Soul Love

by Lynda Waterhouse

  Lynda Waterhouse lives in Elephant and Castle in South London. Her hobbies include missing aerobics classes, watching silent movies and listening to anti-folk music.

  First published in Great Britain in 2004

  by Piccadilly Press Ltd,

  5 Castle Road, London NW1 8PR

  www.piccadillypress.co.uk

  This edition published 2009

  Text copyright © Lynda Waterhouse, 2004

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.

  The right of Lynda Waterhouse to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN: 978 1 84812 025 9 (paperback)

  eISBN: 978 1 84812 259 8

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  Cover design by Patrick Knowles

  Text design by Louise Millar

  Printed in the UK by CPI Bookmarque , Croydon, CR0 4TD

  Song lyrics on pages 87 and 215 are from ‘Because The Night’ by Bruce Springsteen and Patti Smith. Copyright 1978 Bruce Springsteen. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission.

  All efforts have been made to contact holders of copyright material. If notified the publisher would be pleased to rectify any errors or omissions in future editions of this work.

  To my soul love, D.H.

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Prologue

  It’s a warm summer’s evening. The Saturday of the August bank holiday weekend, to be precise. The stars have never looked so bright. I’m sitting at my bedroom window, staring up at the dazzling display, and I’m thinking about what happened to me that summer.

  What a different person I, Jenna Hudson, was then.

  Remembering hurts. My brain tries to locate exactly where the pain is, but soon gives up because I hurt all over.

  I’m fed up of being grown-up and mature about my life. I want to be a child again – a six-year-old girl who’s fallen off her bike. I want to screw my face up, scream loudly and run wailing into the kitchen where my mum would gather me up tight in her arms and kiss the scrape on my knee better. Then I’d stop crying and sip chocolate milk until the pain eased.

  That’s one thing about growing up they don’t tell you – dealing with the sort of pain that can’t be kissed away.

  Chapter One

  I breathed a huge sigh of relief when the car turned into the road leading to Aunt Sarah’s cottage. When we’d set off from London, Mum and I weren’t speaking so I had no idea where she was going to dump me. Given the mood she was in, she would have been quite capable of buying me a one-way ticket to boot camp, where I’d have spent the summer holidays dressed in a brown sack and only being allowed to say, ‘Yes, sir! No, sir!’

  ‘I can’t hang about, Jenna,’ Mum said in a sharp voice as she opened the car boot and deposited my bags on the tarmac. ‘Marcus frets if I’m away too long.’

  I groaned. There was no way I was going to break my no-speaking rule yet. I was too mad at her for that. Typical that she’d be worrying more about my little eight-year-old brother than me. I just rolled my eyes and stayed in the car as she walked up to Aunt Sarah’s cottage.

  From the back Mum could be mistaken for a teenager. It never ceased to amaze me. Her long hair was scrunched up into a funky ponytail and she was wearing kitten heels. From the front, however, it was a different story these days. Her face was one big permanent scowl. And it was all down to me. According to her, my behaviour over the last few months had aged her ten years.

  She should consider herself lucky. When Tara Cowley’s mum discovered that Tara had failed all her exams on purpose, her hair had turned white overnight. What I had done was much worse than failing a few exams and Mum’s hair was still the same shiny nut-brown.

  All I heard from my mum in the days before we’d stopped speaking was, ‘Jenna, how could you …’or that all-time classic, ‘When I was your age, Jenna …’, followed by the ‘modern-parent’ grumble, ‘Do you know how hard it was to get you into Coot’s Hill School in the first place? I had to buy this hideous house just because it was in the catchment area!’

  I did feel a bit bad about that. Good schools are hard to get into in London.

  Mum would then begin muttering about having to go private – ‘If they’d take you!’

  When I heard, ‘Jenna, when I was your age …’ for the trillionth time, I snapped.

  ‘But Mum, that was in the dark ages when fifteen-year-old girls wore big frilly knickers and got excited by hockey and iced buns!’

  Then we had a massive row and stopped speaking to each other altogether.

  What else could I do? Hadn’t I promised Mia I wouldn’t tell? And hadn’t Mum always drilled into me how important it was to keep promises? As I was leaving my house I’d seen Mia looking down at me from her bedroom window across the road. She was dressed in her school uniform. She just kept staring at me and I looked away.

  I glared out of the car window as Mum talked to Sarah. They both turned and looked at me. I continued glaring. Mum frowned back and Sarah gave me a weak smile. Mum began to talk animatedly, waving her arms about. No doubt telling her all the gory details about how her only daughter managed to get herself excluded from ‘such a good’ school.

  Actually, I hadn’t been expelled. Technically, I was leaving two weeks before the end of the summer term to ‘make a fresh start’. But Mrs Kelly, the head teacher, had made it perfectly clear that I was no longer welcome at Coot’s Hill.

  The thought of all those embarrassing meetings in her office made me shudder. So I dug myself deeper into my seat, where, for the moment, it was safe and warm. I looked in the rear-view mirror, and imagined myself in an American police drama. I put on my meanest expression as a cop read out my description. ‘Single, white female; five foot, four inches tall; long, red/brown hair with blond streaks, green eyes, squidgy nose and fat lips. Refuses to talk. Yup, this one’s a real bad girl.’

  Obviously the ‘bad girl’ story had another side to it. There was a part of me that wanted to just break down and tell Mum everything. To be fair, she had tried to get it out of me. I coul
dn’t even bring myself to think about what I’d done without feeling sick to my stomach. To be honest, the fall-out with Mum was really just a smokescreen. It meant that I didn’t have to talk to her about it. She had even rung up Dad and told him and my stepmum all about it. I came close to cracking several times. But then there was Mia. How could I let her down?

  Mum had kept on and on asking, ‘Did Mia put you up to it?’ It was always the same question in a hundred different variations.

  I hated the way she assumed that only another child could be blamed for such unexpected behaviour. ‘I’m not a child. I can make my own decisions,’ I had said over and over again. I had a right to keep some things to myself. Plus, she was getting too close to the truth.

  Mum startled me out of my thoughts as she wrenched the car door open. ‘Get out, Jenna.’

  I got out as slowly as I could whilst Mum and Sarah gave each other a hug goodbye.

  Sarah was Mum’s older sister, but she looked younger. ‘No career and no kids to age her!’ Mum had said once, with a tinge of resentment in her voice.

  ‘Are you sure you won’t stay for a cup of tea?’ Sarah asked in her soft voice.

  Mum shook her head. ‘No, I’m too wound up. I’ll stop off at the motorway services.’

  ‘Jenna.’ She spoke to the air above my head. ‘I’ve given Sarah some money for your keep.’

  I stuck my hands in my jeans pockets and shrugged my shoulders. After she had driven off down the road I raised my hand into an ironic wave and said, ‘Bye, Mum. Love you too!’

  So, I had been exiled to Aunt Sarah’s. My job was to have a miserable summer and be grateful when Her Majesty said I could return to a new school in London.

  Chapter Two

  Sarah lived in a small terraced cottage in a back-of-beyond, middle-of-nowhere village called Little Netherby, slap bang in the middle of the nothingness that’s called the countryside. A place where old folks go for mind-numbingly boring holidays and where mothers send their newly minted bad girls to get them away from the influences of city living.

  She lived there with her partner, Kai, and her cat, Tallulah.

  Sarah and Kai owned a second-hand bookshop in the next village, Greater Netherby. They were both poets who did readings at festivals or in dark, empty rooms above smoky, city pubs. Mum, Mia and I had gone along to one of their readings the previous summer in an ‘alternative’ café in South London. Sarah’s poems were really funny, but she read them out in a small voice with lots of nervous tics so it almost felt like she was apologising for herself.

  Kai’s poems were toe-curlingly, teeth-achingly bad. They were long rants, full of stuff about naked bodies, human smells and the power of lust. Old gals Mum’s age seemed to lap it up, swooning over his ‘rock star’ looks and so-called ‘ability to understand women’. Mia and I had got seriously glared at for giggling at his poems. Mum had commanded that we ‘grow up’, which had just made us giggle even more.

  I chucked my bags down in the tiny hall and went inside the cottage. It was like walking into a junk shop. Every available space was crammed with stuff. I had to blink several times to clear my vision, as books, boxes, pieces of decorative fabric and hideous pottery all fought for my attention.

  ‘Kai’s away on a book-buying trip,’ Sarah said brightly as she brushed away a strand of wispy dark hair from her face. She had silver rings on every finger and hundreds of jangly bracelets on her arms. Every time she moved she sounded like a wind charm in a gale. ‘Are you OK?’ she asked as I stood in the centre of the room, blinking madly.

  Before I could answer she moved into the kitchen and started rattling some cups around. She said, ‘I don’t know about you, but I’m gasping for a coffee.’

  I grunted and flopped down on the dusty sofa and got ready to watch some TV. Instead, I found myself staring into the eyes of a large black cat sitting in the space where the TV should’ve been. We blinked at each other for a few moments before she launched herself off the table and landed with a thud on my lap. She then began to purr loudly.

  Sarah came back in with two large mugs and laughed. ‘Tallulah must like you if she’s doing her industrial purring. My cat is not easily impressed. She goes where she pleases and does what she likes. She often comes with me to the shop.’

  I took a sip of coffee and cut to the chase. ‘How long am I here for?’

  Sarah sighed and tugged at her hair again before replying. ‘For the holidays … to begin with. Then there’s a new school to sort out. There’s always Netherby Community School if you want a fresh start away from the city.’ She sat down beside me and stroked Tallulah. After a long pause she went on, ‘Look, Jenna, you are grown-up enough to know that I can’t force you to do anything. I can’t make you tell me what really happened at school and I can’t make you stay here. I’m not your jailor. I don’t want to be. You can walk out of here any time you like. All that I ask is that you let me know first.’

  That stunned me, because in the car on the way down I’d been planning a big speech along the lines of: ‘You can’t keep me here. I’ll run away. You can’t make me do anything!’ Then I’d planned to lapse into silence, just like with Mum. I was going to keep schtum until Mia, in the form of some weird fairy godmother, set me free with the truth.

  There was even a name for my condition. I’d found it in Mum’s dictionary of adolescent problems, which was conveniently left lying around the kitchen. It was called Elective Mutism. Or in my case, Selective Mutism.

  Sarah’s speech had left me truly speechless. I drank my coffee and allowed myself to feel a bit more cheerful. The place felt less like a prison if it was my choice whether I stayed or not.

  ‘Can I use the phone?’ I asked. Mum had confiscated my mobile.

  Sarah spent ages fiddling with her bracelets before saying, ‘Actually, the phone’s been disconnected.’

  For a second I felt pleased. It meant a break from Mum’s nagging voice. Then it hit me. No TV, no telephone and no friends. No distractions and plenty of time to brood. Maybe a spell at boot camp wouldn’t have been so bad after all.

  Chapter Three

  I opened the curtains the next morning to see a semi-naked body in a deck chair in next-door’s back garden. I took a step back from the window and risked another peek.

  I could make out a tight muscular torso with small brown nipples. His skin was startlingly pale. My eyes slowly traced a fine line of dark black hair from underneath the belly button to the top of his faded jeans. They continued along the line of his jeans pausing to take in the tear on one of the knees and the white toes that were rhythmically stroking the grass.

  His face was hidden from view by the book he was reading. I watched and waited, hoping no one could see me. Every now and then his hand would scratch his chest or brush a fly away.

  The door squeaked suddenly and I jumped away from the window. No one likes to be caught drooling, do they?

  ‘Tallulah!’ I sighed with relief as the cat padded in, looking for attention.

  When I looked again, the boy had turned round and was pulling on a faded red T-shirt with his back towards me. I liked the way his dark black hair curled around his neck.

  I smiled as Tallulah batted me with her paw and meowed crossly. Then I smiled again, because it had felt weird to be smiling. The only smiling that I’d been doing lately was of the joyless, laugh-out-loud, ‘Ha! I don’t give a damn’ variety that made your face ache and your heart burn.

  Tallulah weaved herself between my legs, head-butting my knees in order to get some attention. I was starving, too. Yesterday, Mum had been too mad at me to think about eating so I’d survived on chocolate bars bought during our service station stops. Last night I was too tired to be tempted by Sarah’s offer of reheated mung bean curry, but now I could eat the entire contents of the fridge.

  I looked out the window once more before heading to the kitchen. The deck chair was empty, apart from the book. Hadn’t I sworn that I was going to have nothing to do with boys
for at least a year? Liking boys had played a large part in the trouble Mia and I had got ourselves into. One boy in particular, but I wasn’t going to think about Jackson now. I couldn’t even bear to look at his photo, hidden away in my purse.

  I found Sarah standing on her head in the lounge. She called out, ‘Help yourself to breakfast!’

  The kitchen was only marginally less dusty than the rest of the place. There was an assortment of cupboards, a grease-encrusted cooker and an ancient fridge. As I tugged the heavy door open the fridge rumbled and shook. Inside was half a carton of milk and some bean curd that looked more like green turd. Eating the entire contents of the fridge instantly lost its appeal.

  There was a large shelf full of cookbooks, but the rest of the cupboards were empty. I found an old box of cereal and the milk didn’t smell bad. I wandered out into the back garden to eat it. It was a lovely sunny morning and it wouldn’t do any harm to check out Torso Boy some more from a better vantage point.

  Sarah had maintained the ‘neglect’ theme into the small back garden. It was an overgrown tangle of weeds with a rusty car door right in the centre. I sat down on a wobbly wooden bench.

  ‘Bit of a mess, isn’t it?’ Sarah said as she sat down next to me.

  Your life or the garden? I thought to myself, but aloud I said, ‘Isn’t Kai into green things? His poems are all about nature, aren’t they?’