What They Do in the Dark

IT’S ALL PAULINE’S idea. I can’t go home because I’ll get done. If there’s one thing that sends Mum mental, it’s me not looking after my clothes. Getting them dirty’s bad enough, and the dress is certainly dirty, but there’s the big hole I’ve torn under the arm as well because of Pauline. I can’t even blame Pauline either, because Mum’ll go even more mental if I say I’ve been playing with her. I feel sick just thinking about it. Ever since she’s been with Ian, Mum’s temper has been scarier. It’s always been scary, but now you can tell she likes staying angry, and it’s usually with me. And Ian always joins in as well, not angry but sad, because as far as he’s concerned I should be looking after my mother since she’s precious and I only get the one. The second time he said that to me, I nearly said that that might not be true as I seemed to have ended up with two dads, but Mum was in the room, and it would have been a guaranteed slap to the back of the legs. At least. Pointing out that the proper arrangement was her looking after me would also have earned me a slap, but that was true too. Ian’s mad on Mum being looked after, as though she’s fragile, like the sad clown with balloons at Nana’s I’m not allowed to get down from the mantelpiece. Maybe Mum seems like that to him because she’s so much thinner than his good lady. For saying that I’d probably have been killed.

But now I’m going to get done, properly done. Not just for the dress, but for staying out so long without permission. It’s later than teatime already, hours past it. On top of that, probably when Pauline and I were rolling around fighting on the Town Fields, I’ve managed to lose my library ticket. I can’t begin to imagine what lies in store: thinking about it, I reach the door and Mum’s face, and my imagination faints. The later it gets, the more trouble I know I’m in. I want tomorrow to come, and for it all to be over, but it gets harder to think of going back with every minute that runs out of the day. I want to run away, but I don’t know where to. I know after the last time that Dad won’t let me run away to him but, just in case, we go down our old road to the house, and I make Pauline wait by the gate while I try ringing the bell. There’s no one there. It’s too late now for Dad still to be at work. He always comes straight home, usually for his tea and his wash and shave and telly. The bell rings on, into emptiness. It’s no good. There’s no one to help me.

‘I thought you said we’d get chips.’

Pauline and I walk round and round, and sit and eat chips and walk again, and nothing we think of makes it any better, until she suggests the launderette.

That’s what comes first. Why don’t we go in there and wash my dress, Pauline says, and I can recognize that’s a good idea. Some of the shops have closed, but the launderette stays open late, I’ve seen it from the bus on winter nights. But when we get there of course the 12p I’ve got left isn’t enough; to wash and dry the dress will take 30p. Pauline suggests we just wash it, which is 20p, and then I tell Mum I was walking underneath a window-cleaner’s ladder while he was emptying his bucket to explain why it’s wet. I know this isn’t going to work, and besides, we’re short even for the wash. Pauline doesn’t care. While I watch, terrified, she unclasps the purse left on one of the orange chairs by a lady who is distracted by wrestling her sopping sheets into the drier. It’s the same lady we’ve asked about the prices, which makes it worse, but Pauline palms the silver like she’s been given permission. A 10p and two fives – enough for the drier as well. She’d take more if she could, I can see, but I’m frowning furious disapproval, although I don’t dare say anything, because the lady will hear, and we’ll get caught, and I’ll be in as much trouble as Pauline. We might even go to prison. I feel hot inside and out, with the desert air from the driers blowing over my skin and the sickly heat of my own fear deep within. It’s clear to me that Pauline will do anything bad, and that I’ll let her.

Next, we have to ask the woman we’ve stolen the money from for powder, because we can’t afford any. Pauline does this because she isn’t as shy as me, although I smile a lot, pleadingly. The lady gives us the powder, although she doesn’t return the smiles. Her unfriendliness makes me feel better about taking the money. We put the dress in the machine and wait, and I don’t even care that I’m sitting in the launderette in just my pants and vest for all the world to see. Well, not as much as everything else that’s bad about the day and the general run of days up to now. In the chair next to me, Pauline seems to be dozing, in that weird way she has. For the first time since we saw her on the Town Fields, I think of Lallie. I feel very far away from her. I don’t think ever in her life she’s had to sit in a launderette in her vest and pants, unless for some funny skit with Marmaduke that turned into a big song-and-dance routine. I don’t want to think about what Pauline has said Lallie does, what we fought about. I put it in the same place I put Mum’s angry face, and Ian and the suncream, and Dad’s absence, a sci-fi blank, like a pit someone gets thrown in through a door in Doctor Who. ‘For Sale’ is in there too, now. I prefer to think instead of my version of what Lallie’s doing now, a life on the set of the TV show, without parents, but looked after. The trick, like squinting with one eye and then the other so your focus hops between them, is to see her in my life, sleeping in a version of my bed, eating versions of my meals, wearing the clothes I’d prefer to be wearing, me, but better: me as Lallie. Telling myself about this usually comforts me, but now I can’t get it to stick, and I’m left sweating in my underwear, staring at Pauline. She has grey grooves under her sliding eyes, and grease from the chips we ate earlier slicks her chin. Her head jerks back brutally every time she falls asleep, so that her hair shakes and releases its sour smell, but it doesn’t stop her nodding back off. I don’t want her to go to sleep and leave me on my own. I prod her awake.

‘Mam,’ she says, her eyes still roaming. Then she realizes who I am and kicks me sharply on the side of my leg. I kick her back, just to show her. She’s already crying, though; she started in her half-sleep.

‘What are you crying for?’ I ask her.

She tells me to eff-word off, although real tears clump her eyelashes. There’s no point in insisting. And anyway, I’m now thinking that my dress will still have the tear in it, leading, with my lateness – later than ever now – to my still getting done. I point this out to her. Pauline thinks, one knee up, contorting her hand to chew the fleshy bit at the bottom of her palm. Or I think she’s thinking, since she seems to have gone away again. At least she’s not falling asleep.

Just after we’ve put the dress into the drier, and I feel as though I’ve lived my whole life in the launderette, like I did in the airport when our flight was delayed in Spain, a girl and a woman come in to do their washing. The woman Pauline stole from has left, and for some time we’ve been alone except for the launderette manager, who is only a muffled stream of Radio Two from the room at the back. The mother and daughter are coloured, the woman with a baggy wool coat and a hat which have nothing to do with the weather. The girl is wearing a Brownie uniform, but it’s the cardigan slipping off her domed shoulders that I recognize first as belonging to Cynthia, my bullied charge at the school dinner table. There is something very different about her. It takes me some staring to realize it’s nothing to do with her change of outfit. It’s because she’s talking to her mum and her mum is talking back to her, and she’s smiling – not the appeasing, frightened smile she produces at school, but a real smile with a giggle bubbling from it. It’s as shocking as realizing teachers have first names.

Cynthia’s mum is neither young nor old in her strange clothes. Like Cynthia, she wears cartoonishly thick glasses. I feel like a spy. The two of them, talking, laughing, unload their washing from the mum’s maroon wheeled shopper and a blue mesh bag. Cynthia is too busy and happy to notice us. Pauline is as interested as I am to begin with, then she goes back to chewing her hand. Once the washing is in the machine, Cynthia settles back in a chair at the end of our row (there are two rows of plastic chairs, back to back) and her mum hands her something from the shopper. It looks like a book. Then she gives her a yellow apple, which Cynthia puts on the chair next to her, and then, surprisingly, her mum turns and wheels the shopper off out of the launderette, leaving her alone. Cynthia swings her bare, calfless legs and sees us for the first time. She jerks her old familiar smile and caves her chest, as though we’ve already hit her. Just like that. My hello makes a point of being matter-of-fact and friendly, despite me being in my vest and pants. Very quickly, Cynthia ducks and picks up her book, which isn’t a book at all but something limp made of felt which she’s sewing. I stare at the absolutely straight white parting, like a perfect road, that divides her black hair into two stubby bunches. She doesn’t look up. Her fingers crest in and out, making stitches as her legs swing.

‘Can we have a lend of that?’ says Pauline, loud enough for me and Cynthia both to jump. Cynthia is already cowering as Pauline gets off her chair and snatches the sewing from her. It’s shaped like a small book, with white felt inside and a purple felt cover, stitched with an incomplete bouquet.

‘What’s it for?’ asks Pauline.

Cynthia mutters, glasses downcast.

‘You what?’ Whatever she says, I can see Pauline will be inclined to disbelieve her.

‘It’s a needle case,’ I explain. ‘You keep needles in it, so you don’t lose them.’

‘Can we lend it?’ Pauline says, taking it. Cynthia’s slack fingers acknowledge that this isn’t a request. I wonder what Pauline is going to do. As she pulls the needle free of its thread she briefly admires the embroidery, which is much better than the lumpy cross-stitch we occasionally produce at school.

‘You can sew your dress,’ she points out to me, and then to Cynthia, ‘Got any more cotton?’

Cynthia shakes her head. Unbothered, Pauline hands me the needle and begins to tug at the woven yellow thread attached to the buttercup petal Cynthia is stitching. The surrounding fabric buckles and bunches, but the embroidery silk doesn’t give, even when Pauline uses her teeth. It’ll be hard to smooth out what she’s done. I stand there, holding the needle, as Pauline glares at Cynthia, ready to blame her for thwarting her brainwave.

‘Nig-nog,’ she says.

I know it’s hopeless, really. I know Mum will find the hole beneath the sleeve, if not tonight, when I’ll be in enough trouble for being out so late, then another day, dealing me a double portion for my attempts at deception. But the force of Pauline’s determination blunts this knowledge. She chucks the soft booklet at Cynthia’s face, making her flinch.

‘It’s no good!’

Taking the sewing on to her lap, Cynthia’s fingers attempt to smooth the clotted stitches. ‘Sorry,’ she says, keeping her remote eyes in their bottle lenses turned away from us. She’s saying it to make us leave her alone.

‘We just need to get some cotton,’ I reassure Pauline. And then for Cynthia, in the same spirit in which I give her big portions at school dinners, ‘Embroidery stuff’s probably too thick anyway.’

But Pauline isn’t about to let go. ‘Was that yer mam?’ she demands. Cynthia nods. Suddenly, Pauline shunts forward hard on both legs so that she rams Cynthia’s shins with her own, making her slam back in her chair. Pauline’s face denies what she’s just done. ‘When’s she coming back?’

Cynthia attempts to shrug, but it isn’t good enough, and Pauline rams her again so that she gestures at the machines and says, ‘When it’s dry,’ in her almost voiceless voice.

‘F*cking nig-nog!’ Pauline grabs the sewing from her and chucks it across the row of chairs. I go to rescue it. It’s probably a present for someone, like a grandma. I wonder if I’ll ever make a present again for my grandma, since she belongs to Dad. I feel sick and tired and excited. No one comes from the back room where the radio chunters on, playing ‘The Most Beautiful Girl in the World’ by Charlie Rich. No one comes in to do their washing. Cynthia is crying, which she sometimes does at school, the type of hopeless crying you usually cry only at the end, when you’ve been crying a long time, the way Pauline was crying in her sleep.

When I pick up the needle case, I start unpicking the petal Cynthia was working on, reversing the smooth official stitches to decode the back of the felt square where the connecting lines are chaotic and random, in search of a starting knot.

‘We can just undo this bit,’ I reassure them both. Pauline is interested. She wants to do it, but I won’t let her. Her filthy hands have already greyed the white pages meant for the future needles. Once I’ve started, it’s enjoyable to undo Cynthia’s embroidery. I’m being nice to her really. It could be much worse. After all, I only need one bit of cotton to repair the hole in my dress.

As I thread the needle with the wrinkled, freed cotton, Pauline gets my dress out from the drier. It’s puckered around its seams and I realize it might have shrunk from the heat. I try to smooth it, panicked again. Everything gets worse, whatever you do. Looking up from the mess I’ve made, I see Cynthia staring out of the window, probably wondering where her mum is, and I realize that’s another mess. She might be a blackie but Cynthia’s mum is still a grown-up, and if she gets back before we’ve gone, Cynthia will dob us in. Her mum’s anger will be another route to my own mum and the final reckoning of my crimes, which now includes conclusively ruining my clothes.

‘We’ll get done if her mum comes back,’ I tell Pauline, and hoist the dress back over my head. Sure enough, it feels newly snug and comes further up my legs than before. Pauline doesn’t notice, though, so maybe it’s not as bad as I think. And at least it’s clean.

‘What about the sewing?’

‘We’ll take it with us.’

I pincer the needle and then, since I need to carry my library books, give it to Pauline. Cynthia is holding herself tense, waiting for us to go. Pauline pricks the top of her arm with the needle as we pass. Two more effortless tears crawl from beneath Cynthia’s glasses. They make me feel bad.

‘Listen,’ I say, about the needle and thread, ‘we’ll give it back.’

She doesn’t make any response at all. I may as well not have bothered to speak.

‘Promise,’ I say. ‘Swear to God.’ Which is a promise I have never in my life broken. But she doesn’t know that, does she?

‘You’re really good at sewing,’ I proffer. Pauline’s nodding me out of the door, but it feels essential to get Cynthia to know that I’m not horrible, like Pauline.

‘Tell you what, why don’t you come with us and you can sew my dress? It’s got a hole.’

I lift my arm to show her, but her glasses don’t angle up to take it in. She’s beginning to nark me.

‘I’m rubbish at sewing,’ I tell her, which isn’t even true. I make a last attempt. ‘If you sew it for us I’ll get you something. A lolly, sweets.’ Even though we don’t have any money left. She won’t know that though, will she, until after she’s finished? And it’s true that she might do a better job than me, better than Pauline certainly, and if I sew it myself, wherever we go to I’ll have to take the dress off again outside and parade my underwear. In any case it feels very important now not to leave her alone, unconsoled, before her mum gets back. It feels important that she can’t resist us.

‘Go on,’ says Pauline, wheedling. I’m surprised she’s so instantly keen for Cynthia to come with us, but I’m grateful for the help. I pick up the needle case from where it’s slipped to the floor, square its soft pages.

‘It’s really nice.’

Patiently, I hold it in front of her and in the end she stands to take it. Then she shuffles with me to the door, as though she has no choice. I feel like I’ve won. She must believe I’m not horrible.

‘Is it a present?’

She nods.

‘Who for?’

Outside, the low sun is about to be swallowed by buildings. I wonder if my dad is at home yet, having his wash and shave. Pauline and I both seem to know we need to be somewhere where there are no people. We walk for a bit, and although Cynthia casts a look back a couple of times as streets grow between us and the launderette, she doesn’t say anything. She could say something, and if she did, I would listen to her, but she chooses not to. I know she can speak up, now I’ve seen her with her mum, so it’s her own fault. There’s no pushing even, now she’s walking with us.

Once we reach the Town Fields, I lead the way to the back of the pavilion. It’s boarded up and shabby and is the only destin ation, apart from our school, in the whole space. It’s never been used by the school, as far as I know. As far as I know, it’s never been used by anyone, although it must have been built for a reason. It has Tudor beams and pebble-dashed gables at the top and powdered glass and cigarette ends at the bottom. The rubbish accumulates on the side away from the road, screened from both the wind and a human view. Standing there, I raise my arm, ready for Cynthia to sew up the tear. She’s ner vous about it, because of my skin being so close to the material, especially now the dress has shrunk.

‘Don’t prick me,’ I warn her.

If she told me to take the dress off, I would, but if she won’t tell me and she hurts me with the needle then it’s her lookout. Of course when she approaches with the needle and thread it tickles so much that my arm clamps down of its own accord and refuses to lift again. Cynthia blinks, head bobbling, unsure what to do. She holds the needle out again, and I twitch away before it can even touch me. I’ll have to take the dress off, which I don’t want to do, here where anyone could come round the corner and see.

‘You’re not doing it properly.’

She can’t do anything properly, that’s clear enough. She stands there, holding the large needle as though she’s been told to play pin the tail on the donkey and no one’s explained the rules. She lurches towards me again, but I push her away. Not hard, but it’s enough to make her sit down suddenly on the grass. She has no ballast. It’s like batting away a balloon.

Behind us, Pauline laughs.

‘It’s not funny,’ I tell her. ‘I’m going to get done!’ The self-pity that our trip to the launderette has delayed arrives in knots at the back of my throat. It’s night-time. I want to be at home. Real home, with Mum and Dad, watching Lallie on the telly, just that. That’s all I want, and it will never happen again, ever. For Sale.

There’s a wrenching sound. I turn and see that Pauline is pulling at one of the damaged, ancient boards nailed over the pavilion’s empty windows.

‘You want to be careful, there’s glass,’ I warn her.

‘Stinks,’ she observes, poking her head through the gap she’s exposed. ‘Like you, blackie.’

Cynthia’s getting up. I can’t say I’ve noticed she smells, and anyway Pauline’s not exactly one to talk, as my mum would say. Getting stuck in, Pauline wrenches a larger piece of wood away, rusty nails and all, and waves the studded plank around like a club, grunting caveman sounds. It makes me laugh. She and Cynthia are about the same size, but the fight that’s in Pauline, you never think about her being small. She makes a mock-lunge at me with her new weapon, and I dodge away, even though there’s far too much space between us for her to hit me.

‘You’ll get splinters!’

Pauline runs down the pavilion steps to get me, and we dodge and chase, giggling, until I see that Cynthia has taken advantage of our distraction to start running away. She’s a rubbish runner, I know from the disaster of school rounders matches, but she’s already managed to cover quite a lot of ground despite her knock-kneed shamble. I exclaim, and Pauline and I chase after her. If we weren’t already chasing each other, we might not bother, but it adds to the momentum of our game. Pauline gets to her first, and since she’s still holding her makeshift club, swings it. The wood makes contact with Cynthia’s side, down at the back near her bum, and she goes down hard. Much harder than Pauline was expecting, I can see. When I catch up, Cynthia’s writhing on the grass, clutching the bit where she was hit.

‘That’s got nails in!’ I admonish. I can’t see any blood but I don’t want to look. Pauline nudges Cynthia with her foot.

‘Gerrup then. You’re a right f*cking crybaby, you. I didn’t even touch yer.’

Surprisingly quickly, Cynthia does what she says. Pauline back-swings the piece of wood again, threatening, playing really, and Cynthia jerks back, cradling her head, the sudden movement making her back foot slip and bringing her down again on the grass. It looks really funny, like something in a cartoon, the way her feet lift before she falls and the dismay on her face. The impact dislodges her glasses and for the first time ever I see her eyes, which are large and horrified. Somehow, this is even funnier. I pick the glasses up for her, but before I give them back I can’t resist trying them on.

‘Aw, don’t,’ says Pauline, doubled over now at the sight of me instead. ‘You look a right spaz.’ Everything is a colourful fog, and my eyes strain as though I’m crossing them. Pauline snatches the glasses off me and tries them on herself. She looks hilarious. Instantly lost and useless, like Cynthia.

‘Speccy four-eyes,’ I laugh. And then to Cynthia, ‘Don’t worry, she’ll give you them back.’

But Pauline takes off the glasses and chucks them in a high arc. They land far away, on the grass.

‘Fetch, doggy!’

Cynthia stands, frozen, until Pauline swings the piece of wood back, threateningly. Then her legs stutter off after the glasses. When she puts them back on they’re skew-whiff – one of the pink plastic armpieces won’t sit flat on her ears any more. Pauline doesn’t let herself stop laughing.

‘Look at you, you’re that bloody ugly.’

Cynthia keeps her body kinked where Pauline hit her. She puts her hand there, and from the way she dabs at her side I know she must have seen some blood, although it’s invisible to me on the Brownie uniform. I’d been promised Brownies myself, but since we moved to Ian’s, Mum has made excuses about not being able to take me because of work. Seeing the few pathetic badges sewn on Cynthia’s sleeve makes me indignant. I know my own sleeve would be crowded with them if I were allowed to go.

‘What badges have you got?’

I approach to have a look. Cynthia flinches, which makes me want to get the bit of wood from Pauline and hit her hard. I don’t, obviously. I just want her to talk normally. The black badges have emblems stitched with green and yellow and the names at the bottom of each: housekeeping, music, sport. The last one sounds extremely unlikely. It has a sewn tennis racquet crossed with something I think is supposed to be a golf club.

‘Sport?’ Hearing this, Pauline comes to have a look.

‘What did you have to do?’

‘I don’t know.’ She’s stupid to be so terrified of me. And she must know.

‘You’ve only got three, you must be able to remember.’ I make my voice like Mrs Bream’s. Cynthia twitches more obligingly.

‘Running,’ she admits.

‘Running?’

Pauline produces more laughter. I don’t blame Cynthia for not liking it, it’s getting on my nerves even though it’s not directed at me. Although the thought of Cynthia getting any kind of badge for running is ridiculous. It isn’t fair, either. Pauline twists the sleeve of the uniform, pretending to get a better look at the badge and pinching Cynthia’s arm as she does it.

‘Go on, show us then.’ She releases the sleeve. ‘Run.’

Cynthia’s head jerks between us, to check she’s understood. ‘She wants you to show her your running,’ I reassure her, still being Mrs Bream.

She’s careening and aimless, like a daddy-long-legs released from a jam-jar. Even by her standards, it’s rubbish. Her body’s still arched at one side where Pauline hit her, as though she has a stitch. Pauline gives her yards and yards of head start, then takes off after her and catches up in about two seconds flat. This time she aims the plank more, square between her shoulders. I’m expecting Cynthia to go down like she did before, weightlessly, uselessly, but there’s an odd moment as she and Pauline stagger forward together and then fall, Pauline more or less on top of her. This time Cynthia’s squeal is thin and high, and there’s no apology in it, only pain. It gets louder as Pauline wrestles herself away, and the struggle as she pulls her weapon free makes delayed sense of their dance to the ground: one of the old nails has stuck into Cynthia’s back, and it’s hurting her more as Pauline tries to pull the wood away.

After that she does what we say even if she isn’t up to much. We don’t need to hit her to get her into the pavilion. Pauline breaks more of the boards off and we climb through the low window, with a bit of contemptuous coaxing from Pauline because I’m worried about the broken glass I can see framing the gap like shark’s teeth, its danger disguised by the ancient muck inside. Going in feels wrong and exciting. The air smells old and pissy. I think of Howard Carter and the tomb of Tutankhamun, with its curse. As I climb in, the dusty tunnel of light from the window illuminates something heaped on the floor, further back by a wall. It can only be clothes over a skeleton. I shriek. While I back up to the window, careless now of the hidden glass, Pauline strides up and kicks it. The body’s mound shifts, and I see it’s a torn badminton net, rolled around metal poles.

‘Give me heart attack!’

Cynthia plays no part in either the fear or the laughter. She cries on, huddling her wounds, snot and tears coating her chin. I’m sick of her now. I hate her now. It’s all too late. Because of her, I’m going to get done.

‘Shut up!’

I push her, forgetting it’ll make her fall. My hand comes away with blood on it, and I’m curious to see, in the light from the window gap, that it’s standard red. We’re all the same under the skin, as Mr Scott has told us. The blood is a smear, not drops, and to get rid of it I wipe my palm on Cynthia’s Brownie dress. As she lies there, a sudden hot stink makes me jump back, just in time to avoid the tide of wee spreading from under her thighs. I yelp with disgust, and Pauline laughs again. There are no words for what I feel, seeing Cynthia douse herself with her own urine. It isn’t something to watch. All I did was push her to shut her up.

‘Shurrup, pisspants.’ Pauline knees her in the face. She is more interested in the pavilion, though, than in Cynthia. She wanders off to explore the dim corner beyond the badminton net, where a door hangs askew. I don’t know what her plans are. I only know that coming to this place is the end of the world for me. Suncream. Lallie. For Sale. I want to close my eyes and never open them, but I try and I can still smell the sweet vinegary piss stink, new and old. I wish Cynthia would stop crying. She’s got the worst cry ever, like a donkey or some other old animal, but it doesn’t sound real. It sounds like she’s trying to imitate a donkey, just to be annoying. A deliberate ee as she pulls in a breath and a long exhaled aw of involuntary distress.

‘Shut up!’

And this time, I mean to hurt her. I punch and kick, not aiming, just hurting. To get to what. To make her stop. To make everything stop. I do stop, in the end. She isn’t trying to kick or scratch or grab my hands. She’s balled in on herself, rigid, moving only with the impact of my hurting her. I haven’t got anywhere. I hate her more.

‘Pauline.’ She’s over in the corner, poking around in a cupboard with the wonky door. ‘Come and hold her.’

Because that’s what will make a difference. Being able to get to her. Pauline ambles over, striped with dust and carrying a half-strung badminton racquet. Between us, we uncurl Cynthia, pulling faces at the wee, so that Pauline can kneel by her head, pinning back her arms. We take off her glasses. Cynthia’s knees double up to protect her stomach but I’m much stronger than her and pull them down and sit on them so she can’t do that any more. I know what I’m going to do. I’ve got the knife, the one I got in Spain. I put it in my pocket this morning, along with the library ticket.

‘Get her fanny,’ urges Pauline.

‘You what?’

‘Sambos’ fannies are different. I’ve seen.’

‘What d’you mean?’

‘I’ve seen pictures. Have a look.’

I can see the sodden navy crutch of Cynthia’s knickers.

‘She’s wet herself.’

Pauline shifts, business-like, releasing Cynthia’s arms.

‘Take your pants off,’ she commands.

It seems that Cynthia has stopped being able to understand us, even when we shout, so in the end Pauline gets hold of the sturdy waistband, loose around Cynthia’s narrow belly, and pulls. Gingerly I take the wet pants as they twist round her legs, leaving them to shackle her ankles as I push her knees apart to get a better look. Cynthia’s donkey sounds continue, softly. I don’t know exactly what I’m looking for. I’m not going to tell Pauline, but I’ve never taken a really good look at my own privates. Cynthia’s fanny is like a surprising pinkish ear hidden in the brown skin. I don’t want to get too close in case she does another wee.

‘Told yer,’ says Pauline. ‘Can you see the hole?’

Not really.

‘Oh yes!’ I exclaim.

Pauline arches over from where she’s holding Cynthia’s hands. She grins at me.

‘Dare you to touch it.’

I refuse, until she calls me nesh. I’ve got the Spanish knife in my hand now from my pocket, and I use the plastic bone handle to prod, glancingly. Pauline claims it doesn’t count. Cynthia has started to writhe like a hooked fish, so Pauline knees her head back against the concrete floor and she stops, wailing.

‘Go on, properly.’

I’m not nesh. It’s not disgusting anyway. But Pauline thinks it’s the most hilarious thing she’s ever seen, in that unhilarious way she’s keen on. She says I’m a lezzer because that’s what lezzers do, touch each other’s fannies. She says they lick fannies as well, and dares me to do that. I refuse. Then she starts saying ‘jam rags’. I tell her to shut up. I wave the knife. She dodges back but she doesn’t stop saying it. She swoops her badminton racquet like a sword, like we’re having a fight. She’s enjoying herself more than me, even though all her laughter is like hitting someone. It makes me frightened.

‘Eww, Grimsby docks!’ she says about my hands, which I don’t even understand, but has something to do with the smell from touching Cynthia’s fanny. I wish I was brave enough to make her shut up.

‘You know you can put things up her. Where willies go. And jam rags.’

Pauline flourishes the racquet. Its handle is bound with faded black tape which has unravelled at the bottom, mummy-like.

‘Go on then,’ I say.

It isn’t me. It’s definitely her. I don’t even use the knife, except for when I cut the three Brownie badges off Cynthia’s dress. Pauline hasn’t even asked to borrow the knife, she just grabs, as usual. I grab it back and wipe it off on my own dress so I can cut off the badges. I don’t care about the state of my dress any more. Pauline says I’m mad for getting the badges, but I can tell she’s just jealous she hasn’t thought of it herself. It’s true I haven’t got a Brownie uniform of my own to sew them on to, but that doesn’t matter. You could unpick the stitching, done so carefully in green to match by Cynthia or her mum, but it’s too late now to bother. I saw at the thick nylon, leaving three ragged holes. After that there isn’t anything left to do. Pauline and I roll her in what we can unwind of the tangled badminton net, like a huge caught fish that’s stopped trying to flip itself back in the water. The last thing I see is Cynthia’s eye, alive and ordinary through the dirty grey mesh. At least I think it’s alive, but it’s almost too dark now to tell.

Before we climb back out into the world, I bring the heel of my Clarks sandals down on the glasses that have skidded near the window, one, two, so that the lenses are smashed. Of all the things we’ve done today, it’s the best.

NOT LONG AFTER they’d put the light out, the phone went in the office. The boys yapped him along the corridor after Lol had mumbled him out of bed. Frank had already been so deeply asleep that he didn’t even think to put his glasses on; his reach for the receiver was a fuzzy guess. For a second or two there was just breathing at the other end, delicate and young and distressed.

‘It’s me, Lallie.’

‘Lallie. What can I do for you, my love?’

The boys quivered. Frank sat. He didn’t feel too clever on his legs. The noises at the other end, hesitations and breaths and swallowings, suggested that he needed to draw it out of her. This wasn’t the time. He wasn’t up to it.

‘Sorry,’ she said in the end, and hung up. He fell asleep in the chair until Lol came to get him. Then he did one of his miserly pees and got back into bed. It wasn’t until the next morning, when he was loading his briefcase, that he saw he’d left the receiver off the cradle. He’d call her mother once he was in the office, sort everything out.

July, 1977





IF THERE HAD ever been an invitation to a screening, it didn’t reach her letterbox, so in the end Vera paid eighty new pence of her own money to see the film, a few days after Virginia Wade’s glorious Jubilee Wimbledon victory. There were very few other people in the cinema in Swiss Cottage, which was as it should be on the kind of bright day it was. That Summer wasn’t much of a title, in her opinion, but then no one was asking.

The crits had been tepid. Well, The Stage and The Times, which were the ones Vera didn’t have to go out of her way to read. Both had praised the girl, and Dirk, but The Times chap had pronounced Mike’s direction to be dated. It wasn’t the sort of thing she could tell, herself. It all seemed to trot along well enough, and they were right about the performances. There was the familiar shock of seeing herself not looking like herself, then wondering if this was in fact how she looked. Already two years younger than she was now, of course. Where did the time go, people said, and films showed you, ten times as large as life. Mind you, the two years showed most on the girl, whom Vera had caught a few times gurning away in a dreadful comedy programme on the box. Well, perhaps it wasn’t dreadful; she was unreliable about those sort of things. Never got it. Anyway, she had watched enough of the show to register the spots matted out by pancake and the new breasts. They’d even tried to give her a bit of glamour, which she would never have. Apart from adolescence, there was something different about her face, although it might have just been the strain of trying to make the script funny.

The girl in the film was something and someone else entirely. In the film, Vera forgot who she was watching. She believed everything Lallie did, so that the girl you saw was an ignorant, cunning little pain in the arse, but transparently compelling. It was an awful waste, really. When she’d encountered Dougie at a crammed Christmas drinks party in Earls Court, he’d mooed about Lallie going to America, and the scandal of her getting kicked off a film for not being pretty enough, or for behaving unprofessionally, or for being caught pleasuring members of the crew. The third purely bilious and mainly alcoholic theory reminded Vera of the stand-in on their shoot – what was her name, Sue? Lou? – the lascivious 25-year-old midget. It would be an easy mistake to make, blaming Lallie for those escapades, always assuming she’d taken her stand-in across the pond with her. But really, what did she know? As for unprofessional behaviour, if you were giving them everything else they wanted, it meant sweet Fanny Adams. Plainness was a much more believable lapse. All the talent in the world didn’t make you a star, and stars had to shine. Of course, since Vera herself had come at it from the opposite angle, smouldering in her small way, she wasn’t about to deny you needed a bit of talent as well.

On screen, Dirk was gearing up to no good, and then there she was herself, hatchet-faced and disapproving. She’d not done badly for herself, considering. Only that morning, after a very lean period, she’d got a call-up for an episode of an awful action-spy-series thing. Apparently Hugh was one of the producers, bless him. She’d heard about him taking the telly shilling, and good luck to him really. It hadn’t come to anything with the other producer, the American girl. In fact, Dougie had sworn blind she’d had some sort of a fling with Mike, of all people, and got him on another film in the States. Anyway, as far as Hugh was concerned, it had obviously not done Vera any harm to be nice. Seeing the film was her little treat to herself, a celebration of employment. She could write it off on her tax, as well.


79. EXT. HEXTHORPE FLATS LOCATION. DAY.

COLIN leads JUNE towards a derelict building, once a bomb site.



JUNE



It doesn’t look special to me.

COLIN



Well, you can’t always tell, can you, from the outside?

In front of Vera, to the right of the screen, was a pair of canoodling teenagers, very clearly not there for the film. The boy – it had taken her some time to establish that he was a boy – had pink cockatoo hair, shaved at the sides in that way she’d started to spot doing the rounds. Sitting behind him would have been as bad as being trapped behind a hat-wearer. The girl, on the other hand, judging from her silhouette, didn’t have any hair at all. They were odd, those youths that had bloomed in the heat, vivid and hostile, like troglodyte teddy boys. Their choice of nappy pins to adorn themselves baffled her: did they want to be babies? One she’d seen near Leicester Square had appeared to be wearing a Nazi armband, of all things.

The two in the cinema were keen for an audience. As soon as a jacketed fellow in the row behind them coughed reproval, they started acting up, the boy straddling the girl and extending his tongue, to which the girl responded ostentatiously, in a reptilian French kiss. It was annoying, but on the whole ignorable. Vera decided to ignore it.

The girl Lallie was playing walked her lonely way past the school. The scene forced the grimness of real events into Vera’s mind, although at the time she had made a point of not reading anything beyond the first few newspaper reports. Certainly nothing to do with the trial. They’d had to recut some of the school scenes, apparently, as both the children involved, the victim and the other one, had been extras, and there were sensitivities to be observed. Still, justice had been done and there was enough in the papers every day to top it. There had been another girl as well, from a better home; what had happened to her? It was an awful, awful business. Better not to dwell. It certainly made you glad not to have children.


80. INT. DERELICT HOUSE LOCATION. DAY.

JUNE is unafraid, defiant even.



JUNE



There’s nothing special about you.

COLIN



Shut up!

JUNE



Everyone knows about you, you know, you’re just a—

COLIN



I said shut up!!

The wrench is already in his hand. JUNE screams.

Watching June meet her fate, its framing tastefully askew, Vera realized that what had happened was almost certainly the reason for the delay in releasing the film. It pursued the story, a ghost at the edge of a mirror. When, in the final moments, the camera lingered on the empty desk and the dutifully innocent faces that flanked it, Vera’s tears of artistic empathy were amplified by a nearly enjoyable frisson of the real. All such a bloody waste, really. The time it took to make a film. It seemed like the be-all and end-all, and then it came to this. A July afternoon with ten people in the audience, two of them practically copulating.

She stayed long enough to catch her name, just to be sure. She always did. There it was, large as life, although not as large as some. She was the only one left to see it.