Infinite Sky (5 page)

Ashbourne Lake spread out below us, big as a football pitch and glittering in the sun. A pair of swans came in to land as we reached the water’s edge, scattering moorhens with their floppy
orange feet. Trick kicked water at them, making them hiss, and I told him to leave them alone. I laughed a minute later when one waddled onto the bank and went snapping and hissing after him.

The right-hand verge was striped with an orchard, and I collapsed under a gnarled-looking apple tree, desperate for shade. In the background, Ashbourne Hall stood grey and square, and Trick
asked if we were allowed to be here. I told him that we’d have to run if anyone came, and he didn’t say anything, but I could see from his profile that he was pleased.

At the lake’s centre, a stone woman poured water over her bare shoulders, and I found myself falling into thinking about Mum again, the way she used to wet a sponge in the bath and squeeze
it so water ran over her head, wetting her long hair. Before I fell any further, I kicked off my shoes and ran into the freezing water.

Everything was muffled and reeds tickled my belly, and then there was a fizzing noise and Trick had jumped in beside me. We trod water, and grinned at each other because it was impossible to
describe how good it was to have sun hot on our scalps, and water cold on our bodies, and the surface flashing gold and silver every time we turned our heads.

A bolt of electric blue caught my eye, and I tracked it automatically, moving slowly through the water.

‘What is it?’ Trick asked, following behind me.

‘
Shhh
.’

The damselfly flitted from reed to reed then stopped. Its wings moved so fast they almost disappeared.

‘It
is
! Look. I can’t believe it! It’s an azure damselfly! I thought I’d never see one.’

The rod-like body twitched, then took off, and I flung water into the air to celebrate.

‘How can you tell?’ Trick asked, and he looked confused by how excited I was, but he wasn’t trying to make me feel stupid, so I told him the truth: because of my dad.

‘The azure’s got three stripes on its thorax. They’re really rare. My dad knows everything about plants and animals,’ I said, flicking water at a mist of gnats.

‘Cool,’ Trick said, and I ducked my head under the water so I could beam unwitnessed.

Emerging straight-faced, I hooked my toes against a stone on the bank. Trick did the same.

‘I’m glad we came here,’ he announced, and I knew from his voice that he didn’t just mean today and to the lake.

‘Me too,’ I told him, and my hair swirled around my ears in agreement.

We hung around together every day after that. It was so hot there was a hosepipe ban, and I snuck a wonky stool out from Silverweed, which we used to play cards in the shade
under the oak tree. Trick was an Irish traveller, which meant he was Catholic, and supposed to go to Mass a lot more than he did, and, of course, that he was Irish, though he’d only been to
Dublin once since he was born there and couldn’t remember it.

Sometimes people who love talking are no good at listening, but it wasn’t that way with Trick. He paid attention, and I told him everything. I talked a lot about Mum. He was the only
person I knew who was impressed by what she was doing. I told him how she loved singing, and how easily she laughed, and how easily she shouted, and what she looked like when she got all done up
for a night out with Tess – how she would wear all black and no make-up except lipstick, and her hair would be piled on top of her head.

He showed me how to dig under fire embers to bake corn on the cob, and told me about past evictions. If it was a big one, with lots of families, everyone did their bit, even the little ones.
They’d pull at the men’s legs, and cry. They’d end up getting pushed over or shoved aside, which would send the mums mad, though they should just have kept them safely indoors in
the first place.

If Trick’s dad knew the bailiffs were coming, he’d get his brothers in. There were six of them. In the past, there had been proper stand-offs, bricks thrown and windows smashed and
fires set. Trick’s eyes lit up when he told me the extent they’d go to to stand their ground against the
gorgios
. It made me feel weird, listening to the stories.

He told me that his Uncle Johnny, the one with the enormous chin, had his trailer burned down once, and I couldn’t believe it. Someone actually set it on fire? For no reason? Trick said
country people did stuff like that all the time.

‘They don’t like us when we travel, they don’t like us when we stop,’ he said.

Dad was still waiting for the council to agree to help him with an eviction. Once they agreed, the travellers basically had to remove themselves, or face The Consequences, which as far as I
could tell meant being moved by force or, if they resisted, being moved by force
and
being arrested and having their vehicles and trailers confiscated.

I thought it sounded cruel, but Dad said I didn’t understand. ‘You think everybody’s good,’ he said, like I was some kind of idiot because I didn’t want to make
people live on the dual carriageway. ‘You watch. They’ll stay here for as long as they can, make a bleeding mess, and clear off. And who d’you think’s going to sort out
their rubbish?’

Me and Trick didn’t talk about the feud. As far as I could tell, neither of us had any say in the matter, so there wasn’t much point. Instead, we swam in the lake, climbed the oak
tree, built fires, ate corn, and talked about everything else, and just as it was getting to the point that I couldn’t remember what life had been like without him, a phone call to Silverweed
came and reminded me.

‘Have I done something to upset you?’ Matty burst out on the ‘o’ of my ‘Hello’.

I’d almost forgotten she existed.

‘I thought you’d ring, or ask me round or
something
. Have we fallen out?’

‘Course we haven’t,’ I said. ‘It’s only been a week.’

‘Two!’ she said. ‘
Nearly
. Last year we spent the whole holiday together
and
we spoke on the phone every day.’

I felt bad. Matty was right. Last year we had spent all summer together. And every summer for four years before that. Benjy and Matty would come over loads and we’d sit in the garden
drawing, or take sandwiches out to the paddock. Sometimes Matty would watch from her towel as we rode an inflated inner tube down the brook.

I apologised, and she exhaled, sending vibrations down the phone.

‘Why don’t you come round, then? On Saturday.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘You come here. Tomorrow. They do the shopping on Fridays.’

‘Great,’ I said, but I had a feeling of dread.

I ran a bath for Fiasco, because she’d been rolling in fox shit again, and because it always made me laugh to see her desperate expression when I rubbed soap on her long brown ears. She
jumped out midway and soaked the bathroom, and I could hardly lift her back in – she was so heavy when wet. I was in the middle of cleaning up the mess she’d made when there was a knock
at the front door.

Nobody used the front. I shouted for whoever it was to come round the back, and I was so surprised to see Punky Beresford standing there that I didn’t even say hello. A tall, skinny girl
in a baseball cap was with him. I hadn’t seen her before. She held a growling pit bull by its collar. Fiasco barked her head off, still damp from her bath, but she didn’t come out from
behind my legs.

‘Is Sam in?’ Punky said.

I shook my head. I didn’t even know they knew each other. Punky Beresford had been in the year above Sam. He was expelled last year before he took his exams for throwing a chair through a
window in the maths block.

He had the bluest eyes in the world. They were pink at the edges, like he’d just been crying – though you couldn’t imagine it – and he stared at you when he talked, so it
felt like a challenge. His front teeth overlapped slightly, and the left tooth had a grey patch in the middle where the nerve had died, but it didn’t make him ugly. Even the story that went
with it, that his dad had hit him in the face with a television, couldn’t do that.

The girl had high cheekbones dented with acne scars, and black hair cut into a bob. One side curled under her chin and the other hung straight down, so it looked uneven. I had to shout over the
racket the dogs were making. I told them Sam wasn’t in, that he was off somewhere with Benjy, though I had no idea really, and when I was finished, Punky gave me this strange, slow smile. He
tilted his head back when he spoke, and those pink and blue eyes stared.

He said to tell Sam he’d be at the rec later, and he spoke even slower than he smiled, so I couldn’t tell if he was stoned, or taking the piss out of me somehow.

‘I like your dog,’ the girl said, and her voice was really soft and high-pitched, like a little kid’s. She let go of the pit bull’s collar, and her and Punky walked off,
holding hands. From the kitchen I could hear the dog’s claws tapping on the path.

Matty answered the door in black hot pants and a silver bikini.

‘I’ve been in the garden since seven,’ she gasped, giving Dad and Austin a little wave as they drove off in the pick-up. Dad gave her a nod, but Austin only looked away.

Ever since Dad took him on last year, Austin had been in love with Matty. He was so shy around her that she called him The Mute. She wouldn’t believe me when I told her how clever he was
about trees and ponds and plants. She said he was just like a Labrador with his scraggy hair and sad eyes. Nice to pat occasionally but you wouldn’t have him in the house.

‘It’s sweltering!’ she said now.

I’d never heard her say sweltering before.

‘What’ve you got on?’ she said, looking at my baggy jeans and T-shirt. ‘You’ll die like that.’

‘Nah,’ I said, my legs already sweating inside the thick denim. Death was better than comments about why it wasn’t normal to wear my mum’s dirty running shorts, and why I
should be sympathetic if Dad couldn’t face doing the laundry.

‘Donna’s got loads of stuff in,’ Matty said, and I didn’t ask why she’d started using her mum’s first name.

The kitchen gleamed white. If you made toast at Matty’s house, you had to get the toaster out of a cupboard, and then – before you’d even taken a bite – you had to return
it, and wipe the crumbs from the surface. If you really wanted to make Donna mad, you just had to leave the toaster out, or eat
without using a plate
.