by Mary Hooper
I clicked the mouse, moved the cursor up and scrolled through the conversation we’d just had. It was just as I’d thought: there was nothing at the top of it, it had started with my ‘Hi, Zed’. But then, I’d never thought there would be – not now I knew there was no such person as Sexylegs, that he’d just made her up to keep me keen.
I felt suddenly grateful to Beaky; pleased to have her there as a back-up. I’d certainly never have dared go down to see him on my own.
Later that day, while Mum was getting a meal ready, she was full of questions about Bethany and why she’d been round.
‘She wants you to be friends again, does she?’ she asked.
‘Looks like it,’ I said.
‘Well, thank goodness for that,’ she said. ‘You’ll be back to normal instead of hanging around in your room logging in, or whatever you call it.’
‘I suppose so,’ I said.
‘Maybe you can all go round together. You and Serena and those two.’
I sighed. ‘Mum! You’ve just got no idea, have you? They wouldn’t want to be seen dead with Beaky.’
‘If you make a new friend, don’t forget the old. The new friend is silver and the old one is gold,’ Mum quoted.
‘What’s that supposed to mean? Who’s the old friend – Beaky or Bethany?’
‘I don’t know,’ Mum said, shrugging. ‘It’s just a thing they used to write in Autograph books. All I’m saying is, I’ve never been happy about you talking to that boy all the time. I mean, I know he’s sent his photo but that doesn’t really mean anything. It might not be him. I read the other day about a ten-year-old who was sent some pornographic pictures over the Internet.’
‘Oh, don’t start all that again, Mum!’ I said. ‘I’m not ten years old! I think I’d pretty soon stop writing to someone if they sent me some porny photos.’ I could feel myself going red and I turned away from her: if she knew … if she only knew. I hesitated. ‘Talking of my computer friends,’ I said, ‘the boy I’ve been chatting to, Zed … ’
‘Yes?’
‘Well, I knew you wouldn’t be keen on me going and meeting him on my own, so I thought I’d go down with Beaky on Saturday.’
‘Serena,’ she said automatically.
‘That would be OK, wouldn’t it?’
‘Well,’ she said. She was putting some salad into a bowl and she stopped and sighed. ‘I suppose so. Just as long as you stay together all the time. Don’t you go off with him on your own, will you?’
‘’Course not. As if I’d just go off and leave Beaky.’
‘Serena.’
‘Mum! It’s so aggravating when you correct me all the time.’
‘Well, if I do it enough, you’ll stop calling her that name. It must be very hurtful.’
I ignored that. ‘We thought we’d go down for the day. He lives near the sea, so if it’s nice we’ll go swimming.’
She turned to look at me, long and level. ‘You’re not thinking of him – this boy – as anything other than a penfriend, are you? You haven’t got any romantic ideas about him?’
‘’Course not,’ I said.
‘Sure?’
‘No!’ I said crossly. Not now I hadn’t. Romance? Him and me? It turned my stomach just to think of it.
On Saturday morning I got Beaky to come round for me (see, Mum, I’m not going down there on my own), but we still had another big lecture. Mum, on her way down to open up the shop, told us that we weren’t even to speak to him unless he looked OK, to stay together all the time, and not under any circumstances to go back to his flat.
‘Yes, yes, yes,’ I said irritably. I hadn’t slept well – I think it was because I was scared of having another dream. ‘Perhaps you’d like B … Serena to keep reins on me and not let me out of her sight.’
‘Temper, temper!’ Mum said, going downstairs to the shop. ‘Have a nice day!’
Beaky grinned at me. ‘You OK?’ she asked.
‘Sort of,’ I said in a low voice. I rubbed my stomach. ‘I’ve got a funny feeling in the pit of my tummy, though. Like you get when you’re going somewhere you don’t want to go. Like hospitals.’
She nodded. ‘I used to get that feeling going to school,’ she said. ‘When everyone was being horrible to me, you know?’
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Sorry about that.’
‘It wasn’t you. Not especially you.’
‘I joined in, though. I didn’t stand up for you or anything.’
She just shrugged and I didn’t like to say anything else. I wanted to ask whether, if I called her Beaky sometimes, by accident, she would mind, but I didn’t. Like I said, I had only one major thing on my mind, and that was him. Zed.
It was when we were on the train going into London that she told me something else.
‘I don’t know whether it’s anything to do with … with what happened to you … ’
‘If anything did happen to me.’
‘Yeah, well. I was reading this thing in the paper, see. About this drug.’
‘I’ve never taken any drugs,’ I said. I was looking out of the train window and wishing like mad that we were on our way home instead of on our way down there.
‘Yes, you have,’ she said. ‘Paracetamol’s a drug. Aspirin’s a drug.’
‘You know what I mean.’
‘No, this drug – it’s called the date rape drug.’
‘What?’
‘Look, I’m not saying you were raped or anything,’ she went on hastily. ‘I mean, I’m pretty sure anyone would know if they’d been raped. Even if they were unconscious. I mean, they’d know when they got home, wouldn’t they?’ It was Beaky who was going red now.
‘I should think so,’ I said.
‘This is a drug that knocks you out – I think it’s like a very powerful sleeping pill or something. Almost puts you in a coma. This bloke I was reading about in the newspaper gave it to a girl he met at a club, and she woke up the next morning and couldn’t remember anything at all about the night before.’
‘And then what?’
‘He just told her she’d had too much to drink and had fallen asleep, but she said she’d drunk hardly anything. And then … ’
‘What?’
‘She started remembering things. She had these flashbacks. When I read that I started thinking about those things you’ve been having.’
I gave a start. ‘What is this date rape stuff. Is it like a pill, or what?’
‘I’m not sure,’ Beaky said. ‘The article said there are several drugs which can be used with the same effect, and that people have more access to these now than they used to. Maybe sometimes it comes in liquid form and sometimes as a pill.’
‘I had a cold drink,’ I said, ‘but he had some out of the same tin, so I don’t think there was anything in that.’ I suddenly remembered. ‘I had a chocolate mousse and he didn’t have one! He peeled the top back and handed it over to me.’
‘So he could have put something in first? He could have put something in it at home?’
‘He could have done,’ I said. I began to feel shaky. ‘Do you … do you really think that’s what happened?’
‘I don’t know,’ Beaky said, ‘because you can only get this stuff on prescription, and how would he do that, unless he’s got another job in a doctor’s or something.’
I grabbed her arm, alarmed. ‘The hospital! He works at a hospital one evening a week doing record requests for the patients.’
‘God!’ she said. She drew in her breath sharply. ‘Maybe he could have got hold of it, then.’
‘I don’t want to go down there!’ I said, suddenly panicking. ‘I don’t want to see him again.’
Beaky shook her head slowly. ‘I don’t blame you,’ she said. ‘But we can find out about the birthmark quite easily, and unless you find out you’ll never know, will you? And if it is true, if he is doing stuff he shouldn’t, well, at least you can get him stopped so that he doesn’t ever do it again.
‘But it might not be tr
ue,’ she went on. ‘He could be just harmless. Suppose you did just have a touch too much sun and fell asleep, and suppose he has made up a few things, well, it’s not a hanging offence to be an office cleaner, is it?’
‘Stay by me all the time, won’t you?’ I said. ‘Don’t even go to the loo without me.’
She shook her head. ‘I’ll be by your side like superglue.’ She grinned at me. ‘Bet he’ll be pleased to see me!’ she said. ‘Even if he turns out to be OK, the last thing you want on a hot date is the friend coming along.’
I forced a smile and stared out of the window, just seeing the grime on the glass instead of the fields and trees outside. I tried to think back to a week ago, before I’d met him … how I’d been feeling … the way I’d imagined that we were going to fall in love. I couldn’t dredge up those feelings now. I couldn’t remember anything nice about him at all.
‘Do you wish it was Bethany coming down here with you?’ Beaky asked suddenly.
I shook my head. ‘It’s her fault I’m here!’ I said. ‘If they hadn’t stopped being friends with me I wouldn’t have gone into a chat room in the first place.’ I hesitated for a moment and then added, ‘No, maybe it’s not her fault. They didn’t make me go into a chat room and get picked up, did they?’
‘You know Bethany came round to yours the other morning when I was there.’
I nodded.
‘Did she tell you about Lou?’
‘What about Lou?’
‘She’s going to another school.’
‘What?’ I was amazed. ‘Is she really?’
‘Her mum saw my mum in the supermarket. She said Lou’s not doing as well as she could at our school so they’re sending her to some boarding school in Gloucester which has got a high exam pass rate or something. So she won’t be around next term.’
‘Bethany didn’t tell me that … ’
‘I wondered if she had.’
‘So that was why she came round,’ I said thoughtfully, ‘not because she wanted the three of us to be friends again, but because she didn’t want to be left without anyone to go round with.’
‘Guess so,’ Beaky said. She didn’t say anything else but I knew what she was thinking – was I going to dump her now and start going round with Bethany? I didn’t want to think about that at the moment, though. All that best friend stuff seemed so trivial now. I just wanted to get down there, meet Zed and get it all over with.
Section 13
Recording resumed at 6.00pm after a break
We crossed London on the tube and, while we were waiting for our train, we bought cans of drink and some food: sandwiches, crisps and Danish pastries, to eat during the day. Now that Beaky had told me the stuff about this date rape drug – well, I didn’t know if it was true, but I was even more determined not to eat or drink anything that Zed might have brought along with him.
I was so nervous I could hardly bring myself to speak on the train down there, so I just let Beaky rattle on about birds and twitching things the whole time. I heard words like ‘migration’ and ‘summer visitors’ and ‘pectoral muscles’ but didn’t bother to work out what she was going on about, just sat and listened, glad she was with me. We decided it would be better, easier, to change into our bikinis before we got there, so a bit before we were due in we went into the loo and put them on under our clothes.
I sat on the edge of my seat after that, too jittery to even think straight. Was he, wasn’t he? What had I let myself in for?
Just as we were coming into Hurley station the train slowed and then stopped, and I slumped back. ‘Saved,’ I said. ‘Wouldn’t it be good if the train never got there – if the driver had some sort of brainstorm and took us back to London by mistake?’
Beaky grinned at me and I thought, it was funny about her nose. I mean, when you studied her face, really thought about it, her nose was a bit long and pointed, but I hardly noticed it now. ‘You wish,’ she said. She looked up at the sky outside. ‘It’s got to stay sunny … ’
I nodded. ‘What’ll we do? Say straight away that we want to go swimming?’
‘Yeah, quite early on,’ she said. She looked out again. ‘If it rains we’ve had a wasted journey, haven’t we? We’re only going to find out if he’s got the birthmark if we go swimming.’
I gave a low groan. ‘I’m not coming down and going through all this again.’
‘Well, just let’s hope for the best, then.’
‘If it does cloud over, perhaps you can say something about liking to swim in the rain,’ I said.
‘I can?’ She rolled her eyes, trying to make a joke of it. ‘Oh, thanks very much! He’s already going to be really pleased to see me – and now I’ve got to start laying down directions as to how we spend our day.’
The train started again and I glanced at Beaky in despair. ‘One more minute and I’m going to have to see him!’
‘It’s OK,’ she said. She squeezed my hand reassuringly. ‘It’ll be fine. He might not have any birthmark.’
‘Thanks!’ I blurted out. ‘Thanks for coming and everything. No one else would have done.’
‘That’s all right,’ she said, and neither of us said anything else about that or about being friends, because we were both embarrassed.
He was standing right by the door where you give your tickets in. He came towards me, smiling, and he looked OK – he was wearing a pair of long shorts and a soft grey tee-shirt – but all I could see was his mouth, smiling, stretched over those teeth. Strange, I’d got used to Beaky’s nose, but his teeth seemed to be worse now.
I put my own face into a pleased-to-see-you smile and found I had to force it to go upwards. Beaky was directly behind me, close as anything, with one hand lightly resting on my shoulder. I liked the feel of it there and felt hugely grateful that she’d come with me. I didn’t know how I’d make it up to her, but I was going to try.
Before we even got close to Zed I saw his eyes slip past me to Beaky and catch on that we were together. A flicker of surprise, then annoyance, crossed his face.
‘Who’s this?’ was the first thing he said.
‘My friend Serena from school,’ I said. ‘Serena, this is Zed.’
‘What’s she come for?’
Beaky smiled pleasantly. ‘Hi, Zed,’ she said. ‘I’m a bird watcher. I heard there were a couple of rare sea birds around this way so I thought I’d come down with Amy – with Buzybee, I mean – and see if I could spot them. Hope you don’t mind.’
What could he say? He just shrugged, looking her up and down. ‘Wasn’t quite what I had in mind,’ he muttered.
‘I wondered if we could go up on the sand dunes again,’ I said as we walked out of the station. My mouth was as dry as paper and I felt all fluttery inside. ‘It was my turn to get the food, so Serena and I have brought a picnic.’ I lifted the plastic bag and waved it about a bit. ‘We’ve got all sorts of stuff.’
‘I was going to take you back to my place,’ Zed said flatly. ‘I had it all planned.’
‘Well, maybe later on,’ I said. I smiled at him brightly, promisingly, but my voice sounded strange and false.
‘What? Is she going off on her own, then?’ This last remark was muttered from out of the side of his mouth, and I didn’t reply to it.
As we walked through the town, he hardly spoke. I pointed out places of interest to Beaky and she commented on them and chatted, seemingly unaffected by the silent treatment being given to her by Zed. He was walking one side of me, she on the other. It was an uneasy threesome – a bit like me and Bethany and Lou all over again.
Some little devil inside me made me ask him, ‘How’s it been at work this week? Are you busy at the moment?’
He nodded. ‘End of the financial year,’ he said. ‘I’ve had to put in a lot of extra hours. It’s not so bad, though. I’ve got a good team of guys working along-side me.’
From the other side of me, I felt a tiny little nudge from Beaky.
‘Do you work near here?’ Beaky asked him
.
A second or two went by before I realised that he wasn’t going to answer her, so I answered instead, telling Beaky that he worked just outside of town in the opposite direction, that he was a manager in a stationery company. She gave me another tiny nudge and I knew it meant, What are you talking about? He’s a cleaner.
We walked down to the promenade and stood for a while, staring out to sea. The sky had clouded over a bit now, but still there were crowds of people, stripy deckchairs and windbreaks dotted all over the sand. People ate ice-creams and paddled, kids made sand-castles, dogs leapt around, boys kicked footballs. All normal, everyday things. It seemed mad to think that something horrible, something weird, had happened to me down here just a week ago. Standing there right then, it was easy to think that I’d imagined everything. That I’d just fallen asleep normally and had a dream.
But …
Zed pointed up towards the harbour. ‘You get more birds up there,’ he said, speaking to Beaky for the first time. ‘Where the fishing boats come in you get lots of seagulls and things. That’s where you want to go.’
‘Oh, it’s not seagulls I’m interested in,’ Beaky said. ‘Much too common. I’m more into terns and that family.’ She smiled at him pleasantly. ‘You often get those on sand dunes. It’s one of their natural habitats.’
His face went cold and tight. ‘I don’t know why you two didn’t bloody come down on your own, then,’ he muttered, and I thought for a moment that he was just going to march off in a huff. In a way, that would have been brilliant – to have him go off in a temper and never see him again – but if he did that, then I’d never know what had happened to me. No, I’d got this far, I needed to know the truth.
Beaky flashed me a look and I knew she was thinking the same thing as me: that if he went off, we’d lost.
It was up to me to pull back the situation. No matter how difficult, I’d have to pretend that I still fancied him, that he meant something to me. I slipped my hand through his, leaned over and gave him a kiss on the cheek. ‘Sorry,’ I said, speaking in a low voice, ‘I’ll make sure we’ve got time for us later. We’ll send her off on an errand or something, OK?’