Crossing the Line

GILLIAN PHILIP

For Lucy and Jamie
and for Ian, of course

Back When

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Acknowledgements

Also from Bloomsbury

In this life you have to look after yourself. It's not that your parents don't want to take care of you; it's not that they don't have the best of intentions. It's just that parents have other things on their minds. They have things to do. They look away.

Like Dad looked away from the paddling pool.

I don't know how much of this is my own memory, and how much is what Dad told me later. Because he did tell me. He never let me forget it.

My sister Alexandra was strange and quiet from the day she was born, checking us out with her enormous dark eyes till she found she liked us enough to stay. The midwife said she was comparing the world to the way it was the last time around, and finding it slightly wanting. Mum liked this. Mum believed in reincarnation the way
she believed in almost everything else, so maybe Allie really was a tsarina in a previous life. She certainly acted like one.

The first time I was admitted to her presence, I leaned on the chair arm and stared at her as Mum, Dad and a procession of friends and neighbours gurgled at the baby and ignored me altogether. Which was funny, because Allie was ignoring them entirely, too, her dark liquid eyes locked on me. If it's possible, given that her mouth was clamped round the woman's nipple, she was even ignoring Mum.

Not knowing what to do with my hands besides unscrewing the baby's head or trying to pull off its toes or something (I was only three and a half), I shifted from foot to foot and thought longingly of my electronic-sound Buzz Lightyear. I already felt inferior but Nan Lola took pity on me. She was a little out of the circle too, and as I glanced up, bored almost to infanticide, I caught her mischievous smile. Her hand covered mine and squeezed it, and her creased girlish face beamed down at me and only me. Then Nan Lola winked, as if to say
You're mine now, Nick.

And I was.

Allie hardly ever cried. Not that she was one of those giggly happy babies; her silence was still and solemn and deadly calm. Apparently this is not an adorable trait in a baby, though I for one was pleased with it. I think Mum was unnerved by her ever gazing coolly into the middle
distance and not looking terribly bothered.

So Allie was handed over to Dad, and they had their bottle feeds together. Very bonding, I'm sure, but it pushed me even further off the radar.

This is probably why I tried to kill her.

I remember that the day was hot, June-hot. Mum was holed up in her little understairs office in the house, on the phone to some magazine editor; Dad, of course, had gone for another beer. When Dad was sad he smelt of whisky, but that was usually in the evening. By midday he'd be only mildly gloomy, or maybe tired, and he smelt only of beer. I knew the difference very early.

That day I sat beside my little sister in the paddling pool, our bottoms cold in the freshly hosed water, our heads hot under our cotton legionnaire hats. She watched me, her pupils darker than ever in the shade of her hat brim but glittering with the sun bouncing off the pool. And I hated her as only a child can hate.

Several things riled me. Her unswerving gaze. Her silence. The fact she was only nine months old and she wasn't even fit to play with. And the reddening of her cheekbones, the concentration in her dark creased eyes, that meant she was about to poo in her swim nappy.

It offended me beyond belief. The shameless, remorseless nerve of her. I thought about grabbing the end of the hose out of the corner of the pool, where it was still churning out water, and skooshing it straight in her
impassive face. That'd make her cry, all right.

But I didn't dare. Instead I made a face at her and shoved her hard, so hard that she toppled over backwards into the water.

I looked down at her, and she stared solemnly back. The rippling, sun-dazzled water made a sweet little round frame for her face and it was creeping up her cheeks and forehead and chin. She looked a bit astonished but not scared. I wondered whether to let her lie there and I wondered what would happen.

I knew I'd find out faster if I put my hand on her face and pushed her gently down. So that's what I did: I pressed on her nose with a forefinger and watched.

The water was trickling into her nostrils when I changed my mind. Reaching for her wrist, I tilted her back up on to her bottom. She sneezed out water, wobbled, got her balance back and smiled at me. It was a huge direct smile, just between us. I basked in it and smiled back, loving her for the first time.

Then she was snatched up and away from me. When I squinted into the sunlight I saw Dad, unsteady and panting for breath, Allie clutched against him, and he was staring down into my face, anguish all over his own. So I knew he'd seen me from the house.

At least, he'd seen me shove her in. Then he'd come running, but he hadn't seen me rescue her. So who did he think had pulled her upright? The pool fairies? Who would have saved her if I hadn't been there? Honestly.

‘Never do that again,' he shouted. ‘Never, never, never.'

You know, I think he was talking to himself.

I never did do it again.
He
did. It wasn't the last time he left her, just for a minute, just to get something out of the fridge. It wasn't that he loved Mr Carlsberg more than he loved Allie, of course he didn't. But each time he must have balanced the possibilities, and reckoned he had a moment to spare.

So occasionally I had to stop her climbing into a filing cabinet, or sticking her finger in a socket, or grabbing a pan off the stove. Mum was very busy, writing or broadcasting, and after all she knew Dad was keeping an eye on us. Besides, I loved my alien changeling now, fiercely, violently. There's a photo of me at five years old, the toddler Allie gripped in my arms, and I'm glaring defiance at the camera because she's
mine.
My dour eyes glower out from under straight jutting brows: menacing even at that age, I was.

When Nan Lola came to live with us, Mum thought I was upset. She couldn't have been more wrong: I was crying with sheer relief. I'd been terrified of starting school because it would mean leaving Allie to be supervised largely by Dad. Nan Lola understood this and she understood Dad, so for my sake she oversaw Allie like a benevolent hawk. She loved Allie, of course, but she guarded her principally for me. To make me happy, to make me feel secure. I was Nan Lola's one true love and
I knew that would never change.

But nobody is there for anybody all of the time. So the central fact of life is this: you have to look after yourself.

I knew that voice on the radio. Warm and folksy and caring. Sympathetic words of wisdom to get you through the day. That's what the slot's called: Words of Wisdom.

This was not a nightmare, unfortunately. I knew that because I'd just woken from one, and now I wished I was back in it. Rolling on to my stomach, I hauled my duvet over my head and crammed it against my ears. The voice was still an audible murmur, so I hummed till I thought it had stopped.

I surfaced just in time to hear a jaunty ‘Goodbye, and good day!'

Good day? She'd just destroyed mine. If she hadn't tidied my pit yesterday and messed around with my radio, I might have lived in blissful ignorance till I got through the school gates. Come to think of it, maybe an hour's warning was just as well. I yanked the duvet down
and spun the tuner back to its proper position, then turned up the volume so it would drown me out.

‘Good day, Mother,' I moaned. ‘You utter, utter cow.'

I didn't mean it. Much. At least, I wouldn't want her to hear it, since as far as I know she still has sensitivities. None of which, obviously, coincide with mine or Allie's, or she wouldn't do this to us.

Poor old Allie.

I'd have liked to spend ten happy minutes fantasising about wild sex with Orla Mahon, which took up a lot of my time lately. (Fantasising, that is, not actual wild sex.) But Mum had killed the mood, so I dragged myself out of the warm tangle of duvet into a cool August morning.

Barefoot, I padded through to Allie's room. Mum had hung one of her stupid crystals outside, so I used it to rap on the door, then waited for Allie's grunt, though I knew I could walk in with impunity. There was no way she'd be out of her bed. Indeed, in the dim light I could see only a misshapen heap of duvet and a splayed fan of impossible hair. Her radio was chuntering inoffensive eighties pop: Mum's local station again. I sat down on the edge of her bed and tousled the hair. ‘Morning, Allie.'

Fingers appeared on the edge of the duvet and shoved it down, revealing her delicate face. Delicate but incredibly grumpy. Her eyes were sandy with sleep, what you could see of them through the strips of brown hair.

‘Nick,' she said, ‘you're sitting on Aidan.'

I sighed and shut my eyes. It was too early in the
morning for this. I'd had that disturbing nightmare and I was still sleepy. In fact I was drowsy enough to drop off right here and slump over sideways on to Allie's bed and start to snore …

‘Get
off
him!' She was shoving and punching me, and her voice was turning shrill. ‘Get off!'

OK, game over. I shouldn't have started it in the first place. Sighing, I righted myself and shuffled round to sit obediently on her other side. ‘Better?'

She was still glowering at me. ‘You'd better ask him.'

‘Allie –'

‘Forget it. Don't bug me in the morning. And don't bug Aidan.'

‘OK.' I smiled at her. ‘Sorry.' And I genuinely was.

Her dark eyebrows were still bunched in a resentful frown, but when I sorted out the blunt spikes of hair across her eyes, tucking them behind her ears, her features softened and I finally got a smile.

‘You can feed me a grape while you're at it,' she said.

‘Oh aye? What's wrong with Aidan?'

‘Aidan,' she sniffed, ‘doesn't do food.'

Everybody knew fourteen was way too old for Allie to have an imaginary friend. One of these days, one of these days very soon, I was going to have to have this conversation with my sister. For her own good, as well as for mine and the whole family's. But not right now. And not, at any point in the future, at half past seven in the morning. ‘You're hell first thing, aren't you?'

‘Only because my mother is a minion of Satan.' She wiggled her eyebrows.