‘Can you do me a favour?’ he said.
‘Maybes.’
‘I want to be a teacher if I grow up. Can you call me Mr Tyneside like you would if I were your teacher at school?’
‘Yes Mr Tyneside.’
I said this in a voice made of sugar, and his head went back. He let out a sigh. ‘I have to get you home,’ he said.
‘Yes Mr Tyneside,’ I said, and he squeezed me so tight to him it were like he was trying to hurt me.
My mam wasn’t in when we got back to the close. I doubt she’d of blinked twice if she had been. She didn’t give a shit. I was some accident what happened when she was with some bloke who’d paid her, or too fucked up to know who she was with or why. Anyway, she’d fed her-sen so many chemicals by now most of her brain’d melted and fused with her skull. She didn’t go to bed no more, just stayed on the sofa with the telly on all night. She wouldn’t of noticed if I’d of killed someone next door.
Phil sat on my single bed and asked me to take off his trousers. ‘Yes Mr Tyneside,’ I said. I fished for his belt but it were difficult cause he wasn’t that fit, and too spoiled from being well off. His belly oozed out his jeans like slime. I had to dig through layers to get at the buckle.
‘Jeez, you’re desperate to get that off, aren’t you?’ he said as I fumbled. He pawed at my top, feeling my tits through the fabric. ‘Take that off,’ he said. I did as he told me. I was not wearing a bra. ‘Gorgeous,’ he said. He held both hands out and cupped one breast in each, as if he was weighing them.
I managed to dig out his belt buckle and got it undone. I pulled on the end of his trousers and they slipped down his long legs, snagging and stopping at his knees, then his ankles. He was wearing boxer shorts and told me to take them off too. I did and he lay open in front of me like a soggy pink orchid. I didn’t want to touch him but he took my right hand and wrapped it round his dick. I was shaking all over.
‘Have you done this before?’ he said.
‘No,’ I said, and he let out a loud sound. ‘Am I hurting you?’ I asked.
‘No,’ he said. ‘Oh God no.’
Next morning I met Mark on the park before school. We were supposed to be doing a survey of the kids at Glaisdale, trying to suss out if they were worth one of our after-school sessions, if there’d be enough business. It were a dull, flat saucer of a day, manky grey cloud stretching out a long way off in all directions above my head as I walked. It were the end of September and all the kids at school’d been talking about the fair coming up on the weekend. Mark and me weren’t so bothered. We could get our kicks how we liked. I remember it were quiet that morning. Numbed. Like the cloud what stretched all the way over the park was bubble wrap and soundproofed it. There was a distant hum from the motorway a couple of miles off. No voices. No footsteps. Too early for even the nice Catholic kids from Trinity traipsing across the way. A crow jumped from a tree to the ground, but I didn’t hear it land. The tops of my thighs rubbed and burned as I walked, but it were a sweet soreness.
I saw Mark, sitting against a goalpost with a lit joint. Legs crossed with his feet flat on the wet grass, body curved and crushed round them like in some fucked-up yoga pose. The air stewed round his face as he breathed. His eyes were huge over his cheekbones, and his lashes shone with what looked like dew, as if he’d been part of the grass before I’d got there.
I walked over and sat down beside him, crossed my legs too. He nodded at me, and waved his joint in my direction.
‘What’s in it?’ I said.
He smiled, that grimace he had thanks to a knife scar, so’s I knew it were brown.
‘No ta,’ I said.
Mark sniffed up. ‘What’s that smell?’
I stiffened, and uncrossed my legs, pushed them underneath me. This told him everything he needed to know.
‘Who?’ he said.
I didn’t answer. His face turned to stone.
‘That teacher dick from school you was talking to last night?’
‘He in’t a teacher,’ I said.
Mark gave a dirty look to the big grey sky, as if that were responsible for his problems.
‘For fuck’s sake Kez, you’re a baby.’
‘Din’t bother you and that were last year,’ I said. The set of his face turned against me now.
‘I was just horny. And you were right,’ he said. ‘Yer too young to be fucking.’
‘There’s gells at school been up to it for ages,’ I said.
‘There’s a whole load of slags and slappers at Player. Take after their mams and’ll be up the duff before the end of the third year. Take after yer mam, do yer Kez?’ he said.
‘Fuck off.’
‘How old’s the wanker?’
I looked at the goal line, bottom right-hand corner, the perfect place to sink a penalty. I couldn’t turn back and look at Mark.
‘Jee-suz,’ Mark said. ‘How old?’
He stabbed out his doobie on the mud under the goalposts, on the edge of the area where goalies’d worn a bald patch on the grass. I stood up and so did he.
‘Yer gonna tell me or what?’ he said.
I folded my arms and looked away. I didn’t know what he’d do next, hit me or spit in my face. Douse me in petrol and set me alight.
‘Bitch,’ he said. And he walked off without looking back. The huge grey cloud hovered like a mother ship, all ominous above his head. He’d of had to walk for ever to get out from under it. I sat back down on the grass and cried my eyes out.
Phil took me to this party in a warehouse a few weeks after I fell out with Mark. This huge place, with stage lights hung from its high ceiling, set to move round all over, and a couple of strobes going off in the corner. We were both pilled up, and Phil was all touchy feely while we were dancing. E’d got cheaper by then, about eight quid a go, and the rave was like some big experiment of its effect on people. The only danger I was in was of my mouth splitting open with how much I was smiling. My face ached from gurning and grinning my head off. I loved Phil. I loved everyone. Ecstasy makes you fall in love like the world’s about to end.
I went to the toilets to get a drink. I splashed my face with cold water and looked in the mirror. The sink next to me was full of vomit, bright coloured and pungent. In that state I thought it were pretty. It looked like a bowl of the multi-coloured shit they used to stuff toys with and I almost put my hand in. I looked out the window to a roof covered in skylight windows. Music was throwing its-sen through the door, banging to the rhythm of my pulse.
My favourite track came on and I went back out. ‘You’re twisting my melon man,’ the singer said. ‘You’re twisting my melon man.’ I danced with some bloke I’d never seen before. We both looked cool as shit, waving our arms about through the path of the strobes. I grabbed his hand and pulled.
‘Where we going?’ he said.
‘For a walk on the moon,’ I told him.
He trailed me through the toilets, past the sink full of puke and through the window onto the roof. The skylights were like craters. The real moon looked down on us like a huge, bright lamp in the ink black sky. We sat on the roof, side by side, and I leaned against him. It’s weird, the shit what goes through your head when you’re rolling. I thought about the scars I’d got. A circle on my right knee about a half-inch across, from a scab I kept splitting open when I was eight. My left knee, a comma-shaped patch of skin from a burn of candle wax I dripped there deliberate to see what it felt like. I looked at me and this bloke sitting there, as if I was viewing it from a long way off. I thought it would make a good picture. The gell with matted hair resting her head against the blond man, who was sitting straight and tall as a howling dog in front of the moon. Stuff Disney pictures are made of. We stared at the sky like we’d never seen it before. The moon dimmed as we watched, and the sun rose. The light leaked into clouds of ozone and sulphur dioxide lying low over the city. It burned behind the silhouette of factories and warehouses and silos and hoardings what stretched into the distance. T
hen it happened. Phil appeared on the roof with this gell even younger than what I was. He was pulling at her clothes and she was going ‘Yes Mr Tyneside,’ like he’d asked me to. All at once I had a load more scars.
‘You’re twisting my melon man,’ the singer said. He repeated it, over and over, as the record faded out.
Six weeks later, my period still hadn’t come.
TEN
You know crap all about owt when you’re thirteen. I was so thick. Didn’t want to believe I could be pregnant so I carried on with everything as if it were all normal. Dropped pills every weekend. Drank beer, smoked spliff, took the odd bit of coke when I had the money. Put the fact I hadn’t had a period for ages to the back of my mind. I didn’t get fat, not specially, cause I didn’t eat much. One of the things about taking a load of E is you don’t get hungry or thirsty or need the loo. Your head feels light as air too, so’s it’s difficult to tell if you’re still alive or a ghost. I thought I’d come on any day cause my tummy hurt the way it does before your period. But I smelled different. My skin gave off summat sweet so’s you’d want to lick it. Milk and honey. I was sick, course. Projectile vomiting, lurching my stomach so hard it threw me across the room. But even when I felt the baby move I told me-sen it were just a tummy bug.
One morning I turned sideways in front of the mirror and looked at the curve of my belly and it kicked. I saw a foot, the heel, clear as day. Still in denial, I decided to go and buy a test.
I went to Boots on Bracebridge. I hovered round the aisle where they had the Clearblue and own-brand testing kits, the condoms I wished I’d made Phil use, the tampons I wished I needed. I looked round the shop to check there was no one I knew there. Then I picked up the test, quick as I could, and took it to the counter. Even walking over I felt my tummy quiver. I told me-sen it were muscles, a twitch.
The shop assistant looked at me as she scanned it, eyes full of guesses. I gave her a chilly stare but she didn’t look away. She must of had kids in all the time giving her attitude.
‘What yer staring at?’ I asked her.
‘Yer too young ter be needing that,’ she said, nose half in the air like she was better than me or summat.
‘Shows what the fuck you know cause this’s fer me mam,’ I said.
‘And if I knew-er I’d check on that, and mek her wash yer mouth out,’ she said.
I laughed at her. ‘Like to see yer fucking try.’ I gave her a tenner for the test and grabbed it, shoved it in the inside pocket of my coat. I didn’t bother waiting for my change.
I made certain Jon and my mam were out before I tried it. She’d gone to her dealer and took him with her. She was getting her drugs for favours now, more direct to seller than before, cutting out the middle man. Skag for a shag, fair’s fair and all that. It’s not fair till October, she used to tell me when I was little and I moaned about stuff, a sad joke about when the Goose Fair would be round. That was back before I knew what she was, when I bothered to listen. I still want to know when this October she talked about’s going to come. A few rides on the Forest Rec didn’t make up for all the shit in my life.
I undid the packet in the bathroom and read the leaflet careful as I could. You had to piss on the stick then wait a minute. It showed you pictures of what the panel would look like. Pregnant. Not pregnant.
You wouldn’t of thought there was much to think about in a minute. But there is. In my head there was all sorts going off.
‘Not pregnant, not pregnant, not pregnant,’ I said, like it were summat you could conjure up pulling on a daisy. I must of known deep down I was. I guess I was just hoping.
I waited, looking at the stick the whole time. Not pregnant, not pregnant, not pregnant. I hummed it like a fucking mantra. Tried to charm away what was going off inside me. Course, the panel on the stick turned blue where I didn’t want it to.
I’m no pussy, I’ve had a lot go wrong for me and I don’t cry hardly ever. Course, I did then. How could I not? I wasn’t stupid. After all the shit I’d done the kid wasn’t going to have a chance of being all right. It were just good luck I hadn’t killed it yet. I wasn’t ready to be a mam. I just wasn’t. I couldn’t hardly look after me-sen. I wouldn’t know what to do with a baby, never mind one what’d gone brain damaged cause of my stupid fault.
Mam came back then, so I shoved the test wand in my clothes and went to my bedroom. I buried my head deep into the pillow and bit down to stifle any noise I would make. Then I sobbed.
I don’t know what I expected, but I went to see Phil anyway. I knew where he lived cause he’d took me there once, shagged me over the kitchen table, getting excited that one of his housemates might walk in. I stood ringing his doorbell and saw the curtain twitch. For a minute I thought he might not answer. Then he came to the door, opening it just a little bit and placing his body in the gap, like he thought I might charge him.
‘We need to talk,’ I said.
‘Can you keep your voice down?’
I gave him one of my nasty looks but he didn’t even break off eye contact. A term or so at Player’d toughened him up.
‘I thought we were sorted, love. You understand, don’t you? Me and you,’ he gestured, ‘we couldn’t ever be serious.’
My look hardened and he must of thought I was going to hit him cause he flinched and held his hand in front of his face.
‘As if I’d bother,’ I said.
He stood up taller then, as if he hadn’t just been a total dick, and made his voice go deeper.
‘It’s not a good time,’ he said.
‘Damn right about that,’ I told him. ‘I’m pregnant.’
He stopped talking then, but his mouth carried on moving like he was summat out of a fish tank. After about half a minute he spoke again.
‘Is it mine?’ he said.
‘You tryna say I’m a slag or summat?’ I said, squaring up to him.
‘Well you didn’t exactly put up a fight with me, did you?’ he said.
‘If yer want ter say I’m a slag you could at least have the balls to come out and say it,’ I told him.
He shrugged. ‘I’m not calling you anything. I just don’t see how you can be so sure it’s mine.’
‘You’re the only bloke I’ve slept wi-ever. That’s how comes I’m sure,’ I said.
‘Oh for God’s sake, Kez. Like you’d even know the way you’re off your head most of the time.’
I barged him then, started smacking at him. He was bigger than me though, and stronger. He grabbed my wrists and held me still. He whispered in my ear with a voice like sharpened steel.
‘My girlfriend’s in there. And her mum and dad. If you cause enough fuss that they realise you’re here and why then I’ll phone the police and tell them you’ve been stalking me, won’t leave me alone and how I wish I’d never agreed to help out at that school of yours.’
‘They wun’t believe yer. I’d tell them about this,’ I said, and nodded down at my tummy.
‘And I’d tell them what I caught you doing in the playground, sweetheart. They’d be round searching your house in ten minutes and where would you be then? Who’d be the one got believed?’
He held me fast by the wrists and our eyes locked. I pulled away and he let me go. He smiled as he closed the door. Thought he’d won. He hadn’t seen the last of me though.
Course, any normal gell’d of talked to her mam about it next. But I wasn’t a normal gell and she certainly wasn’t a normal mam. I knew her. She’d shrug and tell me she’d gone and had me and Jon and that’d worked out right. She’d of not cared less, would of left me to have the bogger in secret, in my bedroom, before she’d helped me sort owt out.
So I turned to the only person there was left. I went to see Mark.
I don’t know what I must of looked like, turning up at Mark’s door like that. I’d cried so much the skin round my eyes’d puffed up and gone red so’s I had huge rosy circles either side of my nose. The skin felt tender to the touch and heavy. I felt sleepy even though I
wasn’t tired. I could hardly keep my eyes open. When I saw Mark’s face I wanted to fall into him, let him wrap me up away from the world. But I hadn’t forgot the last time we’d met up, the way he’d looked at me before he’d walked off. So I was wary.
‘What’s a matter?’ he said, looking me up and down. ‘Is it yer mam? Jon?’ I shook my head and felt my bottom lip curl again, fought against it.
‘Can I come in?’ I said.
‘Is it that teacher nob?’ he said then, and I thought my face would explode at the effort of stopping more tears coming. I cupped a hand round my tummy and looked down. I was beginning to show.
‘Oh, Kez.’ There was this long pause. ‘Yer fucking kidding me.’
I shook my head again. ‘Are yer going to let me come in?’ I asked. Mark nodded his head back and opened the door wider. I walked through and followed him to the front room.
‘How far gone?’ he said, and I shrugged. ‘Is it kicking?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Jesus, Kez. It might be too late to do owt.’ Then I did cry. I was surprised I still had water for it, but I did. It seeped over my scratched face again and evaporated, making my cheeks sting. Mark sat there, arms folded and miles away on the other sofa.
‘No point blubbing about it,’ he said. ‘Yer need to see what yer can sort.’
I wiped my face with my hands and looked at him. ‘I can’t do this on me own, Mark. I need yer help.’
‘Yer mam should be sorting this wi-yer,’ he said.
‘My mam?’ He shrugged to concede my point. ‘You’re all I got cept Jon and he’s way too young to be doing wi-all this,’ I said. Mark made a whistle between his teeth and tapped his foot fast on the carpet.
‘I warned yer you was too young,’ he said.
‘I know.’
‘We better get yer ter a doctors. There’s some money I got fer yer, owe yer from before. An’t bin able to bring me-sen to come over. We can use that,’ he said.
The Killing Jar Page 8