The Secret Life of Luke Livingstone (11 page)

‘I didn’t know you suffered from migraines.’

‘Hardly ever.’

‘Nasty things.’ A pause. ‘Is everything all right, dear?’

Well, no. Everything was not all right. Everything was smashed, in red and yellow fragments around my feet.

Meg’s voice had sharpened. ‘Eilish? You there, dear? Where is Luke—can I speak to him?’

‘He’s gone,’ I whispered.

Eleven

Luke

This time, there was no white-haired stranger to keep me company.

The train was taking me further and further from my home. I felt as though I were wearing a big sign on my chest and everybody at the station, everybody in the carriage, knew of my shame. Giggles escaped from a group of schoolchildren sitting behind me. My shoulderblades twitched. Children were laughing. I was four years old.

She woke up in the racing-car bed her daddy had made for her. A million butterflies were dancing in her stomach. After breakfast, Mum got out the clippers and cut her hair (
You want to look smart, don’t you?
), and then she had to put on the green uniform—sandals, shorts and a brand-new Aertex shirt. She hated these clothes, they made her feel horrid, but she didn’t say so because that would make people sad. Her daddy took a picture with his big camera. My brand-new schoolboy, he said.

Now here she was, in assembly. Real school! This was nothing like nursery. She’d never seen so many children before. The new entrants sat in a ragged line at the front. Somewhere in the great
green crowd behind her were Wendy and Gail. She felt happy to know that Wendy was there, but she was scared of Gail.

A boy she knew from nursery had plonked himself down next to her. He was fidgeting. His name was Alex, and he wore glasses. Her best friend, Janey, sat on her other side. She and Janey were holding hands. Their mothers had met in the baby hospital where they were born. Janey smelled of the honey soap that lived in the bathroom at her house. She was wearing a pinafore dress and had a matching green bow in her hair. Luke was sure her own hair would grow long and curly like Janey’s, if only they would stop cutting it.

‘Your little girlfriend,’ Mum was always saying, when Janey came to play.

‘I shouldn’t be surprised if those two got married,’ Janey’s mum once said, holding her coffee in one hand. ‘They’re like twins.’ The two mums seemed to like this idea, and started going on about how they would both be mothers-in-law. Luke was pleased. She and Janey would have a house of their own. And a puppy.

A tall woman was clapping her hands for silence, yelling, ‘Welcome to the new school year!’ Luke knew who this was: Mrs Parry, the boss. She had fluffy hair and sagging cheeks, and she talked on and on. Alex fidgeted more than ever. Luke tilted her head to see the ceiling. It had cracks in it. One of the cracks looked exactly like the scary witch off
Snow White
, the one with googly eyes. She was surprised that her sisters had never mentioned the interesting fact that there was a googly-eyed scary-witch crack at their school.

She could smell the school dinner cooking. She hoped it wasn’t liver, because she’d tried liver once and it was so horrible that she’d been sick. Gail had told her they had liver sometimes at school and they had to eat it all, and if anyone was sick the teachers made them eat the sick. Luke hoped this was a fib. She was imagining what sick might taste like when she noticed two older children standing next to Mrs Parry. One was a red-haired boy, the other a girl with a ponytail right on top of her head. Her
face looked like Granny’s Pekingese dog’s, squashed and grumpy as though she’d just run face-first into a wall.

‘Moira and Carl are cloakroom monitors,’ said Mrs Parry. ‘They’re going to help you new entrants find your shoe lockers and coat hooks. They’ll also show you where the toilets are, and tell you about our toilet rules.’

Luke wondered what a shoe locker looked like.

‘Ladies first!’ cried Mrs Parry. ‘Girls—that’s it, up you get—follow Moira to the girls’ cloakroom.’

Janey and Luke scrambled to their feet, still holding hands, and joined the other four-year-olds clustering behind Moira. Luke knew she was a girl and Janey knew it too. People called her a boy sometimes, and Daddy said things like ‘C’mon, son, let’s us blokes go and fix the tractor.’ But they’d made a mistake, and now was her chance to put them right.

Mrs Parry was smiling down at her. Luke didn’t like the way she was doing that. Then the whole school began to laugh. She looked around, trying to guess what this funny thing might be.

‘Not yet, dear,’ said Mrs Parry. ‘I’ll be calling for boys next. They’ll be going through that other door. Over there, see? That’s the way to the boys’ cloakroom.’

The laughing all around her grew into a big wave. She saw children pointing and felt her forehead creasing up. She hoped she wasn’t going to cry. She held very, very tightly to Janey’s hand. Janey clung to her, too.

‘You can sit with your friend when you get to Mrs Mason’s room,’ whispered Mrs Parry. ‘But first, Carl will show you the boys’ cloakroom. You’ve got a peg waiting just for you, with your name already on it! Isn’t that fun?’

‘But I’m a girl,’ said Luke.

Mrs Parry began to look like the witch with the googly eyes. ‘Don’t be silly.’

‘I’m a girl!’

‘Shush. Now, come on, let go of your friend’s hand.’

Luke wouldn’t let go. ‘But
why
am I a boy?’

The googly eyes flickered down to Luke’s new sandals and back again, as though she were checking. ‘Because God made you one.’

‘I think God made a mistake.’

‘You will go through
that
door with the other boys. And that is final. Now, let go!’ Mrs Parry was cross now. She leaned down to drag Janey’s hand away.

Luke couldn’t bear it. She had to make them understand. She yelled at the top of her voice, ‘
God made a mistake!
’

The crying thing was happening. She couldn’t stop the howl from coming out of her mouth, nor the tears and snot from running down her face. Janey was being led away through the forbidden door. She was crying, too. She stumbled along with her head turned, looking back. Then Luke was all alone, and the whole school was laughing at her. The whole world was laughing. She stood wailing in front of the crowd, feeling ugly in her green shorts. She wished she was dead.

Someone must have gone and got her sister, because she heard Gail’s voice in her ear. ‘You stupid,
stupid
little bastard.’

‘Tell them I’m a girl.’

‘Shut up!’ Luke could hear the smack in her voice, and covered her bottom with both hands as Gail dragged her over to join the boys. ‘And turn off the waterworks.’

Luke couldn’t turn off the waterworks. She cried when Carl showed her a peg with
Luke
written beside it. She cried when they showed her the shoe locker, which was just a place to put shoes. She cried when she saw the boys’ toilets, with a pool of wee and soggy toilet paper on the floor where some boy had missed. Eventually she stopped crying out loud, but she carried on crying in her stomach. This gave her a stomach ache. She thought she would cry forever, because she’d learned something on her first day at school.

God had made a mistake.

‘Tickets from Cottingwith,’ said the guard, holding out his hand.

‘Sorry.’ I fumbled in my wallet to find my season ticket. ‘Miles away.’

He nodded, flicking this particular passenger no more than a casual glance. No doubt he saw a greying man, utterly unremarkable, wearing cotton trousers and a polo shirt.

‘Thank you, sir,’ he said. He was already moving on.

Twelve

Eilish

I dropped down from the stile and began to walk, feeling the crunch of corn stalks under my feet. Each step sent up a small puff of dust. Day was draining from the sky, but I could still see the whole field, all the way to the footbridge.

I was looking for Kate. I’d glimpsed her earlier, arriving home from the station. She’d left the car door open and run straight out here. She used to do that when she was a teenager, usually after a fight with Simon; screaming with sisterly rage as she plunged through Gareth’s precious crop. My policy was generally to leave her to simmer down, but if Luke was home he used to go and look for her. He would sit and listen to her troubles. Then they’d walk back to the house together, and I’d feel like the outsider.

It didn’t take long to spot the slim figure on a cotton-reel bale. She was lying flat on her back, like Snoopy on top of his little doghouse. She didn’t stir as I walked up. I thought perhaps she’d taken Luke’s side and wasn’t speaking to me. It wouldn’t be the first time. I lowered myself onto the stubble, leaning my back against her bale. I felt calmer out here. The evening sky seemed honest and open after the deceitful shadows of the house.

I heard Kate shift in the straw. ‘You okay?’ she asked.

‘Not really. How about you?’

‘I’ve been telling myself to get a bloody grip. Be cool. Nobody’s died.’

‘True,’ I said. ‘Nobody’s actually died.’

‘It feels like somebody has, though.’ Her legs appeared over the edge of the bale as she sat up. ‘Nothing’s what I thought it was. Up’s down. Right’s wrong. Front’s back . . . I mean, he’s my dad. I
know
him. I know he chews all around his thumbnail when he’s bothered about something. I know he secretly loves babies, goes all smoochy over them. I know what makes him giggle: Baldrick off
Blackadder
. I know what pisses him off.’

‘Holocaust deniers,’ I said. ‘Insurance companies. Traffic wardens. Arctic oil exploration.’

‘Bossy check-in chicks.’

‘People who kick cats.’ Yet he’s a fraud, I thought; a fraud with silky secrets. When nobody was watching, he put them on.

‘We used to play British Bulldogs in this field,’ said Kate.

‘How could I forget?’ I smiled at the memory. ‘Every teenager for miles around seemed to congregate at our place.’

‘Sophie Baxter and I used to sneak off and smoke under that lime tree.’

‘I knew about you and Sophie smoking.’ I looked across at the tree, covered now in pale blooms. Luke and I had stood beneath its canopy on our last walk, listening to the hum of bees.

‘I remember him singing bedtime songs,’ said Kate. ‘Dad. Taking us camping. Giving cuddles when things went wrong. D’you remember the day he brought Casino home, up his jersey, after he found him dumped at the railway station?’

I did remember that—and a thousand other things: Luke holding the newborn Simon as though he were made of porcelain, tears spilling from his eyes.
He’s perfect
, he whispered.
Perfect. Perfect
. I closed my eyes. I could hear the chuckling of the stream.

‘A fox!’ breathed Kate suddenly. ‘See?’

I saw it: a lithe shadow trotting through the half-light. He paused near our bale, swivelling dark-tipped ears. Perhaps he’d
caught wind of the presence of humans, but he seemed quite relaxed. I held my breath as he loped by. There was something magical about this glimpse of a wild creature. I felt a tug of sadness when he disappeared into the trees.

Kate and I sat on, watching the slow melting of evening into night, and the glittering of the first stars. I thought I heard the phone ringing back at the house, but perhaps it was only a bird calling. It didn’t matter. I was sinking into a stunned stupor. The air was laced with the scent of wild garlic, and owls hooted from somewhere in the dreaming mass of woodland. We’d been so lucky, I thought, and we hadn’t known it. So very lucky. We had lived a charmed life.

It was fully dark when Kate sighed. ‘How can the world be so beautiful and so shitty, both at the same time?’

Luke

I listened to the ringing tone. One, two, three . . . and the answering machine. Perhaps Eilish had guessed it was me and didn’t want to talk.

‘It’s only me,’ I said to the machine. ‘I’m . . . Well, anyway, I was wondering how you are. Both of you. Let me know you’re all right, will you? Speak later. Bye.’

Life without Eilish yawned ahead of me. It looked bleak.

Evening always came early at the flat because it was almost subterranean; the kitchen window looked out onto dustbins, stone steps and the feet of passers-by. I’d bought the place with a massive mortgage just before I met Eilish, and we’d kept it as a London base. It had a small garden backing onto a railway line. I turned on the overhead light, a pitiless strip of neon, and two flies immediately smashed themselves into oblivion. A wail of sirens swelled and receded into the night.