Watching You, Watching Me (Back-2-Back, Book 2)

by Chloe Rayban

  That’s when I saw Zalia framed in the back doorway. She had on these skin-tight shiny trousers and this shirt thing that wasn’t buttoned up but sort of tied at the waist, kind of carelessly showing off quite a lot of cleavage. A bit obvious maybe, but the guys standing in the kitchen weren’t complaining.

  I shoved through a load of limbs towards her. ‘Sorry mate — hang on a minute — hold that. Yep, if I go under your arm — yeah … OK, I’m through …’

  ‘Hi …’ she said when I reached her, and kind of waited …

  She was expecting me to kiss her — so I didn’t.

  ‘What happened to you last night?’ I demanded.

  ‘What?’

  We were both shouting against the music.

  ‘What happened to you? I couldn’t find you?’

  ‘That’s rich. I couldn’t find you.’

  She stood with her hand on her hip — somehow she managed to put me off my stroke.

  ‘Look, sorry, maybe I missed you,’ I said, climbing down. (Maybe I had!)

  ‘Forget it. It’s history, OK?’

  ‘But I’d like to know …’

  ‘Drop it, like I said. Is there anything to drink round here?’

  ‘Yes, sure, somewhere …’ My voice kind of tailed of as I remembered the empty bath. But then I caught a glimpse of this guy in the garden swigging white wine out of the bottle.

  ‘Stay right there, I’ll be back,’ I said, grabbing a plastic beaker from a stack.

  I forced my way out into the garden, and when the guy paused for breath between swigs, I grabbed the bottle.

  ‘Cheers mate …’ I sloshed some into the beaker and handed the bottle back, just hoping the guy didn’t have some contagious disease.

  ‘Here,’ I said and handed the beaker towards where Zalia had last been. She’d disappeared. I forced my way back through the bodies in the kitchen …

  ‘Sorry, look — it’s me again. Maybe I’ll go under this time. Yep. If you just move your leg up a bit. Fine. I’m through, thanks.’

  Continuing down the hall, I found most of the wine got slopped on the way. Then I caught sight of her again, dancing or rather arm-waving in a really cool way — with Will. Invited or not — he’d come. She was rubbing her body up against the guy. He had his eyes closed, lapping it up. She turned and caught me staring. I held the beaker of wine up. Wil glowered in my direction, but she broke off and made her way over to me. By this time there was about a tablespoonful of wine left at the bottom of the beaker.

  ‘Sorry, someone jogged my elbow.’

  She took a sip and made a face. ‘What is this?’

  ‘Wine.’

  ‘Look, I don’t drink alcohol, OK?’

  Now she tells me!

  That’s when Dom and Brillo turned up and I got separated from Zalia while we sorted the music out.

  ‘Hey man, how you going? Some party-y-y. But what’s that they’re playing?’

  Dom was right, someone had put something really naff on — like really commercial dance music.

  ‘Nothing to do with me, mate.’

  ‘Lets rec-ti-fy the situation,’ said Dom, and forced his way through the dancers towards the decks. Magically, the crowds parted like the Red Sea for the Israelites and Dom strode through. He drew a chair up to the decks and put the head-phones on. There was a moment’s hush.

  ‘Lets get this party off the ground,’ said Dom, and then his first track broke into the room and everyone went crazy. It was something I hadn’t heard before, but good … yeah, really good.

  I was still under the spell of it as I made my way out to the front of the house. The influx of people had died down at last. The front garden actually had some room to breathe in. And what do you know — there was Zalia sitting on the front garden wall, alone, smoking a cigarette.

  ‘Hello again.’

  ‘Hi.’

  ‘Mind if I join you?’

  She moved over about a quarter of an inch, so I remained standing.

  ‘So let’s get this straight. Did I really miss you or what last night?’

  She stared at me and exhaled smoke through her nostrils. ‘What is this, the third degree?’

  ‘No, it’s a pretty simple question.’

  ‘You don’t bloody own me, you know.’

  ‘I didn’t say I did.’

  ‘Right!’

  ‘OK then.’

  ‘That’s clear then.’

  ‘Crystal!’

  ‘OK then.’ I’d turned my back on her and was staring down the street.

  I heard a movement behind me. Then her arm slid around my waist and I swung round to face her.

  ‘You know something?’ she said, looking straight in my eyes. You’re really …’ The crucial word was lost in a blast of sound as the volume was pumped up even higher inside.

  ‘Really what?’

  ‘Come closer, and you’ll hear …’

  I came closer, she slid her arms around my neck. Her head was silhouetted against the street lights, her face was in darkness.

  ‘Sweet,’ she said.

  “Sweet” — the cheek of it! She pulled herself towards me. Almost before I knew it, we were kissing. Long and slowly …

  ‘What do you think you’re doing!’ A voice came out of the darkness.

  This old guy was standing there in a dressing gown. His hair was all over the place — he looked as if he’d escaped from a looney bin.

  ‘What’s it look like?’ Zalia answered back.

  I squeezed her arm to shut her up. I could see she was antagonising the old guy, but she didn’t take any notice.

  ‘This is a respectable street,’ the old guy was going on. ‘We don’t have these sorts of goings-on …’

  ‘Oh come off it,’ said Zalia. ‘Weren’t you ever young?’

  Her tone was really insulting. I grabbed her other arm and squeezed even harder. She tried to shake herself free.

  ‘Shut up, can’t you see you’re only making things worse?’ I hissed in her ear.

  ‘Let go. You’re hurting. Get your hands off me,’ she complained, struggling like mad.

  At that point another voice joined in.

  ‘Let go of the girl …’ said the voice. (Oh no, pl-ease. It was him — the guy from over the road, the Babe’s dad. That was just great, wasn’t it? Now not only was I a complete dosser in his eyes. Quite possibly a drunk. It looked as if I molested females, too.) I loosened my hold on Zalia and she broke free and strode huffily into the house.

  ‘OK,’ said the Babe’s dad. ‘Turn the volume down and keep it down. All right?’

  ‘I’m ringing the police right away. This is an offence,’ said the older guy. ‘That’s what it is — an offence.’

  ‘Let’s just give them a chance first …’

  ‘It’s an offence,’ the older guy repeated, as if he’d got stuck in a groove or something.

  ‘OK, I’m on to it,’ I said, and forced my way back into the house. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll deal with it.’

  Somehow, I managed to reach Dom and the decks. A group of heavies were standing round him and they kind of jeered at me as if I was a total lame-head. The music got turned down for all of ten minutes and then — soon as my back was turned — it was back up to the same level again.

  ‘Look, can you keep it down?’ I shouted.

  The guys were getting pretty uptight about my interfering. And someone else suggested that I’d nicked a bottle of Bacardi he’d brought along. A load of them got into a sort of huddle and started pushing me back against the wall.

  ‘Yeah, a full bottle.’

  ‘I saw him with it. Taking a swig …’

  And then to cap it all, in the midst of their questioning, this foot came through the ceiling. No, literally, it was sticking though and waving in the air and everyone was getting showered with plaster dust. Someone must have broken into the room above — the one with the missing floorboards. That’s when this massive bit of cornice fell and hit this red-haired guy on th
e head. He swung round, his eyes blazing under the impression he’d been attacked.

  ‘Who did that?’ he demanded.

  Will just happened to be standing by. He didn’t actually say anything. He looked at me with such intensity that the guy swung round to me.

  ‘It was you, wasn’t it?’

  Then all hell broke loose. Someone smashed a bottle against the wall. The red-haired guy and a load of his mates were bearing down on me. They forced me to back out through the front door and into the garden.

  I was totally out-numbered. Helpless. I just started shouting at them. Random things. Nothing that made sense.

  But the red-haired guy shoved the broken bottle in my face: ‘OK mate — you’re for it.’

  I backed down the front path. The bottle was coming nearer and nearer my face. I tripped and was falling and then regained my footing.

  Looking round wildly for someone I knew to stand by me, I caught sight of Will.

  ‘Look for God’s sake — tell him it wasn’t me …’ I shouted at him.

  He just stared at me blankly. ‘Get real,’ he said with twisted kind of smile on his face. Then he turned his back on me and shouldered his way through the crowd.

  That was when I heard the police sirens. Must’ve been at least three squad cars screeching to a halt outside the house.

  I’ve never been so glad to hear the sound of a police car in my life.

  Chapter Twelve

  The police searched some of my ‘guests’ — they found stuff on them too. Took a load of them off in a van. I think they were gatecrashers mainly. In fact, Dom and Brillo, Will and Zalia and anyone I vaguely knew had dematerialised the minute the police turned up. They must have hopped it, over the back fence. So the only people the police had to question were the ones who were too drunk or too stoned or too dim to have legged it. Not one of them had any idea whose party it was or whose house they were in. When I came forward and actually admitted it was my house but that I’d never seen any of these people before in my life, I guess there must have been a ring of truth about it.

  The police said they’d need verification that this was actually my legitimate address, so I had no choice but to give them Mum and Dad’s address and telephone number. All hell was going to be let loose when they got to hear of this.

  Eventually, the police cars drove off and the last stragglers left. I went round taking stock of the situation. God, the place was a tip! I just couldn’t face cleaning up till I’d had some sleep. Sleep! Remember that? I realised I’d only slept about three hours in the last thirty-six. Before I could turn in, I opened all the windows in my room. Heat rises and so does cigarette smoke. I reckon there was enough of it in the room to kill off a small community. Now for sleep! I’ve no idea how I got into my sleeping bag, I was virtually asleep on my feet.

  A voice kept nagging at my brain, breaking through the sleep-patterns. It was a high-pitched female voice — saying something urgently.

  ‘Don’t! Please don’t! You mustn’t …’

  I recognised that voice from somewhere. It was … Yes, it was the Babe’s. Suddenly I was sitting up wide awake.

  ‘Stop it! I’ll report you. That’s cruel! You can’t.’

  I got to my feet and stared blearily out of the window.

  She was standing in the street, staring up at one of the houses opposite. And there was that old bloke — the one who’d gone on about the party being ‘an offence’ leaning out of an upstairs window doing something with a broom. The house-martins were going berserk. And then I suddenly realised — he was trying to knock their nest down. I saw red at that moment.

  I was down the stairs and out in the street in a flash. Picking my way in bare feet through broken glass, I negotiated a path through the trashed garden.

  ‘You’re an evil wicked man …’ the girl was saying.

  He ignored her and took another swipe at the nest. The birds were letting out high-pitched cries of distress.

  ‘Stop it, you bastard! Can’t you see what you’re doing?’ I shouted.

  My voice had an effect. He looked round and wobbled — almost lost his balance. Would’ve served him right if he had.

  ‘I’m coming down,’ he shouted.

  The girl turned to me. Her eyes were kind of brimming — she looked really upset.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said.

  ‘Good thing you caught him.’

  She bit her lip. ‘Have you seen what’s happened to his wall?’

  I glanced across. I knew there had been some pretty rough characters at my party last night, but at that instant I experienced one instant of pure undiluted gratitude to them. Executed in elegant zig-zags of black spray paint was the word ‘Fascist’ with a swastika after it.

  ‘Pretty accurate description if you ask me.’

  The old guy’s front door flew open and I guess, unfortunately, that he caught me grinning. He started going on about me being a vagrant and bringing ‘scum’ into his precious street …

  I tried to interrupt, explain that it wasn’t my fault, but he wasn’t having any of it. He was going puce in the face, looked like he might have a heart attack or something.

  ‘Filth, that’s what they were,’ he said, stabbing at some litter in the gutter with his broom.

  I picked up a handful of flyers from the pavement. I was offering to clear up for Gods sake.

  ‘Clear up! You know what you can do — you can clear out …’

  That’s when I really lost it. I kept seeing his rotten broom breaking apart that nest — the nest that had been painstakingly built up, day by day, layer by layer, only to be knocked down in a minute of vandalism. Can’t remember what I actually said, but the gist of it was that the ‘handle’ which had been attributed to him on his precious white-washed wall actually fitted.

  That’s when he caught sight of the graffiti. He didn’t respond for a second, just stood there rooted to the spot. Then he gasped, ‘Fascist!’

  ‘You said it, not me,’ I murmured. After that I thought it wisest to make myself scarce.

  ‘Come on,’ I said to the girl. ‘I think we’ve made our point.’

  She followed me into my back garden. I paused. I couldn’t exactly ask her in. Not with the house in the state it was in.

  She was standing on the trodden earth which yesterday had been a lawn. The sun was behind her and, in the shade, her eyes were intensely blue. Stray strands of hair were blowing across her face.

  ‘You had quite a party last night,’ she commented.

  ‘Yeah, well, you should’ve come over …’ I said, shifting awkwardly on my bare feet and trying to avoid bits of broken glass.

  ‘You should’ve asked me,’ she said.

  ‘I would have. But I didn’t think it would be quite your scene.’

  ‘Look, I better be going.’ She sounded really put down for some reason — what had I said?

  ‘Don’t go for a minute. You live at number twenty-two don’t you?’ (As if I didn’t know.) I held out a hand, ‘Name’s Matt,’ I said.

  Hey, I’d made body contact! Nice hand — slim, brown, tanned and warm.

  ‘Natasha,’ she said. ‘But everyone calls me Tasha.’

  There was a pause. I couldn’t think of one more damn thing to say. The music! Inspiration. She was probably dead keen — ask her about it.

  ‘Who is it that plays a … clarinet, is it?’

  ‘Oboe,’ she said dismissively. She looked as though she didn’t want to talk about it. At any rate, not to me.

  That’s when her Dad turned up. He was calling her from the street.

  ‘I’ve got to get back for breakfast …’ she said.

  Breakfast. My stomach rumbled. Bet they’d have a nice spread — fry-up maybe, clean plates, orange juice. A glance back into my kitchen made a pretty stark contrast.

  ‘Look, I must go,’ she insisted.

  ‘Think the old bastard will leave those birds alone now?’

  She shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’
/>   Her dad called more urgently. I didn’t want to make the situation worse.

  ‘Looks like you really had better go,’ I said.

  I watched her disappearing down the side of the house. She was tall, nice mover — long legs — she really was quite some babe.

  Once she’d gone, I went back upstairs and climbed into my sleeping bag again. Now for some serious sleep. And sweet dreams maybe — that had something to do with that girl Tasha’ coming over the street to see me.

  I’d only just dropped off — or so it seemed — when I was woken again by someone banging on the front door. I just knew it must be that miserable old so-and-so from over the road, so I tried to ignore it. But the banging continued.

  I hauled myself out of my sleeping bag and stuck my head out of the window.

  ‘What is it this time?’ I shouted.

  ‘Matthew! What on earth is going on?’ a voice shouted back. A furious voice. A voice I knew almost as well as my own.

  ‘Dad! What are you doing here?’

  I craned further out of the window, and there was Dad with Mum standing just behind him.

  ‘Hang on. I’ll be right down.’

  It took a few minutes to get the front door open. Someone must have rammed it or wedged it. Anyway, it had got jammed somehow.

  Once it was open, my mother and father were revealed standing on the wrecked front path in their nice respectable Sunday clothes. You couldn’t have dreamed up a more ludicrous contrast to the surroundings.

  ‘Mum! Dad! Come in, I mean … Hang on, better come through this way.’ I kicked aside a roll of carpet that smelt strongly of spilt beer. ‘It’s all a bit of a mess, I’m afraid.’

  ‘A bit of a mess! …’ Dad’s face registered more intense shades of horror the further he penetrated into the house. He came to a halt in the through room, staring up at the ugly great gash in the ceiling where that guy’s foot had come through the night before.

  ‘Oh Geoffrey,’ said Mum, putting her hand on his arm. She never called him Geoffrey — except maybe when someone had died or something.

  ‘This is going to need some explanation,’ said Dad.

  ‘Right. Yes. I know. Look sit down, please. I’ll find a chair. Tea? I’ll make you some tea, OK?’ There are some situations so dire that tea is the only solution. Strong sweet tea for Mum by the look of her. Treatment for shock.