by Amanda Coe
‘Let go of me, you gyppo!’
Pauline knew she was much stronger than Gemma. She hung on till Gemma realized she was getting a Chinese burn from twisting so much.
‘I just want to talk to yer!’
‘What about?’
Gemma had stopped thrashing, but Pauline was now unsure what she wanted. ‘Just talking.’
Of course she wanted to tell her about her mam, of course she did, but if she told her, it would happen again.
‘Just wanted to, thought we could walk around or summat.’
Gemma told her that she had to go to the shop, but allowed Pauline to come, on the understanding that she’d wait outside, like a dog. But when she came out with two bottles of milk, she’d bought them both a chew with the change. She’d got brown from her holiday. As Gemma was unwrapping her chew, Pauline smeared her finger along the top of her bare arm, half wondering if the new colour would come off, like paint. Gemma flinched away theatrically, as though Pauline had hurt her.
‘What you doing?’
Heading back, Gemma warned her that she wasn’t allowed to come near the house or she’d get done, but she said she’d come back after she’d dropped off the milk, so Pauline hovered by the alley, watching her go in. The chew shocked a bad bit on one of Pauline’s teeth, and she switched it to the other side of her mouth. She was hungry, she realized. Being back at school would be worth it for the dinners.
The chew was just a splinter of sweetness by the time Gemma came out again. Pauline had started to wonder if Gemma had been stringing her along by saying she was coming back out, but finally there she was, carrying a cardigan her mum had made her bring out, she explained, and her library ticket so that she could go to the library and come straight back.
‘What’s that doing there?’
Waiting, Pauline had considered the ‘For Sale’ sign. Gemma stalked away, convulsed in exasperation. ‘Some sort of mistake or something, I don’t know. They came yesterday and put it up.’
‘Are you moving away then?’
‘I don’t know, do I? We don’t even live there, not really.’
‘Where do you live then?’
‘Shut up!’
They really did go to the library, to begin with, because Gemma said otherwise her mum would know, and she’d get done. Pauline had never been inside it before. She’d always assumed the red-brick Edwardian building was some kind of church, another category of building closed to her. Inside, Pauline breathed in the respectable stink and closed her eyes while Gemma scanned the shelves. She prayed for her mam. She was actually praying for her to come back, something she’d never allowed herself to do while Joanne was still alive. The trick of the prayer was pretending that Joanne was still just in Leeds, and that prayer magic was being called on only to summon her quicker. That night, Pauline would get home, and there she’d be, drinks and food laid on, a trip to the launderette, calling her gyppo like Gemma did, charging the place with her danger.
You couldn’t spend much time with your eyes closed, which was why Pauline hadn’t been sleeping at night since it happened. The worst was when she saw a picture, more real than a dream, more like a film come to life there in her bedroom, but you knew if you touched it it would be solid: it was Joanne, but Joanne melded with the bag in the picture the police had shown them, flayed, boneless and terrible with blood. The blood was dark, like the stain she’d seen on the bag, but liquid and pouring. Even there in the library, her nodding at a table, it lurked. She snapped her head back. Gemma loomed, holding a couple of books, their dull covers loosely wrapped in protective plastic.
‘Come on then.’
She was so wholesomely like herself, Gemma, socks pulled up, books one on top of the other, fringe exact. Pauline had started to think that if you put your finger out you might poke a hole in people or tear them, but not Gemma, standing there with her cardigan folded over her forearm, her hair bobbles aligned. There was always a smell about her, clean, from her clothes. Suddenly, Pauline wanted to hit her with a hammer. She followed her out of the library.
They walked on to the Town Fields. Gemma was asking her about meeting Lallie when they’d done the filming at the school, and Pauline was telling her all sorts, because the thing she remembered most was the drama of her own hair and what they’d done to it. Lallie or whatever she was called had come in near the end, after they’d already been in a class with an empty desk, where they had to look serious because she’d been killed in the story. After that they were having to be noisy and stuff with Lallie at the desk, nicking a pencil from the nig-nog’s table. She looked older than them, even in the same uniform (Pauline had been given a newish one for the day and had managed to walk off in it at the end without anyone stopping her). Lallie hadn’t bothered talking to them really, but Pauline invented a conversation which expanded to fit the many questions Gemma was then driven to ask about it, starting with what Lallie had been wearing (‘School uniform’ – ‘Did you see what she was wearing before?’ ‘Erm, yeah, sort of jeans and that’ – ‘Not dungarees?’ – ‘What’s them?’ – ‘You know, with a bib and braces’ – ‘Oh aye, them, with like flowers on’ – ‘What colour?’ – ‘Purple’) and progressing to her invitation to Pauline to go on holiday with her to America (‘She never!’ – ‘She did and all, they’ve got a swimming pool and she was supposed to be taking a friend but she got really poorly so she couldn’t come so she said I could come instead.’).
That was when Gemma noticed the cameras and the people down in the bowl of the field and got all excited. She asked a lady who was stood at the top ridge if Lallie was around, and she seemed to know what she was talking about, although Pauline caught her out on saying she had lessons during the holidays.
There was no stopping Gemma then. She started to go on about how Pauline might be able to get Lallie to invite her on holiday as well, if they managed to find her. Or Gemma could talk to her mum and dad and they’d arrange to be on holiday at the same place, even though they’d just got back from Spain, because Ian was an accountant and was rich. It was a relief to Pauline when they saw Lallie smoking and Gemma went mental about it, even though she barrelled down to the middle of the field to see properly and goggle at the outrageous sight. They got stopped before they could get too close, headed off by a mardy-looking bloke in a T-shirt.
‘We’re busy here, girls, if you don’t mind not interrupting.’
He hadn’t been around the school the day Pauline had joined in the filming, but he sounded like a southerner, like all the rest of them. Beyond him, the back of Lallie’s head blew an insolent, perfect smoke-ring as she laughed with another couple of blokes in T-shirts. One of them, one of the shirts that is, looked familiar to Pauline. She remembered then, its block of striped green and white, like a spearmint chew, seeing it as she ran towards town the day she’d bought her mam the guitar charm, thinking she’d get in trouble for disturbing the filming. The stripes had flashed out at her, along with his white bum poking out of his slackened trousers and the motion of the girl’s little hand on his cock, through the trees as she ran.
‘I saw her with him before, wanking him off.’
She could see Gemma, scandalized by the smoking, didn’t have a clue what she meant. Pauline pumped her hand.
‘Down his kecks.’
Gemma stared as what’s-her-name toed her cigarette end into the grass. Pauline thought Gemma was going to cry. Her face had that disintegrating look, and she’d turned a bit red.
‘Liar.’
‘I did! Down Hexthorpe Flats. They was in the trees.’
Gemma set her mouth. ‘D’you think her mum knows she’s smoking?’
Why did that matter? Pauline shoved her. ‘I’m not lying!’
‘You’re a liar, you!’
Unusually, Gemma pushed her back, taking her by surprise. And then they were grabbing at each other, hitting, clawing, tumbled to the ground. Pauline was stronger, but Gemma was heavier and using her advantage. Pauline knew she was bo
und to win, because unlike Gemma she didn’t care if she got hit. But Gemma wasn’t hitting, she scratched, which hurt in a different way.
‘You lie! You’re that mucky, you! Say you lie!’
‘I’m not lying, you fat cow!’
The shock of being clawed in the face made Pauline lose her grip, allowing Gemma to roll partly on top of her, pinning her down. She squirmed astride her, legs near her neck.
‘Say you’re lying.’
‘I saw it!’
All Gemma’s weight was on her chest, making it hard to breathe. She tried to snake out from beneath her, but Gemma just bore down harder. And now she gouged her nails into Pauline’s cheeks, threatening.
‘Say it.’
‘It’s true, I saw it, you can ask her.’
Gemma dug her nails in, but Pauline was determined now. She could kill her if she liked, she didn’t care. Truly. So it was weird that the tears were coming to her eyes and spilling, that her chest was trying to force them out despite Gemma pressing down on her.
‘I can’t breathe.’
‘Just say you’re a liar.’
Pauline sobbed. ‘I’m not.’
Gemma roared, and scratched. Pauline screamed, thrashed a leg enough to knock Gemma off balance for a moment and writhed free. When she held her cheek, blood came off on her hand.
‘You’ve hurt me, you fucking cow!’
Gemma looked shocked by what she’d done.
‘I’m bleeding!’
Gemma offered her something from her dress pocket, as though that was going to help. It was a folded pad of white cloth, yellow-edged. At one corner there was a matching yellow flower embroidered on it, with a sky-blue middle.
‘What the fuck’s that?’
Gemma shook it out so Pauline could see it was a handkerchief, offered for the bleeding. She took it and clamped it to her stinging cheek, spotting the white with her uncopious blood. There was only one deepish scratch where the nails had pierced her skin. Holding the handkerchief so close to her face suffused her with Gemma’s washing-powder smell. The material had creases in it from where someone had ironed it. Her mum, of course. Pauline balled up the cloth and chucked it back at Gemma. She picked the hanky up from the grass as Pauline wiped her full nose on her arm.
‘I’ve got nearly a pound,’ Gemma cajoled. It wasn’t what Pauline was expecting. ‘We can get lollies. Or chips.’
Pauline was so hungry that even the word, chips, had salt and vinegar on it.
‘Aren’t you going to talk to her?’
But what’s-her-name, Lallie, had gone off to the bus parked up at the ridge on the main road. The people and their camera had moved up as well, where they seemed to be concentrating on the lady with the headscarf they’d asked about Lallie in the first place. So the lady wasn’t a real person at all. The surprise of this suited Pauline. Maybe most people weren’t real, just pretending to be. It helped when you knew that, that they might be ghosts, like you. Unless that meant the people you only had a chance of meeting as ghosts, like Joanne, were less likely to be ghosts themselves.
She and Gemma ambled to the road, almost friends.
‘I’ll get done,’ Gemma said. ‘I was supposed to come straight back, me mum’ll be really worried about me.’
And then she looked down at herself. She saw the grass juice staining her knees and hem, which led to her discovering a tear under the sleeve of her bright dress.
‘Oh, God,’ she said, and this time she wasn’t playing. ‘She’ll kill me.’ Pauline could see she meant it. She was terrified. She definitely couldn’t go home.
FRANK DIDN’T TAKE a holiday, as a rule. In his opinion, holidays were overrated, unless you could afford to stay somewhere in the lap of luxury, which was beyond his means. The crotch of luxury, as Lol called it. Fortunately he did quite well with invitations to the country, weekend jollies which made a nice change, although there was still so much talking to do to earn his keep, and after a week of yapping, what Frank craved was peace and quiet, emphasis on the quiet. Sometimes he thought that was why he and Lol rubbed along so well, because God knows it hadn’t been for the sex since nineteen ought dumpty. Lol knew when to be quiet. If he didn’t actually soothe, he certainly didn’t agitate.
The one concession Frank made during the August exodus was to work the odd day from home, since Veronica insisted on her two weeks, and he couldn’t get on with breaking in temps, except for typing letters. Inducting an eighteen-year-old into the arcana of which clients to put through to him and under what circumstances, let alone in a fortnight, was plain impossible. So Frank resigned himself to the modest difficulties of a stretch of doing his own phone work, which was lighter in any case because most people were away. And on the days he was at home, he knew that only the chosen few had the number to the hotline in the study.
Which is how Katrina got him, on an afternoon when he was putting his house in order, appraising the contents of his sock drawer. He didn’t even hear the phone. As usual, it was the boys – as Lol said, Jack Russells were traditionally agents’ dogs, bred to alert you to the phone ringing even through walls. They trotted in to find him, then both accompanied him, weaving eagerly through his short stride, to the study.
‘Have you spoken to her?’
It was left to Frank to work out who was on the line. Quite a few of his clients did this, as though the unique umbilical connection meant it could be only one person. But Katrina had been phoning a lot recently, so he had no difficulty.
‘We’ve left messages,’ he soothed. ‘The Yanks say they don’t know anything about it, and the Italian lot don’t seem to know where she’s got to.’
‘Never mind that, she’s supposed to be coming to the party. What about the plane fares?’
Frank put the unpaired socks he was holding down on the arm of a desk chair. He never sat during calls, but paced, as far as the telephone cord would allow, which was almost as far along the corridor as the bedroom, the boys running shotgun all the while. Lol was out, and he was their best chance for a doubleyew ay ell kay. These bloody plane fares. Katrina really didn’t seem to care any more about the kid’s screen test, or the film, so long as she got the money back, which you might reasonably say was holiday money, which the family could in any case well afford from what he happened to know Lallie had earned last year, however much they claimed it was all salted away for her until she was eighteen.
‘I’ll talk to the studio direct, my love, go over the producer’s head. She’s not really the producer anyway, it’s the way they are over there, all chiefs and no ruddy Indians.’
It might be worth a try. He knew that girl had been off-kilter when she’d rung him to ask which team Hugh played for. Although evading her financial responsibilities was pure producer. Professional enough really, if a bit on the cheap side for a studio boss. At the stretched limit of the cord, Frank and the boys began the route back to the study. ‘But while I’ve got you …’
He had been sent a script which was top of the pending pile there on his desk. LWT were punting a comedy, what the Yanks called a sit-com, Lallie as a kid living with her dad and vetting his new girlfriend, who was a zany girl-about-town, working title ‘Me Himself and Her’. The title you could take or leave, but it was a cute premise. He pitched it to Katrina, along with the fact that it had come from Dennis Morel, who practically had a clause in his contract obliging you to put ‘best in the business’ after his name whenever it was mentioned. Frank also touched on the possibility that Richard O’Sullivan might play the dad, which was more a notion of his than a possibility. But that’s how he, Frank Denny, made things happen.
‘What about the specials?’ was Katrina’s first, suspicious response. But he could tell he’d got her attention.
‘This is additional to the specials,’ Frank reassured her. That, at least, went down well.
‘How many episodes?’
There was talk of six, to begin with – of course they’d have to get the scripts ready, but from th
e look of the pilot it wouldn’t take them long. It wasn’t his cup of tea, but then left to his own devices the only thing he’d willingly watch on TV was Crossroads, if he was back in time before supper. And according to Lol that might as well have been radio, since his eyes closed as soon as the theme music started up.
Frank flicked the pages of the script against his thumb.
‘We’ll get you a copy.’
It would be decent money, on top of the whack for the specials, and taking it all into consideration, nobody would lose out on Lallie not going to the States. Of course that would have been silly money to begin with, but if he was honest Frank knew she was never going to have the profile over there, even if the film was a smash. Here, even his ten per cent of her personal appearances and panto was something to write home about. And the thing about telly was it went on and on; another couple of seasons and she’d be a national treasure. As long as they could get her through the terrible teens, who needed a pension? It was as plain as the nose on your face. Which reminded him. He’d had a nasty jolt the other day, glancing through a consignment of cuttings. He’d only met Lallie’s dad once, back when she did the audition at Tyne Tees, but seeing a shot of him with Lallie and Katrina taken months before at some charity beano, Frank had stopped short. Lallie’s facial future was there, bar some five o’clock shadow (please God), and the future had a massive conk.
It would be money well spent, sorting that out now, and not the shock it might be if they let things get out of hand. Of course Cilla had been very upfront about her nose job, and everyone had loved her for it. It might play differently in a pre-teen though.
When he said this, Katrina, as he had hoped, wasn’t offended in the least.
‘I’ve always worried she’d end up with our Graham’s nose,’ she confided. ‘It’s bad enough on him like, but can you imagine on a girl?’
As far as she was concerned, the sooner they could do something about it, the better. The thought seemed to lift Katrina as much as the prospect of the comedy show, and finally prised her away from her preoccupation with the thwarted journey to America. Mission very much accomplished.