Hurry Up and Wait

by Isabel Ashdown

  Sarah pulls her knees up, turning her hands over for clues. She drops her head back against the solid brickwork, and exhales, paralysed in the moment.

  The door at the top of the stairs opens and in the dim light John’s pale desert boots appear on the first step.

  ‘I’ve got your things,’ he says. He sits beside Sarah, his back against the wall, gently wrapping her red scarf around his fingers as if he were winding wool. ‘I found this at the top of the stairs,’ he says, handing it to her. ‘I’ve been looking for you everywhere.’ He draws up his knees too, and she can see little flecks of mossy green and blue in the knit of his exposed socks. ‘What happened?’ he asks.

  She turns to look at him. The set of his face is strong, yet his eyes are full of sorrow. Again, she recognises something unsettling in his expression, and she turns away to focus on the brickwork of the far wall.

  ‘What made you come down here?’ he persists, taking her hand in his.

  She pulls her hand away and brushes at the dusty floor with the tips of her fingers. ‘I thought I remembered something, and I had to come and see. To be sure.’ Calm washes over her as she speaks the words, and she looks up to see the tears in John’s eyes.

  ‘So, it was here,’ he says quietly.

  The boiler groans and hisses, obscuring these last words. Sarah looks up and frowns, inviting him to repeat himself, but he turns away, nervously running his hands through his hair. Simultaneously, they stretch out their legs, crossing their feet at the ankles.

  John nudges her foot with his. ‘Do you remember my old car? It was a Datsun Cherry.’

  Sarah shakes her head.

  ‘It was blue. You went in it once,’ he says. ‘It had a magic tree freshener hanging in the rear-view mirror, and you said the smell made you feel sick.’

  All at once, she’s there. She’s made it to the top end of the High Street, nearest the school, but she still has to get the rest of the way home. She’s propping herself up against the wall behind the yew hedge at the corner of Tide Road, and she can’t step out because the blood just won’t stop coming. She’s afraid; she’s faint and sick, and deeply afraid. The evening sun casts long shadows across the path, betraying her position. The shops must be closing because the traffic’s dying down, and she knows she has to get home, or her dad will start to worry. She swipes at the streaks of drying blood with her stained school jumper, and takes a small step into the street.

  John Gilroy is driving up the road in her direction, and as she moves back on to the path to get out of his way he stops, pulling up beside her. She looks through the side window at his horrified expression. He’s seen. He leaps out of the car and runs round to her, taking her weight as she feels herself slipping.

  ‘But what about the blood?’ she whispers as he helps her in. ‘Your car? What about the blood?’

  John places an old blanket beneath her and clips the seatbelt in place, his face distorted with anxiety. ‘Did somebody hurt you?’ he asks as he gets back behind the wheel.

  Sarah covers her eyes with her filthy hands and shakes her head. They drive in silence, along the High Street, past the chemist’s, past the war memorial, past the estate agent’s on the corner.

  Outside her house in Seafield Avenue, she tells him he can’t come in.

  ‘Just let me walk you to the door, then? I need to make sure you’re OK, Sarah.’

  She shakes her head. ‘Please. No one can ever know about this. No one.’ She weeps, and John holds her, trembling against his chest until she’s ready to go. ‘Promise me,’ she says as she steps out of the car, her legs trembling with every movement.

  ‘I promise,’ he replies, and he sits and waits until Sarah reaches her front door.

  She turns and looks back at him, her face an apology.

  The boiler lets out a sigh, and Sarah reaches for John’s hand, lacing her fingers through his.

  ‘He’s dead, you know,’ he says, pressing the tips of his fingers against the back of her hand.

  Sarah looks up, her heart quickening. ‘Who?’

  The roaring rush and grind of the water system slows to a hum as Sarah takes in his words.

  John nods once, holding her gaze steady. ‘Kate’s dad,’ he says. ‘Jason Robson. He’s dead, Sarah. He’s gone.’

  Easing the boiler room door shut behind them, Sarah and John step out of the basement. Screeching laughter carries along the hallway from the ladies’ toilets and the walls shudder with every thumping beat from the DJ desk in the party hall. Sarah indicates towards the fire exit at the end of the corridor; John pops it open easily and they escape on to the dark playing field at the side of the gym, running across the frosted grass until they reach the old oak tree which separates the boys’ field from the girls’. The mist has lifted, and the stars are now visible in the clear sky. They can see the lights of the party spreading out on the far side of the building, and the occasional flurry of movement as partygoers stray into the car park and the grounds beyond. The pounding music can still be heard from here, sailing out into the cold night, the words gaining clarity in the quiet air.

  They stand beneath the tree, their breaths rapid from the sprint. The branches cast shadows across their faces so that John’s eyes flicker in and out of the light as he moves.

  ‘I never told anyone,’ he says, helping her into her coat.

  She fastens the buttons, her head hung low.

  ‘I know.’

  He wraps his arms around her, sighing heavily into her hair. ‘You didn’t have to do it all alone.’

  They remain like this for some time, swaying to the music, neither speaking. From the darkness of the playing field, a fox comes into view, just five or six feet from where they’re standing, the auburn sheen of his coat bright against the night. He halts, his front paw poised to run, turning his unflinching face to meet theirs.

  The fox gazes at Sarah, blinks once with his amber eyes and sprints across the field until he’s no longer visible. A momentary hush falls across the field as the track comes to an end.

  ‘Is it over?’ John asks, looking at his watch.

  Sarah looks back along the playing field, towards the small square of light from the open door of the fire exit. Mrs McCabe leans out to grab the bar of the door, taking a quick scan of the area before she pulls it shut, closing off the light altogether.

  They emerge from the darkness of the oak tree, out over the field and into the open.

  As they cross the car park towards John’s old Citroën, Sarah drops his hand. Little groups mill around outside the entrance to the gym, laughing and shouting as the party comes to an end. The ground is littered with cigarette butts and empty cans, and a few women sit on the kerb at the edge of the car park, singing along to non-existent music. Sarah and John reach his car just as a horn sounds out from the vehicle beside them. She spins round at the noise, to see a man and woman in the silver BMW next to theirs. The driver’s seat is reclined so that the woman’s feet are hooked on to the steering wheel, while the rest of her body is obscured by a smooth pink backside and a billowing white shirt. An inside-out pair of purple leggings is draped over the passenger headrest, and through the partially open window the woman’s familiar laughter lifts out into the cold air.

  Sarah gazes at the car, and back towards the old school building. Darkness surrounds the place as the party nears its close.

  ‘See you, Kate,’ she whispers. She exhales, feeling the warmth of her breath rushing out into the night.

  John leans in through the driver’s side of his own car and pushes open the broken door. Still laughing at the tangled scene in the car beside them, he walks round and holds the passenger door open for Sarah to get in.

  ‘All done?’ he asks as he slides into the driver’s seat beside her.

  Sarah winds down her window and they drive out through the high iron gates, up through School Lane towards the High Street. The smell of sea spray is rich in the night air, the sharp, salt tang a nostalgic fragment of home. She clo
ses her eyes and sees her father, stretched out on his deckchair in Dorset, on that holiday in 1986. She’s paddling down by the rocky water’s edge as he smiles and waves, lifting his tatty straw hat and raising it high above his head like a flag.

  The car slows halfway along the High Street, drawing to a juddering halt beneath the salt-bleached sign for the Slipper Limpet B&B. The street is quiet in the late January lull. A tangle of greasy white chip paper drifts along the pavement; Sarah watches as it dances and weaves in the empty street. It flutters once at the junction to Tide Road, where the wind briefly hoists it towards the light of a flickering streetlamp before snatching it away altogether.

  John turns to speak, but Sarah puts up her hand as she gets out of the car. ‘Wait here,’ she says.

  She lets herself into the guest house with her visitor’s key, looking over her shoulder once, before closing the door with a soft thud. She thinks of John, waiting outside in his funny knitted waistcoat; waiting for her. The house is dark and still. Silently, she sprints up the stairs to her room and gathers her belongings. She places £30 beside the guest book on her way out.

  On the front step she pauses, turning her face into the salt breeze as the roar of the incoming tide draws closer. John pops open the passenger door and she throws her overnight bag on to the back seat and gets in, fixing her seatbelt with a solid clunk. She gives him a little nod.

  John laughs, pinching his chin thoughtfully between his finger and thumb.

  ‘OK,’ she says, her eyes fixed on the road ahead. ‘All done.’

  Acknowledgements

  My thanks go to everyone who has encouraged me in my writing pursuits along the way – you are too many to name, but you are greatly valued.

  Particular thanks to Jane Osis and Juliet West, my workshop partners, for their insightful feedback and friendship (and laughter, wine and pasta); to everyone at the University of Chichester for their continued support; to Vicky Blunden, Candida Lacey and Adrian Weston for their frank and sensitive input during the editing and completion of Hurry Up and Wait; to Corinne Pearlman, Emma Dowson and Linda McQueen for their enormous contribution behind the scenes; and to Derek Niemann, a generous friend and perceptive reader of my various drafts. A special mention must go to Jacky Newman, my enduring childhood friend, who accompanied me through the endless, painful, poignant and funny moments of our 1980s schooldays. Jacks, I couldn’t have done it without you.

  As always, my deepest love and thanks to Colin, Alice and Samson.

  Copyright

  First published in 2011

  This ebook edition published in 2011 by

  Myriad Editions

  59 Lansdowne Place

  Brighton BN3 1FL

  www.MyriadEditions.com

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  Copyright © Isabel Ashdown 2011

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  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 without the written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

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

  ISBN: 978–0–9567926–2–4