“It’s rare, that’s why,” Corrine made an unsuccessful lunge. “There’s only a few of them in the whole world.”
Samantha skipped out of Corrine’s reach. “It doesn’t look much to me,” she said. “Bet you can’t even understand it.”
“I do all right,” Corrine balled her hands up into fists. “That belong to a master magician and if he find out you’ve got it, that’ll be the worse for you.”
“A master magician?” Samantha burst out laughing. “That’s a good one, Corrine.”
Corrine’s punch fell through thin air. “Give it back, I said!” she wailed.
“I might do,” said Samantha. “But only if you help me first.” She looked over Corrine’s shoulder to where Lizzy was coming through the salon door.
“Corrine!” the head stylist yelled. “That’s enough. Get back in here now!”
“Just a minute,” Corrine yelled back. She didn’t take her eyes off Sam. “What d’you mean, help you?” she said.
“I said now!” Lizzy started walking across the road towards them.
“That old pillbox where you had the party,” said Sam. “The one that the police found out about. Yes, I saw you, Corrine,” she smiled at the gobsmacked expression this revelation
provoked. “I don’t need a crystal ball to keep my eye on you,
sister
. Meet me there when you’ve finished here tonight. Then I might give it back to you.”
Lizzy’s hand came down on Corrine’s shoulder, but she was looking at Samantha. The girl looked shocking, like she’d been sleeping rough.
“Get out of here,” Lizzy snapped, “and stop bothering my staff.”
“But Lizzy, she …”
“And you,” she propelled Corrine back towards the salon. “Get back to work right now and keep your mouth shut for the rest of the day. Otherwise we might have to rethink your employment here.”
The words stung Corrine harder than a slap around the face.
* * *
At six-thirty, after Corrine had swept up the last tendril of hair and cleaned the last coffee cup in complete silence, Lizzy’s head came around the kitchen door.
“Corrine,” she said, in gentler tones than she’d used earlier, “what was all that about?”
Corrine gave her a hard stare. Up until today, she had idolised Lizzy. But the way she had spoken to her, in front of Sam of all people, had made her wonder if the stylist just wasn’t like all the rest of the adults that had let her down over the years.
Lizzy, in her turn, was shocked by the hostility of Corrine’s glare. “Corrine,” she tried again. “Don’t you understand that I can’t have you fighting right outside the salon window?”
“Samantha Lamb nicked that book out of my bag yesterday,” she said. “I was tryin’ to get it back off her. An’ you stopped me.”
“Well, if you had told me that—” Lizzy began.
“You wouldn’t have cared,” Corrine cut her off abruptly. “Like everyone else. You’re only nice to me when you want something.” She pulled her overall over her head and hung it up on a peg, picking up her bag and slinging it over her shoulder.
“Corrine,” Lizzy tried again, feeling like she was floundering in deep water.
“Can I go now?” the girl’s dark eyes bored into her mentor.
Lizzy took a step backwards. “Can’t I try and help you?” she offered.
“Don’t bother,” said Corrine. “I’ll sort it out myself, like always.” With that she pushed past her boss and left the salon for the last time.
* * *
“How many times do I have to tell you,” Noj’s mother’s voice crackled in Corrine’s ear, “he in’t here and I don’t know where he is. Or when he’ll be back.”
Corrine heard a man’s voice in the background.
Noj’s dad
, she thought,
back off the rigs. No wonder he in’t around.
Mr Kenyon took the receiver from his wife.
“If you see the little poof, you can keep him,” he said and put the phone down.
Corrine stepped out of the callbox. Without Noj, she simply didn’t know what to do.
She looked up at the clock at the top of the market square. Quarter to seven, it said. Hunger pains stabbed at her stomach, and she found herself walking in the direction of the fish and chips stall. She didn’t have a clue what she was going to say or do when she saw Sam. But, she told herself, she didn’t have to do any of it on an empty stomach.
She was just pouring vinegar into her cone, when she heard a voice beside her. “All right, Corrine?”
“Darren!” she spun round, a spark of hope igniting at the sound of his voice.
“Just finished work?” he asked, taking a cone of chips for himself.
“Yeah,” said Corrine. “What you now up to?”
“Not a lot,” he said, taking the vinegar from her. “Debbie’s still in bed.”
“Debbie!” Corrine’s mouth fell open. She had all but forgotten her friend’s plight.
“Don’t worry,” said Darren, “she’s all right. Just in’t really in any state to come out at the moment. I now brought her the music papers, to cheer her up.”
“Oh,” said Corrine, passing him the salt. “That’s all right then. So,” she said, popping the first chip into her mouth, “you in’t meeting up with Jules then?”
“Nah,” said Darren. “He’s gone up Norwich with Alex.” He raised his eyebrows, put the salt back down on the counter. “Early night for me, I reckon.”
“Darren, d’you reckon you could help me out?” Though chewing with her mouth open, Corrine’s expression was solemn. “Fuckin’ Sam Lamb’s dropped me right in the shit again.”
* * *
As they headed towards the seafront, Corrine did her best to explain. “I reckon she’s lost me my job,” she concluded.
“Nah.” Darren shook his head. “She like you, don’t she, your boss? She wouldn’t let you go over one mistake like that.”
“She really shouted at me,” Corrine protested. “In front of everyone.”
“Well, that most probably din’t look all that good from her point of view, did it?” said Darren. “Not if all her customers could see you having a barney. She din’t know what was really going on, did she?”
A sudden stroke of guilt clawed at Corrine as she recalled her last exchange with Lizzy. “No,” she said, “’S’pose not. Shit, Darren, I really lost my temper. I shouldn’t have done it, should I?”
“Don’t worry about it,” said Darren. “That’ll all look different in the morning. You say sorry and I bet she will too.”
“Fuckin’ Sammy Lamb,” Corrine crumpled her empty chip cone, wishing it was Samantha’s neck instead. “Why can’t she just leave me alone?”
Darren shrugged. “I wish I knew what her problem is,” he said. “But look, Reenie, you don’t have to say nothing to her. You just wait outside and let me get the book back for you. She won’t be expecting that, will she?”
“Oh, thanks, Darren,” Corrine put her arm through his as they came out onto Marine Parade and turned left towards the North Denes. “I’ll make it up to you.”
“You don’t have to,” said Darren. He smiled, nodding to himself. “That’ll be good to get one back on the silly cow, all the hassle she put Debs through.”
* * *
The tourists had come up off the beach now for their teas, the few remaining stragglers taking down their windbreaks and packing up their picnic things. A mother and two toddlers still paddled on the shoreline in the distance, the sea glimmering like diamonds.
“That look beautiful tonight, don’t it?” said Darren.
“Yeah,” said Corrine, looking at the two little children and feeling a pang, knowing that she had never paddled in the sea with her mum, wondering if she would ever have a daughter of her own to share this novel experience with.
“Are you going to have kids?” she heard herself asking. “You and Debbie, I mean?”
Darren hadn’t really considered this possibility. “I s’pose so,” he said. “One day.”
“D’you think you’ll move away, like what Alex is?” The possibility dawned on Corrine for the first time, and with it a new sense of fear, of everything she had known slipping away, everybody moving away, leaving her here on her own.
“Well,” Darren seemed to sense what was going on in her head, “I’d like to go to art college in London if I could. But that’s years away.”
“I s’pose,” said Corrine doubtfully.
“Well, you don’t have to stay here, do you?” he said. “Not if you don’t want to. Think about it. You qualify as a hairdresser and you could go anywhere too.”
It was another idea that hadn’t occurred to her. A smile replaced her frown. “Yeah,” she said. “You’re right. I could, couldn’t I? God, Darren, I am going to say sorry to Lizzy first thing tomorrow. I’m really glad I bumped into you. You’re a lifesaver.”
They were drawing level with Sam’s nan’s house now. Corrine shuddered, remembering the night of the little dog, feeling the windows of the villa like glassy eyes upon her.
“Let’s walk across the dunes,” she suggested, jumping down off the sea wall, out of sight.
“Hold up!” Darren levered himself down more carefully, not wanting to get sand all over himself. They were very nearly
at the pillbox now. “Here, Corrine,” he said, catching up with her. A mischievous smile played over his lips. “Something I meant to ask you.”
“Oh yeah?” Corrine turned her head to look at him. “What?”
Darren laughed, a blush coming into his cheeks. “Debs’ll kill me,” he said.
“What?” said Corrine, not knowing whether to smile back or not, wondering if he was going to start taking the piss now.
“Well,” he said, “if you don’t mind me asking – what were you doing up a tree in the graveyard that night?”
Corrine stopped still in her tracks, on top of the dune in front of the pillbox. Remembered the voice coming out of the window across the road from the graveyard, just at the moment Noj had begun to cast the spell. Saw in her head Debbie pulling him away, pushing the window down. The hairs stood up on the back of her neck.
“No,” she said, her pupils widening.
“Sorry,” said Darren, “I knew I shouldn’t have asked.” He patted her on the shoulder, clearly embarrassed. “Look,” he said. “Forget I asked. Now you stay here and I’ll go get the book back for you. Now I’ve got something to make up to you.”
“No,” Corrine repeated, the vision she had had in the pillbox coming back to her –
red, black, white. Blood, hair, skin. The flash of a blade, slicing through flesh
…
Like the blade of grass Sam had used on her, the black magic she had summoned to blend their blood together, calling her sister, entwining their destinies forever
… In a sudden flash of premonition, Corrine realised what everything meant. The spell
had
rebounded on her, she and the person who had broken the silence around the incantation. She knew what was going to happen if Darren
went inside the pillbox …
She tried to move to stop him, but it was like her limbs had frozen as the appalling destiny was revealed to her.
“Don’t go in there,” she croaked. “It’s all right, really, Darren. I’ll get it back another way. Let’s just go.”
“Don’t be daft,” said Darren. “That’s no bother. She can’t hurt me, can she?”
She put her hand out, grabbed his sleeve. “Please, Darren. Don’t go!”
But Darren just laughed, shook her fingers away. “It’s all right Corrine, honest.”
“But …”
Corrine stood there powerless, caught in the rays of the evening sun, as Darren walked on, down the side of the dune, spraying up sand as his momentum increased by the steepness of the slope. Watching him go …
* * *
“
Aieeeeeeeeeeee!
” the piercing scream brought her back to her senses.
Corrine ran down the dune, fear powering her footsteps, ran down the dune and into the dim shade of the pillbox, where her legs moved faster than her eyes and she found she couldn’t stop, found herself tripping over his legs and falling with a tremendous thud over the top of Darren.
“Oh my God!” she screamed, heels of her hands skidding over concrete and sand, fear abnegating pain. Darren didn’t move as she landed across him. Trying to right herself, she found her right hand had come into contact with something hot, wet and sticky. Something coming out of the back of Darren’s head.
“Oh my God!” she started to lash out with her legs, desperate to untangle herself.
“
Aieeeeeeeeeeee!
” the scream came from behind her now. The sound of it was terrifying enough to propel Corrine up and away, send her scuttling into a corner.
Silhouetted against the sunlight streaming through the entrance to the pillbox, Samantha stood, her legs apart, her arms swaying slightly from the huge chunk of concrete she was holding above her head. Her eyes flashed as she took in the scenario unfolding in front of her.
“Sam!” Corrine’s voice came out like a strangled wail. “Sam, you’ve fuckin’ killed him!”
“Him?” Samantha looked down at Darren and then back at Corrine, her face twitching madly. She dropped the concrete.
“Corrine? What …?” She stood over the splayed body, regarding the contours of arms and legs with a quizzical expression. “Darren?” she said, kneeling down beside him.
She touched the back of his head and brought her fingers up to her lips.
“Darren,” she repeated, looking back up at Corrine with a smile of such radiance it seemed to Corrine that she was glowing, a perverse angel of death. “But that’s perfect, Corrine. That’ll hurt her even more than if it had been you.”
“H-hurt h-h-her?” Corrine stammered.
“Your precious Debbie, of course. She ruined everything for me – and now I’ve ruined everything for her!” Samantha shrieked with laughter and reached forward, rolled Darren over onto his back with such ease he might have been a rag doll.
Corrine could see his face now, the expression of shock caught in his wide blue eyes. His arms flopped sideways helplessly,
so pale and skinny and unyielding. She crawled further towards the wall, screaming inside but unable to make any sound come out of her.
Sam knelt beside him, cocking her head at different angles. She started to rummage in her pocket, drawing out a packet of John Player Specials and a lighter she had stolen from home. She took out a cigarette, lit up and inhaled deeply. Her hands didn’t shake, Corrine realised, as she began to shudder uncontrollably herself.
Sam lifted one of Darren’s arms, took the cigarette from her mouth and touched his skin with it.
“Don’t!” Corrine croaked. She tried to shut her eyes but they wouldn’t obey her. Tried to put her hands over her eyes instead, but they slid back down her face, leaving smears of his blood in their wake.