by Rhian Ivory
‘Don’t you worry, boy. You’re in safe hands here with me and her. We’ll look after you, see if we don’t. Come by in a few days and we’ll have some coins for you, get you some new clothes and som’at to eat, eh? You look like you could do with a good scrub n’all!’ He pointed at me, as if I were some kind of shame. I looked down at my coat, which had holes in showing the layers underneath. I nodded and ducked out from under his big hand and turned to walk away. Emilia wasn’t finished with me yet though. She beckoned me back with her bony finger once Henry had gone back to serve in the taproom.
‘Come here, come closer now, lovey, I won’t bite! Now you know what’d happen if anyone caught you with this ring, or got to hear about it. So I’ll help you out, once again, I’ll do you another favour. Off you go, you get on back to your little hut, but make sure to come back and see your friends Emilia and Henry in a few days though, come back and see what we have for you.’
Her smile was stretched so thinly across her face that I could see her yellow teeth poking out under her lips. She smiled at me, swinging the empty purse back and forth in front of my face before tucking it away in her apron.
And then the smile dropped, replaced by a look of hunger, thin lips open wide ready to bite into something, chew it up and spit it out.
CHAPTER 17
NOAH
‘Beth? Hi, what are you doing here?’
I open the door wider, balancing on the wooden ledge in my socks, tilting back and forth.
‘I’m stuck on my English homework. Thought you might be able to help?’ she asks.
Things have been different since the History talk. Three days passed and neither of us brought up what had happened with her fish. I hadn’t gone back to her house because I didn’t think she’d want me there. I’d used homework as an excuse and so had she.
I grab hold of her hand and pull her inside before she can change her mind. We stand there looking at one another, holding hands, then she shuts the front door. I lead her upstairs to my room. I close my bedroom door and she sits down on the end of my bed.
Beth is in my room. Beth is in my house. In my room. It’s different at her house, it’s fine there. Relaxed, safe, nothing to hide. But here? In my house? It feels like anything could happen.
I’d woken up that morning at my desk, my head lying on another picture of her. When I opened my eyes, the first thing I saw was Beth, crying. This wasn’t the first day that had started with pictures of Beth crying. But I didn’t know what had made her cry, or who. I hoped it wasn’t me, but guessed it probably was, which was why I’d kept my distance these last few days.
‘Anyway … so…’ she starts and then stops. Awkwardness begins to cloud over us, a pressurised silence. I want to fill it, but don’t know how. I want to say sorry again about her fish, but don’t want to go back over what happened or who is to blame. I knew things would end with me feeling guilty – they always do. I stand in the middle of my room. Eventually I force myself to speak, to break the tension.
‘What do you feel like doing?’ I ask, trying to get back to normal.
I nod at the space next to her on my bed. She moves across to make room for me. I lean back against my headboard, which creaks and groans embarrassingly.
‘I don’t know. What do you want to do?’ She looks around my room. I try to see what she might see: plain white walls covered in pictures by various artists; odd prints by Dali of melting clocks hanging off trees next to some strange loud ones with sharp notes of colour by Kandinsky. She pauses to look at the Van Gogh one, Starry Night, with its midnight skies rolling like waves, surrounded by spinning stars.
I’d drawn my own variations and pinned them around the original, like constellations, but I didn’t tell her this, I didn’t want to draw attention to my own stars. I could see which one she liked the best: the one on the ceiling above my bed. It had caught her eye. I put my head back on the pillow, next to Beth’s, and look at it with her – it is slow and gentle, warmth and tenderness running in waves down the back of a golden dress that sighs and shimmers as the couple cling on to one another.
‘Who painted that one?’ she asks. I look at the painting then at her and clear my throat.
‘Gustav Klimt, an Austrian painter, my favourite. He said, “Whoever wants to know something about me should look carefully at my pictures.”’
As I say it, I realise that’s what I’d been trying to do, with her fish and the pictures. I wanted her to know me. But it was a mistake.
She is still pointing at the picture, waiting for an answer. I don’t know what she’s just asked so I keep talking.
‘So … this one is of Klimt and Emilie his … lover. It’s called The Kiss.’
I feel something hover between us, but I’m a moment too slow to catch it. I lean in towards her just as she pulls back, away from me, and jumps off the bed kicking her flip-flops off onto the floor. There is a beat of emptiness and then she starts talking, filling the silence with something completely different. It takes me a second or two to catch up.
‘So did you get the English homework? I thought maybe we could do it? I mean, do the homework. Together.’ She looks around for somewhere to work, a clear surface and seems shocked at how messy my desk is. It is covered in paper and drawings and pages torn from magazines like a collage.
‘I didn’t have a clue what Mrs Ashwell was going on about. Pip and symbols of justice and the role of guilt in the novel? I mean, he’s innocent, isn’t he, clearly? I’ve got the essay question and stuff in my bag.’ She reaches across to her flip-flops, but there is no bag.
‘I must have left it downstairs in the hallway. I’ll go and get it, you clear that mess off there so we’ve got somewhere to work in this pit!’
She leaves my room. I jump up and rifle through all the pictures on my desk, trying to find the right one. I shove some of them into the top drawer, which is already pretty full. I ram more into the bin. As I spin around with another handful to hide under the bed, Beth comes back in and we collide in the small space. My drawings fly up into the air and land everywhere.
My hands are on her shoulders, where I’d steadied myself so I wouldn’t crash into her. But now I can’t take them away. It is like they are stuck. I pull her in to me and move my hands from her shoulders, down her back, pushing her forwards into my body. I can feel her against me and hear her breathing. Her hair smells of lemons, or something citrusy. She doesn’t push me away this time, or try to move back, which I take as a good sign. I lean all the way down as she sweeps her hair out of her eyes, stands on her tiptoes and moves her mouth to mine. Her lips are hot and sweet and very soft. She tastes like strawberries. I nearly forget to breathe so, when she eventually pulls away my whole body feels like pins and needles, but in a good way. I rub the back of my neck which aches from stooping for so long. I’m not sure what to say to her.
‘Sorry, I … I don’t know what to say after that. Wow!’ she says, pulling her hair back across her face again, smiling widely.
‘Sorry, sorry.’ I’m not sorry at all, but I don’t know what she is thinking or feeling. I am feeling awesome, fabulous, amazing, on top of the world, totally epic – all the phrases I’d heard people say all the time, but never used myself before because they’d have felt fake. This is how I should have felt before, in other places with other girls, kissing. This is real, in this new room with this new girl, and it feels nothing like before.
‘Are you OK?’ I ask, needing to know what she is thinking.
‘Yep, you have no idea how OK! That was so different to when…’ She stops talking and laughs instead. She takes a step backwards and watches me for a second, then bends down to hide her face and her smile. She gathers up some of the paper off the floor. I want her to come back and kiss me some more, but don’t have a clue how to make this happen. She carries on tidying up the mess while I wonder what to say next, what to do next and how to move things on.
‘Is this your homework? It’s in a right state and oh … oh
?’ she stutters as she takes in what she’s holding. It is a drawing of her. The one I don’t want her to see.
I’d found the first lot a few days ago under my bed and more this morning. The new one is much more detailed. I hadn’t realised in the others that she was sitting at her piano, her fingers paused over the keys, hands hovering in mid-air. This new drawing was big and close up. You could even see the veins under the skin on her hands, each knuckle and line. Beth stares at it, taking it all in. In the drawing, tears had run down her face and were pooling in the dip at the bottom of her neck. It looked like she’d been crying for a while and hadn’t wiped them away. In the picture, it was just her, sitting on her own, crying. I wanted to know why, to make it better.
‘What is this? What-the-hell-is-this?’ she hisses at me, too angry to shout. She shakes the drawing at me and then her body folds at the middle and she falls onto the floor. I stand over her. Heaviness settles in my stomach and pushes down on my shoulders, rooting me to the spot. I have nowhere to hide.
‘It’s a picture I drew of you.’ I decide to stick to the truth. Everything else I’ve tried is too complicated and doesn’t work. Maybe the truth will make sense for once, not all of it but some of it.
‘I can see that. I can see it’s me, but why are you drawing it? Were you spying on me, Noah? Were you looking through the window last night watching me? Oh my God!’ She draws herself away from me, tucking her legs and feet underneath her.
‘No, no, no way. I’d never spy on you, never. I’m sorry, Beth, I’m so sorry. I wasn’t watching you, I promise, I totally promise. I was out running with my dad. Why, what happened last night?’ Now I am worried.
‘How did you know about this unless you were watching me? How do I know you were with your dad?’
I shake my head and look wildly around my room for something I can do, something I can say to change what she is thinking. She’s getting it all wrong. Getting me wrong.
‘I drew it before last night. I drew loads of others like it days ago. I draw things, I keep trying to show you that, to tell you…’
I am making a mess of this. I walk around in circles trying to find the right words.
‘Tell me WHAT? Stop walking around. Stop!’ she shouts at me, not caring that my parents might hear.
‘I draw the future.’
There. I said it. It is out. I’d tried showing her, I’d tried hinting at it, I’d tried making fun of it, but it was all a waste of time. She wasn’t getting it. I didn’t want to hide it from her, so I had to just stop and say it, just tell the truth and trust her, like she asked me to.
‘What? What are you on about you draw the future? Noah, are you mad?’ she shouts at me as she jumps up. She is looking at me as if I am a complete stranger. Her eyes flick over to the door and part of me wants to fling it open and let her escape and another part of me wants to stand in front of it and block the way out. But I don’t want to scare her, not any more than I already have. I have to make sense of this for her. It is too late to do anything else now.
‘The pictures of your fish I drew them before they died, didn’t I? I drew that before it happened.’ I move towards her.
‘Yeah, but that’s just coincidence. It was just too hot. Loads of animals have died in this heatwave. You can’t make stuff happen, Noah, that’s just not possible, not in the real world.’ She shakes her head at me, as if I am dangerous.
‘I know I can’t make stuff happen, OK? I’m not saying I can. I never said I had any control over it!’ I shout back at her, then stop myself. This isn’t her fault.
‘Sorry, sorry, I didn’t mean to shout at you. Let me try and explain, Beth, please? I draw stuff before it happens. I always have. I don’t know what’s going on, but lately I’m drawing more of the future than I’ve ever drawn before. It’s all started changing, since I met you, I think. Since we moved here.’
I stop for a moment to try to slow down my thoughts. She nods at me, telling me to carry on, but doesn’t come any closer.
‘Lately if I throw a drawing away, I end up drawing it over and over and bigger and in more detail, like the ones of you playing the piano. I draw them and draw them until I know them off by heart. It feels like sitting down to watch a film but I don’t seem to be able to pause it anymore, or press stop or rewind. It is out of my control. All I can do is watch it play out in front of me.’
I reach down to the floor and pass her a handful of scrunched up drawings – all of her at the piano, all from different angles. One in profile, another the back of her head with her long messy hair trailing down her back. Each one bigger and bolder, more colourful and more complicated than the previous one. Every possible angle.
She doesn’t know what to do with them so she just holds them, standing there in the middle of my room.
‘I was playing Adagio for Strings,’ she says. ‘It always makes me cry, even when nothing bad has happened. Mum and Dad were doing Friday evening surgery so I played, most of last night actually, once I’d got back. But the thought of someone watching me, the thought of you standing outside the window watching me play and cry is … horrible, Noah.’
She doesn’t believe me. She thinks I’ve been prying at the window like some village idiot.
‘What do you mean: even when nothing bad had happened? Do you mean the fish? I’ve said I’m sorry. I’ll buy you some more if you like.’
She snaps up her head and shouts at me. ‘It’s not about the fish, for God’s sake! I wasn’t crying over the stupid fish OK? It was … I went out. I shouldn’t have gone but they kept on asking me, daring me and you’d upset me – yes about the bloody fish – so I went. I met them down the graveyard.’
She flumps down onto the carpet, her hands in her lap as she moves her rings around and around on her fingers.
I hold my breath in really hard to stop myself from reaching down and shaking the story out of her. I have to know who’s made her cry.
‘They were playing KISS/CRUISE/MARRY. Harley gave me my options: him, Theo and you.’ She stops, her voice cracking as she starts crying softly, her head down.
This is torture. I need her to spit it out, just tell me what’s happened. I know the game – you have to say who you’d kiss, who you’d be stuck on a twelve-month cruise around the world with and who you’d marry. I sink down onto the carpet next to her. This time she doesn’t move away.
‘I said I’d go on a cruise with Harley, even though I never would, that I’d kiss Theo, which ended in Eva having a massive strop, and that I’d marry … that I’d marry you,’ she splutters as she breathes in on a sob. I pull her forwards awkwardly and wrap my arms around her, feeling her body relax against me.
‘So why did that make you cry?’ I don’t get what has upset her so much.
‘Because Theo then grabbed me and kissed me really hard for ages. He stank of fags and I tried to push him off, but Eva said it was all my fault, that I’d led him on, that I was always flirting with him and Harley called me a … called me a tease. And then they all left me there in the graveyard on my own in the dark.’
I rock her back and forth, mumbling stupid things like it will be OK, it’ll be alright. All the time thinking she’d marry me, she’d marry me, she’d marry me!
When I stop talking, she turns her face up towards me. I want to kiss her again to erase Theo’s stale kiss from her lips. But I can’t. I have to show her something first, the last drawing that I tried to hide. I can’t hide anything else from her now. There is nothing – almost nothing – left to hide.
‘I’ve already seen this. You showed me this before.’ It is of her hut. And she is right, she’s already seen it, but there’s something neither of us had noticed, until now.
‘Look through the door.’ I push it back towards her.
‘OK, yeah … what am I looking for?’ She sniffs as she brings the large sheet up to her face.
‘Look on the chair.’ I’m not sure how she’ll react, but I know I have to do this.
‘M
y key!’
The realisation hits her.
‘This is from before. You drew this before I even lost my key, didn’t you? Did you know when you went in to the summer house that the key would be there? Did you?’ She is shouting at me again. She’s ripped the corner of the picture by holding it too tightly. She’s back on her feet now.
‘No. I didn’t realise I’d drawn the key then. I didn’t even notice it, not until after it happened, honestly.’ I am being truthful, trying to be honest, but this time I stay on the floor, away from her.
‘This is really creepy, Noah, just creepy. It’s freaking me out. Maybe Eva was right about you, you’re just too much. I need to go home. I don’t want to be around you right now.’
I start to get up, holding out my hands to her.
‘No, don’t say anything, don’t touch me!’ She holds her hands up, as if to ward me off. The tears in her eyes push me back to the floor.
She takes the pictures with her, shoving them into her bag as she walks out of my bedroom. I watch her from my window, wishing I could call her back. I could run after her and say sorry, whatever it takes, but I know there are no words. Not for this. Sorry was never going to cover it.
CHAPTER 18
BLAZE
I stood outside The Swan waiting for one of them to come to the stable door. Dog refused to sit and stood next to me, hackles raised. He started pacing between me and the door, back and forth, back and forth. I didn’t know how long it would take for one of them to notice me. Although people in the village kept their eyes on the ground when they walked past me, I knew I stood out. Women who had visited me in the past walked past nervously, arm in arm with men who looked over and around me like I was a bad smell. I could see the panic in their eyes as they recognised me, worried that I’d give them away. But I didn’t. I didn’t look in their eyes, I kept my gaze on the ground as I kicked at the dirt, my feet moving about too freely in my large boots.