Never Close Your Eyes (2 page)

‘Please, Jude,' she said, ‘can Ah just finish this?'

Jude stopped banging. Dawn waited for something, more sneers, but nothing came. The silence was almost worse than the humming and banging. It was creepy.

She looked up to see Jude leap from her bed on to Dawn's and then on to the floor. Jude was still in her school uniform, though she'd taken her tights off and her rolled-up navy-blue skirt was so short that you could see right up her fat white legs to her dirty grey knickers.

Dawn sprang to her feet, whipped her essay away from the end of the bed and hugged it to her chest. ‘Ye nearly trod on me work.' Her whole face felt hot.

Jude smirked, turned her back and started fiddling with the things on Dawn's bedside table: her travel clock in the shiny brown case; the little pink flowery porcelain pot in which she kept the two pairs of gold studs that she'd bought with her paper-round money.

Dawn winced. Her bedside table was precious. It was white and plasticky and it wobbled but it was hers, her own private property. Jude had no right to touch it. She kept her diary locked up in the top drawer and her watch, given to her two years ago on her tenth birthday by Nana, in the bottom. ‘Double figures!' she'd written on the card in big, bold letters. ‘With lots of love to my special girl.' She'd kept that, too, and the case with ‘TIMEX' on it that the watch had come in.

Jude had Dawn's school photo in her hand now and was poking her finger in some of the faces, laughing. ‘Look at the conk on that!'

‘Give me that,' Dawn said, trying to grab the photo back. But Jude was taller – though Dawn was catching up fast – and held it above her head out of reach.

‘Ahh, little Dawn in her hockey photo,' Jude teased. ‘At her posh grammar school.'

Dawn jumped on the bed and made another lunge for the photo, but Jude had it behind her back now. Dawn wondered, for a second, why she cared about it so much. She was only in the B-team. But she was so happy when they picked her. It showed that she wasn't just good at essays, she was OK at sport, too. And she wanted to go on a hockey tour with the other girls. She'd hardly ever been off the estate, let alone out of Newcastle. She wouldn't tell them that, though.

‘Give it me, ye big fat cow,' Dawn muttered again. ‘It's mine.'

‘Ye're just a stupid little girl with ye stupid little hockey,' Jude taunted. ‘I'm gonna rip it up.'

Dawn's head was throbbing, ready to explode. The photo was probably doomed one way or another. She jumped off the bed, reached out and seized two great clumps of her sister's long, ginger hair and pulled as hard as she could.

‘Bitch,' Jude shrieked, dropping to the floor and pulling Dawn down with her. Jude was kicking and squirming but Dawn held on tight. She was almost enjoying this.

‘Get off!' Jude yelled again. ‘I'll fuckin' kill ye.'

Dawn couldn't see the photo. Jude wasn't using her hands to defend herself so she must be clutching it. She was so hard.

‘I'll only let go if ye give it me now,' Dawn screeched, yanking viciously on her sister's hair again. Good job she'd got Mam's thick fair mop, not Jude's pathetic, orange wisps.

Dawn felt a sudden sharp pain. Jude's foot in her stomach. She fell back, winded. Jude was on top of Dawn immediately, sending her crashing backwards. She started thumping and scratching, her knees digging into Dawn's sides. Jude was much heavier. Dawn knew that she couldn't beat her with brute strength alone.

She was on her back beside the bed. She registered the frayed pink base of the bed-frame, which sagged in the middle. There was a gap between it and the floor and she could see the outline of various objects hidden away underneath in the dark.

Anything precious that Dawn couldn't put in the bedside table went there: her Monopoly board; her shoes for best. If she put them in the small, rickety wardrobe that she shared with Jude they wouldn't last long.

Jude was straddling her, thumping up and down on her stomach as hard as she could. Her long nails scraped down Dawn's cheek, making her eyes water. She snapped them shut in case Jude decided to gouge them out; she wouldn't put it past her.

Dawn was hurting so much that she could hardly feel it any more. She wondered if she was going to die. She managed to pull her left arm out from underneath Jude's right leg without her noticing and slid her hand under the bed, reaching round until her fingers felt something rubbery: the end of her hockey stick?

‘I hate ye,' Jude was saying. ‘I'll always hate ye. Ye think ye're so fuckin' clever but ye're not. Ye're so ugly no lad'll ever want to shag ye. Ye'll never get a job neither. Ye'll end up cleaning toilets just like me mam.'

Dawn inched her fingers along the stick until they felt wood. Then she managed to drag the whole thing towards her so that it was close enough for her to lever it round in an arc until it was lying beside her.

Dawn's head was pounding and she was gasping for breath. She squeezed her eyes open and registered Jude's pink, sweaty neck, her heavy, jutting jaw as she bounced up and down. Dawn managed to raise her head a couple of inches off the floor and the second that Jude looked down she spat as hard as she could. Bingo! The spit landed on Jude's cheek and dribbled down, leaving a disgusting foamy trail.

Now she'd be for it.

Jude's eyes flashed. ‘Ye'll be sorry for that.' She grabbed Dawn's head in both hands and banged it up and down, up and down on the carpet. Dawn wanted to be sick. She knew she had to get out fast or Jude probably would kill her.

Still clutching the hockey stick, she mustered just enough strength to wriggle on to her side, knocking Jude off balance. Jude toppled sideways, hitting her head on the bed, and lay sprawled on the floor for a second, her skirt up round her middle, her revolting fat stomach spilling all over.

But she rallied surprisingly quickly. She twisted, put her hands on the floor and started to pick herself up. Dawn could see the photo underneath her, all crumpled and torn. She didn't have much time. She sprang to her feet, picked up the hockey stick in both hands and brought it down on Jude's body with all her force.

One, two, three. Jude screamed, curling into a little ball, pulling her arms up to protect her head. Dawn wanted to laugh. She felt so good, mighty, powerful. Made a change.

She took a step forward, closed her eyes tight and brought the stick down again: one, two, three. It made a dull thudding noise. Jude deserved it.

Dawn lost count of the number of times she struck. When her arms started aching she stopped and opened her eyes. Jude was no longer screaming and thrashing around. Good, it had obviously hurt. Dawn paused, took a step forward and then hit one more time without looking. ‘One for luck.'

There was a funny sound, a sort of gurgle, like bath water going down the plughole, then a sigh. Dawn dropped the stick and looked down. Jude was lying on her side now, her eyes staring, her hair spread around her in a knotty orange mess, her mouth open. Something seemed to be oozing from the side of her head and nose on to the tatty blue carpet. Blood?

Me mam's gonna kill us.

Dawn squatted down. ‘Jude?' There was no reply.

She gave her sister a shake. ‘Jude? Stop funning, will ye? We're gonna have to clear this lot up quick before me mam gets back. We'll get wrong . . .'

Jude's shoulder looked a bit weird, sort of wonky. And her ear was bleeding. Dawn sat back. She needed to think about this.

She noticed the frayed edges of the carpet round the scuffed skirting board and the faded brown duvet cover, all rumpled and falling off the end of the bed. She saw the dirty cream walls with stickers and crayon marks on them and the ends of the thin, pale pink curtains fluttering in the summer breeze where the window was open.

All these familiar things. The room seemed so quiet.

Her hands reached up to her mouth. She jumped, startled. Someone was screaming, shattering the silence. It was a high-pitched scream. The hairs on her arms prickled, but she didn't know where it was coming from. Not from Jude. She was sleeping.

There were noises outside the window. Voices. A key turning in the lock: Mam getting back from work; people coming upstairs.

‘Oh my God!' someone shouted. It was a man. The screaming went on, boring into her unconscious, making her brain hurt. The hockey stick was still on the floor beside her. She looked at her hands, stared at them. They were covered in blood.

Then Dawn realised she was the one screaming, saying the same thing over and over again: ‘I didn't mean to, honest to God, I didn't mean to.'

What was she talking about?

Then there were hands on her. Someone was lifting her up.

‘Call an ambulance . . . get the coppers.'

Who were these people? What were they doing? Everything was weird.

Someone was carrying her downstairs into a car. It wasn't Mam. She wanted Mam. Where was she?

Then she blacked out.

Chapter Two

‘“The handsome face of Spiculus, turned brown by the sun, moved closer to hers. Cornelia had an overpowering urge to run her fingers through his thick, dark locks. His lips were dangling there, like ripe cherries . . .”'

There was a cough. Evie stopped reading and looked up from the page. She sighed. There was an unwritten rule that no one should speak until whoever was reading out loud had finished. But this was the third interruption in as many minutes.

‘Did you want to say something else, Pamela?' Evie asked. It came out slightly more sharply than she'd intended. After all, the whole idea of the writing group was that it was supposed to be friendly and collaborative, not confrontational: the last thing Evie wanted was to get into an argument, and with Pamela of all people.

Pamela, who was sitting up ramrod straight in the front row, nodded. The half-moon glasses slid down her long thin nose a little further. Evie hoped they'd drop off.

‘Do lips really dangle?' Pamela enquired. She made it sound like an innocent enough question but the expression on her face gave her away: she was smug, no doubt about it, delighted to have found fault. She really didn't have the right attitude.

‘And why on earth don't you say hair rather than locks?' Pamela went on. ‘Nobody says locks in real life.' She scanned the rest of the group for approval.

The ten or so others sitting in front of Evie glanced at their feet, embarrassed. Several cleared their throats.

At last Tristram raised a hand. ‘Let, erm, er . . .'

‘Evie,' someone stage whispered.

I've only been coming here for four years.

‘Evie, of course,' Tristram continued, straightening his tie. ‘Let Evie finish, please.'

Pamela sniffed.

Tristram was self-appointed chairman of the St Barnabas's Creative Writing Group, so called because of the church hall where they met each month. But members didn't hold him in particularly high regard.

For a start, he was forever going on about the army and his old boarding school, wasting valuable time. And being rather hard of hearing, he tended to get the wrong end of the stick, too. At least he'd had the good sense to intervene now, though. It was really bad manners of Pamela to have jumped in like that. She should have waited till the end.

Evie felt crushed. She couldn't help it. She was trying so hard to finish
The Roman's Wife
, her historical romance. It wasn't coming easily to her and she knew that she was making a lot of mistakes. But it was her dream to get published one day and, let's face it, we all have to dream.

The only person whose writing Pamela seemed to have any respect for at all was Becca, and Becca already had a high-powered job. Writing was just a hobby to her. It really wasn't fair.

Evie looked down at the page again and tried to find the spot where she'd left off. Suddenly a voice piped up from the back of the hall: ‘Well, I think “lips dangling like ripe cherries” is rather a nice, sensual image.'

It was Nic, confident, outspoken Nic, who could always be relied on to leap to Evie's rescue at moments like this. Evie peered over Pamela's stiff helmet of grey hair into the rows beyond and smiled at her friend.

Nic beamed back and did a furtive thumbs up. But Pamela had the bit between her teeth and would not be constrained. She gave a bitter little smile.

‘It's, ahem, a bit of a cliché though, isn't it?' she said.

Evie saw Nic look down at her lap and start to flick furiously through a book. ‘Hold on a moment,' she said, her blond bob quivering. ‘Here we are. It says in my dictionary that a cliché is “a phrase or word that's lost its original effectiveness or power from overuse”. Well, how often do people talk or write about lips dangling like ripe cherries?'