Special, p.7
Special, page 7
Instead, she was practising speeches. Long, beautiful speeches all designed to devastate. Perfect speeches, full of truth and brilliance and not one single mistake. Perhaps this time she would get it right. Perhaps this time she might actually be able to say what she meant instead of spitting out nothing but heat and a few acrid tears of frustration. It always happened. Every time she was angry, all her words ganged up against her, clotting in her mouth like a faceful of stones, coming out in the wrong order, too fast, too slow, gobbled up, munched to bits, ludicrous, incoherent. More than anything, Jules prayed for the gift of articulate rage; to be able to lose her temper beautifully, to slash and burn with the power of speech. Just once, it would be so wonderful to open her mouth and say the perfect sentences printed on her mind.
But for now, it all sounded just right. Hen would be shocked at what she had to say. Jules pictured her rooted to the spot, ripped into silence by all the things Jules had to tell her. Like how fucking stupid she was, and how Jules had no fucking idea why she bothered being her friend, and incidentally didn’t she know she looked rough as hell and no one wanted to hang out with her any more. Like how fucking dare she leave Jules and run off like that. Like she could just fuck off back to Edinburgh and never come back, for all Jules cared. Like Jules only ever talked to her because Hen smoked. Like she should realize a whole lot of things about herself, stuff that it was about time she knew. Like her clothes were shit, her hair was an embarrassment and there were moments—lots of them, actually—when Jules only bothered because she felt sorry for her. Like she’d been such a fucking wimp in the music shop with the men, like she was always a fucking wimp when it came down to it, when it really mattered.
And then, when she’d said all of that, when she’d pulled Hen into very small pieces and put her back together in a different, better order, she’d present the fait accompli, the final devastating evidence that she, Jules, was a whole lot fucking smarter than Hen would ever be. She’d just say it quietly, like a throwaway line. She’d just say something like, oh, by the way, I went back to the shop. And were meeting the boys on Friday. Hen would have absolutely nothing to say. There would be no possible retort. Even Caz would be impressed. It would be so gorgeously stage-managed that they’d only be able to sit there and marvel.
When she thought about it again, she was pretty chuffed with herself. After Hen had stormed off, Jules had turned and walked in the opposite direction. She’d gone into the newsagent and stood broodingly at the counter until the manager began to look as if there was something weird about her and she was forced to buy some fags just to show she wasn’t a shoplifter or a psycho. Then she’d wandered up and down the main street for a while, not sure what she was supposed to do with herself. She didn’t want to go back to the Manor just yet. It wasn’t time, and she had things to sort out in her head. Finally, she had walked back into DiVinyl, gone over to the bloke Hen had been talking to, tapped him on the shoulder and said, ‘Do you want to meet?’ He hadn’t laughed at her, he hadn’t ignored her, and best of all he hadn’t asked where Hen was. He’d just smiled and said yes, he’d meet them in the Cross Keys on Friday night. He said he’d bring some mates along as well. She’d walked back out of the shop in complete control of the situation. She was smart; no question, she was smart.
Somewhere behind her a church bell began to chime the hour. The road signs clanked in the wind. Down at the river, the water darkened, folding over itself, twisting into the sands. Jules saw the gates of the Manor and increased her speed.
+
By the time Ali came out, the shadows had stretched right across the little clearing. She stood on the edge of the cave for a minute, looking down at where she had been. The change in the light had altered the atmosphere. She had been thinking of using it as a starting point from which to run away, a refuge in moments of possible emergency. But now the thought made her feel foolish, as if she’d been caught playing with something she should long ago have outgrown.
She turned and began walking back towards the track. She could hear something banging rhythmically against the ground. Tap tap tip. Tap tap tip. Too regular to be a bird or an animal, but not regular enough to be a machine. It sounded quite far away, further down the track. Izzy. Of course. Izzy, heaving resentfully along beside her, Izzy, with whom she was supposed to have completed the walk. Ali felt remorse, not so much for having abandoned her but for having completely forgotten her.
She found the track and began walking. The wood was darkening now, and the undergrowth at the side of the track seemed more sharply green than at midday. The landscape which had seemed so beguiling earlier in the day now seemed shadowy and covert. She no longer liked the silence, or the way the shrubs at the side of the track kept up a steady rustle even without the wind. The colours seemed too sharp and the shadows too overwhelming. She hadn’t really thought about it before, but there was something about the countryside in this part of England that didn’t seem quite as domesticated as things in England should. She could sense the presence of animals somewhere. If she turned suddenly she might see something she didn’t want to see. Perhaps there would be eyes shining in the darkness. Or teeth. Perhaps the forest had evolved differently to other parts of the country; perhaps wildlife flourished here that could not have survived outside this cavernous twilight. Perhaps there were giant beasts here: super-rats and mutant cats, wolves slipping watchfully in between the tree trunks, invisible snakes shaded like stones. Perhaps the forest was a haven for a wilder kind of life where herbivores turned carnivores and preyed on passing fools. Maybe they were just lurking there, watching her go by, waiting until they were hungry enough. She pictured a rat as big as a dog leaping out at her, its scarlet eyes abstracted with blood. You cannot, she told herself firmly, get frightened by killer rats. There is no such thing as a killer rat. As she walked, she giggled, thinking about wild dogs and Izzy’s huge pale face staring up at her.
She turned a corner in the track to where it forked three ways. ‘Ali!’ called a voice.
Jaws and Izzy had evidently been there for some time.
As she drew level, Izzy tipped her head to one side and squinted up at Ali. ‘You OK?’
Ali nodded.
‘Sure?’
Ali nodded again.
‘Really sure? Look a bit . . .’
Ali looked down at her. Izzy looked as if she and the wood had come to some sort of agreement, and that she had found a place here now. There was an empty bottle of water and the remains of a chocolate packet beside her.
‘You went off like that. Suddenly.’
‘Mmmm.’
‘Where did you go?’
Ali shrugged.
Jaws got up and brushed the bark off her trousers. ‘We ought to be getting back.’ She glanced once at Ali, a veiled look. Ali could not read what it meant.
‘Where did you go? I looked for you. For ages,’ said Izzy.
Ali shrugged.
‘Like where? In that wood? Why? It’s so weird, wandering off like that.’
‘Mmmm’
‘Oh, for God’s sake. We’ve been waiting two hours for you. Two hours of boring sitting around in this place.’
‘Sorry.’
Jaws sounded calmer than Izzy. ‘It doesn’t matter. She’s here now, isn’t she?’ She inclined her head towards the track. ‘Come on. Or all the shops will be shut.’
They walked on. Izzy began to wheeze a little.
Ali could still smell the coldness of the cave on her fingers. She wasn’t sure what she’d found while she was there, only that it had helped her to make a decision, and that sooner or later she’d have to do something about that decision. Alone.
+
Hen stood in the loo with her back against the door, waiting. This place wasn’t as private as she would have liked. It was halfway along the corridor, between one bedroom and the next. It had bright orange curtains and smelled of something industrial. Underneath the industrial smell was the smell of something nastier. Above her, a light bulb fizzed. Outside, she could hear the murmurings of conversation, Izzy’s voice, the sound of the rooks coming home to roost. She leaned her head against the back of the door and closed her eyes. There was always the bathroom a little further down the corridor but that, she figured, was probably even more risky than this place.
Standing with her arms behind her, she began to feel faint. She stared for a moment at the toilet seat. It was black and she could see droplets of something on its surface. The toilet bowl itself was stained with age and unnameable dirt. There was a rim of brown scum just above the water level, and under the seat was a fine speckling of shit or blood or something. She could see wipe marks where someone had tried to clean it. It didn’t look as if they had tried very hard.
When she had eventually returned to the Manor, Miss Naylor was standing in the hall, silhouetted against the evening sun. ‘What time do you call this?’
‘Sorry.’
‘You were supposed to be back at five.’
‘Yes. Sorry.’
‘What were you doing?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Julia is already back. She said you walked off on your own.’
‘Sorry.’ Capitulation is always easier. Or, at least, capitulation is always quicker.
‘Go on. Go and get your supper.’
After a few steps, Hen realized that Miss Naylor was following her. When they reached the canteen, Jules looked up from her food, a long, awkward stare. Hen went up to the serving hatch and picked out an apple, a stick of celery, and a bun with a thin strip of ham jammed inside. She began walking back, but Miss Naylor caught her arm.
‘Over here,’ she said, nodding to an empty table. ‘You eat with me.’
‘But everyone else—’
‘Never mind everyone else. Over here.’ Her fingers were squeezing Hen’s forearm, not painfully, but hard enough that Hen could not pull away without making a scene. ‘If you cannot be trusted to eat properly on your own, then you will have to be supervised.’
‘Who says?’
‘I say. Go on. The bun, please.’
Hen picked up the bun. It was white bread, with a hard lip of staleness beginning to form around the edge. It didn’t seem to have any filling at all. Hen turned it round and round in her hands as if it were a new kind of gadget and she couldn’t find the right buttons.
‘Go on. It won’t bite.’
Hen took a nibble. The bun was made of something weird and light, like artificial pillow stuffing. Whoever had made it had barely bothered to include any ham, and the gap between the layers was filled with margarine slathered on so thickly it had crept into the pores of the bread. Hen thought about the slick of oily margarine, the globules of fat down her throat, all that yellow sewage seeping into her stomach. The thought was so nauseating she thought she was going to gag. A small chunk of ham fell out of one side and lay there on the table, its surface shimmering with grease. It was pink, with a flabby white rime of fat around the edge. Her throat felt blocked by something big, as if a stone had been rolled over it. I can’t, she thought, I can’t . . .
‘Go on. It’s not that bad. I’m eating it.’ Miss Naylor took a cartoon bite of her own bun. Hen watched her lips working over the bread, the moist sliver of tongue.
‘I can’t,’ she said miserably. ‘I just can’t. I just . . . It’s . . .’
‘Oh, for God’s sake. Stop fussing. What do you expect? It’s not great, but it’s food, and we can’t all be so precious about it.’
‘I’m not . . . I’m not saying that. I don’t mean that.’
‘Well, just get on with it. And if you can’t eat that, eat the apple or something. Or the celery.’
Hen put down the bun and pulled out the apple. It was a pale yellowish colour, bruised on one side and covered in a thin film of what looked like blackheads. If she looked at it for too long, she wouldn’t be able to manage that either, so she closed her eyes and bit into it. The sensation of eating something unnatural came back to her again. The apple seemed to be made out of cotton fibre, with an odd false sweetness.
‘There. See? You’re eating that.’
Miss Naylor had a little red line, a burst vein or something, on the side of her nose. Her hair looked flat now, lifeless, as if she’d picked it up off the carpet that morning and plonked it on top of her head any old how. It was fixed into position with so much hairspray that it just sat there, immobile. It wasn’t a wig; it was far too horrible to be a wig. It was also thinning a little, so that Hen could see the white skin of Miss Naylor’s scalp through the strands. God, thought Hen, she’s ugly. Who would have sex with her? She pictured Miss Naylor lying on a mattress like an upturned beetle, bits of her body moving, her legs trembling feebly. She would be making the kind of squeaky noises that people made on television. Up at the top, her hair would just crouch motionless, waiting till she’d finished.
Miss Naylor seemed discomfited by Hen’s sudden interest. ‘Right. That’ll do. Off you go.’
When she got to the canteen doors, Hen turned. Miss Naylor was still watching her. She was too far away for Hen to see her expression.
She stood now with the door handle jabbing at her back, staring at the floor. The feeling of Miss Naylors grip on her skin wouldn’t go away. When she looked down at her arm, she was almost surprised not to see a neat line of fingerprints just above the wrist. It was odd, this new thing of being so aware of her bones. It seemed to coincide with a general loss of feeling in both arms. Sometimes they just went cold for no apparent reason, as if she was freezing from the inside out. When she touched the skin it felt like it always felt. If she put her wrist up to her face and sniffed her skin, she still smelled comfortingly of herself. But underneath the warmth, in the parts she couldn’t see, something seemed awry.
She couldn’t stop thinking about Miss Naylor’s hair. Underneath all that hairspray, she thought, perhaps it’s alive. She remembered walking by the side of a burn in the country once, turning a corner, and seeing a rabbit right in front of her, just sitting quite still in the middle of the path. The rabbit didn’t move when Hen came up to it. It just sat there, with its head hunkered down and its quick hot eyes sliding from side to side. Hen knew what a rabbit with myxomatosis looked like, but there seemed nothing wrong with this one. She had inspected it cautiously and then moved forwards to pick it up. As she did so, she saw why the rabbit wasn’t moving. A thin dribble of blood was running down behind its ears. A stoat, perhaps, or a weasel; she’d obviously surprised it and the stoat must have run off. At the same instant she saw something else. The rabbit’s fur moved oddly, not with the motion of its breathing but with a separate rhythm. The fur shifted in one place, irregularly, and then in another. Hen put her hand down to touch it, and as she did so she saw what was making its fur shiver. It was alive with fleas. Thousands of them. They lay in the soft folds between its haunches, burrowing and squabbling, making its fur convulse as they consumed it. The rabbit was being eaten from the inside out. Hen closed her eyes and the rabbit’s shifting fur merged with Miss Naylor’s hair. Hen saw insects and maggots crawling out from under Miss Naylor’s hairline, running down her face, burrowing round her ears.
Hen leaned forward, lifted up the toilet seat and was sick.
Thursday
‘Happy birthday,’ said Miss Naylor, cocking her head to one side. ‘We are getting old, aren’t we? Fourteen. My goodness.’
Ali didn’t reply, so Miss Naylor picked up one of the two small parcels by the side of her plate. ‘Heavy. A book? We like books, don’t we?’
No response.
‘Aren’t you going to open them?’ She jabbed at Ali’s shoulder. ‘Look at me when I’m speaking to you.’
Ali watched the floor.
‘Look at me, Alison. Do you have no manners?’
‘I’ll open them later.’
‘If you don’t want to share your birthday with us . . .’
‘Just prefer to open them upstairs.’
A rigid silence. ‘Eat your breakfast. And be downstairs with your kit in half an hour.’ They heard the squeal of her rubber soles against the lino.
‘Stupid cow,’ said Mel.
Jules picked up the water jug. ‘She’s a dictator, basically. She should work in a prison, not a school.’
‘Thought school was prison.’
‘Know what I mean. Mean like a place where sad twisted fascists can kick the shit out of small people.’ Jules stopped. ‘Somewhere anyway where they put sexually frustrated old bitches like her.’ She leaned over and shook one of Ali’s parcels. ‘Oh, go on. I want to see. What is it? Do you know what’s in it?’
‘You always get good presents,’ said Mel balefully.
The way Jules was shaking the parcel made Ali nervous. ‘I’ll open it upstairs,’ she said, swallowing a clot of toast so large it made her eyes water.
Presents from her parents were always fraught. Those from her father tended to be lavish, shameless, exuberantly over-generous. A Discman once, an electronic organizer the next time, a Dreamcast after that. They were lovely expensive things, but nothing about them suggested that her father knew who she was. He bought them because he liked them and assumed she would too. He liked them because they were expensive and because they were new. And, perhaps, because they came without any personality attached; just a nice shiny box with a nice shiny toy. He did not think about how they would look so many miles away in front of other people. He didn’t think of other people’s reactions. He didn’t have to.
Presents from her mother, on the other hand, usually came with an invisible accusation attached. Two birthdays ago Ruth had sent her a cushion embroidered with a sampler her grandmother must have sewn many decades previously. It was made from some heavy, cool material and had ‘My Presence Shall Go With Thee’ embroidered in blue cross stitch over the front.
