Inbetween Days (13 page)

I snorted. ‘Not anymore.' I stopped short of saying
it's okay
because it wasn't, not yet, but I'd get over it. I missed her.

But then she nodded at Mr Broadbent, who was already drifting off with his eyes half-closed. She kicked his foot lightly with hers and sniggered, ‘Where'd you take him? Why's he smiling like that? Huh?' She dug into my ribs with her elbow. ‘Crazy old coot.'

Mr Broadbent flinched and startled awake. He stopped smiling.

‘Hey, Astrid?'

‘Yeah?'

I handed her the bottle I was still gripping. ‘Why don't you take this and shove it in your heart-shaped hole.'

Trudy was waiting for me when I got home. She still had her bar apron tied around her waist and her T-shirt was so tight it made her look like a Hooters girl.

‘When were you going to tell me you lost your job?'

‘Same time as you told me the phone was back on,' I said.

‘I figured you'd work it out the next time you tried to call your life,' she said. ‘Seriously, am I supposed to read your mind? Pay your rent? Be the only responsible person in this house?' She had her hands on her hips.

‘Responsible?' I said. ‘I am so sick of that word. Look, if I had caught a fucking jet plane home the day I was fired you still would have found out before I told you myself. You know, the usual telegraph—a series of grunts and clicks carried on the wind.' I threw myself onto the couch and flicked the television on. ‘Anyway, it's not my fault.'

Trudy stamped her foot. ‘It's not a matter of whose fault. It's a matter of who's going to pay the rent.'

‘I'll get another job.'

‘Damn right, you will. I asked Max again—'

‘I don't want to work at the pub. We can't even live together let alone work together,' I snapped. ‘I'll look in Burt.' I settled a cushion under my head and closed my eyes.

‘You can't drive. How are you going to get there?'

‘I'm working on it. Stop nagging me—you sound like Ma.'

I couldn't tell what she threw at me because my eyes were shut.

My bike choked on its last millilitre of fuel a couple of days later. I would have to get used to walking. I already knew where I was going that day. I'd thought about it lying awake at night. Alby's keys were still tucked inside the pocket of my shorts; I pulled them on, tied my now orange hair back and swiped my face with a flannel.

I rummaged for something to eat and found an utterly foreign batch of healthy food in the fridge: yoghurt, tofu, green beans, fancy lettuce and fat-free milk. Fat-free milk sure didn't come from any of the full-fat cows I'd ever seen in the flesh, so I figured Trudy must be on a new diet.

Trudy and I had taken turns being naughty or nice when we were young and we were now slipping into the same routine. It was like there was a finite amount of goodness between us and we could only heave and haul that shared rope, like a game of tug of war. I now swore often, avoided chores and ate junk, lied, stayed up late and slept until lunchtime; Trudy took on two extra shifts to cover my rent, went to bed early, complained and lectured, started enunciating her h's and t's in a prissy tone that reminded me more and more of Ma. Every morning, through the fog of sleep, I heard the metallic clunk of the bathroom scales as Trudy stepped up.

I shut the fridge door. I missed routine, contact, conversation—Ma and Dad. I couldn't miss the note Trudy had left on the fridge, written all in red capitals: COME IN TO THE PUB TODAY. Normally she would sign off with kisses but this one ended with the full stop.

I picked up the phone. The dial tone buzzed pleasantly. I dialled Luke's home number and listened, counting the rings, all the time undecided whether I would speak or hang up. It was the sixth time I'd called in two days and the sixth time it rang out.

I even missed waiting. It might have been often painful and mostly futile, but at least sometimes there was a reward at the end of it. I missed being happy at least half the time. I'd never noticed before, but rage sits just under your ribs.

I hung up.

‘Don't you ever get bored?'

‘I didn't hear you coming,' Pope said. ‘Are you still spying on me?' He was scooping peas and corn from a can, eating them cold.

‘I'm glad you're okay.' I shot a look at the bottle, swinging from its branch. ‘It's not really spying if you know I'm here. Anyway, you never do anything worth reporting.'

‘
Au contraire
,' he said. ‘Some nights I howl at the moon and run naked with wolves.' He frowned. ‘What day is it?'

‘Wednesday—maybe Friday. I'm not sure.' He seemed to think it was an answer. ‘I brought you something.' I dangled Alby's keys. ‘They're for the laundromat. I saw you waiting outside.'

‘I saw you, too. Like Lady Godiva, wearing jeans, on a motorbike.' He put the empty can in a plastic bag.

‘Who's Lady Godiva?'

He ignored the question. ‘Why do you have the keys to the laundromat?'

‘I borrowed them. It's okay, Alby won't mind. You can let yourself in. Just make sure you don't use the machine in the middle. It'll shred your delicates.'

Pope gestured at his canvas pants and work shirt. ‘I don't believe that will be a problem. So, if it's Wednesday-maybe-Friday, why are you skulking about and sneaking up on innocent campers?'

‘I'm currently seeking employment.' I mimicked his posh accent. ‘Do you know why I think you're here? Do you even know why most people come here?'

‘Better than some,' he said tightly. ‘More than most.'

‘You're very good at not saying what you really mean.'

My comment seemed to cause him physical pain. He sat heavily and ran his fingers through his hair. His complexion was raw, like he'd scrubbed it too hard.

‘Go ahead. Say something nasty. I'll probably run off again but in a couple of days I'll be back to make sure you're still here. I am a tenacious blot on your existence.'

‘Blight,' he said. ‘Why do you keep coming back, Blot?'

I shrugged. ‘I have no one else to talk to. And your pants are dirty.' I was aware that my attempts at humour were starting to sound forced.

A whole minute of silence passed. He seemed to forget I was there.

‘Did you know the first one, the very first guy, was a mistake?' I said desperately. ‘He was some famous naturalist, and there was a sighting of a supposedly extinct reptile, so he comes to the forest in nineteen hundred and whatever and tries to photograph this lizard. Only nobody warned him about the mine shafts. When they find him, the first thing the papers say is that he jumped because his wife had left him. See, it's more likely he just fell, but nobody reads retractions. Then they all start coming. My dad says it's become a religion for lost people. This way, they all become part of a legend, rather than being one lonely body in a rented room or slumped behind a council bin. This way, they think they'll have company. And so they keep coming.'

My top lip was beading and the bottom one wobbled. I didn't want to say the wrong thing. ‘But he was a mistake, that first guy. If he had watched where he was treading then none of this would be happening. Can you see? Fifty-three people, all following the wrong guy, and our town has to keep reliving this awful legacy that none of us wants.'

Another minute passed.

‘I saw your car go up that night. I thought it was happening again and I wanted to stop it.'

He shook his head. ‘Is that really why you think I'm here?'

‘You're alone. You're really sad.' I looked up at the bottle. ‘And you've got this thing hanging over your head. What am I supposed to think?'

He didn't seem to know what to say. I watched his mouth working, like he had a wad of gum stuck to his palate. Then it went slack, the way mouths do just before we cry.

‘Do you believe in ghosts?' he asked fiercely. ‘I don't. I think when you're gone, you're gone.' He looked surprised, as if this revelation was new and unwelcome. ‘Sorry. I don't even know why I'm telling you. I must be going jungle-mad up here.'

‘It's the insects. They never stop. Sometimes the frequency is so high our crime rate triples.'

Pope laughed, then caught himself. ‘I can believe that.'

‘I used to bring my dog up here a lot, but she's old now and she can't walk properly. If there was anything here, she would have known.' I placed the keys on his makeshift stool. ‘I'll leave these with you. For your undelicates.'

‘Indelicates,' he said. ‘You didn't answer my question.'

‘About the ghosts?'

He nodded.

‘Everything is changing,' I said. ‘I'm not sure what I believe anymore.'

CHAPTER TWELVE

The night after I left the laundromat keys with Pope, I woke suddenly just before midnight. The quaver of a sound was still in the air. Had I screamed? The door creaked open. It was only Gypsy, nosing the gap. I sat up. Gypsy slugged her weight onto the bed; she could no longer jump. Her grey muzzle pushed into my shoulder and she fell into an immediate, fitful sleep. She could no longer hear—how did she know? I shaped my body to the curve of her spine and lay listening to the beetles butting at the window.

When I was small, Trudy used to kill my monsters. She never told me they weren't real, like Ma, who'd stumble into my bedroom, switch on the light and revel in my squinting. In the morning there was a punishment for waking her. It was the same, every time: Ma, saying ‘See? There's nothing here', her arms wide to show me that there was truth and safety in light.

But Trudy, whose bedroom was next to mine and who usually heard me first, would never flick the switch. She'd creep in, crouched and ready for combat, because it was entirely possible a monster was eating her sister alive and to hell with it, she was coming in. She collected weapons and lined them up beneath my bed: a smooth, club-ended stick she'd found in the forest; a plastic toy sabre; a spray-bottle of clear liquid she'd labelled
H
₂
SO
₄
MONSTER ACID!!
; and a homemade garrotte she'd fashioned from two sticks and a twisted strand of fencing wire.

The door would open a crack. Her hands always arrived first, haloed by the hallway light, held up in front of her face, poised for a karate chop. She'd press a finger to her lips and nod—
yes, I see it
—and move stealthily towards my bed, her fierce stare fixed on the corner of the room. She would choose her weapon and arm me with the spray-bottle. Our battles were long but mostly silent—we didn't want to wake Ma—and I never had to leave the warmth of my bed. There was just the metallic scrape of the garrotte as it cut air, or the whip of the sabre when Trudy carved her initials, Zorro-style, into a monster's dying flesh.

I got too old for screaming. Later, when I would sneak into Trudy's room, her bed was empty. She didn't lie, she didn't fake her shape under the blankets, and she didn't lock her door to keep us out. She simply stayed out all night and made no excuse or apology for it.

Ma and Trudy yelled at each other when Trudy finally came home, proving at least half of Ma's theory: there was truth in daylight. It was loud, and ugly. For the first time I noticed that Dad preferred the sawdust stink of the shed. I learned new words for girls who stayed out all night and I'll never forget the sound Trudy made when Ma pulled her by the hair.

Ma cried when Trudy left, but we swung into an easier rhythm and, for a while, nobody fought. Years later, on the first night I stayed out way past curfew and came home reeking of beer, I decided I wouldn't stand up to Ma the way Trudy had. I'd take my punishment and wait it out. God knew Trudy's tactics never worked. I'd try something different. But Ma was snoring when I staggered in and the hallway light was on—her only concession to my childish fears. A day later there was a new, clean space left on the wall. She'd taken down the last remaining picture of Trudy and me. That's how I knew she knew.

I don't think Ma cried when I left. She'd gone from yelling to silence and we all carried on that tradition. When Trudy came back from overseas Ma was cool, unsurprised, almost civil. She behaved the same way when I blurted that I was moving in with Trudy. By then the hallway wall was bare, apart from my parents' wedding photo. Maybe Dad was the only one who hadn't disappointed her, but…in a way, he had left, too.

Gypsy groaned and huffed in her sleep. If I didn't get her out of there I'd be awake all night. I'd started to be afraid of wakefulness: in the middle of the night, nothing became something, became everything. I sorted and shuffled my worries, fretting. Now there were too many things I couldn't change back.

I got up and went to the bathroom. I brushed my teeth for the second time, and hoped that going through my bedtime routine again would reset my clock. But as quiet as I was trying to be, somebody else wasn't bothering.

I listened outside Trudy's door, straining to hear above the cricket song. I slid down the wall and sat with my bare legs against the cool floorboards. It sounded like Trudy was crying in her sleep. I checked the kitchen. The phone was right where it should be. I went back to listen again. Trudy moaned.

I took a spray-bottle from the bathroom and an old wire coathanger from my bedroom. It was entirely possible she needed saving from her own monsters—at the very least she would find it funny. I was so sure.

I practised swishing my initials in the hall. I was going in. I turned the handle.

If I had to pinpoint the exact moment I went over the edge, I'd say it was this one. Trudy wasn't alone and she wasn't crying. She didn't need me and she didn't need saving—she had her ranger and it was pretty clear they were a good fit. Now I had all the more reason to keep Pope to myself. Trudy was getting some, paying the bills, behaving like a responsible adult for the first time in her life and, as was tradition in my family, I'd have to pick a corner, any corner, as long as someone wasn't already in it.