Ghosts in the Morning (8 page)

‘Are you sure we should...I’ve never... mean what if we get caught?’ Frankie looked worried. She was a frail, nervous girl, not as tough as most of the girls in the home. Anita was protective of Frankie, some sort of maternal instinct perhaps.
Anita could be tough, but she wasn’t a bully, and she didn’t tolerate others being bullied.

‘Look, Frankie, you know those dreams you get sometimes, like the ones we all get. Okay,
okay, I know
they’re not all
exactly
the same, but
none of us sleep too sound, do we? Sometimes, I wake up and find I’m hunched under the covers, sweating, convinced that my old man’s coming to beat me up. So vivid sometimes I can almost feel his knuckles on my cheek. You too, Andy, I know you’ve got some demons that visit you in the dark hours, I hear you scream out loud at night.
No, no, Andy, there’s no need to look embarrassed, t
here’s no shame in it, it’s just one of those things that happens to girls like us. Anyway,
the thing I’m trying to say is that
booze helps with that,
it
helps put those dreams on hold for a while.’

‘But your old man used to drink,
Anita,
look what it can do
to people
.’

‘That wasn’t the drink, Frankie, that was just
the fact that
my old man was a bastard,
drink or no drink. Besides, it’s only bad for you if you drink too much every day. Yes,
okay,
you’ve got to be a bit careful, you don’t want to become an alcoholic, but now and again is okay.  Everyone drinks a bit – I’ve
even
heard Miss Wallen likes a sherry or two. ’

Frankie nodded.
‘
Yeah,
I heard Clare drinks whisky. And she does drugs sometimes
.
Lizzie told me.’

Anita’s voice suddenly grew stern.
‘I don’t care what Cla
y
does.
And you should stay away from her, don’t be mixing with her, she’s trouble. I know we’ve all been through a few tough times but Clay is different. Got that dead look in her eyes, I’ve seen it before. Hardcore, so stay away from her, do you understand me?’

‘Okay,’ Frankie and I had chorused.

Anita reached behind a box filled with rusty tools and pulled out a bottle of vodka. ‘Good. Now
come on, let’s get pissed.’

***

A muffled sound was coming from the lounge, it sounded like the television on low. I eased the door closed – I didn’t want to hear the
sound of the
slam, my head had begun to pound from the wine I’d had at lunch with Anita.

I was angry too
. T
here had been a comment as we had left the bar.
There had been t
wo young men, standing at the bar,
they
looked like rugby players, meaty hands clutching their pint glasses. They had looked at Anita and then at me and one had muttered ‘
don’t fancy yours much, bit of a chunky one
, be like shagging a bouncy castle
’. They thought I hadn’t heard, but there was no fat in my ears. Before...well, before recent events, I would have done nothing, said nothing. Before, I would have left the pub quickly, would have been desperate to leave before
the
redness and
the
heat suffused my face, my body.

Things were different now,
somehow
I
was different. I turned and glared at them, and said ‘
did you say something
?’ and the one who’d made the comment – the tallest one – shook his head and suddenly found something interesting to stare at in his
glass, he couldn’t meet my eyes, scared perhaps of the rage
I was feeling.

Anita had looked at me with a curious smile as we left. ‘Well well, Andy, not like you to be so feisty.’

‘Sorry, yes, I’m just...just tired of being treated like, oh, I don’t know, like dirt.’

‘Hey,
Andy
dear,
there’s
no need to be defensive,
don’t try and justify yourself to me.
I think it’s great.
It’s a
bout time too
, if you ask me. Bastards like that think they can say what they like, good for you sticking up for yourself. Now, look,
I’ll give you a ring in a few days, I’ll treat you to lunch next time.’
Anita had kissed me warmly on both cheeks.

I had walked to the bus stop
– I ha
d left the car at home, I
had guessed I would be drinking at lunchtime with Anita – and had felt
a frisson of joy coursing through me, as I thought of the sheepish look on the tall
rugby player’s
face.

I put my bag down in the hall and headed for the lounge.
Daniel had no doubt gone out and left the television on. I sighed. He was getting lazier by the day.

But
Daniel hadn’t gone out.
He was on the sofa with a young woman. Well,
it seemed she was
more of a girl really,
but
it was hard to tell. Daniel was lying on top of her, but thankfully clothed. His hand was worming around under her jumper. I thought of Uncle Peter and how he used to grip my barely budded breasts, pawing and scratching. He made one of my nipples bleed once.

Daniel
jumped up. ‘Mum, what are you doing here?’

‘I live here, Daniel.’
I said, coldly.
I stared at the girl. She looked about fifteen.
Young, innocent.
She had four studs drilled into the upper edge of her right ear and another through
her
nose. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Er, I’m, er, I’m
Jadie-Lee.’

I sighed inwardly. What was it with people these days, why did they have to give their kids such stupid names? ‘How old are you, Jadie-Lee?’

‘I’m fif - ..I’m sixteen.’

I turned to Daniel. ‘Daniel Halston, you are
twenty years old. And this girl here, this Jadie-Lee, is fifteen. What do you think you are doing, are you some sort of paedophile?’ I wa
s aware that I was shouting now, but I couldn’t help it, this wasn’t right.

‘But, Mum, we weren’t doing anything, we were...we were just – ’

‘Daniel, I am not stupid. You were
not
just doing nothing.’

‘Look, she’s nearly sixteen, she’s – ’

I
tried to
force my voice
down, but I was still shouting.
‘Shut up, Daniel.
And go upstairs. No, Daniel, now. I need to speak to your...your friend.
’

Daniel opened his mouth to argue but
then
saw the look on my face and closed it. He shuffled slowly upstairs.

I looked at Jadie-Lee, who was tucking her blouse into her jeans. She was sniffing,
maybe the stud in her nose was causing it, it
couldn’t be comfortable
having a thick nail through your nose.
‘
Look
, Jad
e...Jad
ie-Lee, I am going to call
for a taxi for
you, and you are going to go home.
And
, please, I want
you
to
think about going for boys your own age
in future
.
You’re only fifteen, for God’s sake. Please, Jadie-Lee, you
should think
a lot
harder before letting men grope you, you’re just a kid.’
There was a slightly desperate pleading note in my voice but I couldn’t stop it.

‘You’re not my Mum,’ she said, and sniffed again.

‘No, I’m not your Mum. But you’re not even sixteen yet,
so you should listen to someone who knows
that
...well, who knows that you have to be careful. You can’t trust
people, you
certainly
can’t trust men
.’

‘What,
so
you’re saying
that
I can’t trust Dan? He’s your son, are you saying you don’t even trust your own son
?
’ She sniffed again.

‘Do you want a tissue?’ I said. She shook her head, she still
carried
an air of defiance. ‘Yes, he’s my son, Jadie-Lee,
and Daniel, yes, he’s okay, but...
but
, look,
you just need to be careful. Men aren’t like us, they don’t think rationally, they can be...well, they’re different, you just need to be a bit careful,
you have to watch out for...all I’m saying is, you need to look after yourself.’ I wanted to reach out to this slender girl, squeeze her tight, and protect her from all the bad things...

‘Yeah, whatever,’ she sniffed. ‘Anyway, I don’t need a taxi, I can walk, so I’ll see myself out, yeah.’

The door slammed and she was gone
, and I realised that I
was
crying
and I had no idea when exactly the tears had started
.

***

I
pushed the button to
turn on the cooker. Nothing. I gritted my teeth. I wanted to kick the blasted thing, to smash its ugly hob eyes that were glaring at me. Daniel had gone out in a strop, giving the door an extra hard slam to illustrate his annoyance.
As if
it was my fault that he was acting like a paedophile.

I grabbed the phone book and scanned the yellow pages for home appliance repairs. I dialled the first name. ‘
Sorry, there’s no-one here to take your call at the moment, so please leave a message after the tone.
’ I rang off and dialled the next.

‘Alan Bonstead speaking.’

‘Hi, I have a problem with my cooker, I’m wondering if-’

‘Er, sorry, yeah, I’m stacked out at the moment, can you give us a call next week?’ I rang off without replying
and slammed the phone on the worktop. I sighed and o
nce again, I scrolled down the list of names in the phone book
. I took a deep breath
, then dialled again.

‘Colin’s Domestic Repairs.’ The voice
had a harsh Scottish accent, and
was curt to the point of rudeness.

‘Hello, I need someone to take a look at my cooker, it’s-’

‘I don’t fix cookers,’ the voice said.

I dug my nails into my palms. ‘
So what the fuck do you fix, then, I would have thought that cookers fall into the category of domestic repairs
, no?
Or do you not have a cooker in your house, does a cooker not count as a domestic appliance in Scotland
, maybe you just cook your fucking haggis on a barbecue, then, you fucking arsehole
!
’

I paused and heard a brief silence on the phone. Then the accent again,
but
softer and slower this time. ‘Eh,
well,
you are some fucking crazy bampot, right you are. A right fucking weirdo
, you are missus, you need your head looking at, so you do
.’
The phone clicked off.

Fifteen minutes later, I tried again, my rage dulled by a large glass of wine
, and this time I reached a repairman who promised he would be with me in twenty minutes.

‘Is simple,’ said the repairman , true to his word on his time of arrival. ‘Is just a fuse. But, lady, I think you need to change the element, soon, yes. It has not long, I think. You want me to change now also, I have parts in van.’

‘Er, yep, okay, fine.’ I shrugged at the repairman. He had told me he was from Poland.
‘
I am Pieter, I am
from Krakow, is beautiful city, have you ever been, lady. No? You should go, you would like, I think
.
’

Graham wouldn’t have liked the fact that I was using a Polish repairman. He didn’t like immigrants, and
his more vociferous outbursts appeared to be reserved for those that originated from
Eastern Europe. He said they came to Jersey, took all of the jobs, and then still had the audacity to moan about the island.
‘
You know what they say, if you don’t like it, there’s always a boat in the morning.
’
I never really understood how Graham could moan about immigrants, I mean, his parents were from England originally. Personally, i
t didn’t bother me where someone was from, it
always
seemed to me that people worried about that sort of thing far too much.

Pieter worked fast. A mere half hour later and he was done. ‘That is, please, eighty five pounds. You want that I send you a bill?’