Bad Company (6 page)

‘There are no words for how I feel, Ralph. For what I could do to these people who did this.’ He paused. Spittle was bubbling through his clenched teeth like lava ready to erupt from a volcano. ‘This was a hellish act. But we can start again, Ralph. There’s always next year’s competition.’

I could only see the side of Ralph’s face. ‘It doesn’t matter, sir,’ he said in a flat, lifeless voice. ‘My dad’s right. He says there’s no point even trying. Nothing ever works out for people like us.’

And though I could only see the side of Ralph’s face, it was enough to make out a trickle of a tear.

That was when Murdo noticed me. His wild eyes fixed on mine. I felt my whole head go red, not just my face. He knows, I thought frantically. He must know. I ran out of the classroom, bursting through the doors that led out on to the playground.

‘I don’t know why you’re so upset.’ Diane sounded annoyed as we left school that day. ‘It’s done now. And he can always make another for next year.’

I thought about Ralph and what he had said. ‘There’s no point even trying.’

‘Maybe he won’t,’ I said.

Diane shrugged. ‘Well, if he doesn’t that’s his problem.’

‘Maybe we should just confess and face up to it.’ The thought terrified me.

‘You must be joking!’ For a moment a different Diane flashed in her eyes. One that kind of frightened me. Then she smiled. ‘I mean, I would get into as much trouble as
you and that wouldn’t really be fair. I never really did anything. I was just the lookout.’

‘I won’t mention you. I promise.’

She was already shaking her head. ‘That’s not fair, Lissa. You don’t do that to a friend. You do still want to be friends, don’t you?’

And of course I did. Diane was the only friend I had. I couldn’t bear the thought of losing her.

She was right anyway. It was done. Me confessing wouldn’t help Ralph Aird. Diane said if he was made of good stuff he would bounce back. Make another for next year’s competition. That’s what Diane would do, she said. That’s what people like us would do.

That’s what I kept telling myself too.

If only I could forget his lifeless voice, with no hope left in it and that single tear running down Ralph Aird’s face.

But all thought of Ralph Aird was blotted out when I came home. Magnus Pierce was there. Magnus Pierce with his big frame blocking the doorway into the living room. Margo was in her playpen, hugging a brand new teddybear. No prizes for guessing who had brought that. J.B. was standing over her, like a lion protecting his cub.

‘We really have to talk,’ Magnus Pierce was saying as I walked in. ‘If I can’t come here, you should come to my office. We have things to discuss.’

J.B. saw me then, and his eyes flickered in my direction. As they did Magnus Pierce turned slowly round.

‘Ah, it’s the lovely Lissa.’ He beamed a big white smile at me. I almost expected to see his teeth flash like in a cartoon. ‘And I’m just leaving. What a pity.’ As he stepped past me he touched my shoulder and turned back to J.B. ‘Just think about what I said, Jonathan. You’ll see I’m right.’ Then he paused and added very slowly, ‘You have a family to look after you know.’

At that very moment Mum burst into the house with Jonny in tow. She’d known she was going to find Magnus Pierce here, must have seen his car. I certainly hadn’t but then I had been too busy thinking about Ralph Aird.

‘I’m just going, Mrs Blythe,’ he said pleasantly, as if Mum had already asked him to do just that.

And in two long strides he was out of the house and moving down the path. Mum ran to J.B. and he held her close. Jonny looked baffled, didn’t know what was going on. And Margo with her nose running was biting obliviously into her new bear.

Mum was crying. I could hear it in her voice though I couldn’t see her face crushed against J.B.’s chest.

‘I’m so afraid of that man, Jonny,’ she said.

And do you know what J.B. said? ‘So am I.’

Chapter Nine

April 3rd

I’ve been to Diane’s house for dinner tonight. We went straight after school, running through streets and alleys and on to the broad tree-lined avenue where Diane lives. Our house had been in a street just like hers. Our house had been so much like hers. No wonder I love going there
.

Dinner was served at a long, mahogany table and the dinner set was white china with dainty lines of gold around the edges. Tall crystal glasses were on the table for mineral water and stemmed glasses for the wine. In the middle was a bowl of glorious chrysanthemums. It took me back to the dinner parties Mum and Dad used to have for J.B.’s business partners. Magnus Pierce was always there. He seemed to dominate the table with his loud voice and his larger than life frame. Even then, he fascinated me
.

And for the first time I have actually met Diane’s dad. He has grey hair, but a young face and he looks so much like Diane, it’s uncanny
.

‘Terrible thing about what happened to that boy’s artwork,’ he said while we were having dessert. (Banoffee pie, my favourite.) I almost choked on it. I glanced at Diane but she didn’t even look up at me
.

‘They’ve locked the school up now, Daddy,’ she said, sounding sorry for herself. ‘It’s like a prison in there. Isn’t it, Lissa?’

My mouth was too dry to answer. Just as well I didn’t have to. Diane’s mum crashed into the conversation angrily. ‘Locking up schools! Vandalism!’ Her thin voice was shaking. ‘I hate using clichés but I don’t know what this world is coming to.’

Mr Connell was calmer. ‘Yes, dear. But it won’t be for long. We should hear from Adler Academy soon.’

Adler Academy, the private school in the countryside nearby. The one I had once hoped to attend
.

Now Diane is going to Adler Academy. Leaving me alone again? I can’t bear the thought of it. It was only just before I was leaving for home that I had the chance to ask her about it
.

‘Well, you didn’t think I’d be staying in that dump, did you?’ And of course, I shouldn’t have. Diane was never meant to be in a school like mine. But the thought of losing her just makes me feel sick
.

‘Couldn’t J.B. send you to Adler Academy with me?’

Sure, I almost said. He’ll be able to afford it with his tips from Burgers A GoGo. He has a night job now too, stacking shelves. It gets worse and worse
.

But he has an interview coming up, for a ‘good position’. I heard him discussing it with Mum. And if he gets that job, then why shouldn’t I ask him to let me go to Adler Academy with Diane?

How sure I was when I wrote that. Sure I was safe. Sure Diane was my friend. Sure everything was going to be all right. Diane was the only thing that made school bearable. Security had been tightened up because of what had happened, and there was an air of mistrust about the place.

I was convinced Murdo knew I was responsible. He never smiled at me any more but I found he was watching me, very thoughtfully. When he talked to me he was always brusque.

I didn’t care any more. I had Diane. And she had been right. No one had blamed us. Everybody assumed it had been the vandals and soon everything settled down once again.

Except for Ralph Aird. Diane said he had reverted to type.

He was always missing school and when he was there
he was sullen and bad-tempered. Even Murdo couldn’t motivate him.

At moments like that I felt sick with guilt. Had I done that to him? How would he have acted if he’d won the competition? Proud? Confident? A totally different Ralph?

And he would have won. Murdo stormed into the class one day and showed us the entry that did win. A very unimaginative paper tower covered with ‘My Favourite Words from Books’.

Murdo was incensed that such a winner had been chosen. It was banging down the desk time again. ‘Words are nothing!’ he shouted, his Highland burr always more noticeable when he was angry. ‘It’s how they are used that matters. The ideas they convey.’ He spat the words out at us. ‘It’s the characters they create. Ah Ralph! Your entry spoke of characters and ideas and literature.’ He shook his head violently and addressed Ralph’s empty chair as if he was in it. ‘Ah Ralph, surely you would have been the winner instead!’

Later that same afternoon as we passed two of the other teachers in the corridor we heard them discussing Ralph. Diane pulled me back to listen.

‘He’s not at school again. And I heard he’s been running
wild at night time all through the town centre. Always said he was a bad lot.’

The other teacher agreed. ‘Well, look at the family he comes from. You know, I wouldn’t be surprised if he’d destroyed that collage himself. People like Ralph Aird and his kind can’t handle that kind of responsibility. But don’t tell old Murdo I said that, you know how precious he thinks his pupils are.’

They moved off still talking and I wanted to scream after them, ‘He didn’t destroy it. He didn’t. We did.’

But Diane thought it was amusing. ‘Told you they’d never suspect us,’ she said.

‘But that’s so unfair, Diane. If they start to think he did it himself.’

But she just shrugged that off. ‘Do you think Ralph Aird cares? He’s probably forgotten his old collage already.’

I didn’t think that was true somehow, and as I trudged home it was all I could think about.

I could hear Margo snoring as I let myself in. She was lying on her back in her playpen, sounding like a great navvy. ‘She’s got adenoids,’ Mum keeps insisting. I stood looking at her for a moment. Apart from the awful noise, and her runny nose, she looked so sweet with her chubby
cheeks and her rosebud mouth. I warmed all over just watching her.

But where was J.B.? Not far anyway. He’d never leave Margo alone. Yet the house seemed so quiet. Ominously quiet.

He wasn’t in the kitchen. The lunch dishes were stacked on the dresser and the lemon curtains were blowing gently in the breeze from the open window.

Was he having another of his secret phone calls? There was an extension in the bedroom and I tiptoed upstairs, sure I was going to find him out at last. This time, I promised myself, I would tell Mum.

His bedroom door was ajar, the telephone still in its cradle, lying beside the bed. No J.B.

Puzzled, I pushed open the door of my bedroom and there he was, sitting on the bed. His shoulders were slumped and his face was drawn and grey. He looked older than I’d ever seen him. As if he’d had a shock.

Something had happened to Mum! That was my first thought. Until I saw what he was holding in his hands.

My diary.

He had been reading my diary.

He looked up at me slowly, not surprised or shocked to
be caught, but very deliberately. He’d been waiting for me. He looked at me as if he was disgusted by what he saw.

‘What kind of girl have you turned into, Lissa?’ He held up the diary. ‘How could you have done such a terrible thing? How could you have been so cruel?’

I shrieked at him, refusing to feel guilty. ‘You had no right to read my diary. That’s private!’ I tried to snatch it from him but he held it high away from me.

‘Maybe so, but I’ll tell you this, Lissa. You are going to school tomorrow and you’re going to confess everything.’

Chapter Ten

All that night I screamed and screamed at him, but he wouldn’t change his mind. ‘You’re going to own up to what you have done, and that’s all there is to say.’

It was no use appealing to Mum. She’d never go against J.B. ‘I don’t know why I find it so hard to believe you could do such a thing,’ she said, clutching a snivelling Margo against her. ‘You did the same thing to little Jonny’s poster. How could you have been so cruel?’

‘You don’t know how cruel Ralph Aird can be. He deserved it.’ I refused to feel sorry for Ralph now, or guilty. He had brought it all on himself.

When I said that J.B. jumped to his feet. ‘Deserved it!’ he yelled at me. ‘Deserved to have his hard work ruined, something he’d put so much of his time into ripped to shreds.’ I could have answered him then, told him about what I’d put up with from Ralph, all the time he was in
prison. Told him how he’d made a fool of him for working in Burgers A GoGo. But he didn’t wait for an answer. Didn’t want one. He took a step toward me. ‘What could he have possibly done to deserve the wrath of you and your snobbish little friend?’

‘Don’t you say that about Diane.’

He didn’t listen. ‘Maybe you both suddenly realised he was better than you. And he was going to prove it by winning that competition.’

‘He’s not better than me,’ I shouted. ‘Ralph Aird’s the scum of the earth.’

I sounded like Diane when I said that. Scum of the earth.

‘And what does that make you?’ he shouted back.

There was no arguing with him. No getting round him.

‘I won’t tell, and you can’t make me.’

‘Yes, I can.’ He held up the diary. ‘If you refuse to confess of your own accord, I’ll hand this over.’

That was the worst threat of all. All my feelings, my hopes, everything was locked in the pages of that diary. I had no doubt he’d do what he threatened.

‘You’re the one that’s despicable. Reading someone else’s private diary. No wonder I hate you.’

That got to him. He sank on to the arm of the chair. ‘Hate me then. I shouldn’t have read it, I know that. But
when I saw it lying there I thought maybe inside I’d find the key that might get me through to you. I just wanted us at least to begin to respect each other again, Lissa. I didn’t know you hated me that much. I didn’t expect to find anything like this.’

‘I’ll never respect you again. I hate you.’ I was crying now. Didn’t want to but couldn’t help it. I didn’t see any way out of the nightmare he was creating for me.

‘Don’t say that, Lissa.’ Mum put her arm gently on my shoulder but I shrugged it off.

‘I’ll go with you to school tomorrow,’ J.B. said quietly.

‘To make sure I go?’ I snapped.

‘No. I want to support you.’

That almost made me laugh. ‘You! An ex-con. Oh yes, I really need your support.’