By Any Other Name (19 page)

Do I care? No, I don’t think I do.

I’ve got that feeling of peace again. Weird.

T
asha has replied:

I should feel better, but I remember how Tash and I would sometimes sit in the dining hall when we were in a bitchy mood and pull apart every girl who wasn’t in our crowd for how they
looked and dressed.

I feel a little bit sick.

I wince and look away. It’s funny how my value has decreased since we lost money and status. Not that the people around here know that of course – they just judge what they see now.
So I guess this
is
what I’m worth now – just me, without any back-up behind me.

I lie back on the bed and think about the whole thing. It’s a big shock, I guess, to realise that. Even if a magic wand was waved and all the external bad stuff went away and we could go
home, I
know
now. And that knowledge is another thing that takes me further away from being Lou.

Something Katya said springs into my mind. She knew.

‘I think that a lot of the people at school who talk to me do so because Papa has money. I don’t think I have any real friends there, not like you do.’

At the time I didn’t really understand what she meant so I gave an awkward half-smile and said, ‘Really? No, I bet most of them really like you. What’s not to like?’

She smiled back and shook her head. I thought she was probably being a bit paranoid so I dropped the subject. A shame though if she was right and she didn’t have real friends. I
couldn’t imagine how horrible that would be.

We’d been sitting on the bench overlooking the cove. It was late afternoon and Katie was playing behind us on her bike. Mum had made strawberry shortcake and taken some
round to Katya’s mum and it sounded like she’d all but thrown Katya out here to socialise. Katya had brought some of the cake for us on paper plates.

‘I am sorry – we do not have real ones. We forgot to bring some with us.’

‘Your mum probably thought there’d be some in the cottage.’

‘Yes, I expect so.’ But she was lying. I could see it in the way she wouldn’t meet my eyes. What was the big deal? It was only plates.

‘So is your dad coming down later?’

‘I am not sure. He was going to, but then something important came up at work, so we came on alone.’ She was lying again, or not telling the whole truth at the very least.

‘So what do you like doing out of school?’ I decided to change the subject, because her face had grown even paler. Even if she was lying, she clearly didn’t want to.

Her eyes lit up. ‘I like to paint, and to draw, but most of all to paint.’

‘Is that what you’ve been doing all day?’ Her hands looked very clean, but there was a smear of blue by her elbow that was half hidden by her sleeve.

‘Yes. I forget myself when I paint. I think you might understand that? I’ve heard you when you play your violin in the garden. You forget where you are too?’
I nod and she goes on, ‘So I sat by the little window in the bedroom today and looked out at the sea, and I painted what was inside me.’

‘Can I see it?’

She looked reluctant but got up. ‘Come up. It’s still drying.’

I followed her into the cottage and she led me upstairs. Although the place was the twin of ours, it had a very different feel inside – less lived-in. You could tell it was rented and not
loved.

Her room was plain and bare. She hadn’t brought much with her except for an easel in the corner and several blank canvases. Paints were spread over the dressing table. I went round the
easel, expecting to see something scenic with rocks and clouds and sea.

What I did see stopped my words in my mouth. The canvas was a wild daubing of angry red and purple and black. I could make out shadowy ghost figures in the background, twisted and knotted into
tortured shapes. In the centre was some kind of black void that seemed to be sucking the figures towards it.

She painted what was inside, she said. I looked at her, with her sad eyes and passive face. How could all this be inside that sleek-haired head?

‘What do you think?’ she asked me, calm and serene outwardly at least.

‘It’s not what I expected . . . I wouldn’t like that to be inside me.’

She walked past me to look out of the window at blue sea and beautiful coastline. ‘No.’ She turned back to me. ‘Let’s go into the sun. Leave the shadows in
here.’

I know now, Katya. I know how it feels to have that inside. Please God, wherever you are now, I hope you’re not trapped with those shadows. I hope you’re dreaming
of the sun shining off the sea. Of swimming in the early morning. Of the sweet, soft crunch of strawberry shortcake on a summer afternoon. Of anything but
that
.

K
atie’s sitting on Joe’s swing pushing herself back and forth, with his old dog lying panting in the grass, and I’m perched on a
low tree branch nearby. The sky’s overcast and we’ve got thick sweaters on – Joe’s is black obviously – but the rain is holding off.

He laughs. ‘She never gets tired, does she? You’d think she’d want a change and go up to the playground to the slide or something. But she doesn’t.’

‘It’s part of her condition – habits . . . rituals. Anyway I’m glad she doesn’t.’

‘Why?’

‘It’s peaceful here. The playground isn’t.’

He gives me a curious look. ‘You mean because there’s no danger of running into Crudmilla and Co. here.’

‘No, not really. It
is
peaceful here. Like the light’s different, or the air or something. It doesn’t feel like it does back in the village.’
No cars or
strangers for me to watch for.

‘Oh.’

‘Do you believe places can have spirits? I’m not sure I do but if they can, then this place has a peaceful spirit.’

He sniffs. ‘Probably the fertiliser.’

I try not to laugh but I can’t help it, so I shove him off the tree branch and he drops to the ground where he makes a swipe for my feet to pull me off too. I kick out and he stops . . .
then tips me back off the branch a few seconds later.

I hang backwards, caught by my knees, with his hands hanging on to mine to stop me falling. ‘Now, that wasn’t being a good girl, was it?’ he says, with the chuckle that makes
me join in.

‘OK, OK, no.’

‘Say sorry.’ He relaxes his arms and I slide a few centimetres back, and let out a shriek.

‘OK, sorry, sorry!’ But I’m laughing as he pulls me back up to a sitting position.

I laugh even more a few seconds later as Katie appears silently by his side and sinks her teeth into his hand. He yelps and scoots under the branch behind me.

‘Katie, no, it was only a game. You’re not to bite.’ But I can hardly speak for laughing.

‘She bloody bit me,’ he whispers. Katie’s glaring at him, looking a bit satanic.

‘Go back and play on the swing, Katie-pops.’

She throws him a last drop-dead look and stalks back to the swing. Kip gets up and gives her hand a quick lick, then flops down again. Joe hefts himself back up on the branch, openly laughing
now Katie isn’t looking.

‘You’re in her bad books now.’

‘Ah, I’ll fix that. She can bottle-feed the lamb.’

‘You’ve got a lamb?’

He taps me on the head to say ‘stupid’. ‘We’ve got about ten. Except this one’s mum won’t feed him and he won’t take to any of the other ewes so
he’s on the bottle.’

‘Ooh, can we see him now?’ Any shred of sophistication I may think I have vanishes – I’ve never seen a baby lamb close up before. He shakes his head at me in amusement
and leaps down to the ground again.

‘Wait there a bit and I’ll get the feed.’

Ten minutes later we’re in the corner of a barn and Katie’s sitting on a hay bale feeding a teeny tiny lamb with a baby’s bottle. Joe and I lean on the
railing of the pen.

‘So,’ he says, chewing on a hay stalk, which I suspect he’s doing entirely for comic effect because nobody is that yokel for real, ‘are you ever going to tell me why you
lot all turned up here, and where you came from?’

It was bound to happen. It’s the most natural set of questions in the world and I have my answers all prepared, and yet I still panic inside when he asks.

‘Gloucester was the last place we lived. We move about a lot because of Dad’s job, which is why I was out of school for a while – it wasn’t worth going as we moved so
often so I studied from home for the last two years. Anyway he decided to go freelance so we could settle somewhere and we pitched up here. Dad’s from the north originally, though he moved
about a lot as a kid too, and he wanted to come back to his roots. Why here? Because there’s a good school for Katie. She needs proper support. Dad fancied having a house project to do up so
he downsized us for a while. We’ll move somewhere bigger when he’s done all the work on the house and had a chance to look around for somewhere he really wants.’

‘Wow, did you write that down as a script and learn it?’

I freeze. He can’t know – he’s just joking. But I messed up there. Stupid of me – I can’t afford to do that with him. He’s too sharp. I need to regain control
of the situation.

‘Yeah, ha ha. It feels like it. You’re about the fiftieth person to ask me that. Maybe I
should
write it down and print it off. Then I can just hand it to people and save the
questions.’

He turns to look me straight in the eye, spinning the straw in his mouth, which looks ridiculous. ‘Maybe you should. Or maybe you could give me the real version.’

When I look closer, I can see irritation in his dark eyes. They’re difficult to read, that dark, dark brown, But he’s cross, it’s clear. How does he know? Because I bungled the
story, or from something else he’s picked up? I ask in the end because I can’t afford to make more mistakes.

‘Apart from the speaking like it’s scripted? And good catch – you nearly saved it. But it was you.’

‘What?’ I cast a distracted glance at Katie with the lamb to make sure she’s not listening. She isn’t.

‘You made me think it’s not true. You don’t fit.’

Oh, thanks . . .

‘What I mean is, you don’t behave like someone who’s used to moving around or you’d have settled in quicker. You wouldn’t have arrived like you were Paris Hilton
dropped in the Bronx. You’d have known that’d turn people against you. You’d be more . . . bland.’

Several things strike me at once:

‘Bland?’

He nods. ‘People who fit in everywhere are always bland. I suppose you have to be to get on with so many different types of people.’

I decide ‘not bland’ is a compliment coming from him.

‘So why do you lie about it, and are you going to tell me the truth?’

‘I can’t.’

His eyes look more disappointed than cross now, or am I imagining that? ‘Why not?’

I take a deep breath, trying to find something that will satisfy him. ‘It’s not just my story to tell, so I can’t.’

He bites his lip and nods his head thoughtfully. ‘Fair enough.’

I can’t believe that’s the end of it but it seems to stop him. Katie’s finished feeding the lamb and hands him the empty bottle. She’s following the little thing around
now, stroking it like a dog. He smiles as he watches her.

‘What about you?’ I flick his arm lightly with my finger.

‘What about me?’

‘You’re not exactly out there with the personal information yourself. I asked you what you were going to do when you leave school and you ducked out of answering. Don’t think I
didn’t notice.’

His smile shifts to a more rueful one. ‘I’d never think you don’t notice things. I reckon you probably notice too much to be comfortable.’