July 1
TIN WHISTLES, SCRATTY NOISES, birdsong, and a stained-glass angel. The little church on the Isle of Grain, I remember now, lit by sun through the first crack of the day. Mam. The row. Stella and Vinny, waking up in each other’s arms. My throat goes tight. I s’pose if some man’s been inside you often enough, it’ll take a while to get rid of him. Love’s pure free joy when it works, but when it goes bad you pay for the good hours at loan-shark prices. 06:03, says my Timex. Sunday. Ed Brubeck: There he is, asleep on his cushiony things, mouth squashed open, hair floppy. His baseball cap sits on his neatly folded lumberjack shirt. I rub the sleep from my eyes. I was dreaming about Jacko and Miss Constantin holding open a curtain of air, and stone steps going up like in an Indiana Jones film …
Who cares? I lost Vinny. Stella stole Vinny.
Ed Brubeck snores like a bear. Brubeck wouldn’t two-time his girlfriend. If he has one. Most boys in my year drop hints ’bout losing their virginity at a mate’s party, specially boys who haven’t, stroking their bum-fluff moustaches … Ed Brubeck doesn’t do any of that, which means probably he has done it. If it was with someone at our school, I’d’ve heard. Dunno, though. He keeps his mouth shut.
Mind you, he told me quite a bit yesterday.
His dad, his family, everything. Why me?
Watch his sleeping, pointy, half-man-half-boy’s face.
And the answer’s obvious: ’Cause he fancies you, you prawn!
If he fancies me, why didn’t he make a pass at me?
He’s clever, I realize. First he makes you grateful.
Right. Of course. I do believe it’s time I was off.
DANDELIONS AND THISTLES grow along the cracked track and the hedges are taller than me. The early sun’s like laser beams. Dunno why I nicked Brubeck’s cap as I crept away, but I’m glad I did. He won’t mind, much. Should be able to cut across the fields to the main road to Rochester—six, seven miles away, I reckon. My blisters’ll take it. They’ll have to; I don’t have a first-aid box in my duffel bag. I feel a jab of hunger, but my stomach’ll just have to put up and shut up—I’ll find something to eat at Rochester. Perhaps I should’ve said bye and thanks to Brubeck but if he’d have answered, “No worries, Sykes, but are you sure I can’t give you a backie back to Gravesend?” all cheerful-like, I’d’ve found it too hard to say no.
Up ahead, I see the track ending at a farmyard.
I climb a gate and skirt round a field of cabbages.
Another gate. A hawk thing’s a speck in the sky.
Six days should do it. The police only get interested in missing teenagers once a week’s up. Six days’ll show Mam I can look after myself in the big bad world. I’ll be in a stronger, whatchercallit?, a stronger negotiating position. And I’ll do it on my own, without a Brubeck to get all boyfriendish on me. I’ll have to be careful to make my money last. Remember that time I tried my hand at shoplifting?
One Saturday last year a bunch of us went to Chatham Roller Disco for Ali Jessop’s birthday, but it was so lame that me and Stella and Amanda Kidd sneaked off to the high street. Amanda Kidd said, “Who wants to go fishing, then?” I didn’t want to but Stella said okay, so I acted all cool too and we went into Debenhams. I’d never nicked anything in my life and really I almost peed myself, but I watched Stella. She asked the shop assistant something pointless and a bit later, accidentally on purpose, dropped two lipsticks from the cosmetics stand. When she bent down to pick them up she put one of them in her boot. I did the same with some earrings I liked, and on my way out of the shop, I even asked the assistant what time they were open till. Once we were safe outside, the world felt different, like the rules had been changed. If you keep your nerve, you get what you want. Amanda Kidd had got a pair of sunglasses worth a tenner, Stella had some Estée Lauder lippy, and my fake diamond earrings sparkled like real ones. Next we went to the Sweet Factory, where me and Amanda Kidd stuffed sweets into our clothes while Stella told the Saturday boy she’d seen him here every week for ages, and even dreamt about him, and would he like to go for a walk with her somewhere private after work? Last we went to Woolworths. Stella and me drifted away to look at the Top 40 singles, innocent enough, but the next minute the manager and an assistant were walling us in, and this store-detective guy had Amanda Kidd—shaking and white as a sheet—by the arm and saying, “These are the two she came into the shop with.” The manager ordered us upstairs to his office. All my willpower and attitude withered away, but Stella snapped back, “By whom am I being addressed?” Her voice came out posh and sharp.
The manager said, “Just come quietly, sweetheart,” and tried to put his hand on her shoulder.
Stella slapped it away and snapped at full volume, “Keep your grubby paws off me, you horrid little man! I neither know why you’ve linked my sister and me with this … shoplifter,” she sneered at Amanda Kidd, who now shook and sobbed, “but you’ll tell us exactly why we’d steal any of the crap you sell in your ghastly little shop”—here she emptied her handbag onto the record counter—“and you’d better be right, Mr. Manager, or my father will serve you a writ first thing Monday. Make no mistake: I know my rights.” Lots of customers were rubbernecking our way and, miracle of miracles, the manager backed down, and muttered that perhaps the store detective was mistaken and we were free to go. Stella snapped, “I know I’m free to go!,” put her things back in her handbag, and out we huffed.
We sneaked back to the roller disco and didn’t tell anyone what’d happened. Amanda Kidd’s mum had to go and get her in the end. I was panicking she’d grass us off, but she didn’t dare. Amanda Kidd ate lunch with a different bunch of girls that week, and we’ve never really spoken since. She’s in the second-from-top class in our year now, so perhaps getting caught was good for her, sort of. The point is, unlike Stella, I’m not a natural thief, or a natural liar. That day in Woolworths, she even convinced me we were innocent. And look what a fool she made of me, when my turn came to be Amanda Kidd–ed. Doesn’t Stella need friends? Or for Stella, are friends just a way to get what you want?
ON MY LEFT’S a steep embankment, with a dual carriageway running along the top, and on my right a field’s been cleared for a massive housing estate by the look of it. There’s diggers and bulldozers and Portakabins and tall wire fences and notices saying HARD HATS MUST BE WORN, and over a sign saying UNAUTHORISED ENTRY IS FORBIDDEN someone’s sprayed AINT NO BLACK IN THE UNION JACK, plus a couple of swastikas for good measure. It’s still early: 07:40. Brubeck’ll be cycling home, but back at the pub Mam and Dad’ll still be in bed. Up ahead’s the entrance to an underpass going under the fast road above. When I’m about a hundred meters away, I see a boy there, and I stop, and this is really odd, but I could swear …
It’s Jacko. He just stands there, watching me. The real Jacko’s twenty-odd miles away, I know, drawing a maze or reading a chess book or doing something Jacko-ish, but the kid I’m looking at’s got the same floppy brown hair, shape, way of standing, even a red Liverpool FC top. I know Jacko and this is him or an identical twin nobody knows about. I keep walking, not daring to blink in case he vanishes. When I’m fifty meters away I wave, and the kid who can’t be my little brother waves. So I shout his name. He doesn’t shout back, but turns and walks down into the underpass. I don’t know what to make of it, but I jog along now, nervous that Jacko’s done a runner to come and find me, even though the sensible part of me is sure it can’t be him ’cause how’d Jacko know where to look?
I run as fast I can, now, knowing something strange is going on, but not knowing what. The underpass is for walkers and cyclists only so it’s quite narrow, and as long as the width of the four traffic lanes and the grass in the middle it goes under. Ahead, down and then up a bit, the far exit’s a square of fields, sky, and roofs. I’ve taken a few steps in before I notice it: Instead of getting darker towards the middle of the underpass, it’s actually getting lighter; instead of getting echoier, it’s getting more muffled. I tell myself, It’s just an illusion, don’t worry, but after a few more steps, I’m sure of it: The underpass is changing its shape. It’s wider and higher, with four corners, a big diamond-shaped room … It’s becoming somewhere else. It’s incredible and it’s terrifying. I know I’m awake but I know this can’t be real. I stop walking altogether; I’m scared of hitting the wall. Where is this? I’ve been nowhere like it. Is it a daymare? Is all that stuff waking up again? There are narrow windows to my left and right, about ten paces away. I’m not going to look through them—they’d be well past the underpass walls—but through the left window I see dunes, gray dunes, climbing up towards a high ridge, but through the right-hand window it’s darker: The dunes roll down towards a sea, but it’s a black sea, utterly black-black, like darkness in a box in a cave a mile underground. A long table’s appeared in the middle of the chamber, wherever we are, and I’m walking down on the left side of it, and look, there’s a woman, keeping pace with me, on the right. She’s young and beautiful in a cold way, like an actress who can’t be touched; she’s got white-blond hair and bone-pale skin, rich rose-red lips and a midnight-blue ball gown like a woman from a story …
Miss Constantin, from my armchair when I was seven years old. Why’s my mind doing this to me now? We head towards a picture hanging in a sharp corner, of a man like a saint from Bible times, but his face has no eyes. I’m inches away now. There’s a black spot on the saint’s forehead, a bit above where the eyebrows meet. It’s growing. The spot’s a dot. The dot’s an eye. Then I feel one on my own forehead, in the same place, but I’m not quite sure I’m still Holly Sykes, not exactly, though if I’m not me, who else could I be? From the spot between my eyes something comes out and hovers there. If I look straight at it, it goes, but if I look away a bit, it’s like a small, shimmery planet thing. Then another comes out, and another, and another. Four shimmerings. I taste green tea. Then it’s like bombs going off and Miss Constantin’s howling and her hands are talons, but she’s flung away, bowled down the table by whip-cracking blue light. The old saint’s mouth’s opened, full of animal teeth, and metal screams and stone groans. Figures and shadows appear like a shadow-puppet show in the mind of someone going mad. One older man springs onto the table. He has piranha-fish eyes, curly black locks, a busted nose, a black suit, and there’s a strange indigo light coming off him, like he’s radioactive. He helps Miss Constantin up, and she points a silver-tipped finger straight towards me. Black flames and a roaring loud as jet engines fill the place, and I can’t run and I can’t fight, and I can’t even see anymore so all I can do is stand there and listen to voices, like voices shouting as a building collapses on their owners, but I catch one clear voice saying, I’ll be here. Then there’s a new shaking, and a light brighter than suns is powering up and up and up until my eyeballs melt in their sockets …
… and gray comes in through the cracks, birdsong too, and the sound of a lorry passing overhead, and a sharp pain from a knocked ankle, and I’m crouching on the concrete ground of an underpass, just a few yards from the exit. A breeze that smells of car fumes washes over my face, and it’s over, my daymare, my vision, my whatever-it-was, is over. There’s no one to ask, Did you see that too? There’s just those three words, I’ll be here. I wobble out into the light, into the dry blue morning, still shaking with the gutted weirdness of it all, and sit on the grass bank. Perhaps daymares are like cancer, which goes away and comes back when you think you’re all clear. Perhaps whatever Dr. Marinus did to fix me is wearing off. Perhaps the stress of yesterday, of Mam and Vinny and everything, triggered some sort of relapse. I just dunno. There was no sign of Jacko, so I must’ve imagined seeing him, too. Good. I’m glad he’s safe at the Captain Marlow, twenty miles away, even though I’d love to see him, to know he’s okay, even though I know he’s fine and there’s nothing to worry about.
THE FIRST TIME I saw Jacko, he was in an incubator ’cause he was born too soon. That was in Gravesend General Hospital, too, though the maternity wing’s in a different building. Mam, who’d just had a C-section, looked tireder than I’d ever seen her, but happier, too, and told us to say hi to our new brother, Jack. Dad had been at the hospital all the previous day; he looked and smelt like he’d been sleeping in a car park for a week. Sharon, I remember, was most dischuffed at losing her cutest-thing-at-the-Captain-Marlow crown, specially to this monkey-shrimp in a nappy with tubes coming off of him. Brendan was fifteen and spooked by all the bawling, breast-feeding, sick and poo in the ward. I tapped on the glass and said, “Hi, Jacko, I’m your big sister,” and his fingers waggled, just a tiny, tiny bit, like he was waving. The God’s honest truth, that; nobody else saw but I felt a tickle in my heart and I felt willing and able to kill to protect him, if I had to. I still feel it, when some twat talks ’bout the “weirdo” or the “freak” or the “premature one.” People can be so crap. Why’s it okay to draw spaceships if you’re seven, but not okay to draw diabolical mazes? Who decides that spending money on Space Invaders is fine, but if you buy a calculator with loads of symbols you’re asking to be picked on? Why’s it okay to listen to the Top 40 on Radio 1 but not okay to listen to stations in other languages? Mam and Dad sometimes decide Jacko needs to read less and play footy more, and for a bit he’ll act more like a normal seven-year-old kid, but it’s only acting, and we all know it. Just now and then who he really is smiles out at me through the blacks of Jacko’s eyes, like someone watching you from a train zipping past. At those times, I almost want to wave, even though he’s just across the table, or we’re passing on the stairs.
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HALLUCINATIONS OR NOT, I can’t just sit on my arse all day. I need food and a plan. So off I walk, and after a roundabout, the fields stop and I’m back in the world of garden fences, billboards, and zebra crossings. The sky’s hazing over a bit and I’m thirsty again. I haven’t had a proper drink since me and Brubeck got some water from a tap in the church, and the rules say that you can’t knock on a door and ask for a glass of water in a town the way you can in the middle of nowhere. A park with a water fountain’d be perfect, or even a public toilet, but there’s no sign of either. I’d like to brush my teeth, too; they’re all scaly like the inside of kettles. I smell bacon from a window and stomach pangs wake up, and here comes a bus with GRAVESEND written on it. Hop aboard, I could be home in forty-five minutes …
Sure, but picture Mam’s face when she opens the side door. The bus wafts by, and on I trog under a railway bridge. Up ahead there’s a row of shops and a newsagent where I can buy a can of drink and a pack of biscuits. There’s a Christian bookshop, a knitting shop, a betting shop, a shop that just sells Airfix models and stuff, and a pet shop, with scabby hamsters in cages. Everything’s mostly closed and a bit sad. Okay, so I’m arriving in Rochester. Now what?
Here’s a phone box, strawberry red.
Strawberries. That’s an idea.
THE DIRECTORY ENQUIRIES woman finds Gabriel Harty and Black Elm Farm on the Isle of Sheppey, no bother, and asks if I want to be put straight through. I say yes, and a moment later the ringing tone rings. My watch says 08:57. Surely not too early for a farm, even on a Sunday. Nobody’s answering. I don’t know why I’m so nervous but I am. If it rings ten times and no one answers, I’ll hang up and assume this wasn’t meant to be.
On the ninth ring the phone’s picked up. “Ye-es?”
I ram in my ten pence. “Hi. Is that Black Elm Farm?”
“It was when last I looked, ye-es.” A rusty drawl.
“Are you Mr. Harty?”
“When I last looked I was, ye-es.”
“I’m phoning to ask if you’re hiring pickers.”
“Are we hiring pickers?” In the background a dog’s going mental and a woman yells, Boris, shut your cake-hole! “Ye-es.”
“A friend worked on your farm a couple of summers back, and if you’re hiring, I’d like to come and pick fruit for a bit. Please.”
“Done picking before, have you?”
“Not on an actual farm, but I’m used to hard work, and”—I think of my great-aunt Eilísh in Ireland—“I’ve helped my aunt with her vegetable garden, which is massive, so I’m used to getting my hands dirty.”
“So all us farmers have dirty hands, have we?”
“I just meant I’m not afraid of hard work, and I can start today, even.” There’s a pause. A very long pause. Very, very long. I’m worried I’ll have to put more money in. “Mr. Harty? Hello?”
“Ye-es. No picking on a Sunday. Not at Black Elm Farm. We let the fruit grow on a Sunday. We’ll start tomorrow at six sharp. There’s dorms for pickers, but we’re not the Ritz. No room service.”
Brilliant. “That’s fine. So … have I got a job?”
“Thirty-five pence a tray. Full punnets, no rotten fruit, or you’ll be picking the whole tray again. No stones, or you’re out.”
“That’s fine. Can I turn up this afternoon?”
“Ye-es. Do you have a name?”
I’m so relieved I blurt out, “Holly,” even as I realize giving a false name might be cleverer. There’s a poster by the railway bridge advertising Rothmans cigarettes so I say, “Holly Rothmans,” and regret it straightaway. Should have chosen something forgettable like Tracy Smith, but I’m stuck with it now.
“Holly Bossman, is it?”
“Holly Rothmans. Like the cigarettes.”
“Cigarettes, is it? I smoke a pipe, me.”
“How do I get to your farm?”
“Our pickers make their own way here. We’re no taxi service.”
“I know. That’s why I’m asking you directions.”
“It’s very simple.”
I bloody hope so, ’cause at this rate I’ll run out of coins. “Okay.”
“First you cross the bridge onto the Isle of Sheppey. Then you ask for Black Elm Farm.” With that, Gabriel Harty hangs up.
ROCHESTER CASTLE SITS by the Medway River like a giant model, and a big black lion guards the iron bridge. I pat its paw for good luck as I pass. The girders groan as trucks go over and my feet are aching, but I’m pretty pleased with myself; only twenty-four hours ago I was a weeping bruise, but I just passed my first-ever job interview and next week’s sorted, at least. Black Elm Farm’ll be a place to lie low and get some money together. I think of small bombs going off in Gravesend, one by one. Dad’ll go round to Vinny’s later, I reckon: “Oh, morning, I believe you’ve been sleeping with my underage daughter; I’m not leaving till I’ve spoken with her.” Ka-booom! Vinny’s ferrety face. Ka-boom! Dad’ll rush back to tell Mam I’m not there either. Ka-boom! Mam’ll start replaying that slap, over and over. Then she’ll march round to Vinny’s. Shit, meet Fan. Fan, this is Shit. Mam’ll leave Vinny splattered down the hallway and hurry to Brendan and Ruth’s to see if I’m there. Brendan’ll report I was on my way to Stella Yearwood’s yesterday morning, so he and Mam’ll stomp off there. Stella’ll be all, “No, Mrs. Sykes, she was never here, actually I was out, I’ve got no idea,” but she knows a heat-seeker missile’s heading her way. Monday comes and goes, and Tuesday, then on Wednesday school’ll phone ’cause I’m missing exams. Mr. Nixon’ll say to her, “So let me get this straight, Mrs. Sykes. Your daughter’s been missing since Saturday morning?” Mam’ll mumble ’bout a small disagreement. Dad’ll start wanting details, like what she said to me, and what she means by “a little slap.” How little? Ka-boom, ka-boom, ka-boom. She’ll lose it and and snap, “I already feckin’ told you, Dave!” and go upstairs to the kitchen, and as she’s looking out over the river, she’ll be thinking, She’s only fifteen, anything could’ve happened … Serve her bloody right.
Gulls kick up a racket on the river, below.
A police boat buzzes under the bridge. I walk on.
Up ahead, there’s a Texaco garage—it’s open.
“WHERE’S THE BEST place to hitch a ride to Sheppey from?” I ask the bloke at the till, after he’s handed me change and my two cans of Tizer, my Double Decker, and pack of Ritz biscuits. My ￡13.85 is down to ￡12.17.
“I never hitch,” he says, “but if I did, I’d try the A2 roundabout, the top of Chatham Hill.”
“How do I get to the top of Chatham Hill?”
But before he answers, a woman with raspberry-red hair comes in and the Texaco bloke just drinks her in.
I have to remind him I’m there. “ ’Scuse me? How do I get to the top of Chatham Hill?”
“Head left out of the forecourt, over the first set of traffic lights, past the Star Inn, and up the hill to the clock tower. Take the left turn to Chatham and follow your nose a bit further, past Saint Bart’s Hospital. Keep going till you get to an Austin Rover dealer and you’re at the Chatham roundabout. Stick your thumb out there, wait for a knight in a shining Jag to stop.” He deliberately said it all too quick for me to take in. “You might get lucky, or you might be waiting hours. You never know with hitching. Make sure you’re dropped at the turnoff to Sheerness—if you find yourself in Faversham, you’ve gone too far.” He readjusts his crotch and turns to the woman. “Now, what can I do for you, sweetheart?”
“Not calling me ‘sweetheart’ would be a good start.”
I don’t hide my laugh. The guy stares daggers at me.
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