Skin Deep (7 page)

Mum had a face like she was chewing on a rancid nut when I ducked my head in through the door and came down
Liberty
’s wooden steps. She didn’t say a word.

‘Hey, you’ve been busy!’

She had rows and rows of finished necklaces, earrings and bracelets laid out on the folding table, and a pile of the dragon torcs. She must’ve been at it all day without a break. A twitch ran up my spine. Not a good sign . . .

‘I had to do something to keep busy instead of sitting here worrying about you,’ she snapped.

I thought of the food she’d made me, cast on the roadside halfway between here and Whitmere for the birds to peck at. She’d been on her own all day. I couldn’t remember the last time she’d been alone for so long – not since before Cole left. I thought of how never being away from her suffocated me and how I’d felt free today. And then how different it must have been for her, sitting here polishing stones until I came home . . .

I sat down beside her, guilt knifing me. ‘Today went fine. It’ll bring in some extra money anyway. Mum, these are great. Really great. Want a hand with anything?’

She took a breath in and combed her fingers through her mess of hair to loop it back. ‘I’ll start dinner. Tidy up for me and bag the finished ones.’

‘Want me to put the price labels on?’

‘Yes . . . yes . . . OK.’ She hesitated and forced a smile. ‘It was strange here without you today.’

I fished in my pocket and pulled out the bus timetable I’d picked up in Whitmere on the way home. ‘Got this for you. There’s a bus that runs through the village. Maybe you could go into town tomorrow and give those shops I told you about a try. And you could find out about the market. Do some shopping too?’

She nodded and put the timetable on the pinboard.

‘It’s an OK town,’ I said as she got a pan from the cupboard and took ingredients from the fridge. I thought I saw tofu and shuddered. ‘Plenty to look at and you’ll like some of the shops. Bet there’s even somewhere you can get some new supplies . . .’

I wittered on while she got dinner ready. The more I talked, the more she relaxed, so in the end I babbled on about nothing just to drive the day’s silence away for her.

Thursday was Charlie’s football night so I came home from school alone.
I picked the letters up from the doormat and went to put them on the hall table, but a folded sheet of paper caught my attention. It was an A4 sheet folded in half, with the shadow of dark lettering showing through. I opened it.

Letters cut from a newspaper were glued on in a message:

UR A DEAD MAN

Steven – I knew it was from him. I headed for the hall chair before my legs gave way under me.
Don’t overreact – this is typical of him. Always shouting his mouth off
. It didn’t mean anything, I told myself, trying to calm down. He was trying to scare us, that’s all. For all Steven Carlisle thought he was a big man and not a stupid boy, when the car had crashed, he’d lain crying on the grass. It was left to Rob White to pull me and Sarah out while Steven whimpered and did nothing. He’d never have the guts to do anything to Dad, no matter how much he might hate us.

I tried to put it out of my mind and focus on my homework. If only Dad would drop this stupid campaign. It’d alienated most of the village against the Carlisles and while I didn’t care how that affected Steven one little bit, I did care if it kept people talking about the crash. All I wanted now was for it to be forgotten – as much as it could ever be possible for the village to forget Lindz and Charlotte’s deaths.

I never did understand what Lindz saw in Steven, apart from the looks of course. He thought the world rotated on its axis for him alone and treated everyone as if they should agree with him.

The scrape of a key in the front door lock meant Dad was home. I ran downstairs. Mum was with him. I handed him the note. He read it and passed it to Mum. His face didn’t flicker. He picked up the phone from the hall table.

Mum’s hand flew to her mouth as she read the note. ‘Clive, what are you doing?’

‘Calling the police. I’m not having that little thug try to threaten us.’

‘Are you sure that’s a good idea? Maybe it would be better to ignore him.’

‘Dad, let it lie, please.’

He dialled the number for the police station and walked off into his study with the phone.

‘Come on, let’s go and pick some apples,’ Mum said. I knew she was only trying to distract me, but I didn’t mind being distracted right then.

We walked down the garden to the two apple trees by our vegetable patch. Mum held the basket while I reached up and picked the ripe ones from the lower branches.

‘Get that one. No, up a –’ Mum stopped suddenly.

I followed the direction of her eyeline over the hedge and into next door’s garden. Lindz’s dad was standing there, staring into space. We watched him for a while, but he seemed frozen to the spot. Mum put her arm round my shoulders. ‘Come inside,’ she whispered.

‘Do you think we should say hello?’ I whispered back.

She shook her head uncertainly. ‘I think we’d better not, Jen. Last time Dad and I tried to speak to him, he got very upset. I don’t think he’s well at all just now. We might make him feel worse and we don’t want to do that.’

Maybe I was like Lindz’s pony – too much for him to see. I sort of understood that. I think perhaps I understood it better than anyone.

Charlie’s friend’s mum brought him home after football practice, and he came stomping into my bedroom, mud-spattered.

‘I got dropped from the team for the next game,’ he said, flopping on to my bed. Normally I’d have yelled at him for messing my duvet up, but he looked too upset.

‘Why?’

‘Doh – someone else was better than me.’

I put my homework down. This was going to take a while. ‘You’ve trained loads. Maybe you had an off day.’

He prodded my teddy bear in the eye with a stiff finger. ‘I was beyond bad, and anyway, it’s not the same now.’

‘Don’t do that to Barney. It’s not his fault. Why isn’t it the same?’

‘Because you used to be in goal for me before and I could practise shooting better.’

‘You said I was rubbish in goal!’

‘Yeah, you are, but it’s still easier when you have a goalie to aim around, even if they are useless.’ He prodded Barney again viciously. ‘You never do anything with me now.’

That was true. I’d hardly spent any time with him since the accident. ‘I was worried about getting my face hit by the ball.’

He pouted. ‘It’s better now though and you still don’t do stuff with me, even other stuff, not like we used to.’

I hadn’t realised he’d missed that. Maybe I had been too wrapped up in me. Most little brothers would have sulked like anything over how much attention I’d had over the past months, but Charlie hadn’t. ‘OK, so tomorrow night when you get home, we’ll practise your shooting. How about that? And we’ll keep doing it until you’re so awesome, they can’t wait to get you back on the team.’

His face lit up. ‘Thanks, Jen! Maybe you’re not the suckiest sister ever.’

‘Thanks, Charlie. Your compliments slay me.’ I laughed and shoved him off the duvet. ‘Now go shower – you’re minging.’

He stuck his tongue out and tried to rub his sweaty, muddy shirt on me, then trotted off to get cleaned up.

I finished my homework when he’d gone and went for a long soak in the bath before I went to bed. I fell asleep almost immediately.

A couple of hours later, something woke me with a start. I saw the landing light go on under my door. Dad shouted, ‘Stay in bed. I’ll sort it out.’ He thundered down the stairs. I heard him swear briefly and throw the front door open. Mum yelled, ‘Clive, don’t go out there,’ but I heard the crunch of his feet on our gravel drive, then Mum’s feet running downstairs too. When I crept to the top of the stairs and looked down, I saw the hall carpet was covered in broken glass. A brick lay on the floor by Mum’s feet and the window beside the door was smashed.

Dad came back in. ‘No sign of them now. And no sign of a car. That proves it was someone local.’ He snatched the phone up. ‘I’m calling the police again. Friendly chat, they said. Warn him off. That didn’t do much good. He needs locking up.’

‘I’ll go and check on the kids,’ Mum said. ‘Ask the police to keep the noise down if they come out. It’s school tomorrow.’

I scooted back to the bedroom. Charlie had slept through it all. If the roof blew off, he’d not wake. I pulled the covers over my head and pretended I was asleep because I was too angry to talk to Mum about it now. Angry with Steven Carlisle for being walking, breathing scum, and angry with Dad for getting us into all of this. The police wouldn’t find any evidence that Steven was involved – he’d have an alibi for sure.

Mum hovered in the doorway for a few minutes. I could sense she was unconvinced by my act, but she closed the door quietly and left me.

I burrowed my head into the pillow.

The helicopter engine buzzed loudly in my ears. Lindz laughed. ‘Come on, do it! Do it!’

I’d had this dream before. Always the same. She always laughed. Always ran forward to the open side of the helicopter with a big grin. Flung herself out into the sky, shouting ‘Come on!’ as she fell away from me.

And I always followed. Sick, knees weak, but I followed.

We fell through the sky together, pulling the cords of the parachutes at the same time. Hers never opened, but she still smiled, that same wild grin as she plummeted down to the deserted forest beneath, the canopy of the trees a rippling ocean of green.

It looked peaceful. I always thought that.

Until Lindz hit the first tree. She died a different way each time. Sometimes she hit her head. Sometimes she fell feet first. This time her neck snapped back like a broken doll as she plunged into the trees and disappeared.

I floated after her until my parachute got caught in the branches and I hung from the harness. The canopy snapped back into place above me – nobody would see me from the air.

Below, far below, Lindsay’s body lay on the ground. But me, I dangled there. Suspended in the trees where nobody would ever find me.

Does any pay packet feel as good as your first?
Especially when you get a ten quid-bonus for keeping the shop customers happy. Pete was impressed with how patient I was with the old ones and how that made money land in his till. I tried to tell him it wasn’t difficult, talking to them about all the bargeware stuff because Mum was into all that, but he waved me off with a laugh and told me to enjoy the rest of the day.

I cycled into the town square and went into a craft shop with a jingly door curtain made of metal bells. Some of Mum’s jewellery was on sale in a locked counter on the desk and two women were bending over, examining it. ‘Ooh, Sandra, these are lovely. New in?’

‘Yes, I’m rather impressed with that range too. Very high quality and all handmade locally,’ the woman behind the counter answered. She looked up sharply as she noticed me. ‘Can I help you?’

‘I’m looking for a present,’ I said. ‘Joss stick holders?’

She smiled, the kind of smile a security guard gives you when they’re watching you, and she pointed me to a rack at the back. ‘You’ll also find a wide selection of fragranced sticks,’ she added, sounding like an advert.

I ignored the usual brass holders – boring – and rooted around until I found a painted one Mum would like. Her old one had got broken a few months ago and she’d been sticking incense sticks in a blob of Blu-tack ever since. I picked up two packets of joss sticks to go with the holder.

‘Do you gift-wrap?’ I asked the woman at the counter when I went to pay.

‘Yes, an extra pound if you want curling ribbon and handmade paper.’

‘Yes, please.’ It’d cost me more to buy the stuff myself and I’d probably mess it up.

‘Are they selling well?’ I pointed to the jewellery display as she made curls of silver ribbon with the scissors. How did women know how to do that stuff? I’d cut my finger off or something if I tried that.

She gave me a strange look. ‘Yes.’

‘My mum makes them.’

Her face changed – a smile spread over it. ‘Ah, you’re Karen’s son! She told me about you. Working at the marina, aren’t you?’

‘Yes, just finished for the day.’

‘Are these for your mum?’

‘Yeah, I thought I’d get her something with my first week’s wages.’

She got that cooey expression like the old ladies in the boatyard did when I helped them. ‘No charge for the wrapping then.’ She dropped her voice to a whisper and nodded over at the two women who were now looking at sequined cushions in the corner of the shop. ‘Those two have just spent fifty pounds each on your mum’s work. That’s a nice profit for both of us. Tell her to bring more in on Monday if she has any.’

I couldn’t wait to see Mum’s face when I got back with a present and good news, and I belted back to Strenton. I stopped at the bottom of the hill up to the village to strip my T-shirt off. Summer seemed to be lasting forever this year and the afternoon sun beat down on my shoulders as I powered up the hill, standing up on the pedals for better leverage.