky face reflected in them like in those crazy fairground mirrors.

  Rev Cootes points at a chair, ‘Take a seat, Feather.’

  I feel like I’m about to have tea with the Queen. Or an axe-murderer.

  Behind Rev Cootes, on the kitchen wall, I spot a photograph. I can’t be sure because the guy in the photo is really young and he’s got a pencil moustache but it’s definitely Rev Cootes. And poised in Rev Cootes’s arms, in mid-waltz, stands the prettiest woman you’ve ever seen: black-and-white-movie-star pretty. Beautiful pretty. So she’s real. And there was a time when Rev Cootes left his churchyard – with Rosemary, whoever she is.

  There’s a small brass plaque attached to the photo frame: FINALISTS: THE WILLINGHAM WALTZ, 2000.

  ‘You dance?’ I ask.

  He looks round at the photo.

  ‘Rosemary’s the talented one. I do what I can to keep up.’ He smiles. ‘We dance for ourselves now, that’s enough.’

  I’m not very good at grammar and tenses and that kind of stuff, but whenever he talks about Rosemary, it sounds to me like she’s still alive. And living here in the vicarage.

  Rev Cootes goes quiet. And then he says, ‘We were in the final against your parents once.’ It’s the first time I’ve seen him smile. ‘Josephine and George were the most beautiful couple in Willingdon.’

  I think I’d have been less surprised if Rev Cootes had admitted that he was in fact an axe-murderer and that he was going to kill me and then pickle me in jam jars along with those other children in his basement.

  ‘Mum and Dad – dancing?’

  Dad’s so gangly he’s bound to have two left feet and he and Mum just aren’t the kind of couple who do stuff like that together. I mean, if Mum made a wrong step, she’d squash him. They love each other because they’re married, but they’re not into that romantic, slushy stuff.

  ‘If there’s someone to rival my Rosemary on the dance floor, it’s Josephine Tucker,’ he says.

  And then it hits me. Rev Cootes would have known what Mum was like before she locked herself indoors, before she had me – when she wasn’t scared of the water yet and sat by the Lido.

  ‘Do you still dance?’ I ask.

  ‘Only at home. Rosemary is too tired for competitions. She taught ballroom dancing in Willingdon and Newton for forty years.’

  And then it hits me that for all their differences, Rev Cootes and Mrs Zas both love ballroom dancing. Maybe when he knows that about her, he’ll like her more. Plus, they’re both the same age and they’re both kind of lonely. It would make sense for them to spend some time together. Unless Rosemary really is around. Which looks unlikely.

  ‘Did you know that Mrs Zas teaches ballroom dancing?’ I ask.

  He furrows his brow and his eyes go dark and he gives me the look he gave me when Houdini had shredded his Fuzzy Deutzia.

  ‘It’s not the same,’ he says.

  ‘Not the same as what?’

  ‘Rosemary gave proper lessons. She was classically trained. She took dancing seriously.’

  So that’s why he doesn’t like Mrs Zas: he knows she’s been giving lessons. And it makes him sad because he feels like this mad woman who goes round in coloured headscarves and jangly jewellery and fancy-dress costumes has replaced his beautiful wife. Plus, Mrs Zas doesn’t believe that the waltz should be a competition.

  ‘Rosemary and I did a different kind of dancing,’ he adds.

  Isn’t a waltz a waltz? I mean, I get that there are different techniques, like how I do butterfly stroke differently from other people, but basically the dance must be the same, whoever does it.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ I say.

  ‘I don’t expect you to understand,’ he snaps back, which gives me a jolt and reminds me that only a few minutes ago I thought he might be an axe-murderer.

  ‘Sorry,’ I say.

  He doesn’t answer so I lean over the china cups and notice they’re filled with hot water. Rev Cootes picks them up, carries them to the sink, empties them and brings them back to the table. He places one of the steaming cups in front of me.

  ‘You need to heat the teapot and the cups,’ he says. ‘A steaming teapot opens the leaves and a warmed cup keeps your tea hot. Serving tepid tea is criminal.’ He makes a sucked-on-a-lemon face when he says the word tepid.

  I’ve never been scared of having a cup of tea before.

  He picks up the milk jug and fills the bottom of my china cup.

  ‘There’s some disagreement as to whether the milk should go in before or after but I’m with the Royal Society of Chemistry: when poured into hot tea, milk separates, which causes degradation. You’d need a microscope to see it but you can taste it. This does not happen if you add the milk first.’

  Rev Cootes pours tea into my cup: it looks like liquid gold and sunshine and honey all at once.

  ‘Wow,’ I say.

  ‘Not a word I would choose, but, yes, tea is a small miracle.’ He picks up a white-crystal lump with t
he silver tongs. ‘One or two?’

  ‘One please,’ I say, hoping it’s the right answer.

  He plops in the sugar, gives my cup a quick stir with a silver spoon, pushes the cup and saucer towards me and sits back in his chair.

  Then he stares at me.

  ‘So, are you going to try it, Feather?’

  I’m not sure how. I mean, I’ve obviously drunk liquids out of cups ever since I was a toddler, but not like this, not proper tea from a teapot in a warmed china cup with milk poured in first. I’m worried about slurping and spilling and generally doing something to upset him.

  And then I have a thought: maybe this is Rev Cootes’s way of luring in his victims. Maybe he goes through this whole ceremony and really the tea’s poisoned and the person he’s about to murder is so hypnotised by his whole tea ceremony thing that they don’t realise that they’re about to die. The fact that he hasn’t poured himself a tea and that he’s just watching me confirms my theory. But would he kill me with Clay in the house? Maybe he’s killed Clay too – maybe that’s why Clay hasn’t been at school. People kill their own family members all the time, more than strangers—

  Rev Cootes’s eyebrows scrunch together.

  ‘The tea’s getting cold, Feather.’

  My hands shake, like they did when I stood on the doorstep.

  He won’t stop staring at me.

  I blink, look down at my tea and lift the cup from the saucer. I make sure to keep my little finger down because I remember watching a film with Mum where posh people all had their little fingers in the air when they were drinking tea and she said that the director had got it all wrong, that real posh people think it’s vulgar to do that and that it’s only people who want to pretend to be posh who put their pinkies in the air and that it’s a dead giveaway that they’re really not posh at all.

  I close my eyes and take a sip.

  Please don’t let me die, I say to myself.

  I feel the liquid going down my throat and the corners of my mouth lift. If it is poison, well then, poison tastes totally yummy. Warm and fresh and light and rich all at once.

  ‘So, your verdict?’