Special, p.19
Special, page 19
There was no good reason why the sight of Hen should so disconcerting, but it was. Despite the dressings and undressings they all had to negotiate in full view of each other, Hen had somehow managed to cover herself up. She, like Jules, had perfected the art of removing her clothes without ever quite being naked. Now, torn between envy and repulsion, Jules realized how much Hen had changed, and what that change meant. Though there was no question that Hen looked freakish, there was something compelling about her, something that hadn’t been evident when she’d just been herself. Starvation had separated her. It had made her shine.
I want . . ., thought Jules, and stopped. Something in the thought seemed too confusing to go forward. I want to look like that? I want to be that thin? No. Even she could see that Hen had stepped many miles past the point of pretty-thin and become something different now, become freaky-thin, ugly-thin. But she did want something that Hen now possessed. That separateness, that pared-down bony glow. She saw the mothers at the other end of the pool lazily watching the line they made along the side. Jules could see their gaze move from left to right and the way they’d stop when they got to Hen. Something in their eyes would sharpen and they’d lean over and murmur to each other, making the water glimmer as they moved. That was what she wanted. She wanted to be the one that they saw.
Miss Naylor blew the whistle.
Nobody jumped. Izzy tested the water with one foot and then withdrew it.
‘Come on. In. All of you.’
‘Cold,’ grumbled Mel.
Miss Naylor stepped up behind her.
‘OK, OK, I’m going. Just wait.’
Jules raised her arms above her head and closed her eyes. When she dived, the overwhelming water stopped her from thinking about anything except remaining afloat. She wasn’t a bad swimmer, but she wasn’t fast, and therefore rarely attracted attention. Usually she took pleasure in the stroke of the water against her skin and the sense of a new, but not hostile, element. But this pool was so hill of chlorine and her head was so full of Hen that she couldn’t concentrate properly.
Halfway through Jules’s seventh length, she parted the water and looked up. Miss Naylor was talking to the guard, a girl of not much more than eighteen with muscular shoulders and the corn-fed sheen of someone who had spent too long in a gym. She had on a light blue T-shirt with ‘Detroit Athletics’ written across it.
When they had finished, they flopped back onto the side. Miss Naylor walked back towards them. ‘Bad luck. The lifeguard needed to speak to me so I didn’t manage to time you. You’ll have to do those lengths again.’
‘No way.’ said Mel.
‘Five minutes to catch our breath. Then another ten.’
Mel wailed. ‘So unfair.’
‘Burns those nasty little calories, swimming.’
Hen lay with her legs still dangling into the pool and her arms behind her head. Jules noticed the way the water gathered in a little pool where her rib cage ended and her stomach—or what was left of her stomach—began. She seemed indifferent to Miss Naylor, to them all.
‘Lola. Up. Come on.’
Hen turned her head and said something Jules couldn’t catch.
‘Tough. You had enough energy to go chasing boys, didn’t you?’
Hen turned her head away. Miss Naylor, standing above her, crouched down suddenly and put out her hand as if to grab one of Hen’s arms. ‘Get up. Up.’
Hen took a long time to sit upright.
‘Go,’ hissed Miss Naylor. And then to them all, standing on the side. ‘Go. Go on. Get in. Swim, the lot of you.’
Jules just had time to see Hen’s knees collapse underneath her, and the crashing trajectory as she half jumped, half fell over the side and into the pool. Then the water covered her.
+
By the time Hen had been rescued, propped up on the side next to Izzy, wrapped in towels and given a lukewarm cup of tea (which she ignored), it was evident that there was no point in continuing with the swimming. When she saw Hen fall, Jules changed direction in mid-dive away from the deep end and towards the lifeguard. But the girl in the T-shirt had been watching and had already started out of her chair. Together she, Miss Naylor and Jules had levered Hen out of the water and dumped her, dripping and gasping, on the side of the pool. The lifeguard spoke to Hen softly, bent low near her head. Jules could see from the way she smiled that she was consoling Hen, and that Hen, however silent, was helped by the kindness.
Slack with staring, the others padded off to the changing rooms and changed in silence. They sat outside on the grass, picking through the contents of their backpacks. When Hen and Miss Naylor emerged, they looked up, not speaking.
Miss Naylor strode towards them. ‘Come on.’
Jules fell into step beside Hen. ‘What happened?’
Hen gave no sign of having heard.
‘Did you feel ill?’
Nothing.
Jules tried again. ‘God, Naylor’s a cow. She ought to be sacked.’
Still nothing.
Jules didn’t know how to speak any more. She wanted to tell Hen that when she had fallen, it had felt almost as if it was Jules herself crashing through the air. She wanted to say that things had gone too far, that Hen was too thin, that everything was wrong. She wanted to say that everything about Hen felt like an accusation now. She wanted to say she was sorry, even if she didn’t know what she was sorry for. She wanted acknowledgement that Hen felt as sad and as weird as she did. She wanted Hen to say thank you for not quite rescuing her. She walked a little further, concentrating on the rhythm of their feet. Why was Hen staying so silent? What was the problem?
It took about half a mile before Jules lost her temper. Half a mile of hurrying to keep up, and half a mile of thinking about things so that they turned sour and annoying. Yves, the sandpit, the drink, the interrogation, the stuff in the church, the boys, Hen falling, Miss Naylor—all of it becoming one big furious stew. She felt wild all of a sudden, spoiling for . . . not a fight exactly, but a small bad-tempered victory, proof that if she felt bad, she could at least ensure that someone else felt worse.
She took off her jacket and swung it around her waist. ‘You going up to Scotland for the holidays?’
Hen’s back stiffened as if Jules had poked it. ‘Yes.’
‘With your dad?’
‘Yes.’
‘How come,’ said Jules thoughtfully, ‘nobody’s ever met your dad? Everyone else’s parents hang around. Your family—it’s like they don’t exist. Like to meet him.’
‘No point.’
‘Doesn’t he ever come out of Scotland?’
‘Sometimes.’
‘Don’t you want him to come and fetch you?’
‘No.’ Vehemently. ‘It’s fine.’
‘D’you think . . .’—Jules gazed up at the trees—‘you’re like you’re sort of ashamed of him?’
‘No.’
‘So why does he never come down here?’
‘Because it’s difficult.’
‘Why’s it difficult?’
‘It just is. He has to look after my sisters.’
‘Does your dad have a funny accent?’
‘No.’
‘What sort of accent?’
‘Just normal. Just English. He speaks English like normal.’
‘Don’t you want him to meet us? Me, and Caz, and Mel and people?’
‘It doesn’t . . . It isn’t . . .’
‘At the beginning,’ said Jules, cheerily malevolent now, ‘you used to talk about Scotland all the time. About your dad and your sisters. You never talk about them any more. Aren’t you proud of them? Don’t you want to tell us about Scotland any more?’
‘Got bored.’ Hen’s voice seemed to be receding a little.
‘Bored of what?’
‘Bored. Just bored.’
‘Bored of telling us? You said Scotland was cool.’
‘Doesn’t matter.’
‘What doesn’t matter?’
Hen turned. ‘Don’t want to say. I just don’t want to, all right?’
Jules’s eyes widened. ‘OoooOOOooh. I was only asking.’
‘Doesn’t matter. Just leave it, right?’
‘Don’t you love your dad or something? Don’t you want him to meet us?’
‘Just leave it.’ Hen lengthened her step, trying to outpace Jules.
‘I’d really like to go to Edinburgh, see what it’s like. D’you think I could ever come and stay?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘Just . . . It’s difficult.’
‘Why’s it difficult?’
‘He’s got stuff to do. He’s busy.’
‘All the time? He’s doing stuff all the time?’
‘Look, just stop fucking winding me up, OK? Leave it. My dad’s got nothing to do with you. That stuff, it’s not yours. It’s nothing to do with you or Caz.’
Jules looked wounded. ‘Fuck. God. I didn’t know it was such a big deal.’
‘I just don’t want to talk about it. It isn’t anything to do with you.’
‘You’re really ashamed of them, aren’t you? Your family. What’s wrong with them? They freaks or something?’
Hen didn’t speak, just turned back to the path, put her head down and almost ran. Jules settled back to a more comfortable pace. The way she felt now was like she felt after she’d eaten a particularly complete meal.
Behind her, Izzy turned. ‘Hang on,’ she said, staring back up the road. ‘Where’s Ali?’
+
Ali was looking at Miss Naylor’s wrinkles. There were two prominent ones which ran between her eyebrows from the top of her nose, four creases on her forehead as neat as foolscap lines and a few thin gatherings around her lips. There were the beginnings of crow’s feet round her eyes—why, Ali couldn’t think, since Miss Naylor wasn’t exactly known for smiling—and the lines which ran from her nostrils to her mouth seemed to have become deeper in recent months. Every time Miss Naylor frowned, Ali had the sensation of watching time move. The frown made her older, the normal face made her younger. She watched the sittings of foundation round the corners of her nose, and wondered how Miss Naylor’s life had brought her to this place.
The room was one of the better ones. It had a bunk bed in one corner where Miss Naylor had laid out a series of maps and papers, a larger bed in the centre of the room with a brown and pink duvet cover, a cheap wardrobe, a desk by the window and a basin. Apart from the papers and the duvet cover, there was nothing to indicate the personality of the room’s occupant. No clothes, no jewellery, only some make-up by the basin and a bottle of anti-dandruff shampoo. There was no evidence of what Miss Naylor favoured as bedtime reading, no radio, no handbag, no sense of someone who had an existence beyond the school gates. She wondered again who Miss Naylor was. Had she once loved someone? Had they loved her back? What did she think about late at night when there was no one there? Were there still parts of her that remained human?
‘And then?’
The late afternoon light was shining directly into Ali’s eyes, and she was beginning to feel claustrophobic. They’d gone over it twice already. Everything, all the details from the moment she’d crept out of the swimming pool changing rooms to the moment she got back to the Manor. Which route she’d walked, where she’d stopped, what time she’d arrived at the station, which ticket she’d bought, which train she’d intended to catch, what she thought she was going to do at the other end. Whether she’d spoken to anyone, what they’d said, whether they’d given her anything, how long she’d waited, what she’d seen, what her mother had said on the phone when Miss Naylor rang, what her father would probably say when he was contacted. How long it had taken Jaws to search for her, what inconvenience it put them all to, how shamelessly inconsiderate . . . All the normal stuff. They’d confiscated her backpack and gone through it piece by piece. She’d said all she could say. And, so far, she’d said it quite well. She’d told them enough to pacify their suspicions, but not so much that they would find her openness surprising.
When she’d got to the station, there hadn’t been too many people about: a few stragglers on the way back from shopping expeditions in Bristol, a greasy-looking man holding a cyclist’s helmet, an old woman arguing with her middle-aged daughter. The car park was full to capacity with the cars of commuters, dusty in the silence and the early afternoon haze. Someone had been standing by the ticket booth, having a conversation with the guard. She could hear little snippets, stuff about timetables and delays. She had watched two little girls trying to give each other piggy backs and falling over. Their mother shaded her eyes against the sun and tried to joke with the man selling tickets. There had been something surreptitious in her gestures: the way she bent so close into the booth, the way she smiled with only one side of her mouth when she couldn’t find the right change, the way she snapped at the children when they weren’t really doing anything bad. Perhaps she was also planning to escape. If so, she wasn’t doing it very well. Ali watched her, and learned. Best not to be like that. Best to look like everyone else, waiting and staring at the timetable boards.
Miss Naylor held up a crumpled five-pound note. ‘How long did you expect this to last?’
Ali shrugged.
‘You were going to get to Oxford and survive with this?’
‘Maybe.’
‘How, exactly?’
‘Don’t know.’
‘You don’t know? So you and your five pounds were just going to get there and see what happened? See if you could survive on the streets? Wander into a hotel and just hope that someone was handing out free rooms for the night?’
‘Don’t know.’
‘Do you know what happens to people on the streets?’
‘Yes.’ Ali felt her mind recede. She remembered the trick she’d had when she was young of disappearing somewhere into her own head. She would slip so deep inside herself that the words rained down softly without ever quite touching their target. Her mother could shout all she liked, and Ali would just stand there like a pony in a snowstorm, patiently waiting till it was over and she could move again.
‘So you know how many of them don’t survive, or end up dead or mugged or sick or raped? You know that some of them go missing and don’t return? You know what it’s like out there, do you?’
A shrug.
She tried a different tack. ‘You are aware of how much concern you’ve caused your mother?’
‘Mmmm.’
‘And you don’t mind? You don’t mind the idea of your mother going frantic with worry, blaming herself, blaming us, blaming the school? You know she was just about to get in the car and drive all the way down here to look for you? That’s all OK with you, is it?’
‘Sorry.’
Miss Naylor rested her forehead on her hand. Although the gesture was supposed to imply exasperation, Ali was surprised to notice that she seemed tired. There was something in her shoulders and the angle of her spine which suggested a deeper weariness than that which came from interrogating a recalcitrant teenager.
Miss Naylor leaned back in her chair. ‘Go,’ she said. ‘Just go. I’ll think of a punishment later. And you can work out what you’re going to tell your mother.’
Ali got up. Perhaps she should offer Miss Naylor something: a foothold, a clue, some small consolation. She stood in the grubby sunlight, looking down at Miss Naylor’s hand where it rested on the desk. She tried to think of something to say, but nothing came. She turned and walked towards the door, feeling somehow dirtier than she had expected to. She no longer felt glad to have been found.
Tuesday
‘Results.’ Miss Naylor slapped a pile of faxes down on the breakfast table. Hen heard the dry rustle of the pages, watched them creep, curling, back to the edge. ‘We’ve been looking forward to these, haven’t we, missies?’
Conversation had been desultory. Only Mel and Mina seemed to have enough energy to talk, but when Mel saw the faxes she stopped mid-sentence and put her hands to her face. ‘Oh Jesus. Oh no.’
‘Shall I read them out?’
‘Couldn’t you . . . ?’ said Izzy.
‘Aaaah.’ Miss Naylor cocked her head to one side. ‘Nervous, are we?’
‘No. Just . . .’
‘I could pin them to the board. I could stick them on the ceiling if you really want. The results will still be the same.’
Jules made a grab for the faxes. ‘Can’t we just look . . . ?’
‘Excuse me, Julia.’ The women in the canteen had stopped talking and were watching them across the tables. ‘Melanie Baxter. Ready? B maths, C Eng. lit., Spanish B, French D, geography E . . .’ Mel covered her face with her hands and groaned. ‘Eng. lang. B, biology C, art A.’
‘Catherine Fleming.’ This time, it was the rest of the table who averted their eyes. They knew what was coming. ‘All As except Bs in Eng. lang. and physics.’
Hen thought briefly of nudging Caz, of laughing, of taking the piss a little. But what would have felt right three days ago now seemed inconceivable. ‘Isobel Mackeson. Mainly Cs. A in music and art, B in maths.’
‘Lola Rettie.’ Hen sat bolt upright, quite white. ‘All As. We are clever, aren’t we?’
Mel made vomiting motions. Hen blushed, fast and uncomfortable. The results didn’t mean anything. They weren’t even nice. She’d got them because she’d worked hard, harder than she’d ever bothered before. She wasn’t sure why. The subjects were no more or less engaging and the teaching no better or worse than it had been in previous terms. True, they counted towards GCSEs, but so did other exams at other times. She’d worked because time spent not working seemed worse than the time spent working. She’d got them because work was the one anaesthetic which smoothed away food or home or Caz or guilt. And now, here, the results of all that work seemed just a handful of ashes. Her father would be pleased, but that was cheap consolation, and her mother . . . She didn’t bother telling her mother about school stuff any more.
