by Louisa Reid
‘I’ve never read any Shakespeare.’
For a moment he looked crestfallen but he brightened up fast. ‘Well. You’ll soon get the hang of it. Can’t be hard for a bright cookie like you. Shall I tell him you’re up for it?’
‘All right.’
My hands were shaking when I left as the excitement took hold. I was a bright cookie. He thought I could help Archie. Well, I would try. I was so preoccupied with the thought of it that I didn’t notice my legs carrying me up the driveway to the vicarage and round to the back door. The Mother was in the kitchen, I could see her at the stove, her shoulders hunched and thin under her thick wool sweater. She had to be boiling in that; it was the hottest day of the year so far. I pushed open the door and went inside. The room smelled rancid. The Father would not be pleased if she’d forgotten to wash. The Mother had been getting like that more and more since Hephzi had died and he had to tell her all the time to scrub up, to tidy her hair, to smile more sweetly. But you can’t hide poison forever, it has to seep out sometime and I could smell it on the air. I couldn’t wait to get out of the room and fly upstairs and sit and plan how I’d help Archie. She swung around, her wooden spoon held up like a weapon, her face only growing grimmer when she saw it was me.
‘Hi.’ I wondered what she’d do if I smiled at her again.
‘Where’ve you been? You’ve been gone all night.’ Her voice was as rough as sandpaper, scratching at me, scraping for a row.
‘At work. I stayed at the home. Ask if you don’t believe me.’
She shook her head, her mouth a narrow line.
‘He should never have agreed to it. He’s always been too soft, letting you and Hephzibah run rings around us.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘That job. It’s time you called it a day. I can’t have you swanning off like that for days at a time, there’s work to do here. You can stay at home.’
‘I don’t want to.’
Yes, whispers Hephzi. Tell her, tell her again!
She advanced towards me, brandishing the spoon. Up close I saw the bags under her eyes and the broken veins on her cheeks dancing over her face in a bloody web. She looked old, and I stepped backwards. Her pale, blank eyes sought mine.
‘You’re getting just like her, just like the other one. She came and went as she pleased and now you think you can do the same. And you’ll go the same way, mark my words, you’ll go the same way.’
Retreating further and skirting round the kitchen table to the door, I ran from her, although her hectoring followed me up the stairs.
‘You don’t know how lucky you are!’ she called to my retreating back and I stumbled, startled all over again by this woman who called herself my mother. I knew she wouldn’t chase me, she was all talk without him to back her up and her words weren’t going to hurt me now. Instead I reminded myself that I’d got away with it all, so far, and that there were better things to come.
I’d need to be clever though and take things one step at a time.
No! shouts Hephzi. No! But I ignored her again.
I sat at the window, avoiding the wall, and thought about The Parents. The last thing they’d ever want would be for people to realize how sick and twisted they were. So I had to exploit that. I thought of Mrs Sparks, round here every other day or so, the vicar’s right-hand woman, or so she’d like to think. I’d never liked her, simply on principle, but reflecting now I could see she’d never been anything but kind to Hephzi and me. Sometimes she’d brought round bags of clothes, things her own daughters had grown out of, colouring pens when we were little, or a box of books. We never saw most of it but Hephzi usually managed to swipe a few nice bits from the clothes bags before The Mother whisked the unsuitable booty away. And I had Mrs Sparks to thank for my job. She’d suggested it and he had been unable to refuse her without making himself subject to talk. Talk meant gossip and gossip is the devil’s radio. I suppose he thought, what with the care home being right next door, it’d be easy to keep me under surveillance. Well, that’s what he thought. Hephzi was watching me and sneering.
Smug, are we? she says. You reckon you got away with that yesterday?
I shrugged, it was obvious she was annoyed and I didn’t want to provoke her.
Just you wait, they’ll get you back. She pauses, goading me. Unless you get out first, that is. What did you come back for anyway, idiot? You were free!
I didn’t want to listen right then so I crawled under the bed and closed my eyes, thinking about Archie and Shakespeare.
Hephzi
Before
I’m expecting to see Craig at school on Monday, just like he promised, but he doesn’t show. It’s the same on Tuesday and Wednesday. Slowly the drug of Saturday night wears off and I’m left feeling empty, like I just failed some test I didn’t even know I’d been taking. Maybe I made the whole thing up, maybe I fantasized the entire night. When he doesn’t even send me a message on Facebook to say hi or to explain I start to wonder what I’ve done to make him hate me. I catch Daisy looking my way in the common room and I know she’s desperate to ask me what happened but I’m not telling anyone. Not now.
On Thursday, when I’ve given up hope and am slouching to class with Rebecca, someone grabs me from behind, circling my waist and whizzing me up into the air. I squeal in surprise and Rebecca shouts something incomprehensible. Then I hear him laughing and realize it’s Craig at last, holding me tight, there in the corridor, like that’s totally normal in-character behaviour for him. I laugh too and let him kiss me right on the mouth in front of everyone.
‘Where’ve you been?’ I eventually manage to say. He shrugs, just like you’d expect, but there is happiness dancing in his eyes and a smile is twitching his lips. Rebecca tries to pull me away and along to our lesson. He looks at her curiously, like he’s never noticed her before, and all three of us arrive at Maths just about on time. Craig’s presence is a boon for the teacher, who goes to town on the sarcastic welcome. He picks on him for the whole lesson but Craig answers nearly every question right and helps me with my work. He’s some kind of living calculator or something, swinging in his chair, spewing out answers like he doesn’t even have to try. I never realized how sexy a guy with brains could be.
The bell goes and he grabs my hand and drags me behind him out of the class and out of the building. Behind the gym he kisses me like he’s just had forty days in the desert and I’m a glass of water. Pushing him away at last I catch my breath. I’ve never seen Craig look so happy, it’s like he’s a different person.
‘You look different.’
He raises an eyebrow. A new trick, maybe an improvement on the shrugging.
‘You look hot.’ His tone is accusatory and I can’t keep my cool. I go bright pink. He kisses me again, mumbling into my hair.
‘Especially when you blush.’
‘So, what now?’
He stares at me, pushing the hair back from my face, drinking me in. I fidget and squirm.
‘I reckon we get out of here. What do you think?’
I nod and we race off the premises before anyone can stop us. My bag bangs against my legs as I run, holding his hand, a few steps behind, but it doesn’t matter, nothing matters now.
We spend the day back at his place, in his room, listening to music. He tells me about the trouble he was in because of the party, the fight with his mum’s boyfriend, and that he’s been staying at his brother’s flat in town for the past few days until things calmed down.
‘Sorry I let you down. I wanted to see you but, well, I had to keep out of the way.’
I can understand this and nod. Then he plays me a song he’s written and I ask what it’s about.
‘Can’t you guess?’ he looks at me, teasing, smiling, flirting again and the blush is back. I sense that I really shouldn’t be here on my own in his bedroom in the middle of a school day. Anything could happen and Rebec
ca will be going spare.
‘It’s about you, of course.’
He puts his guitar down and wraps his arms around me. By the time he’s finished kissing me it’s almost dark outside.
‘I’d better go home.’
‘Stay.’
‘I can’t!’
He groans. ‘All right. I’ll walk you.’
On the way he tells me that he’s taking his bike test next week and that he’s saved up enough to buy a second-hand moped his brother’s mate’s selling. He’ll take me away then, he says, we’ll go to the seaside for fish and chips and ice cream, he’ll take me up to London and show me all the sights. He can’t believe it when I say I’ve never been and he wants to know why not. But we’re home and I run inside before he can kiss me goodbye or ask any more awkward questions.
They’re all sitting there at the supper table. I can hear the house creaking and whining in the dead silence. No one is eating and the food looks as if it’s been congealing on the plates for days. I check my watch and realize I’m over an hour late for dinner. Silently I slide into my place and I feel Rebecca’s shoe meet my ankle, a gentle, insistent pressure, warning me to watch out. Father picks up his fork and takes a mouthful of his dinner. Then, in an explosion of shattering glass and china, the plates are smashed on the floor, the food is hanging from the walls, he’s screaming and shouting at me and Rebecca and Mother. I push Rebecca behind me and suddenly, for the first time, I’m not afraid.
‘What the hell’s wrong with you?’ I scream at him, into his face, although he doesn’t hear me above the sound of his own rage. He reaches for my neck, swaying in his alcohol-induced frenzy, but I duck and we scarper fast.
Barricaded in our room, under Rebecca’s bed, which is wedged against the door, all I can hear is the ragged edges of our breathing. Downstairs, the smashing and banging and swearing continues and I hope Mrs Sparks pops in to witness St Roderick’s freak-out.
‘Why did you have to do it?’ Rebecca whispers eventually. ‘Why couldn’t you just come home on time? He’s going to kill us now.’
‘No, he isn’t. Don’t worry.’
Rebecca half grunts, half sobs. She’s sharp with anger and fear and I know it’s partly because I’ve been with Craig.
‘Listen, Reb, don’t be cross with me, you mustn’t. I’m happy!’
‘Well, bloody good for you!’ she explodes and lashes out at me with her fists and legs, flailing at me, her elbows jabbing my flesh in the cramped space. I grab her and stop her easily and she weeps into the carpet.
‘You’re going to leave me here with him, aren’t you? You’re going to go off with that horrible boy and leave me here and I’ll never escape. I hate you, Hephzi, I hate you.’
‘Stop it, Reb,’ I whisper into her shoulder. ‘Stop it. I love you. I love you.’
We lie there tangled in the dark space under the bed because it feels safer than venturing up. Sometimes my sister cries and screams in her sleep but I don’t dare ask her what her nightmares are about; I don’t think she’d tell me anyway. While Rebecca mumbles and moans beside me I wonder what I’m going to say to Craig about everything here. Some things are pretty hard to keep secret and I don’t want to have to start lying to him. But I’ll have to, I can’t see another way. If he knew, he’d look at me differently and he’d know I wasn’t right.
October is our month. I sneak off from college almost every day. Craig passes his test, like he said he would, and we ride the bike as far as we can, sometimes just out into the fens, maybe to the water meadows or into town to meander through the shops. He points out stuff he’ll buy me when he’s rich and I smile and picture it so easily. Our future glows like a sun in my imagination. When I’m sitting behind him, holding on for dear life as he drives fast enough to catch the speed of light, I think we might take off. Fly away and be free. I dream of it, sick and scared and ready for anything, just so long as I can keep my arms around Craig. No one else matters any more. I see Daisy in the corridors and smile and wave and don’t care what she might be saying about me. Funnily enough, she’s always in my face now Craig and I are an item, inviting me out, lending me stuff, giving me things, passing me notes. Because I’m so happy I forget what she said about my sister and let her be my friend. On the days I’m in college Craig is too and the others latch on to him, he’s like a magnet, he just sits there and they come, and I sit and smile and watch, proud.
Daisy doesn’t really like it. Samara says she’s jealous even though she’s got a boyfriend of her own. I don’t care that she’s angry, not now I’ve got Craig, but when we’re at school she’s either my best friend or making my life a misery.
Craig and I are eating lunch in the common room, two weeks after we began going out, when she starts. Craig’s got me a sandwich and a can of Coke; I’ve no idea what Rebecca’s having, but she’ll have lost herself in a book and forgotten all about food. Anyhow, I see Daisy looking at me, thinking, a bit like a snake watching a mouse, and I wait for what she’ll say this time.
‘D’you know what, Hephzi? I reckon I know your dad.’ Her voice is super-sly.
I swallow a mouthful and I don’t look up. Maybe if I ignore her she’ll leave it.
‘He used to run that Saturday club, didn’t he, every weekend, even in the holidays? My mum used to make me go – free childcare, she said. We were remembering it last night, when we were talking about you. She feels really bad about it now.’
I know she wants me to ask what she’s been saying about me; she likes that, Daisy does, tantalizing you, making you hang off her every word. But I remember easily enough what she’s talking about. One of Roderick’s recruitment drives. He let me go too: me and Mrs Sparks and Mother and a couple of others were his ‘team’, he said. It was fun, one of the best things I got to do as a kid. We weren’t allowed to do any of the normal things, not even go to school, and I’d always longed to go to the primary, to wander round the classrooms and just be with the other children. We’d peer through the school railings as we walked past, trailing behind our mother, our heads turning to catch an extra glance as we went by. We’d see the pastel walls and the children’s paintings, the pictures and bright smiling faces; the hustle and bustle and all those colours and shapes jumped out at us from behind the big windows and tempted me to reach out and touch. I imagined having my own poem or collage up there on a wall and how proud I’d be. I’d draw a picture of a garden and two little girls. Me and Reb. Sometimes we’d see the kids out in the playground, running and shrieking or swinging upside down on the climbing frames, maybe hopscotching with their friends. I tried to jump like they did, but on the pavement squares. It wasn’t the same.
Daisy’s voice cuts in. ‘Yeah, d’you still do that, then? Help out Daddy with his Jesus army?’
I meet her eye at last. Her head is tipped to one side and a tricky smile is playing on her lips. Daisy could never even dream the truth. I shrug and answer slowly.
‘I never went to the Saturday school, that’s his church stuff. I do my own thing.’
‘Bollocks, I remember you. You were the one handing out the name tags.’
She’s right. I remember standing there with Roderick’s hands tight on my shoulders as I peeled off the stickers and he grinned hello at each and every one of them, how I solemnly handed the tag to each newcomer, wondering if maybe this one, or maybe that one, might be my friend.
‘Well, maybe I went a couple of times. Big deal.’
Craig looks from me to her and back to me. Then he concentrates on his lunch again, not interested.
‘They taught us all those stupid songs, those actions. God, it was so embarrassing! I can’t believe I let my mum make me go there.’
It comes back, booming through the speakers of the past, Dad on the makeshift stage he’d rigged up in the church hall, shouting Bible verses down a crackling microphone, his arms in the air, pouring his excitement into their ears as he strutted bac
k and forth, whipping the children up, encouraging them to join him. Some of the grown-ups, who were also church helpers, participated in his frenzy; they looked as if someone had lit them up from within as they reached out their hands in praise, an orgy of oblation. I put down my food, hardly hungry now.
‘He’s a nutter, your dad, isn’t he? That’s what my dad says anyway, one of those religious nutters.’
‘Yeah, whatever,’ I say and pick up my bag. She smirks, happy she’s twisted a knife somewhere and made me feel different.
The Saturday club hadn’t mortified me at the time. I’d felt special to be chosen to go, they didn’t let Rebecca. Now though I don’t want to think about it, how he’d build himself up each week as if he were out to conquer the world, all dressed up in his special trendy jeans and Mr Men T-shirt. ‘Mr Happy’ it said on the front underneath the round, smiling yellow figure. I’d watch the way he held the little kids’ hands, how he hugged them tight, whispering into their ears that Jesus loved them and that they should come to Jesus. I’d been about ten or eleven when I’d been allowed to join the team, just so excited to be meeting other children at last. He gave it up eventually. The effort outweighed the gain. We rarely saw those kids at the services on Sundays but I kept looking out for them even so. Granny had wasted her time when she’d tried to persuade Mother to let us go to school.
‘Why don’t you let them go, love? Give yourself some time off from all this home-schooling? They’d love it, meeting all the other little kiddies, all the fresh air and fun.’
‘The children are fine here. It’s out of the question.’
‘Why, though? I don’t understand.’
And Granny didn’t get it. She never understood them and they got sick of her trying to interfere.
‘I’ll have a word with Roderick, shall I? Tell him what I think?’
‘No,’ Mother hissed at her. ‘Just leave it, would you?’
Granny did keep trying though, right to the end, I’m sure she did.