White Crow (12 page)

Rebecca told me about the thing with her dad, and she told me that she hadn’t told him it was me.

‘Thanks,’ I said, smiling.

She frowned.

‘I’ve never done this before, but it’s stupid, isn’t it?,’ she said. ‘I mean, it’s what kids do, isn’t it?’

I sighed.

‘Trust me,’ I said. ‘You never grow out of this. It’s great.’

And it was.

We started in the village.

From the Rectory you can hop over the wall into four different gardens.

It was dusk as we set off and I knew we wouldn’t be seen from anyone’s house, if they had the light on inside.

Rebecca hesitated for ages and I had to kind of convince her to do it, but she ran fast once she’d started and I had a job to keep up.

We dropped off the Rectory wall and into the rose beds at the bottom of the Symons’ place. Their house is big, almost out of sight from where we were, but Rebecca panicked anyway, and was off across the grass to a spot I’d pointed out behind their summerhouse.

I caught up with her and she was panting madly, but she’s pretty fit and I knew it wasn’t from the running.

She stared at me and then began laughing.

‘Wow!’ she whispered. ‘Why is that such fun?’

I grinned. I could see she felt it. The same thing I felt. The thrill of it, the danger of being caught, the exhilaration of getting away with it.

‘Don’t know, but it is. Let’s up the stakes a bit.’

‘How?’

‘Dares.’

‘Dares? Like the swimming thing? That really is for kids.’

But I knew I had her this time, because before I said anything else, she pointed to a fountain in the middle of the Dobsons’ lawn.

‘You,’ she said. ‘There and back. And I want wet hands to prove it.’

It was easy, and I was back before she knew it.

‘Right,’ I said. ‘Your turn. Come on. Next garden.’

‘Wait. What’s the penalty? If you don’t do a dare?’

‘Total forfeit. You have to do the very next thing the other one says.’

She laughed.

‘Anything?’

‘Absolutely anything.’

We were over their fence in a moment and I pointed to the conservatory on the back of the next house.

‘There! And bang on the glass.’

‘But there’s lights on.’

‘So? That’s not how this works. Be harder for them to see you anyway.’

She looked nervous.

‘Are you going to lose already?’ I said, and with that she was off across the dewy evening grass.

As she got to the house, she slipped and banged into the glass of the conservatory hard.

She scrambled up and fled back to where I was ducking out of sight behind a shed.

She swore.

‘Shh! Someone’s there.’

The door to the conservatory opened and someone called out. Just once. Then went in again.

‘They probably think it was a bird,’ I said.

Rebecca turned to me.

‘Your turn. Only . . . This isn’t fair, I don’t know as many places as you do.’

‘So. You should have though of that before you started.’

‘All right,’ she said. ‘You have to go and knock on the front door of the next house.’

‘Is that all?’ I said.

‘No,’ she said. ‘You have to stay there and when they answer the door, you have to say you’ve lost your cat . . .’

‘But everyone round here knows me. They know I don’t have a cat.’

‘You should have thought of that,’ she said, ‘And you have to say these exact words. “I’ve lost my pussy and it’s called Mitzi. Please will you tell me if you find Mitzi.”’

She was getting the hang of a difficult dare and I did what she asked, but I thought I needed to take control before she came up with something really imaginative.

‘So,’ I said, leaving some bewildered villager promising to look out for Mitzi. ‘Your turn. And I think it’s time we changed the venue. Come on.’

‘Where are we going?’

‘Come on,’ I said.

She followed but she wouldn’t let it drop.

‘Ferelith. Where are we going?’

I stopped and looked at her. The dusk was complete and the night drawing in fast. It was perfect. Everything was perfect, and everything was ready.

I smiled.

‘We’re going to the graveyard.’

F
erelith refuses to answer any more of Rebecca’s questions as they tread the silent night summer-scented path to the churchyard.

Wafts of honeysuckle and dog rose hang over their journey, and it is a warm and close evening, as if the air is desperate for rainfall that will not come. The path is dry and dusty underfoot, and Rebecca watches Ferelith’s slight and elfin form ahead of her, merely a silhouette, bobbing and weaving.

She wonders about the odd girl she has met, and though she feels very close to her now, she realises with quick shock that she actually knows very little about her.

She knows where she lives, but not really who with. She doesn’t know who owns the house where she lives, she doesn’t know how she gets any money to live on. A thought flashes through her mind that perhaps she’s a drug dealer; she could go into town once a month and sell enough to live on comfortably. Rebecca’s dad is always saying that this stretch of the coast is rife with drug-drops, and smuggling, as if this is the eighteenth century, not the twenty-first.

She dismisses the thought. Wouldn’t she have tried to have pushed some on her by now, if that were the case?

She knows very little too about Ferelith’s parents. Her father leaving. Her mother going crazy. That must have a pretty bad affect on anyone, especially at the age of fourteen. She doesn’t know if there are any brothers or sisters, she only knows that she is so intelligent that she finished school years earlier than normal people.

There’s another word she catches herself using. Normal.

And is it intelligent to be so very able with facts and knowledge at that age, or is it actually a bit weird?

 

They’re nearly at the churchyard of St Mary’s.

‘Where are we going?’ Rebecca asks.

‘I told you.’

Rebecca knows but she wants a better explanation. She tries another tack, forcing some lightness into her voice.

‘So, what’s my dare then?’

Ferelith doesn’t even answer that.

‘This isn’t funny,’ Rebecca shouts, suddenly losing her temper.

‘Hey. Cool it. We’re there. You’ll see.’

Rebecca sighs, and follows her round beyond the perfect front of the church, looking through the dark at the great front door that Ferelith opened to reveal her temple to the sea. It already seems a long time since that night.

She thinks about her father, chasing his own daughter round a shadowy churchyard, but pushes the thought away.

 

The sounds of the sea come clearly in the still night air, the rushing of the waves on the beach below the cliff sailing up to them like the soundtrack from a dark but gentle dream.

 

Ferelith takes Rebecca by the hand.

‘Close your eyes,’ she says. But Rebecca doesn’t. Not at first.

She’s still angry.

It’s gone midnight and suddenly she feels very tired and cold. But Ferelith insists.

‘You have to do your dare,’ she says. ‘Shut your eyes.’

‘All right then. But if it isn’t over in ten minutes I’m going home.’

She shuts her eyes and though the churchyard was pitch black anyway, now she can see nothing at all.

It’s an unsettling feeling she thinks, being led, blind. It requires a great deal of trust, and she realises that she doesn’t trust Ferelith enough.

She’s about to say so when they come to a stop.

‘Open your eyes,’ Ferelith says.

When Rebecca does she doesn’t get it at first. It’s so dark now, and although her eyes have adjusted to night vision she can see absolutely nothing.

‘What?’ she says, feeling irritable.

‘There,’ says Ferelith. ‘Your dare. It’s right in front of you!’

Rebecca looks, looks right down at her feet.

She can vaguely sense something now, a greater darkness in the gloom that surrounds them.