‘I’ll find out what your secret is,’ I say under my breath. ‘I’ll find out what you’re hiding. Then you can say goodbye to being the Golden Boy, for ever.’
‘Did you hear the news?’ asks Mum as I shovel cold egg into my mouth. ‘Mr Harper’s been arrested. They think he might be the one. The Battersea Park Killer.’ She shudders. ‘I can’t believe he can have done those terrible things to those poor girls. And to think I used to say hello to him too.’
‘Oh, Mum,’ I say. ‘Didn’t you ever notice there was something not quite right about him? It was so obvious. I’ve always seen the evil in him.’
Mum snorts. ‘Think you’re so bloody clever sometimes, don’t you, my lady? Perhaps you should join the police force and tell them all how to do their jobs, hey?’
‘No need to be like that!’ I snap at her. ‘I’m only telling the truth.’
‘Well, your truth isn’t necessarily the truth, is it? Just remember that, Violet.’
I don’t know what she’s talking about. The truth is the truth, no matter what. Two girls are dead and Mr Harper killed them. You can’t get more truthful than that.
It’s nearly seven o’clock. Mum, Dad and Joseph are downstairs in the chip shop and I’m staring at my reflection in Mum’s dressing-table mirror. I look ridiculous. Even I can see that. I look like a five-year-old dressed up in her mother’s clothes. Actually, I look like a sixteen-year-old dressed up in her mother’s clothes. The lipstick I’ve put on is too bright, the mascara is already smudged, and my hair looks like someone set fire to it and put the flames out with a bucket of chip oil. Jackie’s going to be calling for me soon. I can’t let her see me like this. She’ll run a mile and never come back.
I run into the bathroom and scrub my face clean with the flannel. Then I tug a comb through my hair and tuck it behind my ears and the arms of my glasses. There’s not much I can do with my clothes, apart from taking them off, and I can’t go to a dance in my underwear. I run back to my room to fetch my shoes and that’s when I see it. My leather jacket. Still hanging on the outside of my wardrobe, gleaming at me invitingly.
I don’t give myself time to think. I pull off Mum’s skirt and throw it on the floor, then I pull on my old denim jeans instead. I slip the leather jacket on over my blouse and run back to Mum’s room. I take a deep breath and carefully paint on a fresh slick of eyeliner and a brush of mascara. I remember the girls on Chelsea Bridge and I keep a picture of them in my head as I use a handful of Mum’s bobby pins to secure my hair behind my ears. Next, I backcomb the rest of it and tease it into a giant quiff. Then, before I lose my nerve, I spray nearly a whole can of Mum’s lacquer over the whole lot. I squint into the mirror. I can’t tell whether I look good or bad, but by now I don’t care. I look like the girls on Chelsea Bridge and I feel like the real Violet, and for now that’s all that matters.
I shout through to the shop that I’m off and Mum shouts back, telling me to go nowhere near the park, to not speak to any strange fellas and to make sure I stay with Jackie at all times. ‘I’ll be all right, Mum!’ I yell back. ‘Don’t worry. Mr Harper’s banged up now, and I can look after myself.’
‘Violet!’ Jackie gasps when she sees me. ‘What the hell have you done to yourself? It’s a dance we’re going to, you know.’
‘It’s what I want to wear,’ I say. ‘I feel comfortable in it.’
Jackie shrieks with laughter. ‘It’s not about feeling comfortable!’ she says. ‘Do you think I’m comfortable in this get-up? My feet are bloody killing me!’ She looks amazing. She’s all tight skirt, tight jumper and heels. Her hair is stacked high on her head and there are huge gold hoops dangling from her ears. She looks me up and down again and smirks. ‘Oh, well,’ she says. ‘Suit yourself. It’s your funeral.’
The Sugar Girls are waiting for us outside the Roxy. They squeal with delight when they see us approaching. They totter up and kiss Jackie. ‘Oh, you look lovely! New skirt? Cool earrings!’
‘Remember Violet?’ Jackie asks them. They nod at me. ‘Yeah. Hi.’
‘Didn’t know she was a Rocker,’ says the blonde one. Mary, I think.
‘Neither did I,’ says Jackie. She wrinkles her nose.
‘I am actually here,’ I mutter. But already, they’ve all linked arms and I follow behind as we join the queue into the hall. We’re not even in there yet and I’m having second thoughts. I look around at all the other people in the queue. Tight knots of bottle-blonde girls mixed with groups of fellas dressed in shiny suits with tight trousers and pointy-toed boots. Dad would call them a bunch of Nancy-boys if he was here. I stuff my hands into my pockets and try to stay as close to Jackie as I can. As we shuffle further towards the entrance, the music from inside grows louder and louder. Everyone around me starts to jig around as though they’re already on the dance floor.
‘Ooh, I love this one,’ shouts Pauline. I remember her mean blackbird eyes. They’re even meaner tonight. They’re lined in thick black kohl and are startling next to her pale pancake make-up.
Then suddenly we’re inside, the music is deafening and the floor is shaking. It’s hot and smoky and there are bodies everywhere. Girls and fellas are writhing, hopping and jerking. I follow Jackie as she pushes her way into the thickest part of the crowd just as the band on stage strike up another tune.
‘Come on, everybody!’ shouts the singer. It’s like a secret signal passes through the crowd and all of a sudden everyone is moving in the same way. They’re twisting their hips from side to side as they lower themselves to the floor and back up again.
Everybody’s twisting again, like they did last summer, apparently. The singer on stage belts out the lyrics. I stand there, frozen to the spot, like an idiot. I don’t know what to do. Jackie hits me on the arm. ‘Like this, Violet,’ she yells. ‘Pretend you’re stubbing out a fag with your toes and drying your back with a towel at the same time!’
I try to do as she says, but my arms and legs don’t belong to me. They won’t do what everybody else’s arms and legs are doing. It feels all wrong. The Sugar Girls start sniggering. I know they’re laughing at me. The song goes on for ever. Some fellas have inched their way towards us. They’re dancing opposite Jackie and the other girls and they’re grinning madly at each other, as though all this twisting around is the best thing in the world.
Come on, Violet, I tell myself. This is meant to be fun. I stretch my mouth into a crazy smile, I twist my hips around and shake myself from side to side until I almost believe I’ve got it right. I’m going round and round and up and down, just as the singer’s telling me to. I begin to understand what it’s all about and I’m actually enjoying myself and thinking it’s going to be a good night after all.
When the tune finishes, I’m as breathless as everyone else and I tag along to the bar with Jackie and the others and stand in line for a glass of lemonade. The fella that Jackie has been dancing with has got his arm around her waist and keeps whispering in her ear.
I tug Jackie’s arm. ‘You going to introduce me?’ I ask.
She can barely tear her eyes away from him. ‘Oh yeah,’ she says. She clears her throat and tries to pull a serious face. ‘Colin, this is Violet,’ she bursts into giggles.
Colin smiles at me apologetically, but I can see behind his eyes that he’s laughing at me too.
‘What’s so funny?’ I challenge Jackie.
‘Oh, chill out, Violet,’ she says. ‘You’re supposed to be enjoying yourself.’ She turns back to Colin and they start laughing again at some private joke, except it’s not that private, because I know it’s me they’re laughing at. I sip my lemonade. It’s warm and flat, and suddenly that’s how I feel too. My blouse feels damp under my armpits and the tiny bubbles of fizz I felt on the dance floor have all burst. I’m a joke. A big, fat joke, and I don’t belong here.
I look around the hall at all the heaving bodies. Am I the only one here who doesn’t get it? The only one who doesn’t think it’s fun to gyrate around a dance floor lik
e a demented puppet? I lean against the wall. I wish I could melt into it and disappear. I wish I was back on Parliament Hill with Beau, or on Chelsea Bridge sipping a cup of hot coffee with all the other Rockers. Even being at the shop would be better than this. At least there would be the hope that Beau might turn up.
My bladder pricks. The lemonade’s gone right through me. Great. Now I’m going to have to pee. The sign for the Ladies is high on the wall on the other side of the hall. I turn to Jackie to let her know where I’m going, but she’s gone. Not just moved from where she was, but proper gone. Now my eyes prick. I blink hard. I can’t cry here. I need to pee and I need to cry, and it’s urgent. I can’t bring myself to push through the mass of wriggling hips, so I walk around the edge of the dance floor with my bladder bouncing to the rhythm of the band’s ‘bomp bah bomps’ and ‘rama lama ding dongs’.
It’s chilly inside the Ladies and it smells of stale pee, hair lacquer and disinfectant. The damp patches under my armpits turn cold and scratch at my skin. But at least with the door closed, the ‘rama lama ding dongs’ are just faint memories. There’s no one else here; all the cubicles are empty. I choose the cleanest one and pee quickly, before anyone else comes in. I press hard on my eyelids to stop myself from howling. Then I let a few silent tears slip down my face before I wipe them away with the back of my hand. I feel like a five-year-old again, all alone in the school playground without a single friend.
Someone else comes into the Ladies. I sit quietly and let them go about their business. I don’t want to go out and wash my hands with some blonde dolly-bird watching me and judging me. The taps turn on and off, there’s a moment’s silence and I imagine the girl leaning towards the mirror retouching her lipstick and checking her hair. Then her heels clatter away, back out of the door, there’s a blast of music, then silence, and I’m alone again. I’m about to open the cubicle door when I have a genius idea. Why don’t I just stay here? Nobody’ll know how long I’ve been in here for, and Jackie won’t even notice I’m gone. I can sit here and wait it out until it’s time to go home. Better this than the torture of the dance floor.
I button up my jeans, pull the flush then settle myself down on the closed toilet lid.
It’s okay for the first ten minutes. There’s stuff to read on the walls.
Here I sit, broken hearted, spent a penny and only farted
Jenny Loves Paul X
Hitler kaputt
Go home Mother. You’re drunk.
Elsie Tanner looks like a spanner.
Johnny Brown wears girls’ pants
I wonder who Johnny Brown is and if he really wears girls’ pants. If I had a pen with me, I’d write some messages of my own. A poem, perhaps? There’s one that I read a long time ago that could have been written about me.
Down in a green and shady bed, a modest violet grew
Its stalk was bent, it hung its head, as if to hide from view.
More voices from outside. ‘Lend me your lippy, Sandra.’
‘Oh, it’s freezing in here. Come on, hurry up and have your pee.’
‘You bloody hurry up.’
‘Hey, there’s no paper in here. Pass us some under the door, will you?’
As they leave, others come in. And then more. One lot after another. They’re queuing for the cubicles and I’m just waiting for the awful moment when one of them bangs on the door to ask what I’m doing.
Someone lights up. ‘Hey, Jackie, give us a drag.’
‘Bout time you bought your own, isn’t it? Always poncing off me, you are.’
‘Come on. Hand it over. You know you love me really. Ugh … you’ve got lippy all over the end.’
I freeze. They’re in here. Jackie and the Sugar Girls. My stomach rolls. They won’t know I’m in here, will they? They can’t see through doors.
‘Where’s your little friend, anyway? Haven’t seen her for a while.’
‘Dunno,’ says Jackie. ‘Probably practising her dance moves somewhere.’ They giggle spitefully.
‘Why did you even bring her?’
Jackie huffs out a big sigh. ‘Felt sorry for her, I suppose. She’s always on her own. Hasn’t got any friends. I only know her cos we went to school together.’
‘Not surprised she hasn’t got any friends. Bit of a strange one, isn’t she? And what the bloody hell is she wearing?’
‘Don’t worry,’ says Jackie. ‘I won’t be asking her again. Your reputation is safe! But you know me and my kind heart. Puppy dogs and kittens and all that. Thought it might cheer her up, coming out. She’s got this brother, you see. Killed in the war. Or so they thought. He’s only just bloody well come back!’
‘No!’
‘Yup. And turns out he’s a deserter. Been hiding out in France all these years. So me nan says anyway …’
‘Bloody hell …’
Their voices drift away. The music blasts. The door bangs. Silence again. I uncurl my fists. The palms of my hands sting where my nails have dug into the skin, and my throat aches.
Jackie has finally broken our friendship and there’s a shard of glass sticking right into the middle of my heart. I always knew it would hurt. But I never knew it would hurt this much. It hurts so much, I think I might die.
But I don’t want to die in a toilet cubicle. I want to die at home, lying in bed with The Country Girls resting on my chest, open at a page near the end; at the bit where Kate is all alone again after being betrayed by the man she thinks she loves.
Maybe they could read some quotes from the book at my funeral.
I open the cubicle door. There’s a cigarette butt on the floor, kissed by a stain of red lipstick. Jackie’s lipstick. I crush it under my foot and kick it away under the sinks.
When I step outside the Roxy, the first thing I see is a group of fellas all crowded round their motorcycles. It’s so cold that it’s hard to tell if the clouds of smoke hovering above their heads are made of cigarette smoke or warm breath. My heart starts banging, bomp bah bomp bah bomp. There are five of them. Five fellas in leather jackets. And I’m sure the one at the back is Beau. I recognise the shape of him and the way he tosses his hair to keep his quiff out of his eyes. He looks this way, and suddenly the worst night ever has turned into the best night ever. It’s like I wished him here and he heard me and he came to my rescue. I start to hurry towards him when someone calls my name.
‘Hey! Violet! What are you doing out here?’ Jackie comes tottering up to me, with Colin following at her heels. ‘Wondered where you’d got to. You coming back in?’
I stare at her for a minute. The edge of one of her false eyelashes has peeled away. It looks like a spider with half its legs pulled off. Her lipstick is smudged around her mouth and her jumper has come untucked from her skirt. Colin looks like a dog who’s been thrown the Sunday roast bone.
‘Didn’t think you cared if I was here or not,’ I say. ‘And anyway, looks like you’ve been pretty busy. Your nan thinks you’re such a good girl too.’
‘Don’t be a bitch, Violet,’ she says. ‘It doesn’t suit you. Now, you coming in or what?’ A bike across the road roars to life and Jackie glances over, a strange look flitting across her face. She turns back to me and opens her mouth to speak. Then she frowns and looks down at my jacket, then back across the road again. She gasps. ‘Violet! You haven’t been hanging around with them, have you? Is that what the jacket thing is all about?’ She starts to giggle. ‘Colin,’ she says. ‘What do you reckon? Violet thinks she’s a little Rocker!’
The hot cauldron of rage that’s been bubbling around in my stomach suddenly explodes into Jackie’s shocked face. ‘Just shut up,’ I yell. ‘Just shut up!’
‘What the hell’s wrong with you?’ she says, backing into Colin.
‘I’m going home,’ I say. ‘I’ve had enough of all this and I’ve had enough of you and I’m bloody going home!’
‘But you can’t!’ she says. ‘You can’t leave me to walk home on my own.’
‘I’m sure Colin will
sort you out,’ I say. ‘Or one of your little sugar factory friends.’
‘Don’t be stupid, Violet. Come on. Come back inside and we’ll sort this out.’
‘But that’s just it, isn’t it?’ I say. ‘I am stupid. Stupid little Violet! Stupid boring Violet. Stupid Violet in her stupid clothes who can’t dance to save her life!’
Jackie’s mouth drops open.
‘Go back inside,’ I say. ‘Go back to your friends. You’re a fake, Jackie, just like your eyelashes. You’re not the person you used to be and I don’t want to know you any more. I don’t want to see you any more. So, just go away!’ I rip the chain off from around my neck and throw it, and the silver V, to the floor, then I turn to leave.
‘Violet?’ she pleads.
‘Just piss off!’ I yell, over my shoulder.
‘Suit your bloody self then,’ she shouts back. ‘Come on, Colin.’ Her heels tap angrily on the ground as they leave.
‘Who is she, anyway?’ Colin asks her. And I almost laugh out loud. It’s a good question. Who am I, anyway?
The bike across the road is still roaring. I can feel it in the pit of my stomach, growling and shaking my insides up; mixing all my feelings together until I’m not sure if I’m angry, sad, scared or excited. But it doesn’t really matter any more, because my feet are taking me towards Beau. He’s seen me and he’s waving me over and I can’t get there quick enough.
‘Hey,’ he says. ‘What were you doing in that place? Didn’t think that sort of thing was your scene.’
‘It’s not,’ I say.
He laughs. ‘Came to find you earlier,’ he says. ‘At the chippie. But you weren’t there.’
‘Night off,’ I say. The thought that he actually went to the chippie to find me makes me want to explode with happiness.
He grins. ‘Nice jacket.’ He pats his motorcycle. ‘Fancy a spin, then?’
I grin back at him. ‘Why not?’ I say.
I wrap my arms around his waist and press my face against his back as we speed through the streets. I don’t care that the cold wind bites into my skin and finds its way under my jeans to freeze my bones. It’s good to feel numb. I know that for as long as Beau keeps the bike’s engine alive and roaring, all I have to think about is now. All I have to do is watch the pavements and the street lights and the night sky flash by. And nothing else matters.
V for Violet Page 12