‘“I never saw true beauty till this night”,’ I whisper.
‘That’s the wrong line,’ says Hoshi, then she puts her small cold hand on the side of my face, pulls me closer and kisses me, her smiling lips on mine, stealing my breath away.
I kiss her back.
I shut my eyes and melt in her smell of strawberry and mint. My body is alive, tingling to be so close to her. A distant bark, followed by footsteps, make us freeze, our lips barely touching. Hoshi breathes out and then our lips meet again and I never, ever want this to end.
Then the barking gets louder and we look up to see a dog dash across the park. The owner’s nowhere to be seen. With a final bark the dog disappears. We look at each other for a moment, our faces lit up by the moon.
‘Did you just kiss me?’ I say.
Hoshi laughs and nods and I lie back on the platform and stare up at the sky, my mind dizzy, my heart pounding. Hoshi lies next to me, our shoulders touching. Our fingers entwine and a lightness spreads through my body. I stretch my free hand up towards the night sky and spread my fingers out. I’m amazed and suddenly I know that she’s right: anything can happen.
I turn to face her, not sure how I can explain this. ‘I feel like I could touch the stars,’ I say.
She puts a silver arm across me. ‘Me too.’
For a moment we lie in silence and I don’t feel the cold. Being here with Hoshi feels so right that suddenly I never want to go home. I can’t go back to creeping around my house, scared that Alfie will be in, scared about what he will do next. My throat feels tight and my chest aches. From nowhere, a tear runs down my cheek.
Hoshi’s eyes go wide. ‘What’s the matter?’
I press my fingers into my eyes, almost surprised. ‘I’m happy,’ I say.
‘You don’t look happy.’
I laugh and cry at the same time. ‘I’m happy, but I don’t want to go back to my house. I never want to go home.’ We sit up, but now I’ve started crying I can’t stop.
‘You can stay at my place,’ says Hoshi. ‘Dad will let you.’
I shake my head. I take a deep breath, then another and another. ‘I could do that for a few days, but not forever.’
‘We should go back to mine,’ she says. ‘Then tomorrow, before the show, we can go to your house. You can talk to your mum and tell her everything. Just like you said you would.’
I shake my head. Suddenly what I’ve got to do is as clear as the sky above me. ‘Hoshi, I’ve got to speak to Mum. Right now.’
‘Do it tomorrow,’ she says.
‘I need to do it while I still feel like this. Mum should be back soon. Right now I know I can make her listen to me.’
‘Let me come with you.’
I jump down off the climbing frame and look back up at her. ‘No. I’ve got to do this on my own.’
THIRTY-SIX
It feels like the farm is sleeping. I slip through the shadows, stepping round frozen puddles. Mum’s car isn’t back, so I open the gate, taking care not to scrape it along the ground, and peer in at the kitchen window. My eyes adjust to the darkness of the room. It’s empty.
I let myself in and go into the living room, my shoes crunching over broken glass. It took a while to convince Hoshi that I would be alright, but in the end she realised she couldn’t change my mind.
It looks like Alfie took all his anger out on Gran’s picture of a horse sniffing a dog. He’ll be in trouble. It’s Mum’s favourite.
Quickly, I send Hoshi a text telling her I’m back, and I’m fine, and that there’s no sign of Alfie. Then I go down the corridor towards my bedroom. The door’s open and that’s when I remember.
I never locked it.
I push the door and it swings back. I hear … nothing. No bubble that tells me the pump is on, no hum that says the heater is gently warming the water. I don’t want to turn on the light.
I stare into my moonlit room and gradually shapes emerge – jagged glass, cracks that span the width of the tank, sparkling diamonds on the waterlogged carpet.
Then, when I know what he’s done, I reach for the light.
My beautiful tank is destroyed. The golf club Alfie used is still sitting in the gaping hole and cracks cover the remaining glass. The carpet is soaked with gallons of water and fish are scattered everywhere.
I look in the tank. A few fish are still swimming in what’s left of the water, circling shards of glass. I count them – six – then rest the lid back on top.
My mind is numb, but I know what to do. I turn the central heating on constant and shine a lamp on the glass, hoping this will make the water warm enough to keep the fish alive. Next I pull the golf club out of the tank, then I kneel on the wet carpet and put the dead fish on a plate, side by side. I stack the broken glass on a spread-open copy of Teen Vogue, stopping every now and then to wipe away clinging strands of weed.
I’m trying to mop up water when I hear the front door open.
‘Pearl?’ Mum shouts. ‘Alfie?’ She walks into my room. ‘What the hell’s going on?’ Her voice is furious, then she sees what’s happened and her mouth drops open. I start picking up slithers of glass, dropping them on the magazine, peeling weed off my fingers. Then Mum’s on the floor next to me, throwing my clothes to the side, helping me with the glass. ‘Were you two fighting?’ she says.
‘No.’ I sit back and try to pick at a splinter of glass that’s stuck in the pad of my thumb.
‘Let me do it,’ she says, and she grabs my wrist. I look up at her. Her curly hair is escaping from a bunch and her mascara is smudged under her eyes. She holds my hand and tries to pluck the glass out, but her hands are trembling too much.
‘I don’t fight with him, Mum,’ I say. ‘He fights with me.’
‘I’ve seen you wind him up.’ She shakes her head.
My throat feels pressed tight. ‘I wind him up by walking into the same room as him … By talking. By laughing. By breathing.’
Her face goes hard. ‘Pearl, you’re no angel –’
I snatch my hand away from her. It would be so easy to agree with her, but I won’t do that any more. I point at the ugly mess of my smashed tank. ‘This isn’t my fault,’ I say. ‘He scares me, all the time.’ She sits back on the soaking carpet and looks down at her hands. ‘I mean it, Mum. I can’t live with him any more.’
‘I know,’ she whispers.
‘You leave me alone with him …’ She nods her head. ‘You walk out when he starts on me … You even laugh when he does stuff!’
‘I know,’ she says, so quiet I can hardly hear her.
‘Then why haven’t you done something about it?’ I shout. I want to push her hunched shoulders, grab her. ‘You’re supposed to look after me!’ She stares at me, eyes wide, then holds her head in her hands and cries. ‘Stop it,’ I say, because it’s the worst thing I’ve ever seen. Her whole body is shaking and then she’s howling. ‘Mum … please!’
She looks around the room. ‘Alfie did this?’ Her voice is loud and ugly.
‘Yes!’ I say. ‘You know he did it!’
She nods again, her face grim.
‘Why don’t you stop him?’ I say.
‘I don’t know how to,’ she says. She puts her hand on the side of my face. It feels strange, warm. She never touches me. I rest against it and shut my eyes. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says, pulling me to her and squashing me against her jacket. It smells of Chanel No5 and horses. Ozzie’s nose pokes my cheek, wet and hard, and she whines as Mum rocks back and forth, squeezing me tighter and tighter. ‘I’m sorry … I’m sorry,’ she says, again and again.
I’ve waited years for her to say this, but now I’m hearing the words, it’s not enough. But I let her rest against me and cry into my hair because I don’t know what else I can do.
We spend the next half an hour tidying up the mess. Mum alternates between crying and shouting at Ozzie. Suddenly she remembers that tomorrow is the opening night of Romeo and Juliet and she sends me to bed in her room.
&n
bsp; I lie in the middle of her big, soft bed, Ozzie curled up on my feet. I keep the bedside light on. It used to belong to Gran and the rose-coloured shade makes the room glow pink. My eyes flick over familiar things that I haven’t seen for a long time: bottles of nail varnish arranged on a glass tray, beads hanging on the dressing table mirror, Mum’s black plastic jewellery box – the one that looks like a miniature wardrobe and is decorated with painted flowers. Everything is as carefully arranged as the rocks and plants in my fish tank.
Mum pushes open the door and sits on the side of the bed. The mattress creaks. ‘You should be asleep,’ she says. ‘It’s gone midnight.’
‘I can’t sleep.’ She puts her hand on my shoulder, then takes it away. ‘Where’s Alfie?’ I say.
‘I rang him up. He’s staying at Callum’s.’ I breathe into her pillow. It smells of her. ‘I’m going to sort it out,’ she says. ‘I promise.’ She leans over and switches off the light, but she doesn’t go away. She sits on the bed and strokes Ozzie, occasionally stroking my feet as well. She tells me that tomorrow she’s going to take me to World of Water and buy me a new tank, that we’ll save the last six fish.
‘I’ve spoken to Dad,’ she says. ‘He wants Alfie to go to his for Christmas, for a couple of weeks, then we’ll work out what’s going to happen next. He’s going to go tomorrow.’
Alfie will be gone tomorrow? I start to drift off, wrapped in Mum’s thick duvet, Ozzie heavy on my legs. ‘I’m going to sort everything out,’ Mum says as she strokes me, and I want to believe her so much.
Her hand squeezes my foot and Ozzie stretches out. ‘Mum.’ My voice is muffled by the duvet. ‘I want to bring a friend round, show her the horses.’
‘You could go for a ride,’ she says. Then she starts telling me about a new route she’s found over the Downs, but I don’t hear what she says next because already my eyes have closed and I’ve let my mind wander back to the park, and the stars, and Hoshi.
THIRTY-SEVEN
I’m woken up by my phone. For a moment I don’t know where I am, but then I see a photo of me and Alfie sitting on a pony, my arms round Alfie’s waist, and I remember I’m in Mum’s room.
I grab my phone. ‘Hello?’ but the call’s been dropped. I notice how bright it is outside and realise I’ve been asleep for ages. My phone vibrates. It’s a text from Ms Kapoor. We need you at the theatre ASAP. Something has come up. x Ms K. I jump out of bed and start to search for my leggings.
The door opens and Mum comes in carrying a mug of tea and a plate of toast. ‘What are you doing?’ she asks. ‘I wanted you to have a lie-in.’
‘Mum, can you drop me at the theatre?’ I grab my leggings off the back of her chair and pull them on.
‘I suppose so.’ She puts a mug of tea in my hand and I gulp it down. ‘You’ll burn your tongue. What’s the rush?’
‘I’ve got a message from my teacher. She needs me to go in early.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know,’ I say, staring at my phone. I’ve not had any texts or missed calls from Hoshi. I go to her number, but suddenly I’m scared to press it. Now the sun is shining and I’m back at home, last night at the park seems like a dream. I swallow as I remember all the calls Hoshi was getting. What if she changed her mind about the band? What if what we did, the kiss, made her want to run all the way back to Japan?
‘What about your fish tank?’ Mum asks.
‘Mum, can you get it for me?’ I’m panicking now, pulling my sweatshirt on, hunting around for my socks.
Mum folds her arms and stares at me. Eyes narrowed. ‘What’s going on, Pearl?’
‘It’s an emergency,’ I manage to say. ‘Please, Mum.’
She sighs. ‘You’d better tell me exactly what you need. And write it all down.’ She searches on her dressing table for a pen.
‘Thanks, Mum,’ I say, and I start scribbling a list on the back of an envelope. I know the stock off by heart. ‘I’ve got some money saved up, but Jane will let me pay the rest back.’
‘Slow down,’ she says. ‘I can’t read your writing.’
‘I need to get to the theatre.’
She passes me a plate of toast. ‘Eat this first.’ It’s thin white bread, buttery and spread with jam. It reminds me of when I was little and off school sick. I sandwich the two pieces together. ‘It always tastes best cut in triangles,’ says Mum, watching me as I eat.
I walk into the auditorium and see Ms Kapoor on the stage with Mr Simms. They’re standing in the centre of the stage, arms folded, too busy talking to notice me. ‘It’s not just a matter of finding a replacement,’ Ms Kapoor says. ‘We need someone who can dance.’
‘And sing,’ he adds.
‘And who knows the script.’ Ms Kapoor laughs and Sir puts a hand out to her. She grabs hold of it. ‘We can’t do the show,’ she says.
My stomach squeezes tight and my legs wobble. ‘Who do we need to replace?’ I say, staring up at them. They spin round. ‘Where’s Hoshi?’
‘Here!’ says a voice behind me.
I turn round and there she is, wearing her Totoro hat with her My Little Pony hanging round her neck. Suddenly I love that My Little Pony! I want to hold her hands, hug her, but I don’t dare. Instead, I just look at her and smile.
‘What’s the matter, Pearl?’ She laughs. ‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’
‘You’re here!’ I say.
‘Where did you think I’d be?’
‘When you didn’t ring I got worried,’ I say. ‘I thought you’d gone back to Japan.’
‘You told me not to ring … And why would I go back to Japan?’
‘To join Happy Coco.’
She shakes her head. ‘I’m not going anywhere.’
‘Girls,’ calls Ms Kapoor. ‘When you’ve finished chatting …’
We walk towards the stage. Our fingers link together. ‘How did it go last night?’ she says. ‘I was so worried.’
I think about the mess in my room, the pile of dead fish on the plate. But then I remember waking up this morning and how the house felt like a different place, even though the living room was still full of dog food and there was a stack of dirty plates by the sink. ‘I talked to Mum,’ I say. ‘Alfie’s going to stay at Dad’s.’
A smile spreads across her face. ‘That’s good?’
‘Very,’ I say.
‘Girls,’ says Ms Kapoor. ‘This is important.’
‘Tell me about it later,’ Hoshi says. Then my fingers slip out of hers and we walk up the stairs that lead to the stage. ‘What’s happened?’ she asks.
‘It’s Jake,’ says Ms Kapoor, like it’s obvious. ‘He can’t do the show.’
‘What?’ I say. Hoshi and I stare at each other. ‘Why?’
‘Rugby,’ says Mr Simms. ‘Last night he was helping with the juniors at his club when he broke his collar bone.’ He shakes his head. ‘He tripped over the ball!’
‘And he definitely can’t do the show?’ says Hoshi.
‘No way,’ says Miss. ‘He’s in hospital right now. We need to have a think and see if we can replace him.’
‘Because somebody thought we didn’t need an understudy for Romeo,’ adds Mr Simms.
‘I was wrong.’ Ms Kapoor sighs. ‘There just weren’t enough boys auditioning to find an understudy. I mean, there is Jonah …’
‘Not Hairy Jonah, Miss!’ I say.
‘His hair isn’t the problem,’ she says. ‘It’s his singing.’
‘I could work on his singing,’ says Mr Simms. ‘We’ve got all day. It won’t be perfect, but –’
‘It has to be perfect.’ Ms Kapoor looks at her beautiful scenery. ‘This is a professional theatre. People expect a professional production, not some dodgy school show!’
‘So what?’ I say. I can hardly believe this. ‘We have to cancel? All the weeks we’ve spent rehearsing have been for nothing?’
‘None of us want this, Pearl.’ She shrugs. ‘But what choice do we have?’
‘It�
�s obvious what we should do,’ says Hoshi. She’s staring out at the auditorium, almost thinking aloud. She turns to face us, smiling. ‘Let Pearl be Romeo.’
‘What?’ I burst out laughing.
‘I’m serious,’ she says. ‘You know all Romeo’s lines, you’re an amazing singer and dancer –’
‘But she’s a girl,’ says Mr Simms, speaking slowly. ‘I know we’ve already switched a few of the male roles to female roles, but Romeo is the lead. Romeo and Juliet is the story of a boy and girl falling in love!’
‘Why can’t it be the story of two girls falling in love?’ says Hoshi, looking at me. ‘I think Pearl would make a great Romeo.’
Ms Kapoor is deep in thought, her eyes flicking between us.
‘I suppose Shakespeare’s plays were originally played by all-male casts …’ says Mr Simms.
Suddenly, a big smile appears on Ms Kapoor’s face. ‘Hoshi’s right. Why can’t Romeo be a girl?’ She laughs and throws her arms around Hoshi, wrapping her up in an enormous hug. ‘You’re a genius!’
Mr Simms flicks through the script. ‘There’s very little we’d actually need to change. Just swap the “he’s” for “she’s” … even the rhymes will still work in the songs.’
‘Hang on,’ I say. ‘I haven’t said I’ll do it yet!’ I try to get my head round what Hoshi’s suggesting. ‘So I’d be a girl called Romeo who falls in love with a girl called Juliet?’
‘Exactly!’ says Hoshi.
I walk to the front of the stage and stare out at the auditorium, at the rows and rows of seats stretching to the back of the theatre, and I imagine this actually happening: me walking on to this stage and speaking Romeo’s lines, declaring my feelings for Juliet in front of hundreds of people. ‘But who’d be Tybalt?’ I ask.
‘Me,’ says Ms Kapoor. ‘I know all the lines, the fights … Plus the costume will fit me. But what do you think, Pearl? Do you think you can do it?’
I’m still gazing out into the auditorium. ‘I think I can …’ I say. But even as I start to believe this is something I can do, I’m filled with doubts. I turn round. ‘What will everyone say when I walk onstage as Romeo?’
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