Troublemakers

by Catherine Barter

  ‘How old were you?’

  ‘Like two or three. And my brother kicked a football in my face when I was three or something. I remember that.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Don’t know. Probably. Why? What’s your first memory?’

  ‘It’s this thing with my aunt. Me screaming at her. It’s nothing.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘I can’t remember anything before living with Nick and Danny.’

  ‘Oh.’ Ollie looks uncomfortable. ‘That’s probably normal though.’

  ‘It’s not normal. It was my mother. That’s when my mother was alive. It’s like I just wasn’t paying attention.’

  ‘But. Yeah. I mean, that’s not your fault.’

  ‘It is, though.’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘It is. And you and Teagan remember all this stupid stuff that doesn’t even matter. It’s not fair.’

  Ollie goes quiet for a minute. His breath is misty in the cold air.

  ‘If you get in a lot of trouble with this email thing,’ he says. ‘If it’s really bad. I’m thinking about going to Swansea. You could come with me.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘I got this email from my brother. He didn’t really say anything but – I think that’s where he is. I dunno. I think I’m just gonna go. On the train. I’m saving for a ticket. So when I’ve got enough I’m going to go.’

  ‘For the weekend or something?’

  ‘No. I’m going to stay there.’

  ‘Stay where?’

  ‘I’ll find somewhere.’

  ‘Ollie.’ I think this is the stupidest plan I’ve ever heard but I can’t bring myself to say this to him. ‘Ollie. Don’t do that. I don’t think you should.’

  ‘My mum doesn’t want me around,’ he says. ‘She’d be happy if I left.’

  I’m about to say, That can’t be true, but then I think what do I know, maybe it is true.

  ‘You could come with me,’ he says again. ‘It’d be better with two of us.’

  ‘Ollie.’

  ‘Come on,’ he says. ‘You obviously don’t like your brother that much or you wouldn’t’ve just totally screwed over his job and everything.’

  ‘I haven’t screwed over his job. It was nothing to do with him.’

  He falls silent, looks back at the cup he’s holding.

  ‘Anyway what would I do in Swansea?’ I say.

  ‘I don’t know. I’ll find Aaron. Maybe we could stay with him. I’m going to get a job.’

  ‘Ollie. I really don’t think you should do that.’

  He turns away from me. ‘All right, never mind,’ he says. ‘That’s what I’m going to do but you can do whatever.’

  ‘Ollie—’

  ‘Don’t tell Teagan though, all right? Just forget I told you.’

  In the house behind us, I can faintly hear Teagan singing in the kitchen while she bangs open cupboards and looks for snacks.

  I make my voice go quiet. ‘You should talk to Teagan, she’s actually good at things like – I mean, she has good ideas. She could probably help you look for Aaron if that’s what you want to do.’

  ‘She wouldn’t understand.’

  ‘She would.’

  He shakes his head, gestures vaguely back at her house and her garden like, Look at all this, like that explains something, and says, ‘No. Just forget it.’

  I wonder, then, what it is he thinks Teagan’s got that I don’t, what he thinks I understand that she wouldn’t.

  Maybe it is true that Ollie’s mum doesn’t want him around. Maybe I know the feeling. Those times when it seems like Nick and Danny forget I exist, and then remember.

  Teagan comes out again, clattering the back door open and kicking it shut with her foot as she carries platefuls of crisps and biscuits. ‘Anybody see anything yet?’ she says.

  ‘There’s nothing to see,’ says Ollie. He pulls the hood up on Teagan’s dad’s coat and goes silent, and the atmosphere between the three of us takes a weird, wrong turn. We stop talking and just watch the sky.

  ‘What were you two talking about?’ Teagan says, later, after Ollie leaves and her parents are back. She is standing in the doorway of her bedroom holding her toothbrush while I check my email on my phone. There’s an email from Nick’s mum offering to take me shopping next weekend and saying, Isn’t it dreadful about the bombing? and that’s it. Nothing from Mike.

  I put my phone down on the bed. ‘What?’

  ‘Before. Ollie was talking to you about something and then you both shut up and went weird when I came back.’

  ‘He was just – nothing. He was talking about his brother and stuff.’

  She has pinned her fringe back with a hair-grip and washed her face so her cheeks are flushed and red. She looks uncertain, like she thinks I’m lying but isn’t sure. I’m not sure if I am either. Other people’s secrets are difficult. It’s hard to know where they’re supposed to start and end.

  ‘You both seemed like you were in the middle of something important. Ollie was all, like—’

  She trails off, looks at her toothbrush in her hand and twirls it through her fingers a few times.

  ‘He told me not to tell you,’ I say, and then immediately regret it because what a stupid thing to say.

  ‘Not to tell me what?’ she says, clearly hurt.

  I lie back on the bed, look up at the glow-stars Teagan’s had stuck to her ceiling for years.

  ‘What can he tell you that he doesn’t want me to know? We’ve known him for the exact same amount of time, what’s the difference between—’

  ‘He thinks his brother’s in Swansea and he wants to run away, or something. He wants to go to Swansea and live with him.’

  There’s a silence, and I sit up and look at her. ‘Don’t tell him I told you.’

  She’s upset. I can tell.

  ‘So why can he tell you that and not me?’ she says.

  ‘How do I know?’

  ‘Lena.’

  ‘He just thought you wouldn’t understand.’

  ‘Thanks a lot. Why wouldn’t I understand?’

  ‘How do I know?’

  ‘Do you understand?’

  ‘I don’t know. I suppose so.’

  Teagan looks at me for a few seconds, blinking, and then she turns and goes back to the bathroom. She comes back without her toothbrush and sits down at her desk. Her pyjamas are an old pair of tracksuit bottoms and a pink t-shirt with a music note printed on the front. She’s had this t-shirt for years and years; I remember her wearing it on a school trip when we were eleven or twelve.

  I lie back down. I feel exhausted and wide awake at the same time. I want to check my email again but it’s late, now. If anything’s going to happen it’s not going to happen tonight.

  ‘I always thought he was jealous of you,’ Teagan says.

  ‘What?’ I say, still looking at the ceiling.

  ‘Ollie. He thinks you’re really interesting. He’s always asking me all these questions about your family. I thought he was jealous of you because you’ve got Danny and he’s got Aaron.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous.’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘What’s so great about Danny?’

  ‘Lena. You don’t even realise. He’s like the nicest person and you don’t even notice.’

  ‘Nobody thinks that apart from you, Teagan.’

  ‘That’s not true.’

  ‘Danny hardly talks to me any more, Nick moved out because of him, you’ve got no idea – Ollie only told me about going to Swansea because he thought I might go with him.’

  ‘Why? Because he thinks you’ve got something to run away from? The two of you have so much in common all of a sudden?’

  ‘I don’t know. Just.’ I close my eyes for a second. ‘Our families aren’t like yours.’

  In the quiet I can hear her breathing, and then then she says, ‘He thought you might want to go with him.’

  ‘Yes.’
<
br />   ‘But not me.’

  ‘Why would you run away from home?’

  ‘Right. Because my life is perfect. Why would you?’

  This is getting ridiculous. I sit up. ‘I’m not,’ I say. ‘Nobody’s running away anywhere. Nobody’s going to Swansea. This is stupid.’

  Downstairs I hear somebody switch on the TV, the news starting.

  ‘Nick’s going to come back,’ Teagan says, quietly. ‘I know you’re upset but he’ll come back.’

  ‘You don’t know that. You don’t know them. Just because you hang out at the coffee shop and they try and impress you by acting like these great parents—’

  ‘They are great parents, though. It’s like – your family is nothing like Ollie’s. You’re so lucky and you don’t even—’

  ‘Ollie has actual parents. And you. You and Ollie have actual mothers and fathers and I don’t have any of that. My mum died and I don’t even know—’

  ‘Oh, all right, we know your mum died,’ Teagan says. ‘We get it.’

  She looks instantly guilty, but then she bites her lip and folds her arms, defiant.

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ I say.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Nothing. Right.’

  ‘Just that until recently you’ve mentioned your mum about twice in your life. And now suddenly you’re really sad about it. And I can honestly understand why Danny wouldn’t want to talk about her. I mean it must be different for him, it must be—’

  ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  She presses her lips together and won’t look at me for a minute.

  We never fight. This already feels like the worst fight we’ve ever had. It’s like there’s something about me right now, like I’m radioactive, in a fight with everybody.

  I get up and go into the bathroom and shut the door, sit on the toilet seat thinking that I’d like to cry but I don’t know which one particular thing to cry about.

  I don’t cry. I just sit there for a while, listening to the sounds of her house, the TV downstairs and somebody loading the dishwasher.

  And then I wash my face and brush my teeth with one of the spare toothbrushes still in the packet that Teagan’s mum always keeps stocked in the bathroom, squinting at myself in the bright bathroom mirror and thinking of Lynn saying I look just like Danny when he was my age.

  When I go back into Teagan’s room she’s turned the light off, pretending to be asleep.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  Usually we’d both just sleep in Teagan’s huge double bed, but instead I sleep on the sofa underneath her window with a blanket pulled over my head. We sleep late in the morning, with the curtains shut, and I lie there half listening to the sounds of her house, her parents talking quietly, and morning news, talking about the bombing. I keep dreaming that the phone is ringing and that it’s Will from Danny’s office telling me that I’m going to be arrested for reading his email. And then the phone really is ringing, and I hear Teagan’s mum answer it, and a few minutes later she comes into the room and sits on the end of the bed.

  ‘Girls,’ she says. ‘It’s time to get up.’ There is something strange about her voice and it wakes me up like cold water. I sit up straight and look at her, and I know instantly that she knows what I did.

  ‘Alena,’ she says, gently. ‘I’ve just spoken to your brother. He’d like me to take you home.’

  ‘What’s happened?’ I say, just in case maybe hopefully somebody has been in a car accident.

  ‘I’m going to take you home and your brother would like you to stay there until he gets home.’

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘He said he had to go into work but he’s going to be home very soon and he’d like you to be there.’

  ‘What’s going on?’ Teagan mumbles, sitting up and rubbing her eyes.

  ‘I’m sure you already know, Teagan,’ she says. ‘It’s time to get dressed, Alena. Do you need some breakfast?’

  ‘I’m OK,’ I say. I can feel my stomach twisting itself into a knot. I couldn’t eat. If I ate I would be sick. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I’ll meet you downstairs,’ she says, and leaves, closing the door behind her.

  Me and Teagan look at each other for a few seconds, and then Teagan lies back down and pulls the duvet over her head, and mumbles, from underneath, ‘Well, good luck, then.’

  In the car, my hands are sweating. Teagan’s mum is talking about the weather, like trying to distract me, until she’s interrupted by my mobile ringing from the bottom of my bag. She gives me a sort of sympathetic glance as I fish it out and look at the name on the screen.

  ‘Hi, Nick,’ I say, almost a whisper.

  ‘Alena,’ he says. ‘Alena, Alena, Alena.’

  ‘Hi,’ I say, again, and I wonder, wildly, how everybody knows already, and whether I could just deny it, say that Mike was making it up.

  ‘I just spoke to Danny,’ Nick says. ‘And he says he had a phone call from Mike this morning. Who apparently had an interesting email from you yesterday afternoon.’

  ‘Oh,’ I say, in a tiny voice.

  ‘I’m not even going to ask how you – I don’t even know where to start.’

  ‘This guy Will said that it was good timing that that guy was killed and he said—’

  ‘I don’t want to hear about it right now.’

  ‘But, Nick—’

  ‘Really. Not right now.’

  ‘OK,’ I say, and he sighs and the phone crackles with static. Nick is worse than Danny when he’s angry with me, because he just goes quiet and sad and disappointed and makes me feel awful.

  ‘What’s Danny going to do?’ I say.

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Rachel’s driving me home.’

  ‘OK. Here’s what you’re going to do. OK? You’re going to go home and wait there and not answer the phone unless it’s me or Danny. OK?’

  ‘Why can’t I answer the phone?’

  ‘Because I say so. I’m serious. Just go home and wait for us.’

  ‘Are you coming home?’

  He pauses. ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘I’m going to come over. I’m the only one in the shop but I’ll be over as soon as Zahra gets here.’

  ‘Is Mike going to do something?’ I whisper.

  ‘I can confidently say, Alena, that you’re going to find out all about it as soon as Danny gets home.’

  ‘Is he going to kill me?’ I say.

  I must sound genuinely scared, because Nick says: ‘No. He’s not going to kill you. I’ll be there as soon as I can, sweetheart, OK? And then we’re all going to sit down and talk about it.’

  I think the last time Nick called me sweetheart was this time when I was ten years old and I was ill and I had such a high temperature they nearly took me to hospital. I remember sitting on the side of my bed and holding this stuffed penguin I used to have while Nick looked at a thermometer. Everybody was being so nice to me.

  The flat is deadly quiet. There’s a half-drunk mug of cold coffee on the kitchen counter. I kick off my shoes and sit down on the sofa, try to ignore my skittering heartbeat and do what Danny always tells me to do, which is to pretend to be brave even when you don’t feel like it.

  All he can do is shout at me, I think. That’s all he can do. That’s all that will happen. Nobody else will even care about the stupid email.

  I put twenty-four-hour news on for a few minutes in case I’m famous, but they’re talking about the economy, and the sight of somebody in a suit talking about the markets calms me down a bit. But then there’s a short, hard knock on the door, and I jump.

  I stare at it for a moment, and then I switch off the television and get up. As I’m opening the door I’m thinking maybe it’s Danny and he’s forgotten his keys.

  It isn’t.

  It turns out that Jacob Carlisle really is quite good looking.

  ‘Are you Daniel Kennedy’s little sister?’ he says.

  ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I’m Alena.’

 
‘You,’ he says, ‘are an extremely disruptive young lady.’

  THIRTY-SIX

  I stand in the doorway and I can’t work out if I’m supposed to let him in, so we just face each other, me with my hand braced on the side of the door and him with his arms folded and his spine perfectly straight. I can see a broken blood vessel in his eye, a tiny red explosion. His eyes really are very blue: I thought they touched them up in the photos but they don’t.

  There is a woman standing behind him in the corridor, typing into her phone. She looks up briefly and we make eye contact and then she looks back at the phone. There’s a man, as well, further down the corridor, and he has his hands in his pockets but he’s standing stiffly and just watching us. He has a thick neck like a rugby player and a squashed face and he doesn’t look like a politician: he looks like a boxer.

  Maybe he’s a bodyguard. Not that long ago nobody hardly knew who Jake Carlisle was and now he has an entourage.

  I wonder if the bodyguard thinks that I am dangerous, in my socks and jeans and with my uncombed hair.

  ‘Is one of your guardians here?’ says Jacob Carlisle, and I can see him looking over my shoulder at our flat and I think about slamming the door shut so he can’t see it, can’t see our dishes in the sink or my shoes in the middle of the floor or Danny’s jacket on the back of the sofa: so he can’t look at it and think that he knows anything about us.

  ‘No. They’re not here.’

  He turns and looks at the woman behind him and she shrugs.

  ‘Maybe I should call them,’ I say.

  ‘I think that would be a good idea.’

  And he is good looking but he’s short, not that much taller than me, and he could be anybody, could be somebody’s dad picking them up at school.

  ‘Is this – are you here because of the email?’ I say.

  He gives me an incredulous look and is about to answer when the woman with the phone looks up again and says, ‘Don’t talk to her without one of her guardians, Jake. The last thing we need—’

  ‘It’s not my fault that I saw it,’ I say. ‘I just saw it. It was an accident. And I can tell whoever I like. It’s not illegal.’

  The moment I say this I wonder if it is illegal to read someone else’s email. I actually have no idea.