‘It’s Thea,’ I said abruptly, feeling my face hot beneath Lola’s gaze. ‘She’s pining with love for someone in the village. Keeps hoping we’ll bump into him if we spend enough time there.’
It was a lie. But it was a self-serving one, a lie against one of us. Even as I said it, I knew I’d crossed a line. But I couldn’t take it back now.
Lola looked towards Thea’s retreating back, and then at me, her face uncertain. We had developed a reputation, by this time, for piss-taking and insincerity, and I could tell she wasn’t sure whether this was true or not, but with Thea, who knew?
‘Oh yeah?’ she said at last. ‘I don’t believe you.’
‘It’s true,’ I said, relieved now that she was off the scent. And then, some stupid impulse compelled me to add a fatal detail. ‘Look, don’t tell her I told you but … it’s Mark Wren. They sat together on the bus back from the station.’ I lowered my voice, leaned towards her over the top of my book. ‘He put his hand on her thigh … you can imagine the rest.’
‘Mark Wren? That kid with the spots who lives above the post office?’
‘What can I say?’ I shrugged. ‘Thea doesn’t care about looks.’
Lola snorted and moved away.
I didn’t think of the scene again until the following week. I didn’t even remember to tell Kate, so she could mark my points in the book. By this time the game had become less of a competition, than an end in itself. The point was not to beat Fatima, Thea and Kate but to outwit everyone else – ‘us’ against ‘them’.
We spent Saturday night at the Mill, and then on Sunday afternoon the four of us walked into Salten village to buy snacks from the shop, and a hot chocolate at the pub, which doubled up as the town cafe out of season, if you were prepared to put up with Jerry’s suggestive cracks.
Fatima and Kate were sitting in the window seat while Thea and I were at the bar. She was ordering our drinks, and I was waiting to help carry them back to the table.
‘Excuse me, I said no cream on the last one,’ I heard her say sharply as the bartender pushed the last foaming cup over the counter. He sighed and began to scrape off the topping, but Thea broke in. ‘No, thank you. I’ll have a fresh cup.’
I winced at her autocratic tone, at the way those cut-glass vowels turned a perfectly ordinary remark into a haughty command.
The bartender swore under his breath as he turned to pour away the carefully prepared drink, and I saw one of the women waiting at the bar roll her eyes and mouth something at her friend. I didn’t catch the words, but her gaze flicked back towards me and Thea, and her look was contemptuous. I crossed my arms over my chest, trying to make myself smaller and more invisible, wishing I had not worn my button-up shirt dress. The button at the top had broken off, making it lower-cut than normal, and I was painfully conscious of the flash of bra lace that kept creeping out from the neckline, and of the way the women were looking at us both – at my neckline, and at Thea’s ripped jeans, which showed scarlet silk knickers through the tears.
As I stood, waiting for Thea to pass the mugs over her shoulder, Jerry came up behind me with a tray of dirty glasses. He held it up at shoulder height as he squeezed through the throng, and I felt a shock of recognition at the pressure of his crotch against me as he passed. The bar was full, but not crowded enough to explain that deliberate grind against my buttocks.
‘Excuse me,’ he said with a wheezy chuckle. ‘Don’t mind me.’
I felt my face flush, and I said to Thea, ‘I’m going to the loo. Can you manage the drinks?’
‘Sure.’ She barely looked up from counting out change, and I bolted for the door of the ladies, feeling my breath coming fast.
It was only when I went into the cubicle to get some tissue to blow my nose, that I noticed the writing on the toilet door. It was scrawled in eyeliner, smudged and blurred already.
Mark Wren is a dirty perv, it said. I blinked. It seemed like such an incongruous accusation. Mark Wren? Shy, mild-mannered Mark Wren?
There was another one by the sink, this time in a different colour.
Mark Wren fingers Salten House girls on the bus.
And then finally, on the door out to the pub, in Sharpie, Mark Wren is a sex offender!!!!
When I got out of the loo, my cheeks were burning.
‘Can we go?’ I said abruptly to Kate, Fatima and Thea. Thea looked up, confused.
‘What the fuck? You’ve not even touched your drink!’
‘There’s something I need to tell you,’ I said. ‘I don’t want to talk about it here.’
‘Sure,’ Kate said. She scooped up the last spoonful of marshmallow, and Fatima began looking for her bag. But before we had time to do anything more, the door of the pub banged open, and Mary Wren came in.
I wasn’t expecting her to come to our table – she knew Kate of course, she was a good friend of Ambrose, but she had never taken any notice of Kate’s friends.
But she did. She walked straight across, and looked from me to Thea and then to Fatima, her broad lip curling.
‘Which of you is Isa Wilde?’ she asked in her deep hoarse voice.
I swallowed.
‘M-me.’
‘All right.’ She put her hands to her hips, towering over us where we sat. The hubbub in the pub seemed to die away, and I saw that people were listening, craning to see round Mary’s broad, muscular back. ‘Listen to me, my lass. I don’t know how people behave back where you were brought up, but round here, people care what’s said about them. If you go spreading lies about my boy again, I will break every bone in your body. Do you understand? I will snap them, one by one.’
I opened my mouth but I couldn’t speak. A deep, spreading shame was rising up from my gut, paralysing me.
Beside me, Kate looked shocked, and I realised she had no idea what this was all about.
‘Mary,’ she said, ‘you can’t –’
‘Keep out of it,’ Mary snapped at her. ‘Though you were in on it, I’ll be bound, all of you. I know what you’re like.’ She folded her arms and looked around our little circle, and I realised that in some perverse way she was enjoying this – enjoying our shock and upset. ‘You’re little liars all of you, and if I had charge of you, you’d be whipped.’
Kate gasped at that, and half stood, as if to fight my corner, but Mary put a heavy hand on her shoulder, physically forcing her back down against the cushions.
‘No, you don’t. I imagine that fancy school is too modern for that sort of thing, and your dad, he’s too nice for his own good, but I’m not, and if you hurt my boy again –’ she looked back at me, her sloe-dark eyes meeting mine unflinchingly – ‘you’ll live to regret the day you were born.’
And then she straightened, turned on her heel, and went out.
The door slammed behind her, loud in the sudden quiet she left behind, and then there was a gust of laughter, and the noises of the bar began to return – the clink of glasses, the deep rumble of the men at the bar. But I felt the eyes of the villagers on us, speculating about what Mary had said, and I wanted to sink into the floor.