Jase thinks she wants me to respect her. Read it in Cosmo when he was stacking the magazines at work. I do respect her, I tell him. I buy her bus ticket, drop in a ten pack of Benson when I can get served, spend Saturday afternoons down the mall, take her nan to the park. If that isn’t respect, I don’t know what is. Jase looks at me like a retard.
‘Mate, that’s not even the start of it. If you want to get into her pants, you’re going to have to do better than that.’
Like he knows anything. Jase shags one of the part-timers, a Micradriving housewife, in the stockroom once every three weeks if he’s lucky, but he’s never had a proper girlfriend in his life. A casual grope with Lizzie Jennings every once in a while. Nothing that lasts more than a week or two. Something to do with his sister and the car crash; girls think he has too much baggage . . . that he’s a proper nutter because of it. They’re not at the age where a lanky stoner is considered a great catch. In another five years, though, when they’re pining for surfer chic . . . I ditch his advice, need it like I need a hole in the head.
Snogging is snogging, I don’t confuse it with anything else. Kel is still mad at me, each of us taking pains to avoid mentioning the Brit-word in case something blows up again, but I know things are forgotten when she comes back from the toilet with a bag of those baby jelly beans that cost about five pounds a pack. Standing above me, and placing them in my hands wordlessly. She lets the beans and the kiss on my cheek that follows do the talking. Payback for taking her shit on the tube, I guess, and also in part for the strawberry milkshake I’d produced earlier without any prompting, because I knew it was her favourite. We kiss, and hold hands, and giggle, and kiss again.
Much later, close to one a.m., once we’re back within Surrey’s safe borders, and Kel’s mum has been informed, and Kel’s dad is driving past the station, I spot something standing at the taxi rank.
There’s two of them, a man and a boy, the shorty slightly behind the man, both in shadow, and both in trackies I’m now noticing. They’re the last in the taxi queue, a line of around twenty people, and are laughing about some bollocks. The kid is cracking up so the older one must be a hoot. He’s holding a rolled up Britney poster, identical to the two I picked up outside Wembley after the show; supersized so that the tits are bigger than the average human head – one for me and Jason. The older man is in and out of shadow, but the build, the laugh, the Nike airs with the exaggerated red soles like Coco the clown, are all photo-fit material; match my disgraced ex-Harrier trainer 100%. Someone call Crimewatch.
26
Pearson is a volleyball-playing shit-for-brains lump who thinks he’s popular just for punching a stupid ball around an indoor court like a faggot. Sure, the volleyball squad are the glamour elite of the school, twelve guys and girls riding the crest of a wave, the closest thing we have to jocks, but even this status doesn’t protect him from ridicule.
He doesn’t realise that everyone laughs at him behind his back. Thinks of him as an oaf, which, at this place, is saying something. The other members of the squad are protective of him and all, on the court they’re like brothers, but away from the sports hall they’re not as defensive as they should be. Must be something in his manner: loud, overbearing, know-it-all smartarse. Has a habit of hogging the ball and busting a few solo moves on the court, whether it benefits the game or not. Coming out with all kinds of shit just to get some attention. Dumping the flid kids’ clothes in the shower whilst they’re in PE, bullying the pikeys in the changing rooms, challenging them to prove that their underwear wasn’t 2p from Oxfam. General stupidness we should all have grown out of at twelve.
The team seem to agree. Me and Jase would have got a cleaning from them otherwise.
Moon used to realise this, I think, but seems to have forgotten now that her eyes have gone heart-shaped. Now they walk around the corridors hand in hand, barely out of each other’s sight.
Normally I have respect for the jocks. Fellow sportsmen, and all that. It should be a mutual thing. We all give each other a heads-up around school, some more enthusiastic and exuberant than others. Since I do most of my training out of school, do all of my competitions out of school, steer clear from competing in lacklustre class athletics, I keep it low-key. I’m not a show-off like some of these volleyball and footie idiots. But nothing will make me like this guy. Rich boy trying to be like one of us? Fuck off! What’s the appeal of that? Putting my feelings for Moon aside, he just ain’t right for her.
‘They’re sweet together,’ Kel said once, when we saw them feeding each other chips in the canteen. Thought it was all right now that we were a couple ourselves, thought she could relax her neuroses a little, but she saw my look, realised I wasn’t laughing.
‘If you want us to stay together, you’re going to have to stop saying things like that,’ I go, voice so low it’s virtually in the gutter; where tone ends and a snake-like hiss begins. ‘Don’t keep talking about them. Don’t even mention them. Doesn’t do anyone any good.’
It came out tougher than I meant it to. I was going for jokey, but something in Kel’s observation set something off. Made me panic that she was possibly right. Panicked me more when I thought about how everyone else at school might be thinking the same thing; that Moon was better off with a proper boyfriend, and without me.
Glance over in Moon’s direction whilst Kel goes to the loo for a discreet cry, waving over Lizzie Jennings on the way. They’ve finished the chips and she’s now biting into his Snickers. They take alternate mouthfuls. She takes it slow, conscious of crumbs falling on her shirt. He grabs the fucker like the greedy pig he is. It’s all about ownership with that piece of shit. Then they share the same can of drink. I can almost feel Pearson’s gob on my lips. Can’t stop watching. Feel sick. Her face is so different. Furrows smoothed, mouth looser, eyes wide, none of her usual defensive squinting. Touches her hair every other minute but all the time certain of herself. None of it’s a ruse. She’s never looked so settled . . . or sated.
27
Jason has no time for Casey. Calls him various vegetable names, depending on which aisle he’s stacking.
‘He’s a turnip, man,’ he goes, on more than one occasion, when I find myself justifying exactly why I’m with him. ‘He’s a fucking kiddie fiddler. I’ve got no time for him, however great you say he is.’
I get twitchy at the mention of kiddie-fiddler and Casey in the same sentence. I wish I hadn’t been looking out the car window, seeing things I shouldn’t have.
Jase believes everything he reads in the papers. Swears by The Sun, like it’s the Torah or something.
It doesn’t escape my notice that the fiddled kid is the same age as his sister would be now. It touches a nerve; his sole defence for starting a little backyard blaze last summer that ended up in Casey’s house being burnt to the ground.
I’m not supposed to know, but I do. He told some slag the night he did it, as a way to get into her pants. She told Chinese Peter’s sister, who told me. I’d been running as usual, so wasn’t around. And I wonder why people don’t invite me to anything. But I wish I’d got evidence of it. Something like an MPEG would’ve been awesome. Like capturing history in the making. Totally wild.
It’s one of those secrets that Jase keeps from me, the way I keep stuff from him; like when I had to start giving Mum tuff love when she started overdoing the pity party a couple of years after Dad left, and got really close to embarrassing herself. (Jews, delayed reaction.) You gotta do what you gotta do.
We all have our secrets.
28
Kel makes me walk on air and I start forgetting the real things. It’s gone eleven at night when I realise that Mum hasn’t washed my kit. Or any other clothes at all. I’m half asleep when I work this out; one of those late-night flashes that hits you before nodding off, gets you out of bed and staggering about the utility room with your eyes shut.
Mum is watching TV and says she won’t help.
‘I’m moving on,’ she goes. ‘I c
an’t be your maid for ever. You’re going to have to learn to take care of your own laundry.’
There’s an empty bottle of wine on the coffee table, one of the pocket ones, so I ain’t too worried. I’m not casting aspersions, I’m just saying.
‘Watch what you’re doing with the washing liquid. Don’t overfill the machine like last time. If you make a mess, clean it up.’
‘Okey-dokey, lemon-cokey.’
When she’s in this mood, it’s pointless trying to argue.
The reason for the wine bottle and the mood is this:
Mum has decided it’s been long enough since Dad. We’ve been here before, eight months after he ran to Germany with the optician slut, when she said quite resolutely it was time to move forward, but she hadn’t reckoned on the fear taking her over. Ever since Dad left it’s only ever been the two of us.
This time there seems to be more weight behind it. Far from coming out of the blue, it’s been on her mind for a while; something to do with one of the younger doctors at the health centre fancying her. He wasn’t her type, but did something to remind her that she could still cast a spell if she put her mind to it.
She doesn’t tell me this obviously, our open relationship only works one way, but I overhear her on the phone to Jason’s mum one night. Billie was distraught because she’d spent all afternoon chucking her guts up and needed to talk to someone about it. Listening to one-sided phone calls is amazing. If you can concentrate hard enough, you can pick up just about everything. It’s something Moon taught me. She’s an expert at it.
Dad’s also been threatening to come by for a visit, which may also explain Mum’s spring cleaning of self. Bored of life in the Black Forest or wherever the fuck he lives in Germany. Wants to come and bond with his firstborn. A solo trip; new wife staying at home with the kids. Twins, aged five. Killer time manager, my father.
This will be purely a father/son thing, the first time for about three years. He doesn’t want to make a big fuss, and he’s right not to. For once in his life, he’d judged the mood correctly. I’ve got no intention of seeing him.
Mum gets herself in on a speed-dating evening in town with another district nurse, one of the showy younger ones who’s always down the pub, and persuades Billie to go with them. It’s being held at Po Na Na, the smartest bar we have, and also the slimiest. Mum dresses up to the nines, long black dress, feathery shawl, heels. Hair piled up so high that you know she ain’t messing. Face made-up by her mate at the House of Fraser counter two hours earlier. I’m left to fend for myself for the evening. Kel comes round and I get lucky. So does Mum by the look of her. Her face is flushed. She tries to tell me off about not clearing up the snacks after Kel’s left, but can’t help grinning; keeps putting her hand over her mouth to giggle whenever I ask her how the night went. She got numbers, two of them, but won’t tell me any more than that.
29
I hate this trend for skirting around issues. I don’t see the point. Mum’s prone to procrastinate. She knows which tube of toothpaste she wants, but picking the lottery numbers can take most of the afternoon. I’m the other way, happy to charge into anything. Something I picked up from Dad. He’s the master at it. He upped and left the country the moment he’d poked the homewrecker optician and got serious. It’s the reason I hate him, but if it were anyone else I’d admire his style. I suppose it’s like this with any parent. Feelings change from one day to the next.
Coming straight to the point, cutting the bullshit, is one of the few similarities between us. Correction, a similarity I remember being between us. I haven’t seen him for so long I don’t know what he’s like any more.
So at next training, I’m ready to grill Casey about what he was doing at Britney with that random kid. It said on the news last year that the subject of Casey’s investigation was eleven or twelve, but this kid looked way younger. Either he is a half-pint, or he’s really eleven and I’m growing up too quickly for my own good.
It had been on my mind all night. I thought about txting him when I got in but knew it would spook him to know he’d been spotted. Had this feeling it would make him clam up. Dad’s approach was far better. Direct questioning never fails. Even if he’s lying to me, I’ll be able to see it in his eyes.
I get to the park at half-five and warm up, flex. Get through all the preliminary business so that I’ll be ready for him. Six passes and no sign of Casey. Six-fifteen, nothing. Six-thirty, footsteps, but only the park-keeper checking to see that I’m not making mischief (he was the one who caught me breaking out of Harriers last summer). Because it’s early and I never need it, I’ve left my phone charging in my room, the battery having been worked to its last nerve.
Casey plans each session in advance so I pretty much know what I have to do. I set myself exercises based on whatever he’s been threatening the day before. Today it’s starting block technique into the first fifty metres, and I get on with it in the hope that he’ll turn up sometime soon.
‘Stop slacking, V-pen. Don’t think you can put in only fifty per cent just because I’m not here to check up on you, Mr V-pen.’
He’s caught me making a balls-up in the starting block. Dammit. I look at my watch, six fifty-five.
‘What’s with the time-keeping, fruitcake? Thought this was meant to be a full-time gig.’
‘Enough of the cheek, young Turk. Get back on those blocks and let me see what you think’s the correct starting position. Then we’ll compare notes.’
When he’s in this mood there’s no messing with him. He throws down his trackie jacket, red and white, and we get down to business. I suppose that’s why I hired him the first place, because I wanted some seriousness. All this other foolishness is an added extra.
I only get the chance to quiz him once training’s over. We’re walking up the path towards the car park. Park-keeper hasn’t cleaned up the dog shit from yesterday so every step smells foul. He’s in an awful good mood about something, telling me some story about a notorious Surrey ref who’s as blind as a bat and giving examples of his various fuck-ups. We’re both holding our noses and laughing, and he pats me on the shoulder as we walk. Only once, only lightly, but a pat nonetheless. If I wasn’t so secure I’d be screaming for Childline about now.
‘You never did tell me why you were late,’ I go, as he’s getting into his car, glad for some distance. ‘If I was fifty-five minutes late for training, like you were, you’d bust my fucking balls.’
‘I hear that, V-pen, sir, and I sincerely apologise. I’ll fix my alarm clock and promise it won’t happen again.’
‘This training thing works both ways, Casey. Neither of us can afford to be late.’
He laughs at that.
‘Shouldn’t I be the one telling you that?’
‘Not really, since I’m the talent and you’re the help.’
Spoken like my father’s son. He’s a bastard about status, something to do with him being a Tamil and never having had any to begin with.
‘Being disrepectful, V-pen, will only get you into trouble with your maker. Did your mother tell you never to mock your elders?’
‘She’s too busy tending to the sick. So where were you? Late night, was it?’
‘Not at all. I went to my meeting and was in bed at eleven. I’ve been an early bird all week. Not that it’s any of your business. Sir.’
A salute and a sneer.
Casey is member of the Christian Fellowship via Catholicism. Didn’t think the nuns at St Mary’s clapped enough. There’s a church near the Common that takes him. You can find him there speaking in tongues most weekends.
‘Must have been some meeting. You’ve got bags under your eyes, Casey. You should take a leaf out of my book. Went to see Britney the other night, got in at one, and still made it here for six. Fresh as a daisy.’
His eyes widen a millimetre of a millimetre, but that’s just enough for me.
‘Britney Spears, eh? And how was that?’
‘An education, Casey. You sh
ould have been there. I saw all sorts.’
30
Me and Moon don’t have Saturday jobs. ‘We’re professional spend-whores,’ she goes, each time we flash our plastic at the cashpoint or checkout. Practising for the day when we turn eighteen and become eligible for major credit problems.
Mum doesn’t want anything to get in the way of my training, and thinks Saturdays should be my day off. Makes sure Dad sends me all the money I need. Moon, like her sister, is a lazy princess who’s born to shop and very little else. It’s inevitable that we would bump into each other between the mall and the high street eventually.
This is our moment, in the queue at Starbucks. Only the two of us. Jase is at Tesco, Kelly with the traders on the market, and Pearson caddying golf clubs up on the Downs. There are no back-ups or pretending to have prior appointments. We’re thrust together, end of.
‘I didn’t plan it. It just happened with Pearson,’ is the first thing that comes out of her mouth, literally the moment we spot each other, and neither of us have our lattes yet. We’ve both paid our money and are standing at the counter like idiots, thinking of something to say. These Starbucks people are getting slower. If I actually knew them I’d swear that it was deliberate. (But they’re foreign, so it’s not.)
She looks fantastic. Jeans that cling to her arse, pink ugg boots, cropped red hoodie, gold hoops bigger than Kelly’s. Really working a look. I miss hanging out with a fashion plate. A girl like that always makes her boy look equally great by association, a notion that’s never been completely lost on me.
The only warmth coming from my body is from the latte I’m now holding. Realise that the pair of us are holding mugs to drink in, out of habit, rather than take-out cups. We find a table, and get it over with. It’s the only sensible thing to do.
Graffiti My Soul Page 8