She peered down, couldn’t make out whether it was heads or tails. She bent over double and the shadows deepened. She went down on her knees and all she could see was a void.
She started to weep in frustration and found she was scrabbling in her bag, buried in the shadows beside the sofa, like a great catafalque in the dreary brown light.
‘Yes…’
‘Mum…?’
‘Jane!’ She struggled to sit up, clutching the mobile phone to an ear.
‘You OK?’
‘I… yeah. Of course I’m OK.’
‘Good.’ Jane’s voice was as light and hollow as bamboo.
‘Are you OK?’ Merrily sat on the edge of the sofa, hunched up. The room was dim and felt stagnant. The dull day, deprived of any summer glory, was refusing to go gently and seemed to be sucking out the last of the light like a vacuum pump. The feeling she had was that Jane was not OK.
15
From Hell
JANE LAY ON Eirion’s single bed, watching the last of the light in the sky over the sea. All kinds of emotions were pressing down on her – guilt, regret, some bitterness. But mainly she was furious, and not only at herself.
‘So what did you tell her?’ Eirion whispered.
‘Everything. What could I tell her?’
Eirion had claimed the only bedroom as yet converted from the attic. It had white walls and the smell of new plaster, and even he could only just stand up in here. But the views towards Porthgain and the old mine workings were incredible.
If would be OK, brilliant even, if it was just Eirion and the views and this amazing moist, translucent feel you got in Pembrokeshire, the mystical otherness of the countryside.
Oh, no, she’d been about to say to Mum, the house is top, it’s the family that’s from hell. But she’d wound up playing that down, in the end, because of the guilt. And the fury.
Eirion stroked Jane’s bare arm. ‘You didn’t tell me about any of this.’
‘What was to tell? All kinds of shit happens at school. You put it behind you, don’t you? And when you get back after the holidays it’s all forgotten and there’s a new kind of shit waiting.’
‘So this Layla… is she a genuine medium?’
‘Dunno. She claims to have psychic powers, gypsy ancestry, all that. And she’s certainly got this… charisma’s not the word, it’s more threatening than that. Can there be like negative charisma? I mean, she lays it on, obviously – she’s clearly found that being threatening, looking brooding, that works… gets you stuff. Even the teachers don’t mess with her – I’ve noticed this. Teachers are very polite to her, especially the men. Arm’s-length situation. They are… kind of scared.’
‘You know what that means, don’t you?’
Jane rolled over. ‘Enlighten me, O Experienced One, Mr Been Around, Mr Done All That.’
‘Yeah, OK,’ Eirion said wearily, ‘you’ve made your point.’
‘So what’s it mean? Half the male staff are shagging Layla Riddock?’
‘It only needs one,’ Eirion said. ‘Or maybe she set one of them up and he was just that bit slow saying, “How dare you, young lady?” They’re only human, aren’t they? And then they start gossiping in the staffroom as well, warn each other of the traps – “Let’s be careful out there”.’
‘She’s certainly got Steve on a string, the groundsman guy.’
‘There you go.’
‘But this kid, this Amy… I didn’t realize how far it went, you know? I mean, how could I? Like, OK, she’s Miss Prim, fourteen going on forty-five-year-old spinster, stiff enough to snap any time.’ Jane turned over, leaned across him and clicked on the bedside table-lamp. ‘And she set me up. She’s scared shitless of Riddock so she set me up. All it was, I just happened to be there… and virtually dragged in anyway. I was nothing to do with it. This Amy’s more or less claiming I organized it! And I told Mum the truth, but all the time I’m thinking, why should she believe me this time?’
‘You should’ve told her in the first place, shouldn’t you? You knew that stuff was right in her ballpark.’
‘Oh, come on, Irene, you don’t, do you? You just bloody don’t. Even if it’s somebody you don’t particularly like, unless it’s life and death, you just don’t grass them up. And now Mum could be in some deep trouble over this.’ She sank back, rolling her head on her bit of pillow. ‘She was really pissed off with me. More than she was saying, because whatever I’d done she wouldn’t want to louse up my holiday – she’s cool that way. But I could tell she thought I was going to say it was all total crap, that I didn’t know a thing about it, that somebody had obviously fitted me up, et cetera. She was like totally shattered to find out there was some truth in it.’
‘Sorry,’ Eirion said. ‘I’m not being very helpful, am I?’
‘It’s not your crisis. Maybe I should have noticed how it was with Amy and Layla Riddock. We’ve all been there, haven’t we?’
‘Bullying? Intimidation?’
‘You ever have days you were so scared to go to school you were faking stupid symptoms? Hasn’t happened to me since I was like really young… eleven, twelve. I was quite small then, for my age. Thought I was going to wind up looking like Mum.’
‘Little and cute?’
‘Little is not cute at school.’
‘Always the ones who are just a bit bigger who go for you, isn’t it?’ Eirion said. ‘The ones who’ve maybe been bullied a bit themselves. They do much worse stuff and they get away with it because nobody suspects them.’
‘And you’re just so scared at the time. Adults are like, “Oh, you should stick up for yourself.” But you know they can do anything to you at school, right under the noses of the staff. Like, even if you die, it’s only going to look like an accident! They’re completely outside the law. Nobody out there realizes how totally evil kids can be. It’s like some false-memory thing sets in with adults, and all kids become cute and need protecting. And that’s how you wind up with teenage psychos like Riddock.’
‘When you’re nine’ – Eirion lay on his back, gazing into the darkness of the room – ‘there are eleven-year-olds who’re like… like Charles Manson.’
‘Who?’
‘This weird American guy who got people to kill for him. Murdered this movie star and all these rich people, just went into their homes and ripped them to pieces. Manson was claiming to be receiving these psychic messages. And the people who killed for him – who included women – they wrote “pigs” and stuff on the wall in the victims’ blood.’
‘You’re right,’ Jane said. ‘You’re really not being very helpful.’
She wondered if he’d grown up thinking of this guy, Manson, as the ultimate bogeyman because his own family was so damn rich.
There was a knock on the bedroom door.
‘Shiiiiiiiiiiiiiit!’ Jane reached up and snapped off the lamp. Did they never, never, never go to sleep?
‘Eirion?’ That hated tripping, lilting, little-girly voice.
‘What?’ Eirion called out hoarsely.
‘Ydy Jane yno?’
‘Er… no,’ Eirion replied.
‘Wel, ble mae Jane?’
‘Probably gone to the shop.’
‘Aw, Eirion… ma’r siop ar gau!’