Jodie gave me a sort of a smile. ‘Just a bit of a row with my boyfriend.’
She told us she lived in the high-rise flats on the edge of our estate, with this boyfriend. She’d come out for a walk because he was in a bad mood.
‘I didn’t think anyone was still in those flats,’ I said. ‘They look all boarded up.’
Jodie blew out smoke and sniffed again. ‘They’re trying to get everyone out. They’re going to knock the flats down. But we’re still there, until we find something else.’
‘Are you going to work in Dead Bouquet again?’ Zoe asked.
Jodie shook her head. ‘Don’t think so. I was just helping out because Geena was ill. Usually I work in Fryin’Chicken.’ Now that she mentioned it, there was a smell of meat and cooking oil hanging around her.
‘I love that stuff,’ Kerry said. Zoe made a face behind her back. ‘But my mum hates it. She says it’s too expensive and full of fat.’
Jodie smiled at Kerry. ‘She might be right.’
‘Are you OK, really?’ I asked Jodie.
Jodie threw her cigarette butt onto the ground and stamped on it lightly. ‘Yeah. Thanks. I just needed some air.’
She started walking away. Then she stopped and turned. ‘Hey,’ she said. ‘Come round tomorrow after school. I always get a load of chicken to take home. I get sick of the stuff. You can help me eat it.’
Zoe scribbled down the number of the flat on the back of her hand.
The next day, we were a bit tense and giggly, full of a weird excitement. Zoe and I had stuffed a change of clothes into our school bags, but Kerry hadn’t thought about that, so she was still in her school uniform as we went towards Jodie’s house. It was just as well: Kerry always looked even more of an embarrassment than usual out of school. The grey and black uniform was boring, but at least it made everyone look as rubbish as each other, even the really cool girl gangs, because they had to wear regulation shoes, tone down their hair colours and they weren’t supposed to wear make-up. But what you wore out of school said a bit more about you. Zoe wore things that were a bit eccentric, that she made herself, and looked good in a ‘so-sue-me’ sort of a way. My mum was a bit soft – especially since the divorce – and when she got paid she could be persuaded to buy me clothes that I wanted and wouldn’t get me laughed at. But Kerry. Her mum bought her supermarket jeans that made her look like an overgrown kid or else someone aged over fifty, so high-waisted they nearly reached her armpits. She wore her tops buttoned up to the neck – that was something to do with what they were told at her church.
I badly wanted to see Jodie’s home and so did Zoe. Kerry just wanted to do what we were doing. Also, Zoe had done this amazing manga drawing that looked just like Jodie, only with big eyes and a mane of hair. In fact, it made her look like some kind of beautiful cartoon superhero, which she didn’t in real life.
The high rises were even worse than we’d expected, because so many people had moved out and most of the doors and windows were covered in metal panels and graffiti. The stench on the staircase was really bad: stale fag smoke and damp and pee. We had to take the lift because Jodie’s flat was on the ninth floor. I don’t like heights, so I tried not to think about how far up we were going and the way the lift made a grinding noise, like it might break down at any minute. Zoe told us we’d see the place littered with needles, because the high rises had a bad reputation for drugs. We didn’t actually see any needles – that was one of Zoe’s exaggerations – but it did stink.
Jodie opened the door and the thick smell of Fryin’ Chicken wafted out. ‘Brilliant,’ said Kerry. Inside, as well as the smell of the food, there was a kind of a mustiness in the air that reminded me of my nan’s outhouse.
Zoe handed Jodie the drawing. ‘I can’t pay you for the food,’ she told her. ‘I’m an impoverished artist.’
Jodie’s lips twitched at the sides. ‘Right. Whatever that means.’
‘So I did this sketch of you. You never know, it might be worth money when I’m famous.’
Jodie unrolled the paper. She shook her head and said it was amazing. She even went a bit teary-eyed and I could tell Zoe loved having that effect on her. ‘My Dave’s got a tattoo on his back that looks a bit like that,’ Jodie told us.
The room didn’t have much furniture, but there was a little low table that was covered with the bright yellow boxes that the chicken came in, a pile of paper napkins and three big cartons of drinks. We ate the food in our hands, sitting on the floor. It made our fingers slippery with grease. Kerry sucked her fingers so hard that I told her she’d soon have no fingerprints left. Zoe glared as if she’d like to smack Kerry’s hands.
From Jodie’s window, you could see all across the whole of Shieldsgate: our own streets and then right across the motorway, the steeple of the cathedral and some of the taller buildings, like the council offices and the university. I felt dizzy standing next to the window and it even made my nerves tingle when Kerry pressed her nose to the glass. Zoe, though, could hardly tear herself away from it. She said one day she was going to live in a penthouse flat with a view like this one. She said it would have her artist’s studio in it and she would paint the scene from the window.
Jodie snorted at the word ‘penthouse’. When the door opened and her boyfriend Dave came in, she said: ‘Welcome to the penthouse,’ and sniggered.
He said: ‘What are you on about?’
Then he looked at us. ‘Hello, ladies.’ His voice went into a drawl.
Kerry giggled.
‘Some men wouldn’t be happy about coming home and finding the room full of schoolgirls,’ Dave said, more to Jodie than to us, and I thought there was a bit of a knife-edge in his voice. Then he laughed. ‘But I’m not complaining.’
Zoe and I caught each other’s glance. Dave coming in made the whole room feel a bit different. Also, I’d noticed Zoe usually got weird around boys. She always went really quiet, like she was closing the doors on herself. She just went over to the window again and gazed out as if she was looking at the New York skyline or something, not our cruddy east end.
Dave wasn’t as tall as Jodie, but he was thin and muscly. When we pestered him, he took off his shirt and showed us the tattoo across his back, but it wasn’t much like Zoe’s drawing after all. Then he sat without a top on for the rest of the time, which made me feel like I shouldn’t even be looking at him.
I wished I hadn’t gone to the bathroom because I saw things like boxes of tampons and packets of condoms. I didn’t want to think about all that stuff between Jodie and Dave. It made me twist inside, as if I had something to be ashamed of.
When I came back into the living room, Kerry was babbling about how she should have changed out of her school uniform. ‘I’m not complaining,’ Dave said, again. Zoe looked at me and twisted her lip.
It was getting dusky outside. Dave asked us if we wanted some beer. That was when Zoe said we had to get Kerry back home. Kerry said she was fine, and Dave pulled four cans out of a plastic bag, but Zoe glared at her until she said, ‘Oh, well, maybe we’d better go.’
We pressed and pressed the button for the lift, but it didn’t come, so we clattered our way down nine flights of chilly concrete steps. ‘I came here once before, a couple of years ago,’ Zoe said. ‘Someone at school asked me round. It was bad then, but it’s worse now.’
‘Probably because they want to pull the flats down anyway,’ I said.
‘I think they should knock them down,’ Kerry said, shivering. ‘They feel horrible.’
Zoe sighed. ‘You’re a philistine,’ she said.
‘A what?’
‘What they should do,’ Zoe said, ‘is fix them all up properly and rent them out as artists’ studios. I’d live in one if I could. That view is awesome. I’m going to ask Jodie if I can come back and paint it.’
I just didn’t have Zoe’s imagination, I reckoned, becaus
e I couldn’t see anything but misery in the place. The damp and cold of the staircases gave us all goosebumps. We couldn’t wait to get out into the fresh air.
4
Birthday
In early June, it was coming up for Zoe’s birthday. It was the first time I realised she was older than me. Kerry confided Zoe had been kept back a year, because she’d had so much time off. Zoe spotted a flyer for a gig with three different local goth bands. She was desperate to go.
‘That’s all I want to do for my birthday,’ she said, waving the leaflet at me as we sat on our coats on the damp low wall at school during morning break. ‘I wouldn’t want presents or anything if I could just go to that gig.’
I squeezed her lightly on the shoulder. I’d guessed there was no way Zoe’s mum would allow it. From the way Zoe described things, her mum’s mission in life was to make Zoe miserable. Mine probably would’ve agreed, as long as my dad could pick me up at the end of it. But Zoe’s mum had said a flat no. The tickets were £20 each. I could have eked it out of my dad, if I’d worked on him for a bit, but Zoe never had any cash at all.
Kerry frowned at the flyer. ‘I’ve never heard of any of these bands,’ she said. ‘How do you know they’re not rubbish, anyway?’
Zoe made a low growling noise in her throat.
‘Why don’t we do something else?’ Kerry said, trying to get Zoe to cheer up and going exactly the wrong way about it.
‘Such as?’ Zoe turned to Kerry and her eyes were icy diamonds. ‘What would you like to do? Play Scrabble with big brother? Go to church and sing some hymns?’
Kerry went pink. She did go to church, every weekend and even sometimes during the week. Zoe teased her about it, when she was bored enough to pay Kerry any attention.
‘I thought maybe we could all go out and have a pizza or something,’ Kerry said, in a sort of a mumble, because I think she already knew Zoe was going to shoot her down.
‘Why the hell would I want to do that? Why would I want to spend my birthday listening to you? It’s bad enough every other day.’
‘Zoe,’ I said, shifting my legs. The cold from the brick wall was starting to make me feel numb. ‘Don’t.’
Kerry looked like she’d been slapped. ‘I just wanted to –’
‘Just shut up!’ Zoe shouted. Really shouted. Both Kerry and I jumped.
Kerry got up and said something about going to the toilet.
‘I know you’re going to cry, stupid baby,’ Zoe called after her. Kerry didn’t turn around.
I looked at Zoe. She blinked and screwed up her eyes. ‘What’s up?’ I asked, giving her a gentle nudge with my elbow.
Zoe shook her head and said nothing. She was staring down at the ground, so hard that I looked to see what was there.
‘Is it your mum?’
Zoe shrugged. ‘No more than usual.’ Her hair was drooping down at either side of her face, hiding her expression.
‘I wish I could get you to that gig,’ I said. ‘I’d love to go too.’
Zoe sniffed and looked up. ‘Yeah?’
I nodded.
‘I was thinking,’ Zoe said. ‘If I said I was staying with you – and you said you were, I don’t know, staying with someone else, maybe we could go to the gig.’
I thought about this. ‘How, though?’
‘Suppose I got the money for the tickets.’
‘But how would you -?’
‘Never mind that for now. Just suppose I did. Would you be up for it?’
I felt something like pins and needles creeping through my body. ‘If we went to the gig, and you were meant to be staying with me, where would we go for the rest of the night?’
Zoe looked at me. ‘We could ask Jodie. I bet she’d let us crash on her floor.’
‘What about that Dave, though? He gives me the creeps.’
‘Me too. But it’d just be for one night. We could stick together. We’d be fine.’
‘I could ask my dad if he’d pick us up and take us back to mine?’
Zoe wrinkled her nose. ‘Too embarrassing. We’d look like little kids.’
‘How would you get the ticket money then?’
Zoe looked away from me. ‘I’ve got a birthday coming up, remember? I’m bound to get some cash from somewhere. That’s just a detail, anyway. Are you in?’
I didn’t dare hesitate. ‘I’m in.’
Zoe grabbed my hand and squeezed it. ‘We haven’t got to mention this to Pizza Face,’ she said.
‘Kerry? No. Sure. But, Zoe –’
The lesson bell made us both groan. Zoe got up from the wall and pulled me up after her. ‘Finally,’ she said. ‘Something’s going to happen. I have a reason for living after all.’
I laughed as we ran back to the class, brushing damp and grit from my coat.
I’d already bought Zoe a birthday present. It was a little pewter box lined with red velvet. Inside, wrapped in black tissue paper, was a phial of a scent called Poisoned Wine, which was her favourite of the ones we always sampled in the shop every weekend. It came with a little scroll of paper listing its ingredients: things like amber, patchouli and something called dragon’s blood. She was going to love it.
Kerry told me she’d bought Zoe a postcard of the Shieldsgate skyline at night and that she’d put it in a frame. ‘It looks really like the view from Jodie’s window,’ she said. ‘Do you think Zoe will be pleased?’
‘’Course she will,’ I said. I was a bit jealous of this idea myself, though you couldn’t really guess how Zoe would react to anything Kerry gave her.
‘What is she going to do on her birthday?’ Kerry was good at forgetting, or seeming to forget, most of the times when Zoe was cruel to her. A couple of hours later she was always bouncing back at us.
I shrugged.
‘Why doesn’t she want to go for a pizza?’ Kerry asked. ‘It’d be good.’
She just doesn’t want to go with you, I thought. ‘Zoe never has any money,’ I said.
‘I would treat her for her birthday,’ Kerry said.
I made a face. ‘I don’t know, Kerry. I think she’d be embarrassed about that.’
‘My brother’s started working weekends in this brilliant new Italian place in town,’ Kerry said. ‘It pays better than the bakery because he gets tips.’
I sat up at the mention of Luke. ‘Really? Where?’
‘Near the library. The menu looks gorgeous. He said I should bring you along.’
‘He did?’ I felt a little electric charge go through me. ‘Honest?’
Kerry nodded. ‘I’m sure he meant Zoe as well,’ she said.
I thought for a second. ‘But he just mentioned me?’
‘Yeah, he said he really likes you.’
‘Truly?’
Kerry blinked at me, like it was no big deal. ‘Of course. He says it’s great that I’ve got some mates after all this time.’ She lowered her eyes. ‘It was tough, you know, never having anyone to hang around with. When it was really bad, Luke sometimes came to meet me after school. To make sure no one got me. You know.’
I did know. Maxine and her mates would go for anyone who looked at them the wrong way, if they were in the mood. I felt a guilty twinge inside. Fact was, whenever we could, Zoe and I tried to lose Kerry. And we never asked her out with us at weekends. I knew Zoe wouldn’t be seen with someone like Kerry when she was trying to fit in with the Dead Bouquet crowd.
‘Look,’ I said. ‘I’ll try to persuade Zoe to go. Can’t promise, though.’
So later I started working on Zoe, which wasn’t easy. I told her that Kerry had already booked us a table. I suggested we could go there early and then go on to the gig.
Zoe pulled a face. ‘Yes, but what if Kerry follows us? We can’t tell anyone else what we’re doing. You know we’ll be in it up to our necks if my mother finds ou
t.’
I gave Zoe puppy-dog eyes.
She covered her face and shook her head. ‘Stop it! It’s my birthday we’re talking about. Don’t make me spend it with Pollyanna!’
In the end, we agreed that we’d do it, on the condition that I didn’t say a word to Kerry about where we were going afterwards.
5
The gig
On the night of Zoe’s birthday, a Saturday, we must’ve spent two hours getting ready. Zoe came to my house and we’d concocted a story for our mums which involved having a sleepover at someone from school’s house. We’d even agreed on a name – Emma Wood – but the girl we were supposed to be staying with didn’t exist and the mobile number I left with my mum was completely made up. I was banking on the fact that she wasn’t going to check. I felt a bit sick about it, to be honest. But Zoe had bought the tickets and whenever Kerry was out of earshot, she’d talked about nothing else for days.
In my bedroom, we spoke in low voices. ‘Did Jodie say we could stay at her house then?’
Zoe was sitting at my mirror painting on her gloss-black eyeliner into perfect symmetrical flicks at the corner of each eye. ‘Sort of.’
I pulled my T-shirt over my head and smoothed out the creases. ‘Sort of? What do you mean by “sort of”?’
Zoe looked in the mirror at my reflection, staring at her. ‘Well, she told us we could come round any time, didn’t she? Ages ago.’
‘You mean she doesn’t actually know we’re coming tonight, late?’
Zoe shrugged. ‘She’ll be all right. It’s not going to be like turning up at your gran’s house.’
My insides squirmed again. ‘Zoe...’
She held up a pale hand, her nails painted a heavy shade of purple. ‘Don’t. It’s my birthday. Don’t spoil it.’ She started conducting with her mascara brush, along with the track playing in the background.
The Misper Page 3