A Nice Place to Die (8 page)

In fact they provided each other with something both needed. Associating with Nicky graced Jess with a gloss of intelligence, while Jess protected Nicky from the worst of the school bullies, and also gave the younger girl an insight into life on the street in Forester Close. At home Nicky's mother Helen and her friend Terri kept the girl under a form of house arrest. Terri in particular insisted that Nicky was different from ordinary children; she was gifted, she had to be protected from associating with them. But in spite of her, or perhaps because of her, Nicky and Jess had become allies, each protecting the other where she was dangerously ignorant. Jess was the one who'd explained to Nicky that the main reason everyone persecuted her was not only her horrible cheap pink plastic spectacles, but because her parents were lesbians. Jess had had to explain what that meant, too.

Nicky, on her part, persuaded Jess that it didn't pay to be written off as stupid. Stupid people did not get on in the world, and Jess wasn't going to end up like the rest of the nonentities in Forester Close, and in the whole of Catcombe Mead too, for that matter. With superior Nicky for a friend, Jess couldn't be stupid.

The two girls' friendship was a secret, though. It was born out of mutual inadequacy and it flourished in concealment. It wouldn't exist if people knew about it. Then Jess and Nicky would be embarrassed and ashamed and avoid each other because of the preconceptions of others.

In the road, Jess tripped and pretended to take a stone out of her shoe.

‘Is the witch watching us now?' she asked, not looking at Nicky.

‘Sure she is,' Nicky said, pretending not to notice that Jess was there at all. ‘I can't actually see her, but she's always spying on us.'

‘I wish we could get rid of her,' Jess said.

Nicky said. ‘I'm reading a great book about someone just like her. She gets beaten to death in it. It's called
Crime and Punishment
. It's Russian.'

‘Oh, you and your stupid books,' Jess said out of the corner of her mouth.

Jess leaned on the wall and pulled the bright orange hips off a leafless rose bush.

‘The old witch will probably complain about what you and your boyfriends get up to round the back of her house at night.' Nicky made a sniggering noise without her face moving.

Jess scowled in the direction of Number Three. ‘She'd never dare,' she said. ‘I'll set Kevin on her.'

‘Where is Kevin?' Anyone more sensitive than Jess would have noted the tone of Nicky's voice when she said Kevin's name.

‘Who cares, as long as he's not here,' Jess said.

She expected Nicky to giggle, but she didn't. Jess stared at her. Nicky went bright red and tears filled her eyes.

Jess, forgetting to pretend she and Nicky were strangers, crowed with laughter. ‘You're soft on our Kevin. You are, aren't you? Wait till I tell him that. I won't let him live that down. You must be mad.'

Nicky tried to bluster. ‘Don't be bloody daft,' she said. ‘Who'd fancy your Kevin, for God's sake?'

Stung by any implied criticism of her family from an outsider, Jess said, ‘Well, he wouldn't look twice at you, I can tell you that much.'

‘Don't you think I don't know that?' Nicky suddenly screeched at her. She swallowed hard and then said more calmly, ‘you're more his type, after all, aren't you? Cheap an'easy.'

Nicky thought Jess was going to hit her and cowered away from her. But Jess thought better of it.

‘He'd give you a poke if I asked him,' she said.

Nicky looked at her in horror. ‘You wouldn't? Oh, Jess, please don't say anything, I couldn't bear it if he knew . . .'

‘You done my maths yet?' Jess said.

Nicky nodded. She pulled a folded piece of paper out of her pocket and handed it to Jess.

‘I hope you've got some wrong this time,' Jess said under her breath, ‘Mr Perkins gave me a funny look last time and said something snide about believing in the miraculous resurrection of the brain-dead, whatever he thinks he means by that.'

‘Don't ask,' Nicky said.

Jess jumped off the wall and turned to cross the road to Number Two. ‘See you,' she said.

She banged the front door behind her and shouted ‘I'm home.'

Donna was listening to music on Jess's iPod and didn't hear her come in and shout. It was only when she reached out for another handful of crisps and found the packet gone that she noticed the girl.

‘What d'you think you're doing with my iPod?' Jess said, and pulled the headphones off Donna.

Donna didn't try to stop her. She knew better than to oppose Jess physically. ‘Kylie'll need changing,' she said.

Jess turned away from her. ‘Bug off,' she said under her breath, and, putting on the headphones, turned up the sound on the iPod.

But that was too much for Donna. She snatched the headphones from Jess's head, pulling her wiry purple hair as she did so.

‘Eff off,' Jess screamed. ‘That hurt. What d'you think you're doing? Piss off and leave me alone, can't you?'

‘So sue me,' Donna said meaninglessly, without thinking.

‘I'd have a witness that you assaulted me,' Jess said. ‘I know my rights. I could get the law on you.'

‘What witness do you think would support you about anything?' Donna sneered.

‘The old witch at Number Three,' Jess shouted. ‘She watches everything we do.'

Jess was surprised that this silenced Donna. When she looked at her mother, wondering why, she was startled at the expression on Donna's face. ‘What's the matter now? Has she put a spell on you?' Jess said.

Donna wished that her relationship with Jess didn't always seem to come down to this sort of sniping. ‘Why don't you call the bloody cops, then?' she said. ‘I'll make a statement supporting anything you say if it means they take you into care and get you the hell out of my house.'

‘Suits me,' Jess said.

‘What's stopping you?' Donna said.

Jess said, ‘If I get pregnant again I can apply for a council flat even if I haven't been on the waiting list and I'd get handouts for the baby and everything.'

‘Yeah? Who's going to get you pregnant now everyone knows you did it with Kevin?'

Jess pretended not to hear. ‘What's to eat?' she said.

Donna welcomed a change of subject. ‘Since you mention it, where is Kylie?'

‘Who said anything about her?' Jess said. ‘How should I know? You were looking after her.'

‘You're home, you do it,' Donna said.

‘I've got homework,' Jess said. ‘And I'm off out.'

‘Jess, don't you go and do anything you'll be sorry for,' Donna said.

Jess was startled by the sudden seriousness of her tone. She didn't know what to say.

So she fell back on the familiar format of bickering. ‘Leave it out,' she snapped, ‘as soon as I'm sixteen I can do what I like.'

‘Love isn't enough,' Donna said. Suddenly she was fighting to find words to express fears she'd never even thought she had. ‘You don't know what you're doing, Jess, I'm afraid for you. I'm scared you'll wake up suddenly when you're eighteen and you'll have two kids and another on the way and no man and that's it. You may as well be dead. It's all so far from what you think you want. You won't even find a lover after that because you'll be dragged down by the kids and you'll get pissed one night and screw some drunken yob you've never seen before and you'll never see again and then there'll be another baby and you won't even remember what its father looked like. Please, Jess, listen to me. I know what it's like.'

Jess turned sulky. ‘What do you know? It won't be like that for me.'

She was too used to quarrelling with her mother to take in what she'd said, even when Donna seemed suddenly to have changed tack. Jess dismissed her.

‘It may've been like that for you, Mum, but you're not me,' she said. ‘Why should I listen to you anyway when you've ballsed up your own life? You're just jealous because you're past it, that's all.'

Donna recognized the familiar pattern of their arguments and refused to resort to the usual personal abuse.

‘You're right,' she said, and there were tears in her eyes. ‘That's what it was like for me, and I'm afraid of you ending up the same way. No one would ever be jealous of me, would they? I'll tell you one thing, if I could go back to when I was your age, I'd do everything different. I love you, Jess, I'm your mother, I want things to be better for you.'

Donna wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, but she wasn't crying. She meant what she said too passionately for tears.

Jess was staring at her as though she had never met her before. ‘What's got into you?' she said. ‘If you want things different from the way they were, that means you wish I'd never been born. Is that what you're saying? Screw you, Mum. I'm not you. You go on about how you're unhappy, well, tough tit, there's nothing I can do about it, even if I cared. It's all over for you and it's time you knew it. I'm what counts, I'm young.'

Donna looked at Jess's angry contorted face. She remembered herself at Jess's age, how she too had taken for granted that her mother existed only to do what she could to make her happy. Donna thought, it's no good, she doesn't know, she's too young. She doesn't understand. I can't help her.

Upstairs, the baby started to cry.

‘That's all we need,' Jess said. ‘Bloody kid.'

Donna forced herself to wait for Jess to do something.

But Jess knew her mother would give in first. She pretended not to hear the baby.

To avert Donna's attention, she changed the subject. ‘About that old freak at the top of the road watching us all the time,' she said, ‘you know she spies on us, don't you? You'd better watch your step or she'll report you to social services for child cruelty, saying things like that to me.'

Donna stiffened. She gave Jess a hard look, trying to decide if the girl was winding her up or not.

‘Do you think she does? Watch us all, I mean?'

Jess said, ‘What else is there for her to do? Of course she spies on us. But who cares what someone like her thinks?' The baby was still crying. ‘What's that old woman going to do to us?' she added. ‘We could get Kevin to give her a warning.'

‘Do you think Kevin knows she spies on us?' Donna said.

She remembered how it had felt that day the young vicar was killed, turning into Forester Close and seeing Kevin and Nate and their friends kicking at what looked like a heap of clothes on the ground. For a moment she'd thought they'd got hold of a bag of cast-offs left out for the binmen and she'd been annoyed with the kids for making so much mess. But then she'd realized what they were doing and she remembered how it had flashed through her mind that she was scared of them. And she was their mother.

She'd kept quiet about seeing what they did. She'd even warned Kevin that if any of his friends were involved, to tell them to lie low for a bit. She was careful to pretend she had no idea that he was involved.

‘Do you?' she asked Jess again.

Jess was moving to the music on the iPod. ‘Do I what?' she shouted.

Donna reached over and turned off the iPod. ‘Do you think Kevin knows Alice Bates watches us?'

‘Hey!' Jess said, ‘so what if he does? What's she going to do to him, for fuck's sake?'

Jess turned the iPod back on and began to sing along to the music to shut out her mother's questions.

‘It's what he might do to her if he knew what she might've seen,' Donna said, and as she said it, she was glad that Jess couldn't possibly hear her.

The girl was climbing the stairs, going at last to see to the baby.

TEN

B
ert Pearson glowered at the clock on the kitchen wall.

Bert had spent a long time sitting in the kitchen trying to work out what he was going to say to Mark. The fire in the range was long dead, and the room was cold. Bert's limbs were stiff and painful and he couldn't feel his fingers or toes.

He kept telling himself that this was his son and as his father he'd got a duty to say something, but Bert didn't even convince himself. He might be Mark's father, but he'd almost forgotten the days when the relationship had meant anything much to either of them. That had been when Mark was just a kid helping round the farm and he'd spent every Sunday morning with the boy down at the rugby club giving him the benefit of his experience just like the other dads with their lads. In those days Mark had been proud to boast that his father was the best player in the first team the year the Catcombe Corinthians beat Plymouth Albion in a friendly.

Bert Pearson sighed. It was a long time since he'd left the farm of a Saturday afternoon to watch Mark play. George Webber had called in that very day to tell him the boy had scored the winning try in yesterday's game. George had thought Bert would like to know, Bert having not been there to see it.

But George hadn't come to tell him about Mark's try; that was just an excuse. George Webber hadn't come to the farm for years; there was something serious on his mind to bring him to visit Bert.

When he came out with it, Bert was shocked.

He hadn't believed George at first. He'd even started to take a swing at him, but that hadn't come to anything. George said there were others who would back him up. It was the talk of the market that week, Mark taking up with a right little tart from the housing estate, a real tough backstreet low-life whore from Catcombe Mead who took drugs and had two layabout brothers who spent their nights molesting the village girls in Old Catcombe and tearing through the streets on their motorbikes terrorizing old women.