Everlasting Lane (25 page)

I could hear where flies had buried their eggs with a pl-pl-pl-plpl in the mountain of dung, and sense their wriggling white babies burrowing towards the centre of the heap. Melanie’s little tongue was in my mouth like a strawberry.

And then, ‘Peter.’

Melanie’s lips parted from mine with a syrupy slurp.

Anna-Marie was stood before us, her face pale like the rising moon. I wriggled free of Melanie’s arms and struggled to my feet. Even in the twilight I could see something new in Anna-Marie’s face, something I hadn’t seen before.

‘Nice tie,’ she said looking at my school uniform. ‘I didn’t know it was fancy dress,’ but there was no feeling in the way she said it.

I don’t know if Melanie called out or if somebody else saw what had happened but before long everybody had gathered to stare at Anna-Marie in the farmyard. They were just like a jury on that show
Crown Court
which is always on when you’re off school with a tummy bug, all scowling before they even knew what she was supposed to have done, but Anna-Marie didn’t move or speak.

At the centre of the mob Mrs Finch’s face steamed with anger as Melanie wept into her chest. ‘You’re a ghoul,’ she wailed at the visitor. ‘You’re not welcome ’ere. ’Ow many times …?’ Melanie’s friends swarmed about her, patting her back and
condemning the criminal with poisonous gasps. Their feet stomped with outrage; their eyes shone with delight.

Mr Finch emerged from the farmhouse and the group separated to let him through. ‘Go easy on the lass,’ he said. This is what daddies do, I thought. He approached Anna-Marie and laid his hand, as big as a field, on her shoulder. ‘She’s done no wrong.’ Sometimes we all need a daddy just to sort things out.

‘No wrong?’ spluttered his wife. ‘No wrong? I can’t believe my … 
This
is your daughter, you old fool, sobbing in my arms.’

Anna-Marie tilted and rested her head against the man’s chest. He touched her hair gently. ‘You’d best be gone, m’love,’ he whispered, his voice soft as earth. Their eyes met for a moment before Anna-Marie turned and disappeared into the shadows.

‘Well, thank goodness for that!’ exclaimed Mrs Finch.

‘Are you her friend, lad?’

‘Yes.’

He looked at me with sad eyes. ‘Aye, then,’ he said, ‘you’d best go with her, eh?’

And I knew he was right. I’d deserted her once, I couldn’t do it again.

It was properly dark by the time I reached Everlasting Lane. I saw Anna-Marie waiting for me beneath the glow of a lamppost at the top of the path that led down towards the river, but again she turned into darkness as soon as I drew close. I followed the rustle of her feet through the undergrowth.

By the time I found her she was stood on the riverbank, her sandals and socks had been removed and lay beside the cold, dark water. She told me to sit down and had me tug off my own socks and shoes and roll up the bottoms of my trousers.
I couldn’t believe how freezing the water was. The only light was provided by the moon, so silver it was almost blue.

I was just beginning to wonder where I’d left my school bag when Anna-Marie said, ‘How was the party?’

‘How did you know?’

Anna-Marie shrugged. ‘Oh, Peter, do you think nothing ever happened before you came here? It’s her birthday. She always has a party. I went once. How’s her dad?’

‘Okay.’

‘You know, once when I was there they let me ride on the pony. Goldilocks. It was great.’

‘Melanie loves me,’ I said.

‘Sure,’ said Anna-Marie. ‘She loves everybody for a while. Without wanting to spit in your cornflakes, she was in love with Tommie for six weeks when she could barely stand to look at him. Melanie’s problem,’ she said, ‘is she’s not prepared to forsake a little love.’

‘What happened?’ I meant about Mrs Carpenter and that.

Anna-Marie told me to swirl my foot in the water. I could hear her sucking in her cheeks and turned to see her biting her lower lip, frowning at the stars.

‘What was your dad like?’ she said.

Black shapes swooped back and forth in the field before us. The bells of the church began to sound the hour. They seemed to go on and on.

I cleared my throat. I told her that he was tall, that sometimes he was a bit tubby in the tummy; that he had a moustache except when he didn’t. I told her that he’d worked for someone but I didn’t know who or what he did. I told her that he’d been in the war and that sometimes he could be noisy and funny and at other times he would be quiet and—

‘No, Peter. I mean, what was he
like
?’

When I had chicken pox once the spots were so scratchy I
couldn’t sleep and lay in bed, crying. My dad sat with me and told me a story about a man who shot his own foot off thinking it was the hand of a ghost. That was a bit scary, so then he told me a funny story from the war about a chicken and a German soldier. Then he told me not to worry about sleeping. He said, ‘Sometimes you only think you’re awake when in fact you’re dreaming,’ but he stayed with me, dabbing ointment on my spots, until I drifted out of this world into another.

Anna-Marie nodded. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘That is kind,’ and then she was silent again.

I turned again to face her. I couldn’t really see her face, just the sparkle of her tears. ‘What about your dad?’ I said.

‘Don’t look at me,’ she said, so I turned around again. ‘What about your mum?’ she said. ‘Do you love her?’

It was strange to hear her say ‘mum’ like that, but I nodded. ‘Yes.’

‘You love her better since you came here.’

‘Yes.’

It was funny because I didn’t really know what she meant. I mean about whether I loved her—my mum—more since I’d come to Amberley. I was confused. But then I realised that Anna-Marie knew that Kat was my mother. And then I realised that she’d always known; I mean nearly as long as I had. And that was all right. I didn’t mind her knowing, but—

‘How did you know?’

‘Oh, Peter,’ she sighed, ‘it’s as plain as that stubby, fat thing in the middle of your face.’

‘Don’t tell Tommie,’ I said.

‘Tommie?’ She laughed. ‘You’re joking, aren’t you? His brain can barely contain the football results without dribbling down the sides. But,’ she said, ‘what was she like before? Kat I mean. Your mum.’

‘I don’t know.’

I was too embarrassed to say anything else, you see, because the really funny thing was that I’d kind of forgotten. I mean that Kat was my mum. I don’t really know why. I guess I’d just kind of wanted to forget. It’s like I said before, sometimes pretending is better than when things were real.

‘
My
mother,’ said Anna-Marie making the word sound inedible, ‘is a nightmare. A complete nightmare.’ She began to copy her mother’s gloomy voice: ‘ “Anna-Marie, do this. Anna-Marie, do that. Tidy this, clean that, polish this, scrub that.” Frankly, my mother is a pain in the … backside.’

And then I suddenly realised why, well, why she wasn’t sitting down.

But, ‘What about your dad?’ I said.

‘Melanie’s dad was always nice to me,’ said Anna-Marie. ‘He used to show me how to milk the cows and things like that. I didn’t even want to go home sometimes.’

‘What about
your
dad?’

I turned my head to see Anna-Marie gazing deep down into the muddy water in search of a lost ring, seeing the shine but not the ring itself. She told me to swirl my foot again and for a moment the water cleared. I looked up. Her eyes were filled with tears. A shiver passed from the river and twinkled its way up my spine.

‘The problem with you, Peter,’ she said, ‘is that sometimes you’re watching
Blue Peter
when everybody else is watching
Magpie.
’

‘What?’ I didn’t really know what she meant.

And then she said,

speaking slowly, from memory, as if she was carving the words with her voice.

They were the words from the gravestone. Alice’s gravestone. I could remember nearly all of them myself even though I’d only seen them for a second.

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ she said.

‘I … You said you didn’t want to know.’

‘I suppose,’ she sighed. And then, ‘But it’s true, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘Mr Merridew was right. I mean it didn’t even have any dates on it.’ She meant the gravestone. She was right. I didn’t know much about graves but I remembered the dates from my father’s headstone: so precise like rules that can’t be broken. ‘It’s like she died without even being born.’

‘What?’

‘What would that be like,’ wondered Anna-Marie, ‘if you’d never been born?’

I turned again to look at her. She looked kind of funny like a, well, a little girl. I mean that’s silly, I know. She
was
a little girl, of course: younger than I am now. I’d just never really noticed before.

‘What? I don’t know.’

She’d always seemed so much older.

She shrugged. ‘Well, what about other people? What about me and Tommie? You
were
born, so do you think we’d miss you if you hadn’t been? And what about your mum? I mean if you were supposed to be born, but weren’t, wouldn’t you leave a hole?’

‘I don’t … A hole?’

‘For people who would have known you. I wonder if
people can tell there’s someone missing. Do you know what I mean?’

The funny thing was I did. I knew exactly what she meant.

It was just like the secret room. It’d looked like a nursery but it hadn’t felt like one. It had been more like a picture of one. There was no memory of a child at play; no ripples in the air caused by long ago games. The dolls and stuffed animals were nameless and unloved. Had that cot ever been slept in? Had the mobile ever turned, turned, turned so slowly sending tired eyes to sleep? It wasn’t a room of ghosts, but of ghosts of ghosts, of shadows of shadows: of absence, of nothing, of less than nothing.

‘Which is worse,’ wondered Anna-Marie, ‘living, knowing you’re going to die, or never living at all?’

‘What?’ Which was
worse
? Neither filled me with glee. ‘If you never lived,’ I insisted, ‘you wouldn’t know any different.’

‘I wonder,’ said Anna-Marie.

And she was right to wonder. That’s what I think. It’s like Norman said: who isn’t kept awake at night dreaming of the things they should’ve done but didn’t, of the chances they missed that they should have taken, of the things that needed to be said but weren’t? How is that different from a life unlived: a life without love, without friendship, without touch? What might have been said that went unsaid? What might have been done that went undone?

They’re like pale ghosts of ghosts who never cry, never lie, never shout, never shiver; that gaze in the broken mirror aching for all this: for joy, pleasure, love, affection, trust, truth, friendship, for everything they’ve been denied. And do we miss them? Do we miss their presence? Do we notice their absence? No, because they’re only dreams: echoes without sound, smoke without fire, consequences without events. And yet, something of them remains, for sometimes when I’m
dreaming I think I’m awake; and although my eyes are closed I believe them open.

The best I could manage was a kind of grunt.

A breeze lapped at the edges of the leaves. I watched the ducks and ducklings and the wide Vs they left in their wake. Two fat teardrops were rolling down Anna-Marie’s cheeks. Her blue hair shimmered, snot bubbling in her left nostril.

I was so confused. I had no idea what to say but, ‘It’s all right,’ I said. ‘It’s summer and—’

‘Oh, Peter, grow up!’ She snorted loudly and the snot disappeared. ‘Nothing lasts forever,’ she sighed drawing the back of her hand across the space between her mouth and nose. ‘The summer won’t last forever. The lane doesn’t last forever.’

‘It might.’

‘Oh, Peter,’ said Anna-Marie, her voice sounding sad and tired, ‘you’re such a baby.’ And then she said: ‘What are you most scared of?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Don’t be stupid,’ she sighed. ‘What are you scared of?’

I glanced at the trees and their darkness. I couldn’t admit to being scared of them, could I? I didn’t want to own up to anything I might regret.

‘I’m scared that Kat will decide she doesn’t want me around and no one will care about me,’ I said. ‘What about you?’

Anna-Marie stood in silence a long time, staring blindly, her long fingers playing her hair. When she finally spoke it was so soft I had to ask her to say it again.

‘Everything,’ she said. ‘The future. Everything.’

I was stunned. Everything? ‘What do you mean?’ Every thing? That was a lot to be scared of. ‘The future?’ I’d never really thought about the future or things that might happen tomorrow or the day after and certainly not what might happen next year or the year after that. Of course I knew things
changed. That was why we’d come to Amberley. That’s what consequences were all about but it seemed there was enough going on now without—

‘It’s like Alice,’ sniffed Anna-Marie. ‘Now that we know who she is, doesn’t it make you sad? Think about all the things she might’ve done. Think about all the …’

What did that mean: ‘Now that we know who she is’? What did we know?

‘I’m just scared of what’s going to happen,’ went on Anna-Marie. ‘Not people dying and stuff. Not really. I don’t think I’d care if my mum died. Not particularly. And I’m not scared of dying myself, whatever Mrs Carpenter says. I’m more scared of what’s going to happen if I don’t. I mean the future, when I have to grow up and everything. I mean, going to Secondary School and everything. Sometimes I think … Sometimes I know my life’s just going to be horrible and that I’m going to be horrible. And the worst thing is that I can’t do anything about it. I’m just going to watch it all happen like I’m a character in
Crossroads
or something.

‘I don’t know why,’ said Anna-Marie answering the question I was too stupid to ask. ‘I feel like a parcel under the Christmas tree on New Year’s Day, just sitting there waiting: waiting, waiting, waiting for a Christmas that’s already gone. But I’m scared too, not knowing what will happen once I’m opened. Do you know what I mean?’