by Rebecca Ward
‘Pierre?’ Bodi asks.
‘Do I look like bleedin’ Pierre to you?’ she snarls.
‘Is he here?’ Bodi tries again, already sensing the answer.
‘Gone. Long gone. If you see him, tell him I need rent money.’ She slams the door.
Bodi isn’t that surprised by the woman’s behaviour. Anyone asking questions to do with Populus can’t expect a friendly welcome. But she is out of options. She knocks on the door again. A few seconds later the same face appears.
‘Seriously?’ she glowers.
Bodi hears the chain slide back and the woman opens the door quickly, startling Bodi who steps back and trips over her own feet. She lands head first in the gutter, catching her head on the kerbstone. ‘Owwww.’ She howls. The pain is like nothing she has ever known.
Before she knows it the woman is beside her and Bodi holds up her hands to shield her head. ‘Please! I’ll go! Just leave me alone!’ she wails. But the woman just sits down next to her, pulling her up by her armpits to sit on the kerb with her. She uses the cuff of her jumper to wipe Bodi’s face which is smeared with mud and soggy leaves.
‘You’re in a bit of pickle,’ the woman says, much kinder now. ‘Don’t worry, nothing broken.’
Bodi bends double, her face crumpled with sadness. She can’t get the words out. Just the odd ‘Mum…gone…alone…’ in between heavy sobs. The woman simply sits there and nods reassuringly. There is no way she can understand what Bodi is saying with all her words caught in blubs, but she rubs Bodi’s back and tells her everything will be okay.
‘Pierre?’ she asks again. The woman shakes her head. Her face looking as sad as Bodi’s.
The growl of the Sick Boys’ van returning brings them back to reality. The woman runs back into the house with a quiet ‘Sorry’, and Bodi has no choice but to get up. Scuttling round the corner she finds a small park nestled behind the house. She hides under an old slide, resting her bruised cheek against the cold metal which goes some way to numbing the pain. The physical pain, at least. Curled up like a wounded animal, the reality of her situation hits Bodi hard. ‘What if no-one is home, anywhere?’ she wonders. ‘What if all I get is slammed doors, or no doors, and I am completely utterly alone. What am I going to do? How am I going to eat? Can I sleep here, under a slide?’ She almost laughs. Her situation is beyond absurd.
Bodi hugs her knees to her, trying to find some comfort. She feels the pressure of the locket against her collarbone. ‘There are two other addresses on Mum’s list. Two other possibilities, not none. It’s not over yet.’ She talks herself into keeping moving. She feels an overwhelming pressure to slump down on a bench and give in to defeat. But inside her is a force, a drive that her mum has instilled in her. She will not give in. Bodi stands up and faces her future head on.
✽✽✽
Bodi wakes up to a cup of hot tea in Sam’s library, next to the bug-infested kitchen and the miniature Amazon Jungle. She sniffs the tea first, just to make sure, but it smells normal enough. She takes a sip. It is sweet and though she doesn’t take sugar it is just what she needed. A small reassurance that she isn’t in a complete hell on earth. There is also a bunched up tea towel next to her, slowly dripping. She prods it and realises it is full of ice and she holds it tentatively to her throbbing eye. She bites into some cold toast but it makes her whole face ache.
She can hear Sam’s voice booming way off in the house somewhere, who knows who to and what about. Parakeets flap and squawk outside and she tries to piece together the last few hours. Keeping her bag with her, she sets off to find a bathroom and finds a tiny one under the stairs, also stacked floor to ceiling with old paperbacks and magazines. She ducks into it and looks into the tiny mirror tacked on the wall. She splashes cold water on her face and takes another look, running her fingers through her hair and re-tying her plaits. The purple of her black eye is spreading down her cheek like sea fog.
‘What am I going to do now in this house of strangers?’ she wonders. She has to find her mum soon or within days she will be lost in the system and they will be separated forever. She checks a clock in the hall which means, if it is right, it is around nine o’clock at night.
Bodi hears strains of a song she recognises coming from upstairs and follows the music, singing along without thinking. Her childhood had been full of music and it soothes her to hear the rustling crackle of the grooves and small scratches under a worn needle. She comes to a half-open door on the first landing and stands still for a while just listening. There is no other sound coming from the room but the lilting reggae. She pushes the door open and sees that it is Reed’s room. He is sat on his bed reading.
Inside the walls are covered in images of Populus, floor to ceiling: newspaper cuttings, articles torn from magazines, snapshots, images recovered from old reels of film. There are posters showing newspaper headlines in huge letters, taken from seller’s booths, blaring “London under attack” and banners from marches stapled to the ceiling. Not one patch of wallpaper or paint shows, like inhabiting a graphic trauma. Bodi stands wide-eyed not really understanding what she’s seeing.
‘I know this song,’ she says, making him jump.
Reed looks up at her from under his curtain of hair.
‘Can I come in?’ she asks apprehensively.
‘I guess you can,’ Reed doesn’t seem altogether convinced this is the best idea. She starts to leave the room. ‘Sorry, sorry’ he says. ‘Of course, yes, come in…I’m not that used to visitors, that’s all.’ He gestures for her to come in.
Bodi smiles at him, glad of common ground. ‘You and me both. You’ve moved around a lot too I suppose. Hard isn’t it?’ she says, still making small talk while wondering what she is surrounded by.
Reed nods and looks down, his rings knocking together on clumsy fingers. Bodi takes in the barrage of text and images surrounding her.
‘All this is about Populus? All of it? Hey, you’re like their biggest fan!’ She tries not to sound too sarcastic. And fails.
‘It’s not what it seems,’ he says defensively and gets up from his bed to try to leave, gesturing that she should follow him, but something familiar by the window catches her eye. She pushes past him, brushing his arm with her shoulder, and bends down to stare at a newspaper clipping. The newspaper has been torn roughly but Bodi can make out a woman clinging to the reins one of the horses at the front of the statue of Boudicca. She holds a huge striped flag aloft, her eyes to the sky, she is shouting euphorically. What the black and white image doesn’t show you is the flaming red of the woman’s hair blazing behind her. Bodi turns, looking at Reed close up for the first time, confused.
‘Is that my mum?’ she asks. Reed stands up to his full height, he brushes his fringe to one side and looks straight at her with his dark brown eyes. She is taken back by how intense his stare is.
‘Yes, that’s Ruby. You haven’t seen that before?’ he is amazed. ‘It’s just that’s well, you know, the iconic picture, of Populus. Did she never tell you about it? Or about any of what happened? It was a pivotal day.’
Bodi turns back to the picture, searching for answers.
‘I was just there today,’ is all she can manage to say.
Sam interrupts them with a theatrical cough. ‘They seemed to know you were coming. The guys at Populus.’ Bodi wonders how long he has been standing there. He leads them both downstairs and walks through to the kitchen.
‘So the meeting will happen first thing tomorrow.’ He says. ‘I suggest we eat this delectable feast and then hit the hay.’ He gestures towards the bowls of rice, green beans and soy sauce on the table. Noticing she still has hold of her backpack, Sam smiles and said ‘You can put that down Boudicca, we won’t nick it.’ She puts it by her feet but sticks her foot through one of the straps just in case.
‘We should probably find you somewhere else to stay. I’m not sure it’s right that you bunk in here with us two fellas, no matter how handsome we are!’ Bodi catches Reed giving his uncle
a mortified look. Sam shrugs it off. ‘Well, first things first. We’ll see how the meeting goes and what the next moves are and sort the whole ‘where I lay my hat’ thing out tomorrow. Dig in.’
Sam is trying his best to keep Bodi’s spirits up but he is fighting a losing battle.
‘My mum, in that picture. Were you there too?’ Bodi asks.
Sam seems reluctant to discuss this with her.
‘We really love Ruby, girl. We’re going to do all we can to get her back for you,’ he says.
‘I don’t mean to be rude, but that’s not what I asked,’ Bodi says stubbornly.
Warily, he responds, while chewing on a bean. ‘Yes, I was there. It was a very special day. It was quite near the beginning of the cause, an earlier, happier time. We were all so high on possibility.’ He sighs. ‘We really thought we could change the world. It was just a peaceful protest at first and Ruby was caught up in the energy of it all. I don’t think she ever thought for one minute that it would make her the poster girl for the campaign. It caused no end of problems that picture and it really was just youthful exuberance. Her parents wouldn’t see her you see, after that. And Populus, well, they wanted to exploit her potential for their own ends.’
‘Typical!’ Reed interjects, fuming. Sam shushes him. Bodi realises she has misjudged Reed. He isn’t Populus’ fan boy after all.
‘It was different then Reed, we were carefree and idealistic. Just young I guess. Young and in love with the idea of a new utopia. And now here we are, all in hiding, or dead. Not much of a utopia is it?’ Sam says sourly.
‘Do you think they’re hurting her? Torturing her?’ Bodi asks timidly. ‘Do you think…do you think she could be dead?!’ Bodi finally articulates her biggest fear. The one she has done her best to suppress since the Sick Boys had taken Ruby away. She feels nauseous and angry and weirdly static, all at the same time. Sam looks at the table, shrugs a little and shakes his head. Reed looks at her wide-eyed and she glimpses his own pain. ‘What had happened to him?’ she wonders.
They eat little. Bodi knows not to ask anything more. She knows from her mum that when Populus comes up it is best not to ask everything at once. They eat in silence then Reed shows Bodi to a tiny room where he has made up a bed for her.
‘Tomorrow then?’ he says gently.
‘Tomorrow,’ she replies in a whisper.
Ruby felt her mobile buzz in her pocket and knew it was time to leave. She dumped the spray can in her bag, her latest masterpiece would have to wait. She hated leaving anything half-finished but she had already been grounded that month and she couldn't face being holed up in that creepy house again. She stood back to take in her progress.
‘Aren't you going to tag it?' a voice said behind her. She jumped out of her skin. This wasn’t part of the plan. She was normally good at getting in and out without anyone spotting her. She turned to see a guy around her age, tall, slim, his baseball cap on backwards skimming his black fringe to frame his face. He smiled at her as she blushed and waved a can at her in solidarity. She could relax. She was in good company.
‘Gotta go,’ she said and went to pick up her bag. He ignored her and handed her his can. She shrugged and then deftly tagged the corner.
‘Devil Child? Hm, interesting.’ He rubbed his chin like a pseud in an art gallery. She added two horns to the ‘D’. ‘Nice touch’ he said, grinning. She handed him the can back with a small bow.
She thrust her hand forward, ever geeky when she should be cool, and quickly withdrew it. Manners maketh the man and all that but it wasn’t very ‘street’. The boy laughed. He put out his fist for her to bump, which she obliged hesitantly knowing she would get it wrong.
‘Calder,’ he said.
‘Ruby,’ she replied, looking everywhere but into his incredible green eyes.
He turned to go. ‘See you in hell, Devil Child,’ he said over his shoulder. She watched him lumber away, his legs were crazy long and he had a carefree gait. All in all it made for a seriously pleasurable sight.
Ruby grabbed her bag and ran down the street. She would have to hop on the last tube if she was going to make it home before her mum got back from whatever work event she had that night. She popped into a corner shop on the way and picked up a bag of crisps and a bag of sour sweets. ‘Dinner of champions!’ she thought. She eyed the cigarettes behind the counter but she had been trying to quit so sugar would have to be her one indulgence.
The sugar high kicked in just as she got to the escalators and she raced down them ignoring the ‘please take care’ signs everywhere. The world had gone health and safety mad. The doors were shutting on her tube but she bundled in just in time, giving a huge groan which the other passengers on the train acknowledged with a communal tut. Not only because she was holding up the train but because she was so obviously a ‘youth’ of the time. Disrespectful, dressed like a gang member, obviously a yob.
She flopped into a seat and put her bag on her knee. Something was sticking out of the outside pocket. She pulled it out. A card with a giant P on it and an email address. How had Calder managed that trick?
A calling card. Very old school. She twiddled it with her fingers, itching to get home and get on her laptop. No way was she going to let that one walk away again.
TUESDAY
Bodi sleeps fitfully, fighting a barrage of nightmares, and wakes early to the sound of Sam’s bone-rattling snores. On her way to the kitchen she creeps past Reed’s room. Listening at the door she hears nothing. ‘Is he as quiet asleep as when he is awake?’ she wonders. ‘Amazing he can sleep in there, considering the insanity lining the walls.’ Tiptoeing quietly from one cold kitchen tile to the next, she pours herself some water from a bottle in the fridge. The world is asleep, the birds are singing a tender morning chorus and the sun is just coming up in a cloud-free sky. Under other circumstances she would think it quite a blissful way to see in a new day.
She sits at the table staring out of the window, her feet pulled under her on a rickety kitchen chair. Any sense of calm is annihilated by anxiety. Thoughts ping round her head like angry ballbearings in a pinball machine. About being here, where her mum is now, about meeting Populus, about time escaping her before she can rectify things. Her insides feel like a rope being twisted by giant hands.
She takes in the room, free of its household. Other than the obligatory stack of washing up and a crowd of glass bottles, there is nothing very masculine about the room. Saggy festoon blinds hang above the window and sun-mottled wisteria climbs the wallpaper. Some books have escaped the library but only as far one wall and the others hold pots and pans, crooked picture frames and even some ceramic bowls of long past-it pot pouri. Bodi wonders if Sam had inherited this feminine decor with the house or if a woman had tried to make her mark on Sam’s life. Questions for another day. She looks at the clock. Two hours till the meeting, she had better get ready to meet this ‘true family’ of her mum’s.
A half-awake Reed clambers through the alley and then walks Bodi to the meeting. Sam thinks it is safer if he takes another route, so has left before them and hopped on a bus. If they are caught with him then it could be difficult to extricate themselves from the situation. Bodi agrees to the plan though thinks it a little futile as they are all going to be in the same room in a matter of minutes. Still, she wants to humour Sam. She is warming to him as he has been nothing but kind to her since she arrived. Neither Sam nor Reed will tell her where they are going. Sam had insisted over breakfast that it is very much ‘need to know’ so now Bodi is tagging along with Reed, like any other couple of teenagers. Her guard is still up, niggled that she keeps finding herself in situations where she isn’t in control.
Reed’s stature grows as soon as he leaves the house. He walks with purpose and is considerably taller than she thought. His skin is the lightest brown and his black hair has a small patch of white at the back. His hands grasp the ends of his jumper in fistfuls, not in a shy way, but more like he is ready to run at any second. On edge, he is
aware of everything and everyone around him. Along the journey Reed steps around her to ensure he is always the one walking on the outside of the pavement, nearest the traffic. ‘Must be something he learned from his uncle,’ Bodi thinks, intrigued by old-fashioned habits in a person of her age. She finds it a bit bewildering, if very sweet.
Bodi is fizzing with anxiety but wants to talk to keep her mind off things. ‘Start small,’ she thinks.
‘How long have you lived with Sam?’ she asks Reed casually.
‘About three years. My dad was really ill with pneumonia and with all the moving around and not enough money, we couldn’t get him treated properly. He died.’ He says it very matter of fact.
Bodi stalls slightly but Reed keeps moving. He is really pounding the pavement and she is struggling to keep up. She hadn’t thought through what a can of worms a question like that could be. She realises that if she was asked something similar right about now, small talk is probably the last thing that would come out of her mouth. She tries to catch his eye, to convey her sympathy, but his eyes look anywhere but at her.
‘He was only in his forties,’ he adds, again very bluntly.
‘How awful for you. And your Mum?’ Bodi asks, thinking: ‘If you’re opening the can you might as well go the whole way.’
‘She’s always been gone, well pretty much. She found Populus too much. But she also had to leave when all non-nationals got kicked out. Mum and Dad weren’t married so she had to go back to Japan. It’s been hard keeping in touch,’ Reed fidgets with his jumper. ‘To be honest I don’t remember her that well but dad always told me I looked a lot like her, particularly when I frown. Quite weird that, looking like someone you don’t really know.’ His sadness about this absence can’t be masked by bravado. His brow furrows that distinctive frown and he can’t contain a sigh.
It is obviously quite a normal state for him in contrast to Bodi’s naturally, often irritating, perkiness. She tries purposefully to look more sombre, wondering if her life in hiding has made her less empathetic. But feeling empathy can mean opening the gates to your own titanic emotions and she has learned it is shrewder to keep those gates firmly locked.