Skin Deep (8 page)

Strenton came into view and I pedalled harder. I whizzed over the crown of the hill and then zoomed down the narrow lane that wound along to the canal cut-off at the bridge.

I saw something move by the hedge in a field to my left.

What the . . .?

Shit!

A flash of orange scudded in front of my wheels.

I swerved the bike across the road away from it, fast as I could. Jammed on the brakes. The tyres hissed on the road and I sailed over the handlebars.

The bike went sideways and I carried on forwards. I hit the road on my side and yelled in pain as bare skin ground against tarmac.

Saturday afternoon I trotted Scrabble through the village.
Raggs ambled ahead of us, sniffing interesting dog smells, cocking his leg every few metres and generally mooching around. Strenton was quiet and empty except for Mr Ardwell trimming the privet hedge in the front garden of his black and white cottage. He waved as I passed. There were less than two hundred houses scattered in and around the area and everyone knew everyone else. Probably down to what they had for breakfast. Last year, when Charlie had been rushed into hospital to have his appendix out and I’d been dispatched to the village to buy him some comics, eight people had stopped me to ask how he was before I reached the shop.

We turned into Tenter Lane and I slowed Scrabble to a walk. The Grange, where the Carlisles lived, lay to the right and from Scrabble’s back I could see over the high holly hedge into the grounds. Outside the garage block, a boy was washing two cars. Even from this distance, the way he held the hose and soaped the bonnet, his whole body language, said he was bellyaching about doing it.

Steven Carlisle. Official bad boy of Strenton even before he’d trashed his new car that night last January. Outrageously good-looking, and he knew it.

Lindz used to say a boy can be good-looking and he can be hot, but that one doesn’t necessarily lead to the other. Steven was both, she said.

Up until last autumn, we’d never seen much of him except at a distance. He was three years older than Lindz, four years older than me, and he’d boarded at Badeley College. His dad owned a nationwide chain of home-furnishing stores and both his parents were away a lot on business. At Christmas, the family went skiing in Switzerland. In the summer, they stayed in their villa in the south of France. Easter was the only time we saw him around, until last November when Badeley threw him out in his final year of sixth form. We heard it was drugs. Rumour had it that it wasn’t the first time, but whatever the reason it was never made public.

So there he was, back in Strenton with nothing to do. His dad made him go to work in the Whitmere office of the family business, fuming after all the money he’d spent on Steven’s education. That was how Steven had met Rob White, working in the delivery depot shifting boxes. Rob supplemented his wages by pedalling gear small time and Steven had just found his next supplier.

We met him one Saturday morning when Lindz and I drifted along to the village shop. Steven was outside on the bench, rolling a cigarette, with a face that said he was about to die of boredom.

Lindz’s eyes opened wide at the sight of him, a huge present just waiting for her to unwrap. He did look impressive though. Six foot two and shoulders that looked like he played rugby, which we later found out he did. Blond hair and blue eyes and the remains of his French tan lingering. He had cheekbones to die for and a full mouth that might’ve looked a bit too girly if it wasn’t set in a permanent sneer.

Good-looking – tick.

Hot – tick.

Badass attitude – double tick.

‘Wait for me,’ Lindz muttered and she strolled over to him, leaving me pretending to read the notices in the shop window. ‘Hi, I heard you were back,’ she said.

He gave her a ‘Do I know you?’ expression that would’ve withered me. Lindz just reflected it back at him until he laughed and leaned back in the seat to stare up at her with more interest. ‘How do you not go crazy in this place?’ he asked. ‘It completely sucks and I’ve only been back a week.’

‘Don’t you know that in villages you have to make your own entertainment?’

I spun round, hardly believing my ears. She couldn’t really have said that, or meant it how it sounded. But I saw from her face that she did.

And Steven knew it too.

They were hardly apart after that.

But he never even went to her funeral.

We took the bridleway back towards the house and once past the woods, Raggs scented home and scampered ahead. I opened my mouth to shout him back . . .

Too late.

Something hurtled past the open gateway. I heard a simultaneous crash of metal and Raggs setting up a volley of frantic barks.

I jumped down from Scrabble’s back and hauled him to the open gate, looping his reins quickly over the gatepost before I ran into the lane.

‘Oh, I’m so sorry! Are you . . .’ The words died on my lips. A bike was sprawled on the road in front of me, wheels spinning, and to my left a boy groaned on the ground with Raggs running round him like a mad thing.

The boat boy . . . oh God, no . . .

I stared at him, my stomach sinking into my riding boots, and tried to wish myself invisible. Raggs stopped running in circles and leaped on him, licking his face madly.

‘No! Gerroff!’ He shoved Raggs away, but not roughly.

I ran over and clipped the dog’s lead on. ‘Um, are you all right?’ Then I noticed what he was lying in.
No . . . oh no . . . let me die now
. . . A pile of horse droppings. A pile I was pretty sure Scrabble had made earlier. My dog had knocked him off his bike and now he was lying in my horse’s muck.

He sat up with a wince – didn’t he ever wear a shirt? – and wriggled his legs. ‘Yeah, I’m fine.’

I clapped my hand to my mouth when I saw his back. ‘Oh my God! You’re really bleeding!’

He peered over his shoulder. ‘Eww!’ When he looked at the ground behind him in disgust, I braced myself for a hail of abuse. ‘Aww, no, I didn’t . . .’

Sorry, sorry, sorry . . .

He turned back, looked up at me and burst out laughing. ‘Guess at least I got a soft landing, huh? Good aim!’ He scrambled up, gritting his teeth. ‘Are you all right? You’re white as a ghost.’

‘You’re bleeding,’ I said again stupidly.

He scrunched his face up and twisted round in an effort to see his back. ‘I’ll heal – no big deal.’ I gave up waiting for him to explode. It didn’t seem as if he was going to. Instead he grinned ruefully at me. ‘Look a right mess, don’t I?’ Then his eyes widened. ‘Oh shit!’ He hobbled over to his bike and yanked a gift-wrapped parcel out of the rucksack on the back. He felt it over carefully and relaxed. ‘It’s not broken.’

‘Is it a present?’

‘Yeah, for my mum.’ He tucked the package back into the rucksack and picked his bike up.

I swallowed hard at the sight of the blood trickling down his back, mixing with blobs of horse muck. It must hurt a lot more than he was letting on. ‘Is your bike damaged?’

‘Nah, it’s a heap of old junk anyway. Looks all right.’ He wheeled it a few steps. ‘Yeah, it’s fine.’ He smiled at me again. ‘No harm done.’

‘Thank you . . . for not running my dog over.’

He frowned and shook his head. ‘As if I’d have run into him if I could avoid it. What do you think I am?’

Was he cross? He didn’t look cross. I hadn’t meant to insult him. ‘Sorry, it’s just . . . it’s my fault and I feel bad. And your back . . . is there someone in on your boat who can help you clean it up because it’s really dangerous to get dirt in cuts and you should get it seen to as quickly as possible. It could get infected. My house is just here if you want to come in and wash it off . . .’ As soon as I said it, I wanted to snatch the words back. Stupid, stupid, stupid. He’d think I was coming on to him . . .

‘Oh no, that’s . . . er . . . nice of you, but I, er . . .’

My face burned. ‘I only asked because you’re bleeding really badly, and do you even have a shower on a boat? And . . . and you won’t report us to the police for having an out of control dog, will you?’

‘God, no!’ He looked like I’d suggested he ate babies. ‘Of course not.’ He chewed on his lip and watched me from under his lashes, which fascinated me because really that was a girl’s thing to do, but it didn’t seem girly at all when he did it. ‘Sure, we’ve got a shower. It’s got everything you get in a house.’

He said it significantly, like I was supposed to understand something from that. I didn’t.

‘We live on the boat,’ he said after a pause. ‘All the time. We’re not really supposed to be moored down there.’

I got it, finally. ‘Oh . . . oh right. Look, my mum and dad are out if you’re worried about awkward questions. They’ve taken my little brother ice skating and won’t be back for ages.’

He had an odd look on his face. It was only later that I realised properly what it reminded me of. A few years ago we’d visited a nature reserve with Dartmoor ponies. If we approached very quietly and held our hands out, and waited, and waited, then sometimes they would come to us. With that same wary look in their eyes that the boat boy had as he said, ‘You won’t say anything about our boat, will you? I don’t want you to lie, but –’

‘No. Are you kidding? My parents would go ballistic if they knew I’d let Raggs run off and cause an accident.’

A lump of horse turd fell off his back. He stared at it solemnly and that appeared to decide him. ‘Er, can I come in after all? I stink, and Mum’s wound up enough about . . . stuff . . . without me coming home like this.’

I pointed him through the garden gate leading off the paddock. ‘That’s the back door. I’ll be one minute,’ and I jogged Scrabble down the field to the loosebox. He wasn’t too sweaty and it was so warm I decided that he could dry off in the field without a rub-down. By the time I got to the house, the boat boy had found the outside tap. He was crouched underneath the stream of cold water, trying to sluice the muck off his back without getting his jeans wet. His screwed-up face said how much it hurt.

‘You could have done that inside.’

‘Don’t want to drop crap all over your house.’ He shifted his shoulder to angle the water stream on to a dirtier part.

‘Um, you’ve got some in your hair.’

He groaned and stuck his head under the tap. ‘Has it gone?’

‘Nearly. Not quite. No, left a bit.’ I gathered up my courage as the water missed the spot again and grabbed his head, manoeuvring it into place. I gave his hair a quick rub to get the muck out, but it wasn’t coming off his back at all.

‘You’ll get it on your hands,’ was his only response. No ‘eww, don’t touch me, Shrek – you make me vom’.

‘It’s no worse than mucking out. Besides, it’s my fault.’ I took the opportunity to have a closer look at his back. ‘Look, this is no good. Hang on.’

I left him under the tap and went inside the house. Hopefully Raggs wouldn’t bounce around and annoy him too much. The stupid dog had done enough damage already. I grabbed Mum’s antiseptic handwash and two clean tea towels from the kitchen and ran back out.

The boy was still wriggling about under the tap. He twisted his arm into a contortion over his back to try to get the muck off.

‘Um, would you like me to do that?’ I asked, my skin running hot and cold with embarrassment.

He looked up. ‘Yeah, thanks.’ He said it as if it wasn’t an issue, being touched by a strange girl with a crisped face.

I soaped a blob of handwash into his hair and rinsed that out first. His hair kicked up at the edges when it was wet, hints of curl.

Breathe in . . . breathe out . . . breathe in . . . try not to act like a complete loser . . . keep your cool . . .

Then, hands shaking, I started on his back. ‘This is going to sting, but –’

‘Be fine,’ he said, his head upside down beneath the tap.

I’d never touched a boy like this before – a real one that is, not a kid like Charlie. I knew they were supposed to feel different to girls, but I’d not really grasped what that meant until I was soaping his back. He felt . . . amazing. Soft skin stretched over taut muscle that made his body feel hard in a way mine didn’t. I shouldn’t notice that, but it was impossible not to and my fingers didn’t want to leave his skin.

He scrunched his face up as I cleaned his shoulder.

‘Sorry.’

‘It’s all right,’ he said through clenched teeth.

I soaked one of the towels under the tap and used it to swill him off until his back was clean and free of blood, but he was a mess – raw patches down one side and his shoulder and elbow mashed up. ‘This does look awful, you know. Maybe you should go to hospital.’

He stood up, his head dripping, and took another look. ‘It’s only a few grazes. Looks worse than it is.’

‘If you wore a T-shirt, it wouldn’t have been half so bad.’ I passed him the dry towel for his hair.

‘I like not wearing a T-shirt,’ he protested.

I checked out an eyeful of tanned chest and flat stomach. Who wouldn’t like him not wearing a T-shirt? ‘I suppose I could dab some antiseptic on and try covering it with gauze if you want.’