Heart-Shaped Bruise (18 page)

‘Is that why you took a year out? Because of your dad?’ I asked, staring at my chips, too scared to look up in case I’d crossed a line he hadn’t invited me across.

‘A year out is a polite way of putting it. I fucked about,’ he told me with a laugh, and I thought about his tattoos. Sink. Swim.

‘Was it sudden?’

He nodded. That’s when he told me what happened, about his dad, about the fight. He called him a hero. He was looking at the benches that lined the path as he said it. Each one had a brass plate –
In Loving Memory of Edna
or
For Albert Chapperton. His favourite walk
, stuff like that. He said he wanted to do something like that for his dad. A bench or a tree. Something permanent. Something everyone would see.

‘What would you want?’ he asked me between mouthfuls of chips.

‘When I die?’

He nodded. ‘Do you want to be remembered?’

‘Of course. I want people to know I’m gone, to look up at the sky and think of me.’

‘You want someone to name a star after you or something?’

I shook my head. ‘When I go, I want to punch a hole in the sky.’

He stopped and looked at me. I think that was the first time he saw me, saw me as someone other than Juliet’s mate, the girl with the too-red hair and dirty laugh.

He nodded again and we carried on walking in silence for a while.

As we approached the bandstand, he frowned. ‘You only eat chips in twos.’

I forgot that I still had my sketchbook tucked under my arm and almost dropped it as I turned to blink at him. ‘What?’

‘You only eat chips two at a time.’

I stopped and looked at my hand. Sure enough, I was holding two chips and I dropped them as though they’d burned me. ‘I had no idea,’ I muttered.

There was a bin next to the bench we were walking past, so I dropped the white paper bag into it. When I turned to look at him again, he looked mortified.

‘Sorry,’ he said, throwing his chips in the bin, too. ‘I didn’t mean to embarrass you.’

I blinked at him again. ‘Embarrass me?’

‘That’s the most I’ve seen you eat since we met. I—’

‘I eat!’ I interrupted. I didn’t think I was being defensive, but I said it so loudly that a man walking his dog looked up as he passed us.

Sid smiled. ‘Sushi isn’t food, Ro.’

‘Yes it is!’

He shook his head. ‘No, it isn’t. Nance made me go to one of those restaurants last night, the ones with the conveyor belt where you have to pick the plates off as they go past and I can confirm that a bit of rice with a slice of salmon on top isn’t food.’

He laughed, but I didn’t. I crossed my arms and turned away. We – Juliet, Sid and me we, not Sid and Juliet we – were supposed to have gone to that restaurant together. I shouldn’t have cared, but knowing that Juliet either forgot or wanted to be alone with him made me feel tiny.

‘Here,’ he said. When I glanced over at him he was tugging at one of the bushes.

‘What are you doing?’ I murmured, but when he turned to me again, I felt a rush of blood flood my cheeks as he held out a rose. It was well past its best, its red petals bruised and weeping on our shoes as he handed it to me, but it was still the prettiest flower I’d ever seen.

He grinned when I took it. ‘Cheesy as fuck, right?’ he said, sweeping the hair out of his eyes with his hand. ‘I bet every boy you meet gives you one.’

I frowned. ‘Why?’

‘A rose for Rose.’

I brought it to my nose and smelt it with a slow smile. ‘You’re the first.’

‘Yeah, right. I bet—’ he started to say, but stopped as a boy on a BMX rode between us. The shock of it made me jump and I jumped again when the boy turned around and rode back towards us.

‘Safe, Sid,’ he said with a sniff, stopping at our feet.

Sid nodded at him. ‘Alright, Owen?’

‘Yeah. Yeah. Who’s this?’

I waved. ‘I’m Rose.’

Owen didn’t look at me. ‘What happened to that fit one?’

There was an awkward silence after he said it and I felt tiny again.

Sid kicked the wheel of his bike. ‘Where’d you get this?’

‘Borrowed it, innit.’

Sid rolled his eyes. ‘How’s school?’

He sniffed again and wiped his nose with his sleeve. ‘Shit.’

‘How’s your mum?’

‘Alright.’

‘How’s Patrick?’

‘Alright.’

My gaze flicked between them. I think it was a conversation. I’ve had conversations with the bloke at the Chinese takeaway that were more involved.

‘You’d better get home, O,’ Sid told him, ‘your mum’ll be waiting for you.’

‘Alright,’ he said, putting his foot back on the pedal of the bike. ‘Later.’

They nodded at each other again, but before Owen started to ride away, Sid grabbed something from the back pocket of his jeans.

Owen stopped and gasped. ‘Oi! What you doing?’

‘What are
you
doing, O?’ Sid held up a box of cigarettes. ‘You’re twelve.’

Owen lifted his little chin defiantly. ‘They ain’t mine, they’re Patrick’s.’

‘Well, tell him to come and get them off me, then.’

‘Ah, come on, Sid,’ he whined, trying to take them back.

Sid ignored him and slipped the thin gold box into the pocket of his hoodie. ‘
Come on, Sid
nothing. Don’t you know they’ll kill you? Someone’s got to save you from your stupid.’ He nodded towards the gates. ‘Now piss off home. Don’t keep your mum waiting.’

Owen huffed and said something I won’t repeat before riding off again.

‘Little shit,’ Sid muttered, pulling the box back out of the pocket of his hoodie and opening it. He lit one and I watched as he inhaled then exhaled with a long, contented sigh.

‘I didn’t know you smoked,’ I gasped. We’d known each other for three months,
how
did I not know that?

‘I gave up, but I started again recently.’ He winked at me. ‘Don’t tell Nance, she’ll do her nut. She hates smoking; her aunt died of breast cancer.’

Her mum
, I wanted to correct, but I eyed the box instead. ‘Give me one.’

There were only four cigarettes in the box, but we smoked them all – two each – under the bandstand, sitting side by side on the ledge with my sketchbook and the rose between us. It was our first secret, those cigarettes. If I really wanted to hurt Juliet, I could have told her – should have told her, I suppose. That was another tipping point, I know now, the moment I realised I wanted to keep it for myself more than I wanted to hurt her.

‘Let’s do something,’ he said, when he finished his last one, his left leg bouncing.

I checked the clock on my phone. ‘Nance should be done with Sahil by now.’

‘Nah.’ He shook his head. ‘She’s going to that thing at the National Theatre with Eve. I meant let’s you and me do something.’

‘Like what?’

He jumped down from the ledge. ‘I dunno. I just feel like –’ He threw his arms out, then turned to look at me again. ‘Do the muscles in your legs ever shake sometimes like they’re restless? Like you just want to run?’

‘You want to go for a run?’ I frowned and flicked my spent cigarette into the bushes.

‘No.’ He started to pace back and forth over the worn boards. ‘You know how in the olden days they thought that if you sailed a ship too far it’d fall off the edge of the earth?’ I nodded
warily. ‘Well, that’s what I want to do, I want to run until I find the edge.’

He walked over to where I was sitting. ‘Come on, Ro,’ he said, looking at me from under his dark eyelashes. It made my heart throb. ‘Let’s do something.’

‘Like what?’

‘I dunno.’ He looked over my shoulder. ‘I mean, look at these people.’

I turned to see who he was looking at. It was almost dark so the park wasn’t busy. There were a few commuters cutting through on their way home from the station and a man in red shorts had been running laps since we got there, a heart-shaped patch of sweat in the middle of his grey T-shirt.

‘They’re all going somewhere, doing something. I want to do something.’ He looked at me again. ‘Do you ever feel like that, Ro? Like stuff is going on and you’re missing it?’

I thought about him and Juliet at that sushi restaurant, giggling as they tried to grab plates from the conveyor belt. ‘All the time.’

‘Let’s do something, then.’

‘Like what?’

‘Anything. Anything that isn’t sitting around waiting for Nancy.’

‘Okay,’ I said with a small smile, jumping down from the ledge. ‘I have an idea.’

His eyes lit up. ‘What?’

‘Just stay here, okay? Don’t move. I’ll be back.’

I all but ran to the shop opposite the park and back.

He was waiting for me under the bandstand, right where I had told him to. He smiled when he saw the blue plastic bag in my hand. ‘What’s that?’

I grinned. ‘You’ll see. Come on.’

I led him to the biggest tree in the park. When we stopped under it, he looked up, clearly bewildered as I put the rose and my sketchbook into the bag. ‘What’s this?’

‘It’s a tree, Sid.’

He rolled his eyes. ‘I know that. What are we meant to do with it?’

‘We’re gonna climb it.’

The crease between his eyebrows deepened. ‘Do what?’

‘Come on.’

I took a step towards the base of the tree as he crossed his arms. ‘When I said that I wanted to do something, Rose, I meant drink something. Perhaps do something illegal.’

I ignored him as I tried to find my footing. I hadn’t climbed a tree since I was at St Jude’s, so it took a couple of attempts. But, eventually, I got high enough to reach for a branch then another and another. The blue plastic bag rustled hysterically each time I raised my arm; it sounded like applause.

‘I’m not doing that,’ he called out as he watched me. ‘I can’t climb trees.’

‘’Course you can,’ I shouted back, my nails digging into the rough trunk.

‘I’m a London boy born and bred, Ro. They only have parks
here so we know what trees look like. If you were asking me to climb a McDonald’s, maybe.’

‘Get up here, London boy,’ I told him as I tested the weight of one of the thicker branches. Content that it was sturdy enough to support my weight, I clambered on to it. I laughed when I did it, a breathless gasp of a laugh. My hands were cut, my nails ruined, but it felt so good to be up there, sitting on that branch with the whole of London at my feet.

When I caught my breath, I reached into the bag and pulled out a can of beer. I waved it at him with a grin and as soon as he saw it, he launched himself at the tree. My heart leapt into my mouth when he lost his footing once, then twice, but he got to me eventually and the fact he did was a testament to what a teenage boy will do for a can of Stella.

‘You’re nuts, Rose Glass,’ he said, completely out of breath as he pulled himself on to the branch. He wobbled around for a moment or two, but when he found his balance, he leaned back into the curve of the tree and reached his hand out. ‘I almost broke my neck getting up here, so give me my beer. I’ve earned it.’

I handed it to him with a proud smile. ‘Here you go, Tarzan.’

He turned away from me to open it, but as he brought the can up to his mouth, he stopped and stared out at the horizon, his eyes wide.

‘I know,’ I said smugly, getting a can for myself out of the bag. I thought about the first time I climbed that tree in Brighton, how I’d looked out and seen things I’d never seen before. Secret things only I knew about. Me and the seagulls.

‘You can see for miles!’

‘I know.’

‘You can see the gherkin.’

‘I know,’ I said with a giggle, opening the can and leaning back against the tree.

He looked at me, his cheeks pink. ‘Why have I never climbed a tree before?’

I shrugged and took a sip of beer. ‘I dunno. It’s better in summer, when there are leaves and stuff, because you can hide,’ I told him, but it was still amazing up there. It smelt so clean, of wet leaves and earth and old wood.

‘I can’t believe it.’ Sid shook his head. ‘It’s like seeing London for the first time.’

It was, I suppose, from a different angle, anyway, which is why I took him up there. It’s good to see things the wrong way around sometimes, to see the bits you’re not supposed to see, like the tops of vans and people’s underwear hanging on washing lines.

The sky was a different colour up there, too. It was this deep, deep red – cough-syrup red. I wanted to reach up and lick it. I think that’s why I liked climbing trees, because I felt closer to it, like if I stretched a little further, I could touch it and it would be mine. I think Sid got that because he was looking up at the sky as though he was claiming a piece of it, too.

I heard someone walking along the path beneath us and looked down as a man walked under the tree. He was on his phone and kept saying, ‘Yeah, I told him.’

Sid and I watched him pass and when he was out of sight, Sid looked across at me. ‘He doesn’t know we’re here.’

I raised an eyebrow and smiled. ‘I know.’

‘This is amazing, Rose.’

He shook his head again and finally took a mouthful of beer. I’d already finished my can and was opening another when he turned to his left and gasped, pointing at the three tower blocks on the horizon, the ones that didn’t quite touch the clouds.

‘You can see where I live from up here!’

I turned to look at them too. ‘Which one do you live in?’

‘The middle one.’

‘I used to live in the one on the left.’

I shouldn’t have told him, I know, but up there I felt safe. Protected.

He stared at me, open mouthed. ‘You lived on the Scarbrook Estate?’

‘Yeah.’

‘I thought you were born ’round here? Don’t you live in Islington?’

‘Yeah, now. I was born on the Scarbrook Estate.
Literally
, the lift was broken so my mum gave birth in the stairwell. I couldn’t wait to get out, apparently.’

I chuckled to myself, but he kept staring at me, his forehead creased. ‘You’re winding me up. You don’t talk like you’re from the Scarbrook Estate.’

‘Well, I am.’

‘What floor?’

‘Twelfth. Penthouse, baby.’

‘Why didn’t you say?’

‘I dunno.’ I shrugged and looked away. ‘I heard you telling Nancy that you were from the Scarbrook Estate, but you weren’t really talking to me.’