Crossing the Line (17 page)

‘People always say that too, don't they?' she said. ‘That's banal as well. But he was. He was a good person.'

I looked up for her bus. Not that I wanted it to come.

‘I do want to see you again.' Unfolding her arms she rested them on my shoulders. Her fingertips touched the
back of my skull, a light whisper of a touch.

‘OK,' I said. I took her silver forelock between my thumb and forefinger and stroked it, because I'd been dying to do that all night.

She smiled and kissed me again. ‘Here's my bus,' she said.

I don't know how I didn't notice what happened to Lola Nan. I was in a daze all week, torn between tormentingly unfulfilled bliss and the crashing comedown of the Orla-less weekend ahead. Of course I wasn't speaking to Dad and he wasn't speaking to me, but Mum could have told me. Whatever she said later, Mum could have found me and told me and I wouldn't have felt so bad about it or hated Mum so much.

By Friday I was dreading the weekend. For the first time I wished I'd taken that job shoving trolleys round the superstore car park, but I'd used the pressure-of-study excuse and it was hard to back down now. Anyway, I'd saved a reasonable amount of cash from my summer job and Dad, under duress, was still subsidising me. I went into town straight from school on Friday and bought a couple of CDs in a sale, thinking I could sync the most
wrist-slitting tracks on to my iPod and mope around the park on Saturday. I was almost looking forward to it.

I called Mum, told her I wouldn't be home for tea, then pretended I'd lost the signal before she could make a fuss. All week Dad had worn a bitter look and a tight mouth, and there was a sourness to his breath each morning that signalled too many nightcaps and a truly filthy mood. I'd got to the point where I hated going home. Since that late-night scene with Dad, ironically enough, I'd just got angrier and angrier with Mum. I wished she'd stand up for me. I wished she'd forget Dad's feelings once in a while. I was starting to think it wasn't love and tenderness; I suspected she was scared of him and his silent tantrums. What was that expression of Orla's? Passive-aggressive. That was my dad. Passive. Aggressive. My PA.

The shops were open late and I hung around the HMV store looking at games and films and music till I was in a happy trance. I got to the point where I didn't care that the security guards were staring at me; I flicked through DVDs and CDs, the slap and click of the cases a hypnotic sound, and I made little bets with myself about which ones Orla would like. I wondered if she'd come home with me and watch them on the DVD player in my bedroom. When I pictured that, funnily enough, the scene in my head had us both fully clothed. I was propped against the headboard with her lying back against me, my arms round her waist and her head tilted back against my shoulder. I could almost feel the movement of her jaw
around her gum as she stared at the screen. Involuntarily my muscles tightened, as if I already had her in my arms. The courtly-DVD-love scenario made my head float, then my body reasserted itself with a sick little shiver of lust.

I stared at the DVD case in my hand. I'd never even heard of this movie. I didn't know how I was going to last the weekend. I didn't even know when I was going to see her again. I was in love, I thought with a sudden shock.
Love,
as in real proper love. Oh, bollocks.

It was getting dark by the time I got home, and I paused outside the front door, swallowing, my throat tight and my pulse hammering. Well, I thought, a little foreboding was to be expected. Nothing good seemed to happen lately when I walked through this door. I wasn't having some horrible premonition; I was just psyching myself up for the silences.

Taking a breath, I stepped inside and shut the door. Allie was coming downstairs but she didn't smile at me. She stopped on the fourth step from the bottom and looked at me.

Actually, she looked right through me. Her pupils were huge, black and wide, and I hesitated, thinking for the umpteenth time how scary she could be. A few centuries ago they'd have burned her just for the look in her eyes. Next time she was asleep I'd check her scalp for the number of the beast.

The notion usually plastered a fond grin on my face. Not tonight it didn't. Allie gripped the banister, then sat
down abruptly on the fourth stair. Tears glittered in her alarming eyes.

‘I wish he wouldn't bleed,' she said.

There was that spider on my spine again, under the skin.

‘What?' I said.

‘He bleeds sometimes. I wish he wouldn't do that. It scares me.'

No dumping her,
that's what I'd told him. I wished he'd dump her now, all right. ‘Allie, don't talk like that.'

She shoved her hands into her hair and pushed it back behind her ears. ‘I think it's when he's upset. He's upset tonight.'

‘Stop it!' I yelled, flinging the little plastic bag of CDs at her. It bounced off the carpeted stair and her body jolted with shock. ‘Stop it!'

She blinked, and I thought she was seeing me for the first time.

‘Oh, Nick,' she said. ‘Nick. I've got something awful to tell you.'

‘Why didn't you tell me?' I said.

Mum glanced up. I'd found her where I expected, in what she called her office, though it was no more than a gap under the stairs with some modular Ikea office furniture fitted in like one of those clever-dick wooden brainteaser puzzles. She had the phone pressed to one ear, one hand resting lightly on her laptop keyboard. That
hand lifted, palm outward, then she raised a single warning forefinger, putting me on hold. Her lips went on moving, talking into the handset, but I couldn't hear what she was saying for the high-pitched buzzing in my head.

‘Why didn't
YOU TELL ME
?' I screamed.

Silence. The phone drifted away from Mum's ear. I could hear the questioning burble at the other end, but Mum just stared at me and didn't answer. Then she seemed to get her head together, and she muttered, ‘I'll get back to you.'

The phone bleeped as she set it back in its cradle. ‘Nick,' she said, but though her lips moved she didn't manage to say it out loud.

‘You didn't say anything,' I said, more calmly.

‘I didn't know how.'

‘You should have thought of something.' Bitterness rose in my throat again.

‘You must have known,' she said. ‘You must have known we were thinking about it. We've talked about it.'

I just stared at her, and she averted her eyes, then looked back at me.

‘It was all very sudden, Nick. A place came up in the home.'

‘Somebody kicked the bucket, you mean.'

‘A place came up,' she said again, ‘and we had to make a decision.'

‘This afternoon,' I said sarcastically.

‘No, not this afternoon. Late last week. Do you think you've been approachable this week, Nick?'

‘That's not my fault!'

‘Your dad shouldn't have said those things to you that night, but how could he apologise? You've been gone since last week, Nick. You haven't been around. You don't come to breakfast. You don't come home for tea. How could we talk to you? How could your dad?'

Shoving my hand into my pocket, I tugged out my phone and brandished it in her face. Then I flung it to the laminate floor, where it clattered and broke, its metal skin splitting and flying off in two directions, each half spinning to a lazy circling halt.

She took a deep, shaky breath. ‘I know you're angry. I understand. But we –'

‘You could have looked for me,' I gritted through my teeth. I hated it when she did this. I hated it when she put on her professional face, when she was calm and reasonable, when she wanted to see all the sides. All sides but mine. That's the one she didn't want to see. If she saw that, none of us would end up being reasonable.

‘You didn't want to be found, Nick! And how could I tell you something like this on the phone? How could I shout it out the door after you?'

Stop being so bloody clever, Mum. Stop it.
The trouble was, I
had
been avoiding them all week. I knew she'd tried to talk to me because I remembered her saying a few times, as I shoved past her in the hall or the kitchen,
‘
Nick I need to talk to you!
'

‘Better than not being told at all!' I spat.

‘Why would we? So you could argue and scream at us?'

I stared, silent.

‘We couldn't cope any more,' she said.

‘Oh.' I shouldn't say it, I shouldn't. But I couldn't help myself. ‘Did God give you a burden greater than you could bear?'

There was a horrible silence. My face had warped into a vile sneer but I couldn't seem to untwist it. Mum's cheekbones reddened violently and she put up her hands, scalded by the heat of her own shame.

‘Don't throw that in my face, Nick. Please don't.'

‘Don't start asking me for favours.'

‘You didn't wash her sheets!' cried Mum suddenly. She stood up, knocking the phone out of its cradle so that it bleeped a protest. ‘You never disinfected her cushion or wiped her bottom. You never got called out by the police because they'd found her wandering on the bypass. Do you know how officials look at you? Do you? Do you know how nurses treat you? Half your age and they treat you like you're some feckless incompetent uncaring –'

‘You never told me,' I interrupted coldly. ‘You never told me because you're cowards. That's the only reason.'

I thought saying it would make me feel better, but it didn't. I felt grey and stony, and there was something dying in my chest: a small wounded animal or maybe my heart.

Mum sat down again, heavily. Her desk chair swivelled away from me, but she turned it back. ‘Yes,' she agreed with a sigh. Glancing up at me, she smiled sadly. ‘So you don't want to marry me any more.'

‘Huh?'

‘You used to tell me you'd marry me. When you were a little boy. All little boys say that to their mothers.'

‘Do they?'

‘All little boys start out the same, I suppose.'

I don't know if she meant that to sound so cruel. Did she actually mean it to sting the way it did? And I always thought she had such good intentions.

‘I'm sorry about Lola Nan,' she said, as I kicked my heel into the carpet. ‘Do you want to come and see her tomorrow?'

‘No,' I said, viciously and truthfully.

I crouched to pick up the pieces of my phone. I didn't want to, it was humiliating, but I couldn't leave without it. My phone was my lifeline: it was my way to Orla and Orla was the only place I wanted to be. Kneeling beside me, Mum reached for half of the casing, but I shoved her hand away and snatched it up myself. I didn't look at her as I scrabbled to my feet, turned, and slammed out of the front door.

I put Lola Nan out of my mind. She was already out of her own; what could it hurt her to be put away like old china too fragile to be used any more? Best thing for her. Best thing for everyone. I put her out of my mind.

She barged back in at the worst of moments and the worst of places. I'd just come out of the sixth-year common room, fresh from a free period spent hiding W. H. Auden behind
V for Vendetta
, and I was on my way to Biology. I wasn't even thinking about Lola Nan, but about university and applications and whether the sciences were even my thing. I had enough qualifications for my second choice already and I wouldn't have stayed on for a sixth year if I hadn't wanted to keep an extra year's eye on Allie. And because I was afraid that as soon as I went away to university Lola Nan would take her sneaky opportunity and die on me …

I stopped dead. Somebody swore, having nearly tripped over me, and I got a deliberate whack from a swinging arm as he shoved past with the rest of the crowds.

‘Feck's sake, move,' grumbled another voice behind me.

Ordinarily I'd have turned and given them my full Robert De Niro.
You talkin' to me? You talkin'a ME?
But I was frozen, my whole chest had seized up. Panicking, I looked from side to side.

McCluskey's office. How did I always end up here? The great Waiting Room of my life. I just knew that when I died and went to check in with the heavenly bureaucrats, I'd find myself standing outside McCluskey's office.

Nah. When people died they died. They turned into rot and putrefaction, and then they turned to dust. Then nothing. Not even a mind or a memory was left, and maybe that had been gone even while your lungs still breathed and your heart beat and your blood throbbed determinedly, pointlessly, round and round in your veins.

Nope. I definitely wasn't cut out for science, I thought, as I rapped violently on McCluskey's door and walked in without an invitation, then slammed the door and tried not to lean on it.

McCluskey looked up, and so did the second year he was berating. In the silence I stared at the open window behind McCluskey's right ear.

McCluskey stood up, reached past me to yank the door open once more and jerked his head at the shivering kid. ‘Never do it again or you're dead.' He shut the door on
him and sat back down at his desk. ‘Right, Geddes, what is it?'

I squinted at the window. The sunlight was diffused through the branches of a weedy abused beech tree, but at this time of the afternoon the light was still strong enough for McCluskey to have half closed the vertical blinds. It striped McCluskey's desk with murky gold light. He reached up with his left hand and closed the blinds a little further, angling the light on to the council-issue calendar. September, Loch Lomond, The Bonny Banks Of.

‘I have a problem, sir.'

‘As do I, and its name is Geddes. What's yours?'

‘I'm not immortal.' I stared at Loch Lomond.

‘Aye. I'm waiting for the newsflash.' He jerked his thumb in what might have been an invitation. I sat down heavily in a hard little mustard-coloured armchair.