Child's Play

by Alison Taylor

  ‘Are you talking about lesbian rape?’ he asked.

  She ran a bowl of fresh dishwater and put the tray to soak before replying. ‘I don’t know about actual rapes,’ she said, turning to face him, ‘but there were whispers about a sort of ritual called “breaking in” when a girl started her periods.’ Taking the few short steps back to her seat, she went on, ‘I was on my way home one evening when I saw this girl creeping up the path with her skirt pulled between her legs. She made me think of a woman I’d seen in the hospital when our Sean was born — like she’d just given birth and could barely move because of all the stitches she’d had. She was on her way from the sports hall, so whatever was going on probably happened there. Anyway, the caretakers were forever complaining about soiled knickers blocking the drains.’ Seeing Jack’s expression, she remarked, ‘You might well look sick but like I said, women can be very vicious.’

  ‘Can you remember the girl’s name?’

  ‘They used to call her “Charlotte the harlot”, on account of her mother’s goings-on, so I heard. She must be in the sixth form if she’s still there.’

  ‘Did you ever talk to her about what you’d seen?’

  ‘I tried,’ Avril said. ‘The very next day. One of the other cleaners found her bedding soaked with blood, so I used that as an excuse, but she just blanked me — too terrified to open her mouth, in my opinion.’ With a grim smile she added, ‘So I took it upon myself to tell Matron and I let Dr Skinflint know, but I don’t expect for one moment that either of them did anything.’ She took a few more sips of her tea. ‘But don’t set too much store by all this where young Sukie’s death is concerned,’ she cautioned. ‘Bullying there may be, and stomach-churning stuff at that, but I’d be surprised — really surprised — to find there’s any connection.’

  ‘Would you? I’d have thought the connection’s obvious.’

  ‘Then you’re not reading things right. Dr Skinflint controls the bullying like she controls everything else. She lets it go so far, but never far enough to cause her grief.’

  ‘She’s up to her eyeballs in grief at the moment,’ Jack said. ‘Maybe she isn’t so clever after all.’

  ‘Or maybe somebody else is more clever.’

  ‘Like who?’ he asked.

  ‘Somebody desperate to hide something?’ she suggested. ‘Somebody desperate to have something, maybe. People can be made very single-minded by what they want.’

  ‘Sukie didn’t seem to own anything especially covetable,’ he told her.

  ‘Somebody could want something that you or I wouldn’t look at twice,’ Avril said. ‘Like clothes, for instance. Our Sean said about that dog of yours sniffing out a girl in one of Sukie’s old skirts.’

  ‘We’ve been told that handing on outgrown clothes is common practice.’

  ‘Outgrown uniforms, maybe, but those girls hang on to their other clothes like grim death. I’ve seen plenty of fisticuffs because one of them’s “borrowed” something or other, usually when they were cleaning the seniors’ rooms. There’s an awful lot of pilfering.’

  ‘There’s nothing missing from Sukie’s belongings. We’ve checked.’

  ‘Well, if I were you,’ she advised, ‘I’d check again. And again, after that. Now,’ she went on, getting up from the table, ‘can I tempt you to another cup of tea and a bun with a dollop of cream under the top?’

  ‘Butterfly cakes?’ Jack asked, his eyes lighting up. ‘I haven’t had those since I was a child.’

  19

  When McKenna sent her away early, Nona was both angry and dismayed: angry because she would probably miss her favourite Saturday evening television and dismayed by the prospect of being alone with Daisy. By the time she had made a half-hearted trawl of the Bangor shops, in a fruitless search for the kind of stylish clothes Janet wore, she was positively dreading what the night might hold.

  Gwynfor was watching football on television. ‘You’re home early,’ he remarked, keeping his eyes glued to the screen. ‘I wasn’t expecting you before five.’

  She threw her bag on the nearest chair. ‘McKenna’s making me do a split shift,’ she said bad-temperedly. ‘I’ve got to go back for eight.’

  ‘Why?’ Gwynfor jerked his head back and forth, following the progress of the ball.

  ‘They’ve had to put one of the girls in seclusion in the staff flats and I’m babysitting.’ She sat down beside him. ‘Overnight.’

  Absently he patted her knee. ‘Tough.’

  ‘Tough’ was the right word, Nona said to herself, as for the umpteenth time she tried to find something that would keep Daisy occupied for more than two minutes. She felt completely exhausted, partly because she had been too keyed up to doze off at home, even for a couple of hours, but mostly with sheer tension.

  Before she left, Janet told her that Daisy had spent the afternoon quietly reading magazines in the bedroom. She had chatted desultorily while they ate the evening meal that was sent over from the school, but retreated again to the bedroom when the washing-up was done. Once the door closed behind Janet, however, Daisy emerged. She spent almost an hour mercilessly harassing Nona like a spoiled toddler, before agreeing to watch the programme Nona was desperate not to miss. Sitting cross-legged on the floor, Daisy stared at the television for no more than ten minutes before announcing that the programme was ‘shit’. She picked up the remote control and began punching buttons, her eyes skidding back and forth across the screen and, Nona was sure, taking in nothing. When she tired of channel hopping, Nona suggested doing the jigsaw they had found in one of the cupboards. Daisy co-operated long enough to sort the edge pieces, but suddenly scooped them back into the box.

  Watching her, Nona felt a confusing mix of emotions. The incongruity between Daisy’s behaviour and her appearance was unsettling, for although she looked like a young woman, albeit one rather bruised and battered, her limited attention span and constant need for novelty brought to mind the disturbed children Nona helped to process through youth court or met in the children’s homes.

  Shortly before ten she took respite in the kitchen. The school had provided a pint of milk, six teabags, a tiny jar of instant coffee, an old jam jar half filled with instant chocolate, four sandwiches wrapped in cling film and a packet of digestive biscuits. She unwrapped two tuna and mayonnaise sandwiches, made tea for herself and poured a glass of milk for Daisy. Then, supper over, she began persuading Daisy to get ready for bed.

  Daisy ignored her. Restless and irritable, she roamed about the small flat, poking into dusty cupboards, pulling out empty drawers, going back and forth to the kitchen for biscuits, another glass of milk.

  ‘Make that your last drink now,’ Nona told her. ‘I don’t know when we’ll get more milk and we need some for the morning.’

  Daisy’s tongue snaked around the milky moustache on her upper lip. ‘Suppose they forget about us?’ she lisped. ‘We’ll starve.’

  ‘Don’t be so silly!’ Nona said snappishly and was instantly afraid she had unconsciously aped that awful voice. Had she said ‘Don’t be tho thilly!’?

  ‘We will!’ insisted Daisy. ‘We daren’t go out in case the killer’s lying in wait.’ A frown creased her high forehead as she munched the last segment of biscuit. ‘They could be outside right now, ready to kick down the door and batter our heads in.’

  Chills ran up Nona’s spine, lifting the hairs at the back of her neck. She opened her mouth, then closed it, trying to compose a reply that contained no sibilants. ‘Time for bed,’ was all she could muster, her voice wavering between false cheerfulness and optimistic determination.

  To her immense relief, Daisy rose and carried her glass to the kitchen. ‘I won’t sleep,’ she announced, but made her way reluctantly to the bedroom.

  Nona followed her, to collect blankets and pillows for the couch, where she would spend the night. ‘Don’t run off all the hot water when you have your bath,’ she said, as Daisy dragged her towel off the bed.

  Daisy stood as if turned to stone
. ‘No way am I having a bath!’ she breathed. ‘No way!’

  ‘Why ever not?’ Her arms full of bedding, Nona closed her eyes in near despair.

  ‘Because the killer could break in and hold me down in the water until I drowned like Sukie!’

  ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake! Have a shower, then.’

  ‘I had one this afternoon.’

  ‘Have another!’

  ‘I was going to!’ Tossing her head, Daisy stalked to the bathroom.

  For almost an hour she fidgeted between bathroom, bedroom and sitting room, while Nona, flicking through one of the magazines she had taken from the bedroom, tried to ignore her periodic and pointed reappearances. At last the bedroom door clicked shut, the bed thudded as Daisy threw herself down and the flat grew quiet.

  That quietness soon became disturbing. All Nona could hear was the wind, fussing with the trees that grew almost close enough to scrape the windows, and her heart, which fast began pounding in her ears. Pulling herself together, she breathed deeply and steadily until her heartbeat subsided to a slow throb, then switched on the television, just loud enough to convince her she was not alone in this sinister little world.

  The lumpy divan in the staff flat was even less comfortable than Daisy’s cot in the dormitory. Lying atop the covers, she wriggled this way and that, staring at the fuzzy, yellowy oval the bedside lamp threw on the ceiling and, terrified Nona would sneak away at the first opportunity, listening so hard for sounds of life that her ears started to, hum, only relaxing when voices began to chatter quietly from the television. Next, footsteps made for the bathroom, the lavatory flushed, the shower ran briefly, a toothbrush rasped against teeth and the light cord snicked. Soon afterwards the television was addressing a snoring audience and, once more, she felt frighteningly alone.

  As she drifted to the brink of sleep, a lightning-strike of her own electricity cut her from head to toe, leaving her empty, nauseous and wide awake, and, as ever when that happened, she saw herself like the dead frog she had galvanised back to life in first-year biology. Touching electrodes to the frog’s legs, she had watched with utter astonishment as the corpse bounded off the bench. Besotted with her Frankenstein power, she retrieved the cold, flaccid body and repeated the experiment again and again, laughing frenziedly each time the corpse jumped. When Alice intervened, standing between her and the teacher who, her voice hoarse with shrieking, was about to slap down her hysteria, Daisy was furious.

  That was the first time Alice rescued her from her own excess, but now Alice, at the end of her tether, had finally abandoned her. Threshing about on the bed, Daisy wanted to beat herself to a pulp for opening her mouth.

  Nona had dozed off, slumped on the couch with her hands folded across her chest, and she woke with her head hanging over the side and a vicious crick in her neck. Momentarily disorientated, she sat up slowly, massaging the pain, squinting at inane antics on the television screen. Then, remembering where she was and why, she switched off the set. Into the silence, noises intruded from the adjoining room. ‘Oh, hell!’ she muttered, struggling to her feet. ‘What’s she up to now?’

  Daisy was hunched against the bedhead with her knees drawn up and her eyes awash with tears. Her bare feet looked cold.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Nona asked.

  ‘I can’t sleep.’

  ‘D’you want some hot chocolate?’

  Nodding, Daisy slid off the bed and trailed after her to the kitchen.

  ‘You must find being cooped up here very strange,’ Nona remarked, filling the kettle. ‘I expect you’re missing your friends in the dorm.’

  ‘I don’t miss Alice. I hate her!’

  ‘That’s only because you two had a fight,’ Nona said. ‘I used to feel the same when I’d had a bust-up with my best friend, but we’d be back to normal in no time at all.’

  ‘I do hate her!’ Daisy insisted. ‘She gets on my nerves. She coughs all the time.’ She imitated Alice’s irritating, asthmatic cough. ‘I feel like strangling her. And she nags, in that horrible voice of hers. It’s like a rusty hinge.’

  ‘She probably only nags because she worries about you. Friends are like that.’ Nona unscrewed the lid of the chocolate jar and spooned powder into two cups. Daisy lolled against the counter, the bright overhead light exposing the tear tracks on her cheeks. ‘Why were you crying?’

  ‘I wasn’t!’

  ‘There’s no need to bite my head off! You look a bit peaky, that’s all.’

  ‘I’m due soon.’

  ‘Why didn’t you say, then? Have you got stomachache?’

  ‘No. I never get it.’

  ‘Lucky you,’ Nona remarked, pouring boiling water into the cups. ‘I have dreadful cramps and I throw up.’ She stirred the chocolate vigorously until froth billowed over the rims. ‘When did you first get your periods?’ she asked, making her way to the sitting room with a drink in each hand.

  ‘Four years ago.’

  ‘You were very young.’ Nona put the cups on the floor, then sank on to the couch. ‘I was thirteen.’

  Daisy sat beside her. ‘Alice hasn’t started yet and she’s nearly fifteen. There’s probably something wrong with her.’

  ‘I doubt it. People develop at different rates.’ Gazing at her companion, she added: ‘You’re a big girl, anyway.’

  ‘That’s what Matron says. Bitch!’ Daisy stared at her feet. ‘When I’m due, my boobs get so swollen and sore they actually bleed if I do gym or games, and all she says is, “Big girls have to grin and bear it.”’

  ‘It strikes me,’ Nona said slowly, ‘that it’s a good thing she’s had to retire.’

  ‘She’ll probably come back as soon as your lot go. So will Dr Scott.’ Daisy picked up her drink. ‘That’s what Miss Knight thinks, anyway. I heard her talking to Bebb after breakfast.’ She paused. ‘They live together, you know.’

  ‘So I gather.’

  Licking chocolate from her lips, Daisy said, ‘Miss Knight seems fairly normal, but you can tell Bebb’s a dyke from a mile off.’

  ‘What’s that got to do with anything?’ Nona frowned. ‘I expect they live together because they’re sisters.’

  Daisy shrugged. ‘It’s useful when you can tell just by looking.’

  Tentatively, Nona said, ‘From what I’ve seen of her, Torrance looks very normal. She’s actually been told off for flirting with Sergeant Prys.’

  Daisy, her face buried in the cup, said nothing. ‘Still,’ Nona went on, ‘people can swing both ways, can’t they?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know.’ Daisy drained the cup, dropped it in the saucer with a clatter, then rose quickly. ‘I’m going back to bed,’ she said and almost ran from the room.

  Daisy’s breasts felt more swollen and tender by the moment; by Monday, when her regular-as-clockwork period would begin, she would not have been surprised if they had burst like overripe melons. Whichever way she lay, sat, crouched, or contorted her body, they hurt, and she realised she could barely remember a time when eight days out of every twenty-eight were not girded first by this burden of pain and then by the outpouring of blood, that made her stink like a barrel of rotting fish before stopping so abruptly it was as if someone had turned off a tap.

  She tried to lie on her back, but the weight of her breasts was suffocating, so she rolled off the bed and picked up her bra from the pile of discarded clothes on the only chair in the room. Once the engorged excrescences attached to her chest were again harnessed in the pearly grey silk and lace, she buttoned up her pyjama jacket, then stood by the chair, wondering why she could still barely breathe. When she realised the drawn curtains at the single window must be cutting off the air, she ripped them apart and, throwing open one half of the casement, leaned out, savouring the touch of the cool wind and a totally unfamiliar view.

  The ground on this side of the building fell away quite sharply — yet another unsuspected aspect of the enormous enclosure about the school that could, Daisy had often thought, quite easily hide a whole herd
of elephants. Here the trees parted, either naturally or by design, to allow a glimpse of dark water in the distance, the way to the Strait marked out by towering shrubs, ghostly and luminous where moonlight touched their blossoms.

  What she saw, but more important, why she could see it, was one more of the myriad things that would always be beyond the capacity of her deformed speech to communicate. She took pen and diary out of the inner pocket of her backpack, dropped the pile of clothes on the floor and, angling her chair so that she could glance at will through the window, uncapped her pen.

  At one time, she had used a conventional diary, but the compulsion to make an entry under each date seemed to drain her of any thought worth recording, so just before returning for the second year at the Hermitage she bought a stack of blank-paged books, bound in tooled leather of differing colours, and began a new one each autumn, at the start of the school year. The old books, some barely half-filled, some crammed from cover to cover with her small, rounded script — the records of the events and people who had made her what she was without handing her any clues to show how she might extricate herself — were in a brown paper parcel secreted under a loose floorboard in her bedroom at home. This year’s book, bound in a bright topaz-blue, was already threatening to be full before term end. While she decided what to write, she leafed back and forth, reading whatever caught her eye, satisfied that every word was the truth.

  15 October — The vicar from Bangor came this evening for the Harvest Thanksgiving service and he said the chapel looked more beautiful this year than last, which was nice, because I’d been allowed to help with the decorations. It was actually my idea to put candles round a vase of gold and yellow chrysanthemums on the altar. When we came out of chapel, the full moon was enormous, and so low in the sky I imagined, if I reached out, it would just fall into my hands. For some strange reason, even though it looked so cold, it made me feel better. Sunset was horrible and frightening, one of those times when the Strait seems to be running with blood.