I watch TV with Katie for half an hour and then go to help Mum cook while Katie plays with her dolls. Dad’s due back from seeing a client at half five and we’re sitting down to dinner as a family.
‘How’s the revision going?’ Mum asks while I wash salad.
‘Oh, OK. It’s better having someone to work with. Not as boring, plus Joe helps me out if I get stuck.’
‘He’s clever then?’
‘He is at maths and English. I’m a bit better than him at French, but probably only because we’ve been on holiday so often. He was going to come around later, but he’s got to help his dad with something at home now.’
Mum opens the fridge and roots around at the back for the crème fraîche. ‘I’m glad you’ve made a friend. I know it hasn’t been easy for you and he seems nice.’
‘He is.’
Mum looks at me. ‘Terrible hair though, darling. Can’t you persuade him to cut it?’
‘Mum! That’s Emo hair. It’s part of his identity.’ I grin at her.
‘And I’ve always felt someone should tell those boys that silly skinny jeans do absolutely nothing for them. But that’s what girlfriends are for. To sort out their fashion mistakes.’
‘We’re not going out. We’re just friends.’
‘Oh.’ She smiles vaguely. ‘Of course. I didn’t mean to imply you were.’
I eyeball her so she knows I know she’s not got away with it.
I check my Facebook page before I start revising again and there’s a message from Tasha, full of gossip from home. Strangely I feel less interested in what the others are doing than I thought I’d be. I mean, it’s still nice to know, but it’s as if part of me has really accepted now that I’m never going back and it matters less than it did before. Tasha never fails to make me laugh though. She is just one mad ball of energy. It’s like she’s sitting on my bed beside me, waving her skinny arms about, her short, choppy, elfin hair sticking out around her head like a jagged blonde halo while she chatters her message.
And I do miss her like I’ve been freshly wrenched away all over again.
I could message her back, but I need someone solid here now so I pick up my phone and text Joe to ask if he’s still busy or could he come round.
He shows up about fifteen minutes later, peeking round my bedroom door after Mum lets him in.
‘What’s up?’
‘Why should anything be up?’ I know I’m being perverse because he’s right, something is up, but I feel stupid admitting it.
‘You sounded fed up on the phone.’
‘Pfff, how can you sound fed up in a text?’
He comes in and sits on the bed. ‘You can and you did. So what’s up?’
I sigh and flop on to my back. ‘I’m just being dumb.’
‘Yes, you are but what’s up?’
I slap out at him, laughing. ‘How do you know I’m being dumb when you don’t know what’s wrong?’
He shrugs, completely poker-faced. ‘It’s not like your tractor’s broken down beyond repair or –’
‘I don’t have a tractor!’
‘Exactly! So it’s not a catastrophe, is it?’
And suddenly I can’t stop laughing. ‘OK,’ I splutter when I can speak again, ‘my tractor didn’t die and my cows didn’t escape so it’s not the end of the world as we know it.’
‘That’s better,’ he agrees. ‘So what is up?’
It’s hard to explain without telling him I’ve contacted someone from home, and then how it all has to be secret, so how do I tell him what’s bothering me without including any of that? ‘I just got fed up and missed home and my old friends,’ I say in the end. ‘So I wanted to see my new one.’
To my surprise, he flushes scarlet. I think he knows it too because he gets up and looks out of the window for a few moments before coming and sitting down again. ‘Thought I heard something weird.’
But he doesn’t say what and I don’t ask as he’s still red. I know there was nothing there. It’s OK. It freaks me out too, this whatever it is between me and him. Like with Katya, there’s some kind of bond there that makes no sense. We’ve nothing in common. He’s a sometimes morose Emo with an oddball sense of humour, living in Hicksville on a farm with a family obsessed with looking after cows. I’m . . . or I was . . . a city girl and my idea of style is definitely not dyeing my hair black (although I think his is natural, not dyed) and flopping it over my face and wearing too-tight clothes in different shades of miserable.
But he sits beside me and doesn’t say anything. He takes off a leather band on his wrist and hands it to me. It’s studded with black metal skulls. Icky.
‘Keep it,’ he says and I’m glad I didn’t say the ‘icky’ aloud. ‘It’s good stress relief. When you get fed up, you sit and run it through your fingers. It calms you down.’
Running skulls through my fingers . . . yeah, right. But I take the band and I try running it through my hand.
‘Close your eyes,’ he says.
I do as he says and I pass the cuff through my fingers. After a moment or so, I’m shocked to find I do feel a bit better. There’s something tactile about the warm leather and cool metal in combination. You forget they are skulls when you’re feeling them and you focus on the smooth chill and warm rough instead.
When I open my eyes to glare at him, he’s leaning back on the bed grinning at me.
The cuff is still warm from his wrist, the heat held in the leather. It occurs to me I’m stroking his wrist by proxy, and I sit up and fasten the cuff back on him.
‘I meant you to keep it,’ he protests.
There’s warmth on the leather on his wrist from my fingers now – now he’s feeling my fingers on his skin by proxy.
‘Yeah, but if I need it again, I’ll call you and you can bring it round,’ I tell him.
And he flushes scarlet again.
He goes not long after because it’s getting late and he has to be up for morning milking.
It’s strange when you tell a person something that you hold within you and don’t share with others . . . it’s like something of you is inside them, and they’re in you too.
Joe told me about his brother; I told him about how there are things I couldn’t tell.
So when he leaves, his wrist is still within my fingers, my fingers still comforted by his skin.
Joe’s gone most of Thursday while they drive to Birmingham to pick Matt up. He said he’d come round later, but I told him not to worry if he was busy. I knew he wanted to be with his brother. He’d been waiting for this moment for weeks.
I message Tasha back finally, then I lie on my bed – between bouts of vocab learning and breaks to play with Katie – and think. Am I happier now? Yes, I guess so. It’s snuck up on me gradually. Even with the trial looming, perpetually looking over my shoulder and the exams, yes, I’m happier. I miss having a best friend like Tasha that I can do girly stuff with. I can’t remember the last time I sat and mucked about putting make-up on and trying new looks, swapping clothes . . . all that stuff me and Tasha used to do together on wet Saturday afternoons. I still feel anxious most of the time, but it’s a quieter anxious than before, not that chewing-away-at-my heart feeling of when we first arrived.
I have Joe to hang out with and he’s somehow wormed his way into being pretty important in the me-being-happier deal. I don’t quite know how that came to be. I could just pass it off that I was desperate for a friend, any friend. Hey, I put up with Crudmilla and Cronies for long enough. But I don’t think it is that really. We just fit right together, though we shouldn’t at all.
And then I laugh. I know what we are. We’re strawberries with black pepper. My mother discovered that combination in one of her crazy cookbook-reading blitzes and it’s been a family favourite ever since. People who haven’t tried it think you’re mad. In theory it makes no sense as a combination. But when you try it, it works. You can’t explain why – it just does.
Me and Joe. Strawberries and black pepper.
>
Katie and I go round to the farm for brunch the day after Matt gets home. I wasn’t sure at first when Joe invited Katie too, but when I thought about it I knew she’d love it, getting to go out with me. Or she would once I convinced her that it isn’t some freaky, scary change to her routine. But it’d be OK. She’s been to the farm before, even if she hasn’t been in the house, and she knows Joe. Actually she adores Joe. She hugs Joe and Katie only does that to her special people.
I’m proved right when we get to the farm door and Joe opens it.
‘Hi, come in. Hey, Katie.’
‘Wheeeeeeee!’ She grabs him and hugs him tight. She’s started making that noise when she sees him. When I asked her why, she said, ‘It’s his.’ Her noise for him, I assume she means, or her personal own name for him as she never calls him Joe.
He hugs her back and then untangles himself from her grip and steers her into the kitchen.
She goes stiff instantly at the sight of people she doesn’t know in a room that she’s never been in before. ‘Waaah,’ she says uncertainly.
Joe’s mum waves, but keeps her distance. ‘Hi, Katie. Would you like some juice?’
Katie eyes her from the safety of leaning back against Joe. ‘It’s nice juice,’ he whispers in her ear.
It hurts to see the confusion on her face as she tries to process who the other people in the room are and what’s going on.
Joe’s mum’s a tall woman with the kind of sturdy build I expect a farmer’s wife to have. I can’t see any of Joe in her. She’s tanned with short blonde hair. Joe’s dad looks more like him with his paler skin and dark hair, and the slighter build. There’s no chubbiness around his tummy like my dad has. He looks more reserved than his wife. Neither of Joe’s parents have his dark eyes.
Matt’s sitting at the table, the metal frame of his wheelchair visible. He does have Joe’s eyes. He’s broader in the shoulders with close-cropped hair, but he’s got Joe’s face shape too – wide cheekbones and narrow jaw, and his straight eyebrows. The same nose, the same shaped mouth.
I swallow. He looks like an older version of Joe sitting there without legs. That makes me feel a little sick, as if it is Joe.
I snap out of it as Joe introduces Katie to Matt and shepherds her to a chair.
I smile in turn at his mum, his dad, his brother and say polite hellos.
‘Sit down, Holly. Tea or coffee? And would you like juice too?’
It’s all so very farmhouse. There’s bread under the grill as if they don’t bother with unnecessaries like a toaster. His mum is scrambling eggs on the hob, and I can see the oven’s on too, while she effortlessly coordinates getting real coffee and what looks like freshly squeezed orange juice to the table. My mum would be in awe of the complete domestic goddessness of her.
Matt watches me and Katie silently. Joe and his dad have a brief exchange about cows – they’ve been watching one for some disease I’ve never heard of. I’m too unnerved by Matt’s steady stare to listen properly. Katie stares back at him. She frowns and leans over the table to get a better look. I go cold, because I realise what’s about to happen and –
‘Where are your legs?’ she asks.
Matt laughs and winks at her. ‘They fell off.’
I can’t believe it and I look around at the others. His dad’s pouring more coffee, seemingly oblivious, while his mum’s tipping the eggs into a warm dish, and Joe’s gazing at his brother with an expression I can only describe as colossal pride.
Katie frowns harder. ‘Legs don’t just fall off.’
He gives a gentler chuckle, sounding so like Joe that it startles me. ‘No, they didn’t, you’re right. Some bad men made them fall off.’
Katie nods. ‘Bad men. I don’t like bad men. Bad men hurt Katya, and they tried to hurt Boo-Boo too –’
Oh my God! ‘Katie!’
She pouts because I’ve shouted. Matt and Joe both turn to look at me for a moment, puzzled. Fortunately the food is ready and they get busy mounding their plates with thick slices of toast and creamy scrambled egg so no comment is passed on what Katie said. I’m amazed that Joe’s brother could laugh that way and it makes me nervous of him, or in awe, or something. He seems so much more grown-up and resilient than I could ever imagine myself being.
What had I expected? Some sorrowful, sickly guy lying in a bed while the family flock round him in his feeble state, like Beth from Little Women?
Yes, I think I did.
Joe nudges me. ‘Look at Katie.’
I smile. My sister’s cutting her toast into bite-sized squares and then dividing the egg into exactly equal portions on to each piece of toast. She puts the first bite in her mouth and . . . ‘Yum!’ she says loudly.
Matt chuckles again. ‘You like that?’
‘Yes!’
He winks at her again. ‘Me too.’ They grin at each other.
‘So how’s the revision going?’ Joe’s mum asks.
It’s a classic question and I have a stock answer. ‘OK, but I’ll be glad when it’s over. I just want to get on with the exams.’
‘Yes,’ his dad says, ‘then you can enjoy the rest of the summer.’
Yes. After the exams comes the summer . . . August . . . the trial . . .
When I remember that, I hope the exams never come, that these weeks go on forever, and I don’t want the revision to ever stop.
‘You like school?’ Matt asks. I nod. ‘I hated it. Couldn’t wait to leave.’
‘Well, I’m not so crazy about this school, to be honest, but I did like my last one . . .’ And then I realise what just slipped out. Not information, but it’s dangerous ground. I need to be more careful. Joe kicks my ankle lightly under the table. Nothing much slips past him.
‘Teachers there still the same miserable pains in the ass they always were?’ Matt asks.
Joe and I look at each other. ‘Yup,’ we say together.
There’s a scratch at the door. Joe makes to get up but Matt says, ‘I’ll get it,’ and whizzes his wheelchair out and around the table. Kip trots in, tail wagging madly as the old dog realises just who has let him in.
‘Ah, you forgot I was back, didn’t you? Getting old, lad. Memory’s not what it was.’ Matt fondles Kip’s ears.
‘Get away with you,’ his dad says. ‘That dog’s as sharp as when he were a pup.’
I watch, smiling, hoping I’m not staring, but I’ve never seen someone with no legs before. There’s a uselessness about the way his trousers just . . . end . . . in a fold that was never designed to be there.
And I suddenly think back to that English lesson with Joe. It’s obscene. Wilfred Owen used that word in his poem. I understand now why that was the right word to use.
But Matt’s zooming around in that wheelchair like he’s been in it all his life. And Joe watches him and smiles. And I understand that too.
We leave after brunch. Joe’s mum’s invited me back for the party tomorrow. Katie would be welcome too, she says, but it’ll be past her bedtime. I’m to tell my mum that they’ll drive me back at the end of the party so she knows I’m not walking home alone in the dark.
‘I’d walk her back,’ Joe protests and I hear his brother splutter a laugh that makes Joe glare at him.
‘Whatever Holly wants,’ his mum says, giving him a funny look, and I make my exit quickly before it gets embarrassing.
Matt’s party is already in full swing when I get there on Saturday night. Dad drops me in the yard outside the house and waits until I’ve gone inside before he drives off. There’s a crowd of boys in the kitchen, around Joe’s and Matt’s ages, eating home-made sausage rolls and drinking beer. Matt’s in the thick of it and Joe’s standing off to one side watching his brother, rather like Kip watches Joe when they’re out together. He waves me over to his side and gets me a Coke, while I help myself to a plate of food.
‘There are loads of people here,’ I whisper in Joe’s ear.
‘Yeah. Once Mum convinced Dad to have the party, she told my Aunt
y Jenny, who is like the village tannoy system.’
Matt’s laughing with the others as if he’ll be back on his feet in a week or so. That’s still puzzling me.
‘How is he so . . .? Oh, I don’t know how to describe it.’ I ask Joe.
‘That’s just Matt. This is how he deals with difficult stuff. And, like he said to me, it’s just his legs. The guy who was standing next to him came back in a body bag.’
I go cold all over. I don’t know how Matt can be so pragmatic about it. And I realise that scares me about him. Especially when I wake so many nights in a cold sweat dreaming there’s a gun pointed at my head again.
I finish my plate of food quietly and listen to the others talking. Joe stays next to me, but he gets dragged into the conversation, reluctantly at first as I guess he doesn’t want to be rude when I have no one else to talk to. But pretty soon he’s laughing along with the others about stupid stories they’re swapping.
It isn’t so bad being here and just listening to them talk. I smile occasionally at someone’s joke and they don’t seem to expect more.
‘So, Joe, where’ve you been the last few weeks?’ one of them asks. ‘You fallen down a hole to Australia or something? Because it’s like you vanished on us.’
‘Is it now?’ Matt says, grinning hugely. I’ve decided by now that Matt is a wind-up merchant, possibly of the highest order. ‘Why’s that, little bro?’
Joe narrows his eyes at him. ‘Been busy with the cows.’
They all fall about laughing and I wonder if I’ve missed some in-joke. Joe’s flushing a bit and laughing in a self-conscious way.
‘That’ll be the same cows we’ve always had? Those cows?’ Matt says, sniggering at him. ‘Or have we suddenly got five hundred head more that I don’t know about?’
‘OK, and busy with revision!’ Joe adds, causing more raucous laughter, for some reason. He pulls a face. ‘You’re a comedian. You should be on stage.’
The others shove and jostle him, laughing, and he has to take it.
It’s all a bit testosterone-rich for me and I’m relieved when a bunch of girls come and join us.
By Any Other Name Page 16