Honest (5 page)

52% of
men...

As we scraped
away the weeds and dead grass, we gradually revealed Peter’s picture. It was a
photo I took of him when he was fifteen, wearing a Jimi Hendrix T–shirt. Seeing
it, I cried harder and harder still. David gave me odd glances, but we kept
pulling until we unearthed every last weed.

‘Why do people
ruin lovely things?’ I said, wiping my nose again.

Chapter Six

When we came
back to Mevagissey the summer I turned thirteen, I remembered being alarmed by
how much Peter had changed in a year. He was taller, and his legs and armpits
were hairy, and he even had a little tuft of hair under his plump bottom lip.

David was
different too, I guessed, but back then I didn’t waste my time with him. He
didn’t understand me, or care for me the way Peter had. He never gave me much
attention, and so I paid none to him.

This was the
first summer that we spent all our time together, ditching David whenever we
could to go roaming around on the cliffs in the wind and spittle, just us.
Once, he brought his acoustic guitar with him and showed me what he’d learned.
He’d been practicing Jimi Hendrix’s version of
All Along the Watchtower
to impress his dad.

We’d climbed
up so high up the cliff that our legs were splattered with mud by the time we
could see the ocean. We sat down on the grass, the wind howling in our ears,
while Peter strummed the chords and grinned from under his frizz of hair
whenever he hit a good note.

‘Your
fingertips look all leathery,’ I said, raising my voice so he could hear me
over the wind, though I could hear his strumming just fine.

‘Yeah,’ he
said, waggling them in front of my face. ‘That’s from practicing. Dad’s got
fingers like it and you know how well he plays.’

‘I’ve only
seen him play once,’ I said. It had been on my third or fourth visit to his
house, a few streets away from my cottage up the hill, and his dad had been
practicing with his band in the garage.

They’d
beckoned us down to sit on the doorstep and watch them play cover after cover
of bands I’d never heard of. It had been really cool, actually, but only
because I’d loved watching Peter nod his head and mimic the motions of the
guitar with his long fingers. It was also the first time I’d ever felt
comfortable, and accepted, like I was really a part of something. Like part of
the music, even if I only sat and watched.

‘Once is all
you need,’ said Peter, winking. His green eyes glistened in the afternoon light
as he looked at me, making every inch of my body throb and come alive. No man
or boy alive had ever made my body writhe inside like Peter Denton had.

‘True enough.
I think you’re a better guitarist than Dennis anyway,’ I said. I’d tried to
phrase it in a way that didn’t make me sound completely besotted, but I was
failing, and my blushing cheeks gave me away.

‘Better than
Dad? Leave it out,’ he said, laughing with his big perfect teeth. He tore up a
chunk of grass and tossed it at me, covering my jeans in little green flecks.
‘You’ve gone red.’

‘No I
haven’t,’ I said, ducking my head. I busied myself with tearing up some grass
to throw back at him, but Peter wasn’t letting up that easy.

‘Why have you
gone red, El’? Eh? Is it because I’m amazing you with my guitar skills?’ he
waggled his fingers, balancing the battered acoustic on his lap.

‘Shut up,’ I
urged, but only because my face was getting even hotter.

‘Eh, you don’t
tell Jimi Hendrix to shut up. I’m the Voodoo child according to you.’

I scoffed. ‘I
never said that. I regret saying anything now. You only like Jimi
what’s–his–face because your dad does anyway.’

‘So? We can
like the same stuff,’ said Peter, plucking out another riff. I didn’t recognise
this one as anything he’d shown me before. I could tell by the crease in his
brow and the determination in his fingers that he was making something up on
his own, and it sounded...I don’t know, I couldn’t explain it. Even on a little
acoustic, the tune he was picking out went right through me and shook up my
bones. It was like the strings were being plucked inside of me.

Dennis and
Peter had music in common. I couldn’t remember ever having anything in common
with anybody. Especially not
my
dad.

‘Peter,’ I
said, getting an idea. He looked up from his guitar playing, still frowning,
looking a little perturbed that I’d disturbed his picking.

‘Yeah?’

‘Do you want
to see inside my bra?’ I grasped the neck of my jumper, ready to pull it down.
I couldn’t explain why I wanted to do it so much, but I just did. And it seemed
like a good idea. It seemed like something Peter might’ve liked.

This time, he
was the one who looked bashful. He ducked down and started playing again.
‘Nah,’ he said. ‘You’re all right.’

‘Peter,’ I
said, my cheeks aflame. ‘You can if you want to. I don’t mind.’

‘What the
hell?’ he said, nervously laughing beneath his bowed head of hair. ‘Don’t be an
idiot.’

‘I’m not,’ I
said, a lump rising in my throat. What was I doing wrong? I couldn’t understand
what was happening. This was supposed to be something he would have liked, and
he was saying no to me. ‘Why don’t you want me to?’

‘I just
don’t,’ he said, looking me in the face now. Peter’s usual charm was in being
so...boyish, like a big kid. But deep down he had this penetrating maturity,
something I’d noticed when I first met him with the incident with the cake. He
knew when something was important. I loved that about him.

‘Why would you
want
to do it?’

I swallowed
the hard lump. I looked out over the ocean, then down at the grass again. ‘I
don’t know why,’ I said honestly. We shared a silence, then, after thinking
about it a couple minutes, I added, ‘It’s just, you know when...I don’t know,
when something just feels really natural, and—’

Peter’s eyes
narrowed. ‘That comes naturally to you?’

‘Urgh!’ I
booted him in the thigh, knocking his guitar to one side. ‘Peter, Jesus! I’m
sorry all right?’

I got up and
brushed the rest of the grass off my legs. Peter took the hint. He shook his
head while he held up the acoustic and got to his feet, standing head and
shoulders above me. I didn’t dare meet his gaze, but his eyes were on me; I
could feel them.

I trampled
ahead, my trainers squeaking on the long grass as I stomped it down, my lips
pressed tight. Crying was one of my weaknesses, but I wasn’t going to give
Peter the satisfaction. He’d understood me last summer, and now he didn’t seem
to understand me at all.

We were about
half a mile from the road when he changed my mind. His hand sought my shoulder
and pulled me around, and when I stopped, he held it there.

‘What are you doing,
Peter?’ I asked, tired, and weakened, and ready to go home. He squeezed my arm,
sending warmth right through me. I didn’t have any choice. I met his big green
eyes with their long lashes, his long wild hair crowding his face.

‘Just stand
still all right?’ he said, his voice hushed and unsteady.

‘What for?’ I
asked.

He looked away
from me, scuffing his shoe on the ground, his acoustic strapped to his back. He
pocketed his free hand, keeping the other on my arm. Despite his apparent
unease, his hand was still as a blade of grass in calm weather. When his eyes
met mine again, I swear, they were ocean deep.

‘I’m gonna do
something a bit more natural, OK?’ he said. His face came closer then, so close
I could see the little black whiskers growing on his top lip. I could see the
pink in the corner of his eyes.

I could see
his mouth trembling, just slightly, before it folded over my lips and kissed
me.

The kiss
seemed so infinite while we were standing there. The wind picked up and blew
through the strings on Peter’s guitar, but the strumming inside me was louder,
louder than anything I’d heard in my life. At that moment I knew there would
never be anything louder than his lips against mine, not ever.

When we pulled
apart he took his hand away, and we walked with trembling legs back to the
harbour.

When the
rapping came at my door at bed time, I hissed at it to go away and leave me
alone. I must’ve sounded like I meant it, because I was left alone with my
blissful thoughts for once.

That night I
fell asleep and dreamed about Peter Denton. He was taking all my clothes off,
with Jimi Hendrix on the CD player, and all the while his kisses and touches
made music inside me, like he was strumming through my veins.

Chapter Seven

We drove in
silence back to Mevagissey much sooner than I’d wanted to, but it was David’s
car and I supposed that meant it was David’s rules.

I was still
soaked but David didn’t seem to care one bit about making me comfortable. He
cranked down his window and re–lit another cigarette, sending a swirl of grey
cloud around our heads. The cheeks of his thin face hollowed out as he sucked
on it, his eyes narrowing on the road.

David was
still despicable, I could see that now. I’d always known it, and yet somehow
I’d thought he’d become less... conceited? I couldn’t decide, but whatever it
was, I thought there’d be less of it with age. Even still, I looked at him and
knew he ought to be taught a lesson. He could mask his feelings about me all he
liked, but if he had even a hint of Peter’s compassion in him, then he wouldn’t
be treating me this way — like an invalid.

He didn’t
speak to me the entire way, but he did stick on the radio. I stared and stared
at the knobs while the countryside swept by the car window, willing Jimi
Hendrix to come on the radio. Nothing. They played some girlie song; she
sounded like all the others. A bit like jazz music, except...Whinier. Annoying.
It wasn’t my kind of thing at all.

David flicked
the end of his cigarette out the window. ‘Lauren loves this one,’ he said. ‘I’m
gonna pop by the shop for her lunch break. I’ll drop you back home.’

I toyed with
the wet and wrinkled hem of my dress. ‘I thought I was going to meet her?’

‘Yeah, well.
Maybe some other time, if she wants to meet you.’

‘You said we’d
get on.’

David’s eyes
wrinkled up as he shrugged his shoulders. ‘I don’t know. She’s different from
you.’

‘Meaning?’

He rolled his
eyes. ‘She likes this music, Ellen, all right? And you can huff and fidget
about all you bloody like, but I’m keeping this song on. If you don’t like it,
tough.’

My mouth
dropped open. ‘I wasn’t huffing and fidgeting, I was tapping my foot to the
music. I like this just fine.’

‘Really? Then
you should tell your face.’

I pressed my
lips firmly together and stared at my shoes. After a few moments, David cleared
his throat. ‘I don’t mean to be an arsehole to you, Ellen,’ he said stiffly,
his voice thick with contempt.

I could tell
he didn’t mean a word of it. He probably got some power kick out of talking
down to me, the cripple with her stick. Vulnerable, that’s what I was to him.
I’d read about guys like him in a good few magazines. I thought of Lauren,
oblivious to his control of her, trotting about after him like a silly little
lamb.

Perhaps she’d
learn a thing or two from me. ‘I think I should meet her,’ I said, flashing my
best smile. He looked unsure. ‘Don’t worry, I won’t embarrass her or anything.
I’ll just say hi and maybe we can have a chat about jazz music.’

David raised
one eyebrow. ‘Jazz music? What, this? This isn’t Jazz, it’s—’

‘Whatever,’ I
said. ‘You don’t have to label everything, you know. I can like something
without knowing what it’s called.’ I smiled again, trying to reassure him that
I wasn’t going to be difficult. He didn’t need to worry.

‘Right,’ he
said. ‘Well you can pop in and say hi if you want. I’m not sure it’s a good
idea anymore, but whatever.’

‘I’m sure
she’s lovely,’ I said. ‘There’s no need to worry. She’ll be fine.’

His frown
deepened and his hands squeezed the wheel, but he didn’t say anything else. We
carried on in silence until we reached the lanes, the car snaking to a top in a
cramped little car park.

By this point
my dress had stiffened up like a starched apron, and my hair was a clump of
moist rat’s tails over one shoulder. David didn’t bother to wait for me while I
hobbled out of the seat and onto the pavement, striding ahead of me towards a
little shop with crystals hanging in the window. When I got closer, I saw them
through the shop door.

He bent over
the counter and kissed her. For a moment all I saw was a short–fingered hand
with black nail polish grasp him by the shoulder, followed by a flash of
bleached–blonde hair. I placed a hand on the door and the bell started to ring,
but the pair were already coming back out towards me.

I shuffled
aside while he passed her a cigarette from his packet and they both lit up,
giving me a chance to get a good look at her.

She looked
about seventeen, 5”6 tall. She wore thick eyeliner and a red plaid shirt with
rolled up sleeves. It was the kind you could buy anywhere — on trend, you could
say. She squinted over the plume of smoke that puffed up from her cigarette,
her black–nailed fingers pinching the orange tip.

I smoothed
down the front of my dress, squeezing out the wrinkles with my palms. ‘Who are
you?’ she asked, blowing smoke up over her head. David lit another, huddling up
inside his coat.

‘I’m David’s
friend from a long time ago,’ I said, glancing at him just in time to see him
duck and roll his eyes. I understood. She’d probably be jealous about the fact
that I’d technically known David a lot longer than her, so I probably knew more
about him. All right, I didn’t know his favourite bands or anything like that,
but we’d technically known each other for years. Women didn’t like that.

32% of
women...

‘Right,’ she
said. ‘You were mates with that boy who died.’

I winced, my
lip twitching. ‘Peter,’ I said, my voice thickening. ‘He was...He was...He
played guitar.’

She nodded her
head slowly, taking another drag from the corner of her mouth, like Sandy from
Grease
.
I’d read about this look, this act of hers, in
Red
and
Hello!
And
all the others. They called it “Juvenile”.  ‘That’s cool. What’s your name
again?’

#22 One of
the fashion faux pars is to attempt the skater look. If you’re over thirty,
don’t bother — you don’t want to look like one of Avril Lavigne’s posse at your
age!

‘I didn’t tell
you. It’s Ellen. Didn’t you tell her my name?’ I looked at David, who was
staring towards the harbour, ignoring me. ‘Oh look, he can’t get his mind off
work,’ I said. Lauren blew out smoke and glanced sideways at him, a smirk
tweaking the corners of her lips.

‘So what are
you doing down this way? You’ve got a bit of an accent. What is it, London?’

I bit my lip.
Oh, that. I couldn’t stand my accent, though of course I didn’t even know I had
one until I came down this way and everyone had a slight Devonshire tone.
‘Yes,’ I admitted. ‘But I like coming here better, obviously.’

She frowned,
flicking ash onto the pavement by tapping the end with her thumb. ‘Why? There’s
sod all to do here. You’re lucky living there.’

‘Not really,’
I said. ‘I prefer the open air. I like the way the harbour smells. I’d love to
go out on one of those boats.’ I said that last part loudly, trying to
emphasise to David that it might be polite to take me out on one of those
boats, like a gentleman.

I supposed
Lauren could come too. ‘Just a little boat, you know. Me and Peter used to go
out on a little row boat and just sit there for hours.’

David leaned
against the shop wall. ‘Yeah, Pete and me used to go out fishing. We should go
sometime.’ He nudged Lauren and pinched her hip, making her squirm and grin.

‘That’s a
great idea,’ I said. ‘When? What time?’

They both
looked at me, cigarettes poised before their faces, as if they’d just
remembered I was there. David took another long drag. ‘I don’t know when I
could get a boat,’ he said, looking at the ground. ‘I’ll pop by and let you
know when I do.’

‘When?’

He shrugged.
‘I don’t know. To be honest I meant—’ Lauren nudged him with her pointed elbow,
shutting him up instantly.

I’d read in a
magazine once that guys needed training if you wanted them to behave. I
wondered what Lauren was training David for.

I forced a
laugh, just a light chuckle. ‘Treat them mean,’ I said. It was one of those
phrases they mentioned a lot in magazines. They were always in articles under
the same kind of headlines, even though they were supposed to be different
magazines. Stuff like How to
Bag the Office Hottie
and
50 Smiles to
Wow your Guy
.

I was sure
Lauren would know what I meant, but she just looked at me, her bleach blonde
hair hanging over one shoulder. ‘What?’ she said.

‘Keep them
keen,’ I finished. I looked her up and down. I realised she was the last person
who would read those magazines, looking like that. Here I was wearing a wedding
party dress and she was in skinny black jeans and a studded belt. I bet she’d
never even picked up a copy of
Cosmopolitan
.

So how, then,
had she gotten David? I supposed I knew. On American TV shows they called it
putting
out.

I knew how to
do that.

She threw her
cigarette down on the pavement and folded her arms. ‘Are we going for a pint or
not?’ she said to David. He tossed his in the direction of a drain, leaned
down, and kissed her cheek.

‘Why don’t you
go and I’ll meet you there, eh?’ he said, pocketing both hands in his coat.

‘Why?’ she
asked, a sudden hostility in her voice. I kept a straight face, though I wanted
badly to smirk. He wanted alone time with me.

He bent lower
and whispered something in her ear, making her snort and giggle. I heard the
word
leg
but that was all. When he resurfaced, she kissed him square on
the lips, before turning to me and saying, ‘I’ll see you later Emily.’

‘Ellen,’ I
corrected her, but she was already crossing the road, her arms hugging her
torso against the wind, while David hovered awkwardly in my periphery.

‘I’ll drop you
home then,’ he said. I wasn’t listening. I was watching her white blonde hair
whipping about in the wind. I could see just a crescent of her left eye,
turning to a black smudge the further she got away.

When I slammed
the front door closed and hobbled toward my wheelchair, I knew something didn’t
feel right. The cottage seemed too still, even for
our
cottage, which
had always been as quiet as a church since we first started coming here. But
there was something else; I didn’t know how to describe it.

I wheeled
myself towards the stairs and looked up, beyond the ugly stair lift. The
bathroom door was slightly ajar.

I stared and
stared at the door, a seam of light glowing between the wall and hinges where
the little window let the daylight in. I held my breath; kept very still. I
watched and watched that doorway, but nothing stirred.

I could hear
the tap dripping in the kitchen, but nothing from the bathroom. I wasn’t
satisfied. Something was up.

Using the
method Dad had shown me, I grabbed my stick and heaved myself into the ugly
stained chair, before stabbing the button to begin the slow ascent to the
landing. All the while I went, my wheelchair gradually moving away, an ill
feeling crept under my skin.

I looked up at
the off–white ceiling, to the matted carpet, to the bathroom with its door
ajar, then finally down at my hands. They were pale and pimpled, quivering in
the chill.

But that
wasn’t it. Something had caught my attention, like a radio flitting in and out
of tune, and I was picking up on it.
Something.

I drew my eyes
from the bathroom as the stair lift halted at the top, and looked toward my
bedroom. I could hear something, just faintly, coming from inside. Hobbling my
way along the landing, my sandals catching on the threadbare carpet, I picked
up on the sound more clearly, just like tuning a radio.

I tucked my
wet hair behind my ear and listened hard, tipping my head to one side. Voices.

I could hear
voices.

I lurched
forward and beat open the door with my fist, swooping into the room, facing
them directly.

The room was
empty. Still and quiet as a church, like always.

But the sound,
the voices, they kept going on. I stepped into the room, glancing over the
bedspread and the iron bedposts, up at the old armoire and down at the rug,
searching for the source of those sounds.

I put a hand
to my temple and massaged it, pressing extra hard with my fingertips. I was not
going mad, I knew that much. But there was definitely a voice somewhere, somewhere,
muttering away, a long, wailing whining sound coming after it, like something
terrible, like something—

I tore off the
bedspread with one hand, and there it was, right in the middle.

My iPod,
switched on, with a song still playing.

I let out a
long anxious laugh, all hollow and rattling like a tin can. Just my iPod. Yet
the cold, empty feeling remained, chilling me all over.

Then I saw
why.

My pillow,
left plump this morning, had a large dip in the centre for a neck and head, the
material pleated where it lay.

There was
nothing there on that bed. And yet, and yet, there was that space where a
resting head should be.

And that song
was playing.

‘Peter,’ I
muttered, stepping closer, my mouth drying up. I took a swift breath and
plucked the iPod from the mattress, the headphone cable snaking around my
wrist, and held it to my ear.

The voice I’d
heard was coming from there, but it didn’t give me relief to know it. It
terrified me.

It was playing
a song I knew very well. A very specific song from my list of hundreds. It was
All
Along the Watchtower.

A sudden fury
came over me, hearing that song playing out, niggling away inside my brain. I
threw the iPod at the floor and swung my stick down upon it, again and again,
panting and crying while I did it, until the plastic was in bits and the song
had long since died.