“Not long.” She smiled. “I knocked on your door, but
you didn’t answer. I was just checking you were all right, that’s all.” She came into the room and went over to the window. “It sounded really nice,” she said. “The song you were playing…did you make it up?”
“I was just messing around,” I said, fixing the plectrum in the strings and putting the guitar down. “What’s the time?”
“Half past twelve—something like that.” She turned from the window and went back over to the doorway. “I was just making some tea before Mike goes. Did you want a cup?”
“Is Dad back yet?”
She shook her head. “He’s getting later all the time. He didn’t get home until nearly three the other night.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“We’ll have to ground him if he keeps this up.”
I looked at her, recognizing the sadness behind her smile. She didn’t really get on with Mum that well and although she’d never said anything about it, I knew she didn’t like the idea of Mum and Dad getting back together again. I wasn’t too keen on it myself, to be honest, although it didn’t bother me as much as it bothered Gina.
“Do you want some tea, then?” she said.
I nodded.
She smiled again. “Mike’s in the kitchen. Why don’t you come down and tell us all about Candy?”
“There’s nothing to tell. It’s just a song…”
“Yeah?”
I blushed, thinking of Candy—her presence, her body, her face, her voice, her
being…
“Come
on,
Joe,” Gina said. “I’m your sister—you can tell me. We tell each other everything.”
“No, we don’t.”
“Well, we ought to.” She grinned.
“You don’t tell me
anything.
”
“I
do.
”
“Like what? When was the last time you told me anything?”
“Just now.”
“When?”
“I just told you I was making some tea, didn’t I? What more do you want?”
I gave her a look, then got up and went over to the window to close the curtains.
“All right,” she said. “I’ll tell you what—you come down and tell us about Candy, and we’ll tell you something about us. Something that no one else knows. How about that?”
“I’m not sure I
want
to know anything about you.”
“Yeah, you do.”
“It’s probably pretty boring—”
“You reckon?”
I looked at her. She was nearly twenty-one now, but she still didn’t look any older than me—in fact, she was often mistaken for my younger sister. She had that wide-eyed freshness of a little girl, all clear blue eyes and golden hair and spotlessly smooth skin. It was enough to make you sick sometimes. That night, though, as she stood there smiling at me, dressed in a simple white T-shirt and jeans, there was no mistaking what she was: a beautiful young woman who meant everything to me.
“Go on, then,” I told her. “You get the tea on and I’ll be down in a minute.”
Gina met Mike a couple of years ago when she was visiting the local hospital as part of her nursing course. Mike was working as a porter back then, and I think they just bumped into each other in the corridor or something. A quick hello, a friendly chat, and that was that. They’ve been inseparable ever since. Gina’s mad about him. She thinks he’s the best thing that ever happened to her, and I think she’s probably right. He’s kind, funny, serious, smart—protective but not possessive, friendly but not patronizing, cool without trying—in fact, come to think of it, he’s almost too good to be true. But he
is
true. Which makes it all the more baffling why Dad doesn’t like him.
“It’s because he’s black,” Gina said once. “Dad doesn’t like me seeing a black guy.”
“Dad’s not like that,” I said. “He might be a bit old-fashioned, a bit stuck in his ways, but he’s not like that.”
“No?”
“Of
course
he’s not—”
“Well, why else wouldn’t he like Mike?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it’s because he’s a hospital porter—”
“What’s wrong with
that?
There’s nothing wrong with being a porter, for God’s sake.”
“I
know.
I’m not saying there is, but you know what Dad’s like—”
“Yeah, he’s a
snob.
He thinks that just because Mike has an unskilled job, he’s not
respectable
enough for me. God, he’s so narrow-minded. I mean, did you see the look on his face the other day when I told him about Mike being a DJ? He couldn’t have looked sicker if I’d told him my boyfriend was a murderer.”
Mike used to spend all his spare time DJing in clubs around Essex and London. It meant a lot of late nights in a lot of strange places with a lot of weird people, but he really liked doing it—which was why he didn’t mind being a porter. Being a porter was his job, but being a DJ was what he
did.
Dad, of course, couldn’t understand it. He couldn’t understand how anyone could just have a job instead of a career, how anyone could just want to do something because they really liked doing it.
It was beyond him.
Anyway, about six months ago Mike packed in the porter’s job and opened up his own little business in Romford, selling and hiring out DJ equipment—desks, mixers, sound systems, that kind of thing. At first he kept on DJing as well, but after a while he began to realize that he liked the business side almost as much as the DJing itself—and it was less tiring, too. And more lucrative. So now he’s pretty much retired as a DJ and he’s doing really well with the business—making a name for himself and piles of money—but it doesn’t make any difference to Dad. He still can’t stand him. Which, to put it mildly, makes things a little bit awkward now and then.
So when I went down to the kitchen that night, and Gina told me that Mike had asked her to marry him, I didn’t know what to say. I was pleased for them, of course, and it was really nice to see the excitement in their faces, but I couldn’t help wondering what Dad was going to say.
“Have you told him yet?” I asked Gina.
She shook her head. “Mike only asked me tonight—look…” She waggled her finger at me, showing off a small silver ring.
“Very nice,” I said, looking at Mike. “Did you get it in a cereal packet?”
“I’ll have you know that’s a top-quality platinum ring,” Mike said.
“Who told you that?”
“The guy who was selling them in the pub—top-quality, he said, forty-eight-carat platinum, very high-class.”
“High-class goods for a high-class guy.”
“That’s right.”
He grinned across the table at Gina, making her smile like an idiot, and I found myself looking at him, wondering why I wasn’t scared of him in the same way I’d been scared of Iggy. It was an uncomfortable comparison to make, and it made me feel really stupid, because I knew I was only making the comparison because they were both big and black, and that didn’t make any sense at all. I wasn’t scared of Iggy because he was big and black; I was scared of Iggy because he was scary. Because he was Iggy. Black had nothing to do with it.
“What’s up?” Mike asked me.
“Uh?”
“You’re looking at me like I’ve got two heads or something.”
“Sorry,” I said. “I was miles away.”
“Thinking about Candy?” asked Gina.
“No—”
“Who’s this Candy?” asked Mike, leaning his arms on the table, looking interested.
“No one—” I started to say.
“Come on, Joe,” Gina interrupted. “We made a deal. I told you our secret, now it’s your turn.”
“Yeah,” echoed Mike, “come on, Joe—give it up, dish the dirt, spill the beans, ‘fess up—”
“I thought you were going home?” I said to him.
“There’s no rush.” He smiled.
I didn’t want to tell them about Candy. I was afraid of making a fool of myself. But I didn’t want to keep it inside me, either. I wanted to let it out, to give it some air, to see how it sounded outside my head…at least some of it, anyway.
And I had made a deal, after all.
So I drank some tea, settled back in the chair, and told them what had happened. I didn’t tell them everything, of course. I didn’t tell them about the touch of her fingertips or the intoxicating scent of her skin, and I certainly didn’t tell them about the light in the darkness or the crying voice or the stuff I could feel deep down inside me…whatever it was.
Even if I’d wanted to, I couldn’t have told them about that.
But I told them everything else.
When I’d finished, no one said anything for a while. Gina just sat there, looking at me with a slightly dazed expression on her face, while Mike kept his head down and stared thoughtfully at the table. I drained the cold tea from my cup and glanced around the kitchen. White walls, stone floor, pots on the wall—everything was shrouded in the worldless silence of the early morning.
“Well…” said Gina, clearing her throat.
I looked at her, suddenly feeling anxious, wondering what she thought of me. Did she think I was dumb?
Naïve? Idiotic? Was she embarrassed by my stupidity?
Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything after all,
I thought.
Maybe I
should
have kept it all to myself.
Gina ran her fingers through her hair, glanced at Mike, then looked back at me again, smiling awkwardly.
“I don’t know what to say,” she said. “You must have been…”
“What?” I said nervously. “I must have been what?”
“I don’t know…scared, confused…I mean, if that had been me—”
“You wouldn’t have been so stupid.”
“No, I didn’t mean
that.
God, Joe—it wasn’t
your
fault. How were you supposed to know?”
I shrugged.
Gina leaned toward me. “She didn’t ask you for anything, did she?”
“What do you mean? Ask me for what?”
“Money.”
“No…she just started talking to me.”
“Well, then…”
“What?”
“You weren’t to know what she was, were you? It’s not like she had a tattoo on her head saying,
I’m a prostitute…
”
I grinned.
Gina grinned back. “She
didn’t,
did she?”
“Not that I noticed.”
Gina relaxed. She reached out and squeezed my hand, then glanced across the table. “What do you think, Mike?”
Mike raised his head and looked at me. “Are you all right now?” he asked.
“Yeah, I think so.”
He nodded. “Did you get his name, this black guy?”
“Iggy. She called him Iggy.”
“Iggy?”
“Yeah.”
Mike shook his head. “It’s probably just a street-name. He could be anyone. There’re guys like that all over the place—small-time pimps and dealers who run a couple of girls from a flat somewhere…King’s Cross used to be full of them. The whole area was cleaned up a couple of years ago, but there’s still a lot going on down there.” He looked at me. “How old was this girl?”
“I don’t know…seventeen, maybe eighteen. Something like that. It was hard to tell, the way she was dressed and everything…she could have been younger, I suppose.”
“Was she using?”
“What do you mean?”
“Using…taking drugs.”
I thought about it, picturing her face, her fresh white skin, her arms, her lips, her eyes…her eyes…
Like tiny black holes.
“I don’t know,” I said, wondering if I was lying. “I don’t think so…I mean, she
seemed
all right.”
“Any track marks on her arms?”
“No.”
“What about Iggy?”
“I didn’t look that closely.”
“But he definitely had some kind of hold over her?”
“She was petrified of him.”
Gina said, “But she was all right with you?”
“Yeah, she was fine before he turned up. She was just…I don’t know…” I looked at Gina. “She was really nice.”
“Pretty?”
“Yeah.”
“What kind of pretty?”
“I don’t know—what kinds of pretty are there?”
“All kinds.” She smiled. “Beautiful pretty, sexy pretty, sultry pretty, tarty pretty…was she tarty?”
“A bit, I suppose…but not in a nasty way.”
“Tarty but cute?”
“Yeah…maybe.”
I looked away then, suddenly feeling tired, and also a little bit ashamed of myself. It didn’t feel right, talking about Candy as if she was just something to look at—some shiny little bauble or trinket or something. Whatever she was, and whatever she did, she didn’t deserve that.
“I’m tired,” I said, stretching my arms and yawning. “I think I’ll be getting off to bed now.”
“Yeah, well,” said Gina, “you’ve had a long day.”
“Yeah.”
“You’re sure you’re all right now? You’re not worried about anything…?”
“What’s there to worry about?”
“Nothing, I suppose.” She shrugged. “I mean, you’re not going to see her again, are you?”
“Not unless I want my throat cut.”
“Don’t worry about that,” Mike said. “Most of these guys are all mouth. They don’t want any trouble.”
“They won’t get any from me,” I said, trying to sound casual, trying to ignore the sudden image in my mind—the image of a darkened cave, glinting with gold, a death-mask grin…
I stood up.
“Well,” I said, “I’ll leave you to it, then.”
Gina stifled a yawn. “G’night, Joe.”
“Yeah,” said Mike. “Take it easy.”
Upstairs, I went to the bathroom, brushed my teeth, then trudged wearily into my bedroom and sat down on the edge of the bed. It was two-thirty in the morning. My body was exhausted and my head felt drained, but my mind was still buzzing with thoughts:
What’s Dad going to say about Gina and Mike getting married? What’s it going to be like when Gina moves out? What if Mum and Dad get married again and Mum moves back in?
I was thinking about these things, but I wasn’t really
thinking
about them—they were just there, just floating around like dead leaves drifting on the surface of a pond. They didn’t really mean anything to me. Below the surface, though, down in the icy black depths, I could see things that meant something. Moving things, living things, formless shapes, darting and flickering in the darkness, stirring up the silt, whirling in the gloom, forming a narrow black tunnel, with me at one end and a death mask at the other and a pale white ghost floating somewhere in between…
Shit,
I said to myself, shaking my head.
I’m too tired for this.