The Past and Other Lies (12 page)

Jennifer picked up the pencil and her fist clenched tightly around it so that her nails cut into the palm of her hand. Something, a throbbing rush of blood behind her eyes, a flash of painful white light, blurred her vision, and she saw herself reach out and draw a vicious line right across Graham’s notepaper, tearing the paper, her hand sweeping it from the coffee table, flinging the pencil against the wall so that it made a mark on the wallpaper then bounced harmlessly onto the carpet.

But she did none of those things. She sat calmly on the sofa holding the pencil and staring at the word. That damned word.

Ae_rotat
.

On one side of the paper was the neat list of discarded letters: i,
u, b, c, m, n, s, p, l, v, d
and now w. That left
f, g, h, j, k, q, x, y, z
, none of which looked remotely possible. Aezrotat? Aekrotat? Aefrotat? They sounded like a Central American tribe, a Soviet news agency and an African hairstyle. The throbbing started again.

On the television, Greg from Cirencester dropped a stack of plates and the audience shrieked with laughter.

‘Anyway, who cares?’ she declared, throwing down the pencil and snatching up last week’s
Smash Hits
. She proceeded to flip irritably through its pages. Graham leapt forward triumphantly and with a flourish drew the man’s second foot to complete the hangman.

‘Hangman!’ he exclaimed, just in case she wasn’t already aware. ‘It’s a g.
Aegrotat
,’ he said writing in the missing letter.

‘Aegrotat! Crap,’ Jennifer snorted, refusing to acknowledge the existence of such an absurd word.

‘It means a certificate of illness to excuse a student from an exam,’ explained Graham, as though someone had asked for a definition.

‘Yeah? Well, it’s not hangman because I never guessed the final letter so I never got it wrong,’ Jennifer pointed out.

‘Hangman! Hangman,’ sang Graham just as Charlotte drifted into the lounge.

Jennifer looked up and felt the blood drain from her face. The room fell silent. So silent she could hear her heart beating, the blood rushing in her ears, pulses throbbing at her temples and at the back of her neck. She could hear the hum of background noise from the television set, the settling of floorboards on the stairs, the rustling of leaves on the sycamore tree in the garden, the buzz from the streetlight outside the house, the footsteps of a neighbour in next-door’s driveway, the slam of a car door at the end of the street.

‘Wanna play hangman?’ said Graham.

And Jennifer thought, Why aren’t we playing noughts-and-crosses? Monopoly? Snap?

Charlotte ignored the question. She slunk across the room and flopped herself down onto the sofa, staring blankly at the television, her arms folded across her chest as if no one else was in the room.

Smash Hits
had a double-page feature on The Teardrop Explodes. The band members posed in black leather trousers and bulky leather flying jackets in a derelict inner-city landscape. Jennifer began to read the first paragraph of the accompanying interview, but she couldn’t make out the words. They seemed to make no sense.

From the other side of the coffee table Graham scooped up the discarded pencils and pieces of paper and tidied them away, then he reached beneath the table and pulled out the battered Monopoly box.

‘I’ll be the racing car,’ he said. ‘What do you want to be? Char, you in?’

It was Saturday evening. The first week of the new school term. Mum and Dad were at the Bunch of Grapes in Northolt with Doug and Judy Farrelly, who had once been their next-door neighbours but now lived in Kilburn, which meant she, Charlotte and Graham had the house to themselves. At the moment Grandma Lake was taking a nap in her room, and with any luck she wouldn’t bother to get up and come down before retiring to bed. The crunch would come at eight thirty when Grandma Lake liked to watch
The Les Dawson Show
.

Graham leaned forward, carefully placing the little red racing car on the board.

‘Do you want to be the ship or the boot or the dog, Char?’ he said.

Charlotte continued to stare at the television. Ted and Julie from Ipswich were attempting to spin a potter’s wheel.

For the last year Charlotte had spent every Saturday night at Zoe’s house and Jennifer had been out with Darren. But Charlotte hadn’t gone over to Zoe’s since the start of the summer holidays. And Darren was going out with Roberta Peabody even though he’d said, not three months ago, that Roberta had a nose the size of Concorde. And tonight Julie Fanshawe was having a pyjama party because her parents were in Marbella for an entire fortnight and here was Jennifer at home sitting in Dad’s armchair playing stupid games with Graham.

Darren wouldn’t speak to her. He wouldn’t even say why.

Sod him.

She peered across at Charlotte. There had been graffiti in the girls’ toilets in the last week of term. Jennifer had seen it. She didn’t know who’d written it but she knew what it said and she knew why it was there.

Someone needed to say something.
She
needed to say something.

Graham began to count out a wad of brightly coloured Monopoly notes. She didn’t know what she should say and Charlotte didn’t look up, so the words—whatever they were—remained unspoken.

There was a thump from upstairs followed by the creak of a floorboard and they all looked up.

‘Golf Romeo Alpha,’ Graham announced ominously, which was police-radio code for the letters GRA: Geriatric Relative Alert. Grandma Lake, evidently, was awake and up and about. Perhaps she’d fallen or knocked something over? They waited silently but no further sound came and, anyway, she’d call out if she’d fallen over. Everyone lowered their eyes. Graham picked up a thick wad of red five-hundred-pound notes and patted them into a neat pile.

On the television the audience applauded and Ted and Julie from Ipswich waved goodbye. Squeezed tightly into the farthest corner of the sofa Charlotte studied the program’s end credits as though they held the key to some great mystery.

Jennifer observed her with a sideways glance. Everything she did with Charlotte was sideways now. She didn’t look at her anymore, she peered at her from underneath her fringe or around a corner or through a doorway or over the top of a magazine. Charlotte sat with her arms locked around her knees gazing with vacant eyes at the announcer who previewed a forthcoming program.
The Les Dawson Show
came on and Jennifer thought, Why has she come downstairs? Surely it can’t be because she wants company—not our company, anyway?

The television audience broke into tired sit-com laughter. Graham had given up on the Monopoly board and the three of them stared gloomily at the screen and Jennifer thought, if Graham wasn’t here this might be the moment I could say something. She could say, for instance, that Tina Davies in 5B had seen Adam Ant last week in Sainsbury’s in Ruislip. That he was buying breakfast cereal. The whole school was talking about it.

The audience laughed again and Graham remained in the room and Jennifer said nothing. She realised that Charlotte didn’t care about Adam Ant. That she didn’t even listen to records anymore, that she no longer went over to Zoe’s house.

What
had
she been doing over at Zoe’s house all those Saturday nights?

No one really believed
that
, Jennifer reminded herself. Not that.

‘Alright then, Battleships,’ said Graham at last, as though this was positively his final offer on the games front and if they didn’t accept this, well then frankly they were all in for a pretty dull evening.

‘Oh, grow up,’ said Jennifer.

Why didn’t Charlotte go over to Zoe’s house anymore? And why hadn’t Zoe come round to their house all summer? Not once during the entire six weeks. Not one phone call. Perhaps her family were away on holiday?

On the television two fat elderly comedians sat wedged onto a sofa in drag, vast sagging fake breasts resting on their folded arms.

Could Zoe have been on holiday for six weeks? And after term had started? But Jennifer didn’t know whether Zoe had been at school this week or not.

There was a creak on the stairs, then the door to the lounge was pushed open and Grandma Lake shuffled in wearing fluffy powder-blue slippers and a floral dressing-gown. Everyone looked up then looked away again.

She made her way across the room and lowered herself down onto the sofa, losing her balance at the crucial moment, so that she fell backwards with a whomp of fake leather that made Charlotte bounce upwards. Once this would have made Jennifer laugh but nowadays, after a year, it just made her despair. The television audience laughed again and a second or two later so did Grandma Lake, a curiously high-pitched, girlish giggle that was faintly disturbing. It reminded Jennifer that Grandma Lake had probably once been a girl herself.

‘I couldn’t sleep,’ announced Grandma Lake, suddenly and to no one in particular. ‘Not with all that racket.’

The idea that Grandma Lake’s operatic night-time snorts and snores could be interrupted by any noise they themselves could make seemed unlikely but no one was inclined to remark on this. Except perhaps Graham.

‘Sierra Oscar Bravo,’ he announced cheerfully, which meant Silly Old Bat.

‘Eh? What’s that?’ said Grandma Lake.

‘Ow!’ protested Graham, his face suddenly flushing red with shock and pain because the slap had been unexpected, because Jennifer had hit him harder than she had meant to. He kicked her shin in retaliation then sat there with arms folded angrily.

Charlotte said nothing.

There had been graffiti in the girls’ toilets. It had turned up in the last week of term.

Jennifer shut her eyes.

It was Julie Fanshawe who’d seen the graffiti first and perhaps it was Julie who had written it. She’d come bustling into registration full of it, bursting with the importance of it, flushed with the excitement of someone else’s downfall, of her own immunity. And what had she, had any of them, expected Jennifer to do about it—defend the family honour? You couldn’t just march in there and wash it off, everyone would have thought you’d had something to do with it. That you were a part of it. That you had something to hide. That there was some truth in it.

Jennifer had had nothing to do with it. Nothing. And everyone knew that there was no truth in it. But she had run over there anyway because she had to know. And she’d seen Charlotte standing outside the toilet block. Just standing there and she’d known that whatever it was, whatever was written on the wall, Charlotte had seen it. That she had been too late.

Charlotte stood up and stabbed at the television set and
The Les Dawson Show
vanished, replaced by a film on ITV.
The Magnificent Seven
. A parched, desert landscape and a crumbling Mexican village.

‘’Ere! I’m quite partial to
Les Dawson
,’ protested Grandma Lake, but no one moved to change the channel.

Jennifer had had nothing to do with what was written on the wall of the girls’ toilets. All she had said was one little thing to one person. Just an observation really, a stupid throwaway line. And everyone knew Charlotte and Zoe were always together. There was already talk. There must have been. That’s what schools were like. You said one little thing to one person and before you knew it...

‘And I can’t be expected to sleep when your mum and dad are out in that car,’ said Grandma Lake. ‘Not until I know they’re back safely. Can’t sleep a wink till then.’

This was patently untrue but no one said anything. Besides, most of what Grandma Lake said was aimed at the television and required no response.

Jennifer realised she needed to do something. That someone had to do something. They couldn’t all go on sitting here, staring at the TV indefinitely.

On the television bandits rode into the village. Their leader entered the cantina and lit a cigar while the villagers looked silently on.

Charlotte hadn’t moved. She had been wearing the same jeans and black sweatshirt for four days now. Why didn’t anyone else see? The same clothes for four days?
Four days!

A sudden burst of gunfire shattered the silence and a lone Mexican peasant fell dead in the dust, a red circle on his back.

What was worse—no one else seeing or this constant state of dread in case someone
did
see? But so far no one had noticed. What were they all
doing
?

What they were doing was talking to the television or sipping beer at the Bunch of Grapes in Northolt or waiting impatiently to play Monopoly.

But what if Grandma Lake stopped talking to the television? What if Graham gave up the idea of Monopoly? What if they both noticed Charlotte sitting there, saying nothing, in the same clothes she’d had on for four days? What then?

‘Fine. I’ll be the boot,’ Jennifer said picking up the Monopoly counter and placing it next to Graham’s on the board.

Grandma Lake was asleep, her chin resting on her chest, arms folded across her vast bosom, an occasional snort erupting from between puckered lips and
The Magnificent Seven
was over halfway through by the time Jennifer bought her first hotel.

It was after eleven and Charlotte hadn’t moved a muscle, not once, not even to see what was on BBC One. Every time car headlights lit up the hallway and a car engine neared the house Jennifer paused, waiting, but each time the headlights swept on up the street. It was too early, anyway, for Mum and Dad, only just last orders.

Was no one ever going to go to bed?

All she had said was
one little thing
to one person in the last week of term.
One little thing..
.