by Luke Palmer
‘Josh. Why didn’t you stop?’ It’s Dana. She sounds out of breath.
‘Sorry, I didn’t hear you.’ I look over her shoulder, up and down the street. I’m flushing with nervousness again.
She seems to know why I’m uncomfortable, ‘Don’t worry. Carl’s nowhere near here. He’s got a job this afternoon out of town.’
I relax, but only slightly.
‘Can I walk home with you? Just had an hour with Amber.’
‘What for?’
‘Told Mrs Beasley to shove her ingredients up her arse in Cookery. And Amber never misses a chance to tell me about how crap I’m doing. “Your choices have consequences, you know.” I could do with someone who makes me laugh. What were you in for?’
‘Biology. Walters.’
She looks slightly startled. ‘Aren’t you, like, really clever though?’
I shrug my shoulders.
Dana smiles. ‘Don’t worry. I won’t tell.’ Her smile fades quickly. ‘Was Alan in there with you?’
‘Yeah. And a few others.’
For a second, a cloud crosses her face. But then she loops her arm through mine and starts to march me up the road, past the park. I’m going even further in the wrong direction.
We walk on up the hill for a few minutes in silence, the sound of construction machinery getting louder as we approach the edge of town and the new estate.
‘I’m sorry about Friday. Carl can be horrible sometimes. But he’s alright really.’
My cheek goes warm. I’m not sure what to say. So I say just that. ‘I don’t know what to say.’
‘He shouldn’t have hit you.’
‘Yeah, well.’
‘He just gets jealous. It’s because he loves me, he says.’ Dana was starting to smile again, and there was more of a spring in her step.
I’m stuck for words again. I can’t really remember the me that she was laughing with just under a week ago.
‘Can you imagine that, Josh? Loving someone so much that you want to hurt other people for them? He says that he’d kill people if they threatened me. Could you kill someone?’
She stops walking. I almost fall over.
‘Oh my god – I’m so sorry. I didn’t…’
‘What? Oh. Don’t worry. It’s fine.’
‘No, but, with your … dad. And everything. I’m … I shouldn’t…’ She trails off.
We start walking again, her arm through mine, along the road that borders the park. The noises from children playing are drifting on the evening air. In a few minutes, it will be starting to get dark. Dana keeps looking across at me, as if I’ve got something on my face – besides the bruise, of course.
‘Does it hurt?’
‘No, it’s fine now.’
‘He really caught you proper, didn’t he?’
‘Can we talk about something else, please?’
We walk in silence for a few minutes. She’s still looking across at me every ten paces or so.
‘If all you’re going to do is admire your boyfriend’s handywork, I think I’d rather—’
‘It’s not that.’
‘What then?’
‘I’m trying to work you out. It’s what I do. I’m good at working people out.’
‘Really?’
I can’t help but think about her poor choice in boyfriends.
‘I’m wondering if you really mean it or not?’
‘Mean what?’
‘That everything’s OK?’
I know I’m starting to blush. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Don’t take this the wrong way, right?’ She places her other hand on my chest as she says this, ‘but your dad died, what, two years ago now?’
I breathe in hard against my tightening ribs.
‘And you seem, around school, to act like it’s all OK. All the teachers think you’re brilliant, apparently, but you don’t talk to anyone. Ever. I get that. I understand it as a coping strategy, I really do, but…’
‘But what?’ If I don’t say something at this point I’ll pass out. Speak. Breathe.
‘No, I get it. When my dad left I didn’t talk to anyone for months. But you’re still here, Josh. In the world. Friday night, you were really funny. Talking about all the stuff you used to do together, what he used to say. What was it you were saying about ‘listen for the moment just before the song starts’? ‘Try to hear the moment of expectation’! That’s it! Had me in stitches about four songs in a row! You remember that? We were listening so hard for it, and every time, ‘nothing’. Remember?’ Dana’s impression of my voice, saying those words, is like pins in my gut. ‘And you were so good at looking angry when the song started again. Remember you made that girl – Molly, was it? – start the same song about three times in a row. You were so funny! Don’t you remember that?’
I don’t remember. Not a single word or note. I’d been talking about Dad. At the party. And laughing. A wave of nausea hits me like a wall. It’s like Saturday morning all over again.
Dana continues, ‘I wondered whether that was the real you and this,’ she indicates me with a general sweep of her arm, ‘this is some kind of show? A sort of performance?’
When I speak, it’s louder than I mean it to be. ‘So your dad was killed too, was he? Blown up? Is that what you’re saying? That you coped with it and I should act more like you?’
‘No! No no no! My dad’s not dead, for one thing. Mum thinks he might as well be, but he isn’t. What I meant was … you were so happy talking about him I was almost convinced that … I’m not explaining myself very well, am I? Hey, let me show you something.’
She grabs my hand and starts off again at a rapid pace. We walk – almost running – to the end of the road, then turn along the front of the building site, then onto the main road where she stops in front of a hedge. One nettle dangles across the path like some kind of arrow.
‘In here,’ she says, and pulls me through the undergrowth. As we stumble through the greenery, I begin to feel oddly light, being led back to this place. How would she know?
Seconds later, we emerge from under the hedge, through the old wooden door which someone has put back in its place, and into the walled, square patch of garden.
We stand for a few moments, Dana still holding on to my hand, breathing heavily, looking at me.
‘What do you think?’
SIXTEEN
We’re sitting on the grass, Dana’s knees are tucked under her skirt and she’s running her hands along the long, thin leaves of the bush with purple flowers on. A few are beginning to turn black. We’ve been talking for a while now.
‘I’ve been coming here for years. It used to be my grandad’s land, all this. Remember that old cottage that used to be here, by the main road, before they started building?’
They’d bulldozed the land so long before the building work had started that I can’t remember clearly, but there’s a hazy image in my mind. ‘With the yellow walls? Had a strange kind of pattern on the roof?’
‘Yeah, that’s it. That was my great grandad’s house, apparently. He used to be the gardener for some big manor that’s long gone, and they let him have that cottage to live in. Until they condemned it.’
‘And no one else knows about it? About this?’
‘My dad does. But he hasn’t come here for years. Not since he went away. But I think he might have come back the other week. Or over the weekend maybe.’
A few yellow and blue birds flit up and land on the wall, behind which the sky is growing darker, more delicate.
Dana continues, ‘I came here after school on Monday and the door had been kicked in. The lock was all broken, so I’ve fixed it. Took me ages. But at least now I know that I’ve got the only way in.’ She holds up a key. I hadn’t noticed her unlocking the door.
Dana mistakes my guilty look for one of disbelief, ‘What? So because I’m not good in school I can’t fix a lock?’
‘No, it’s not that, it’s just—’
‘Just that I’
m not clever enough to join your little gang because I don’t get on with books?’ As I watch, a wall goes up behind her eyes, not as big but just as old and solid as the ones around the garden. Her garden.
‘Not at all. I’d have no idea how to fix a lock. And I don’t really have a little gang.’
‘I had to do the door first, bought some wood filler and replaced the bits that had been broken off.’ She hands me the key. ‘Go and have a look, if you don’t believe me.’ She says it like it’s a challenge.
‘Alright.’ I get up and go to look at the lock I’d broken. There is a hard, yellow substance where the wood used to be, rounded slightly at the edges and fitted snugly into the old wood. If not for the difference in colour, it would look like part of the door. I tap it with my fingernail. Rock solid. In the space that Dana has cut out somehow, the new lock nestles perfectly, half the mechanism buried in the wood with a gleaming, gold-coloured block that slides out from the side of the door when I turn the key. The action is smooth and satisfying somehow. A few years ago, when there had been a number of reported thefts from sheds in the area, we’d had our old shed lock replaced by a professional. It hadn’t been as good a job as this.
‘What tools did you use?’ I ask.
Dana grins. If it was a challenge, she knows she’s won. ‘I’ve stolen a bunch from school over the years. I’ve pretty much got a full set now, though I have to haul them around in a plastic bag, which keeps ripping. I haven’t got around to nicking a tool box yet.’
‘Or making one,’ I offer. ‘You’re really good.’
‘Maybe.’ The wall in Dana’s eyes is coming down again. ‘I just want this place to be private, you know? Special. Like this.’ She walks back to the big bush with the thin leaves and purple flowers. ‘This is a buddleia.’
‘A bud-what?’
‘A buddleia. Butterflies love them. It’s nearly finished for the year now – there’s only a few flowers left because autumn’s been so warm. Most of them have turned black, look. But you should have seen it over the summer. You couldn’t see them for butterflies.’
As if to illustrate her point, a large, black-winged butterfly with red and white tips lands on the bush above her head, stays there for a bit, then flies off again and over the wall. We watch it go.
‘And this moss. It’s sphagnum.’ She almost runs to the wall which I’d ripped handfuls off of only last week.
‘Ss-fag…’ Languages have never been my strength.
‘It’s an astringent. You should know that word, Biology kid. They used it for putting on soldiers’ wounds in the war.’
I remember again the warm, numb feeling that had replaced the pain in my leg.
‘And in the spring, you wait, there’s a whole bunch of crocuses that’ll shoot up in the middle of the grass all over the place, pink, white and purple, with little yellow tongues in middle. They’re waiting, underground, for the cold to pass. Then they’ll pop up. Boing!’ She jumps over to me.
I watch Dana go from place to place around the small, square plot, pointing at places in the ground where things will rise, or where they used to be. She shows me where birds nest in the higher branches of the buddleia and on the tops of the walls. She finishes the tour at another large bush. It has dense glossy leaves and small red stems are pushing out of the ends of the green ones. I’m not sure, but Dana seems to stiffen slightly as she pulls back a few leaves and sticks her head into the gap.
‘Look in here.’
It takes a few seconds to get used to the gloom. It’s getting dark anyway, and inside the bush there’s not much light to see by. But I can just make out the outline of a circle, about a metre across. It’s made of bricks – crumbling now. A little, circular wall about a foot high.
‘That’s a well,’ Dana says. ‘My dad reckoned it might link up to all the caves that run under this hill – you know, the old mines?’
I nod. The leaves rustle.
‘He tried to send me down there once, my dad. Tied a rope around my waist when I was about seven, six maybe, and starts lowering me down, telling me to be brave. I was screaming so loud he pulled me out, said I’d bring the social services round. That was just before he left.’
We stand a few moments longer, our heads in the bush, staring at the bricked circle that swims and twitches in the fading twilight.
‘I should go,’ I say eventually.
‘Yeah, home to get to. Mum worrying about you. I get it.’
‘Something like that,’ I reply.
‘Listen, before you go…’ The wall comes back behind Dana’s eyes, bigger than before, harder, as if she’s building something that will never be knocked down. ‘If you tell anyone about this place, or about me showing it to you, I’ll tell Carl you were with me, OK? That you hurt me. And he loves me. You get it? He. Loves. Me.’
As I leave, Dana is still standing in the middle of the grass, the key clenched tightly in her fist.
SEVENTEEN
I have to pick films carefully with Mum. Anything too dangerous or adventurous and she won’t watch it, and will get angry if she knows I’m watching it on my own. And anything where people die is also risky, particularly if they’re the henchmen of some evil villain, and not really people, just things that the hero has to clear out of his way as they stop him doing his job of heroing. That’s why I watch so many films in my room. Films, online videos, stuff that Mum needs protecting from.
This evening, I’ve chosen a comedy. It’s about a couple of policemen who are partnered together when they shouldn’t be, and they have to bust a drugs ring. There’s a couple of car chases early on, so it’s pretty close to her tolerance levels. I’m not surprised when she gets up and goes to bed half an hour in.
So I do too.
In my room, I turn on my laptop and carry on watching the film. It’s not very good, but I don’t feel like sleeping.
An email alert pops up in the bottom corner of my screen. It’s from my school account, which I haven’t used in years. There was a big IT initiative when I started at school, and we were all told to sync our mailboxes at home. But after the first year, it all kind of fell away. It was a bit useful when teachers were emailing me work after Dad died, I suppose. Though I ignored most of them.
The sender’s address is one I don’t recognise – a list of letters and numbers. It looks like spam, but then I see the email subject. That video you liked.
I open it, and there’s a link to a private website with a bunch of videos. The first one is the one that Alan showed me this afternoon. In a mid-film daze, I watch again as the grey, hooded head of Dana’s boyfriend chases down the turbaned head of a stranger, and I listen again to the muffled sounds of his crying. The video ends this time with a close up of Carl’s face, turning to look straight into the camera a few seconds after the group have all run down the street. Well, it’s his mouth at least. The top half of his face is part covered by his hood, and the rest is in shadow. If you didn’t know who it was, it’d be impossible to tell. But his jaw seems rigid with anger. It’s as if it’s in his bones. I feel I should turn it off, now, delete the email and go to sleep. But I can also see something like satisfaction in his half-smile, his gritted-teeth, angry grin.
I’ve been looking at it for a few minutes when Mum knocks on my half-open door. I jump a little, the headphones slipping from my ears.
‘How’d it finish?’
‘What?’
‘The film, love. How did it finish? Any good?’
‘No.’ I breathe a little easier. ‘Not really. As you’d expect, I guess.’
‘It is what it is,’ Mum says, pulling the door closed. ‘Good night.’
EIGHTEEN
The next day, Jamie catches me after English and asks if I want to come and watch the old team play tomorrow morning. It’s a home game, district cup, first round. I say that I might.
Eating lunch in the canteen, I sit in one of the window seats. There’s a big bench that goes all the way around the edge of the dining ha
ll, so you can sit right against the glass and look out. It’s another one of those bright, clear, cold days. Autumn is well and truly here, so we had to do the inevitable lesson on poetry this morning with Mrs Burgoyne. I thought she’d forgotten this year, and I wouldn’t mind if it wasn’t the same poem every time, about mists and fruit getting ripe and vines and stuff. This time though, I found myself thinking of Dana’s garden, and that butterfly, and the circle of bricks under the bush.
She’d asked me, at the end of the poem, what I thought of it.
I stumbled at first, then came up with ‘It’s like something’s coming.’ I’d continued, noting the confusion on her face. ‘Something’s on the way,’ I’d said, trying not to sound too loud or too sure of myself. Trying to give her the response that I think she wanted, but with my thoughts in it too. ‘Even if what’s on the way – winter – is bad, it’s still good to have something to look forward to.’
She’d said that it was a very interesting interpretation.
As I eat, I’m suddenly aware of someone behind me. I wait for them to move on, but they don’t. I turn around to see Vince, looming like a tree. He leans in quickly, and stamps. I flinch. He seems happy with my reaction and stalks off.