Sugarcoated (11 page)

Petrified about what I might splurt about Stefan before I’d had time to figure if
any
of it was possible –

Why would he nick anything?

I barely opened my mouth in the half hour before Dad left for the airport. Hummed tunelessly instead. Reading me all wrong, Dad assumed my zipped lips were due to pre-Empty butterflies.

‘Don’t worry,’ he reassured me out on the pavement as Marjory was shotputting Dad’s suitcase into her boot. ‘The neighbours know you’re home alone, Cloddy.’

This comment, fluffy as Milky Way on the outside, was also Dad double-speak for ‘no drunken shindigs, all right?’

‘Oh, and I’ve spoken to your Uncle Mike. He knows you’re alone, too. Turns out he’s coming down to Glasgow in the next day or so. Not exactly sure when, but he’ll bunk at ours. Save the taxpayer a few
quid on his usual hotel bill. This is my brother. Same line of business as yourself,’ Dad explained to Marjory while she was opening her passenger door for him. ‘Big chief honcho up north. Heard of him? Mike Quinn?’ That news stopped Marjory in her tracks. For the first time since we’d met she sounded almost feminine.

‘Not Super Mike? Peterhead? Oh, he’s a
star.
And it’s
us
he’s coming to liaise with,’ her deep voice did its best to giggle. ‘We’re working with him. National task force. The boss has just briefed him about that attack. Outside your shop. Could be part of the same case. Those men. With the hammer. Those ones you’ve identified, Claudia –’

Marjory was positively skittish now, words puffing out in breathless gasps each time she stabbed her chest with both thumbs to illustrate how the Strathclyde polis were working with Uncle Super Mike’s division in the North-East.

‘Same investigation.
Massive.
Europe wide. Investigating this crime ring. Drugs and vice. Small, small world, sir, as they say. On that Disney ride:
It’s
a small world after all, it’s a small world after all.
You know the one I mean?’

Rather Dad than me, stuck with Marjory singing bass all the way to the airport.

‘I can’t believe this. What a coincidence. Super Mike. You’ll feel safer in this big house when
he’s
around, Claudia. I might pop round myself, let him keep an eye on
me
.’ While Marge was living out some secret fantasy with
my
uncle, Dad beckoned me to the passenger window. He took my hand. Pressed a far smaller quantity of notes into my palm than I’d been given by a certain person I daren’t mention to Dad in case he had a stroke. Dad squeezed my fingers shut over the money. Kissed my knuckles.

‘Say a prayer for wee Sean. Work hard, be good and look after yourself, Claudia,’ he managed to whisper just before Marjory leaned across him. Stubbing a big thumbs-up at me she winked, ‘Remember, I’ll be on the end of the phone if you need me. Soon as we round up those men you recognised, we’ll bring you down for an ID parade. See you then.’
Can’t wait.
I shivered while I watched
the police car drive Dad off.
Claudia. You never call me that, Dad,
I thought.

Am I the only person who’s suddenly felt their home didn’t feel like home any more when the other people who lived in it went away? I don’t mean to the supermarket or work or the pub, but on a proper journey: Plane. Train. It was so weird. Once I waved Dad out of sight and stepped back through our front door, it was like Loneliness clanked in to keep me company.

Don’t go. Come back,
the bricks and mortar seemed to pine.

I didn’t know what to do with myself. On the kitchen table a wisp of steam was still rising from Dad’s mug of hardly-sipped tea. I wrapped my hands round it. Tried to make myself stop thinking how our house had never felt colder. Less safe. The distance to the nearest neighbour so far. The pathway to the street so long. So overgrown.

I realised, of course, that I was missing a trick. Here was me with my first ever proper Empty:
party time,
as just about
anyone
I knew would be whooping if they
were standing here, in my kitchen, in my big Clod clogs. They’d have made calls already:
Spread the word,
gonna
?
Posted an invite on the Web.
Come on over.
There’d be just about time to compile a dance playlist before the doorbell was red hot, house heaving to the rafters, slopped bev stickying everyones’ party shoes to Mum’s good floors. Even though it was a school night, less than a week before exam-time, even though none of the folk who’d show at my party were mates:

Whose Empty is this? Claudia Quinn? Who? Oh her? The big galoot who failed everything last year and who’s a total random since her mate left?

But they’d still come to my party. It would last all week if I wanted it to. Night and day.

But, even though I knew a hardcore Empty might have made me more popular, or at least less invisible to my yearmates, I wasn’t tempted. Wasn’t in the mood. Even though I hated the silence around me, and a party would have drowned the silence. Which wasn’t silent at all anyway. Silence never is.

Haaaaaaahhhh
it swirled around me, breathing down my neck, into my ear, forcing me to beat a retreat to the
only place in the house I knew wouldn’t feel abandoned. My room. But even walking upstairs was a different experience to how it felt when Mum and Dad were around.
Eeeek-eeeeee
every tread creaked beneath my feet like it was sadistically out to spook me. And when I wandered into Mum and Dad’s bedroom to turn out a lamp the door clicked shut on me, making me spin round, heart vaulting from my mouth. I couldn’t remember the door ever doing that before. Nearly shat a brick.

Then the phone calls started.

Honestly. Just the bell shrilling through our big empty house the first time was bad enough.

I squealed higher than poor Squeally, the ex-pet mouse I fed to death used to squeal whenever I trod on her tail.

But when I picked the phone up and no one answered …

I mean, of all the nights for some psychic eejit to plough the phone book, select
Quinn, Sean
at random, then churn up my guts with silent phone calls:
I’m sensing a jumpy girl in a big house All By Herself. Let’s get dialling
.

Actually only the first few calls were silent.

‘Hello?’

Nothing.

‘Hello? Hel-
low
?’ That happened twice, each call only lasting a few seconds before whoever was on the other end clicked the phone down.

That was the main thing
about
those two calls that was disconcerting.

Proved someone was there.

So the third time I was a bit more pro-active.

‘He-
llo
again.’

Nothing.

‘Look. If this is a wind-up, gonna stop.’ This time
I
put the phone down. Bang! Dialled 1471.

We do not have the caller’s number
said the calm lady from the phone company. Surprise, surprise. So when the fourth call came, I hardly gave it the chance to ring.

‘Get stuffed ya muppet!’ I snarled into the receiver. Just take a flying fu-’

‘Claudia!’

‘Mum?’

Ooops. She sounded a bit shocked, my poor
Mumsie, what with being such a lady. And that was before I swore.

‘Did I disturb you? Are you studying, darling?’ her questions travelled one way across the world while mine, ‘Have you been trying to get through, Mum?’ crossed them in the opposite direction. This was one of those long-distance calls with a delay that drives you spare. Means a proper conversation is impossible.

‘Is your dad gone? The baby’s pulling through. Isn’t that lovely? And he’s so beautiful. We’re laughing; he’s got your big feet.’ It felt like Mum took five light years to tell me while I interrupted her with the very questions and answers she was looking for: ‘Dad’s on his way. How’s the baby? Oh, that’s great! What’s Sean look like?’

Then we’d rung off. ‘I’ll phone back from a landline when Dad comes, darling. This mobile’s dreadful. Look after yourself.’ I wished I hadn’t sounded so narked by the pauses on the line.

‘Fine, Mum.’

‘Bye, Mum.’

‘You’re breaking up, Mum.’ I’d snapped to bring the call to an end. Now, having had Mum closer than she’d been for days, then letting her go, I felt lonelier than ever.

Even though less than twelve hours from now I knew I’d be sweating through a timed essay: Mussolini’s Dictatorship – Good or Bad? under exam conditions, and had done No Revision Whatsoever, I wasn’t exactly in the mood to get stuck into swotting. (Was I ever?)

So I cracked open a can of Dad’s Guiness –
No lady’s beverage
, as Mum calls it, which is one of the reasons I like it so much. Another is the taste. Bitter thickness; nothing like it. Worth every sip of its 600 calories a pint. While the creamy head settled in the glass, I booted up my computer, lowered one of those amazingly sticky Buttermint boulders into place behind my bottom front teeth. Then I started my weekly email to Georgina.

Guess what? I’m All By Myself.

Like always, I dictated my news aloud so I could kid myself me and G were gabbing face to face. I even hummed
All By Myself
à la Celine, nasal and swoopy and – thanks to the slow dissolve of the buttermint, lispy and slavery – imagining Georgina duetting with me, her voice much trillier and school choiry. We’d only ever get through a few bars of silly singing like that before hysterics took over.

– and I’m an aunty now,

I went on, telling her about baby Sean and him being poorly and my dad jetting off to see his grandson.

Just in case things don’t …

I deleted that last sentence as soon I heard myself saying it. Swallowed my words in a minty gulp. Call me superstitious but I didn’t feel it was a smart idea to tempt fate by putting the worst-case scenario in writing.

Anyway, Mum says she’ll send me out to meet
my
nephew
later this year if I knuckle down,

I dictated instead.

But oh GAWD!!!! I just can’t. There’s more chance I’ll marry Elvis than pass anything. I’ve done zero work. So I’ll be dead and buried by the time you come home! You’ve seen and heard my mumsie on the warpath so you know what she’ll do to me if I fail two years running. Anyway. Hey,

I wanted to change the subject,

see if I do live to go to OZ you so HAVE to come with me. Aunty Clod and Aunty George can lullaby baby Sean with our beeyoootieefool singing. Yeah?

Right. OK that’s enough about the baby. Time to tell you what’s happened to ME this week. You’d better be sitting down in your mudhut, G. Coz you won’t
believe
this …

There were
six
more silent calls while I type-talked Georgina through the Three Most Amazing Days in the
Life of Clod since the hammer attack. It was my longest ever email – a four butterminter by the time I’d filled Georgina in on what the thugs at Dad’s window looked like.

How I’d been interrogated by Starsky and Hutch.

Then picked up at a sweetie counter by the tastiest guy.

Who wined and dined and even kissed me.

Took me to his flash flat.

Didn’t try it on, alas and alack.

But took me shopping.

When I met another guy …

… well fit too, by the way. Dave he’s called and he threw himself on top of me … then gave me his phone number!!!! How mad is that?

I even told Georgina how I was receiving silent phone calls as I typed my email. Then I explained how I was tackling the sixth one.

I’ve just kept it ringing all this time I’ve been telling you
about Stefan’s mobile going dead on me. Hey, by the way, what d’you make of that? Hope he’s not a piece of crap, G! coz he’s a major babe, Anyway, I’ve cued ‘Shut Up Shut Up’ on I-tunes and I’ve turned the volume full and I’m picking up the phone now and –

Well I just kept starting the song over and over: ‘Shut up. Just shut up. Shut up …’ About twenty times. Then, not even putting the receiver to my ear I plucked the buttermint out my mouth to bawl,
‘I’m calling the police now. My uncle’s a Chief Superintendent,’
into the mouthpiece. Then left the phone off the hook while I finished off my email.

Result.

I reported to Georgina.

Who’s the joker, though? Bet it’s that no-tits Linda. She hates me because she tripped over my feet in front of Tam Moore last week and her skirt split up the back and you could see her pants and Tam totally pissed himself
laughing at her and he gave me a round of applause. Anyway, hope it
is
Linda. Not some stalker out there. Or a perv. Spying from the garden, ready to sneak in and saw me up and I’ll lie here rotting till Dad comes back and opens the front door and the strench of rotting flesh makes him gag and he covers his mouth and staggers upstairs and finds me writhing full of maggots and swarming with bluebottles like the Glutton corpse in
Seven.
Oh G!! That’s enough of the Scary Movie stuff. Just remember, OK? See if something horrible
does
happen, better save this email so you can show it to Starsky and Hutch as evidence. Ha! Ha!

Anyway, better go. Luv to Adrian. And lotsaluv to you. E-back what you think of MY new MAN!!!! Still can’t believe a hottie so sweet wants to date me!!! Something to tell my grandchildren if I ever land a bloke who wants to bada bing me. Anyway, let’s not go there: Stefan hasn’t yet.

Hope he’s not gay!!! Coz he’s something else! If he’s still MY BOYFRIEND when you come back you’ve gotta meet him …

Two things dawned on me after I clicked
SEND
and the little wingy icon fluttered my thoughts and words and deeds away to Georgina. First of all I wished I hadn’t raised any of the stalker and the corpse-with-maggots stuff. Not tonight. Coz not all of it flew off with the email. Some of it flew up my nose and into my mind. Now it was worrying me. Making me hear noises that weren’t there: shuffles downstairs, creaks next door, footsteps in the loft. Arggg! Should have deleted all that freak-yourself-out stuff like I deleted the worst-case scenario sentence about baby Sean.

After all – and this was the second thing that dawned on me – I HADN’T included anything in my email to Georgina about Dad’s cloned VISA and his missing passport problems and how all that only happened
after
my new boyfriend wandered into a room he should NOT have been in. Accidentally on purpose I’d left out that little snippet of dodgy information about Stefan.

Actually, to be honest, I’d also accidentally-on-purpose skipped telling Georgina a few other snippets
about Stefan: his evil,
so
not class snake tattoo, his attempts to force wine down me in his flat when I didn’t want any. Then him rough-snogging me in his garage, not to mention turning all Don Corleone on Dave Griffen …

I didn’t let Georgina into any of this because she’s totally crammed with brains (why we’re best pals I don’t know since my head’s as empty as a tube of Pringles five minutes after I pop and don’t stop). Georgina – who plans to be a psychiatrist – is always trying to figure what she thinks people
really
mean when they say something, and has this theory that the language we use when we talk to each other is only the tip of the iceberg.

What we
don’t
say is more important that what we do,
G believes.
That’s what I like to winkle out.

Well, I didn’t want Georgina winkling anything out from what I did or didn’t say in my email. Not about Stefan. No thanks. Not yet. Not when my brain was already trying to build a worst-case scenario about who I didn’t want him to be.

He can’t be a thief. Or a bad guy. He’s too smart. Bit of
class. And NOTHING like the gangsters and thugs down at the station today in those photos.
I swallowed the idea with the dregs of my Guinness.
Just
missed sluicing the brand new mint I’d popped down with it. Lucky, I bit down hard and just about clamped the sweet between my back teeth before it slid down and choked me. Recovered, I went back to thinking about Stefan:
When he phones again,
I promised myself,
I’ll ask him straight if he nicked Dad’s card. In fact
– I checked my mobile was switched on.

Found Stefan’s number. Rang him.

But the connection was still dead.

So in case I’d missed a text from him, my thumb idled through my Inbox:

No new messages.

No new voicemail.

‘Where
are
you?’ I’d to sidewaggle my jaw to speak. A boulder of buttermint was cementing my top molars to the bottom ones on one side. And it wouldn’t budge.

‘Oh well.’ My sigh over not hearing Stefan’s voice wanted to turn into a yawn now. A big one, flaring my
nostrils already, pushing down softly but firmly at the muscles of my mouth. You never think of yawns being macho, but they must be. Because – think about it – even when you try to stifle them you can’t. Not completely. When tsunami-sized ones, like the one swelling up inside my mouth want out, they just force themselves.

Even through teeth glued shut with sugar they force themselves, ripping molars from their moorings.

‘Ouch!’ By the time my yawn swept though me, half a tooth and a big silver filling were impaled in the slippery buttermint which plopped into my hand. Inhaled air converted into electric-shock tinfoil agony when it hit the newly excavated
cavern
at the back of my mouth – Great! – and when my tongue probed about I shot so high in the air I headered my lampshade and the bulb went out. Every nerve, not just the one in my exposed tooth, jarred and jangled. That explains why my thumb, still curled round my mobile, suddenly jerked. Hit a number. Dialled. In the seconds before my dental crisis I’d been scrolling through my pitifully small address book: Dad, Mum,
Georgina, couple of girls I pestered for homework help. Stefan, of course –

Now my thumb had called Dave Griffen.

‘Dave Griffen?’

Through a mush of head-pain I recalled the security guard putting his number in my phone. Telling me to call him when I wasn’t Stefan’s girl any more.

‘Oh God,’ I groaned. Whether I was still or had even ever
been
Stefan’s girl this was no longer an urgent priority. Controlling the raging agony in my jaw was more important. Forgetting about axe-murderers lying in wait for me beyond my room, not even bothering with lights, I moaned my way into the bathroom praying I’d find painkillers.

‘Or clove oil.’

I’d forgotten I was still holding my mobile. Forgotten I’d dialled Dave Griffen at random.

So when my accidental call was answered I was very confused.

‘Who this?’

Despite my phone being miles from my ear I clearly heard a guttural male voice against a background of
yelling. And despite the distraction of my toothache I knew he wasn’t Dave Griffen. Dave Griffen wasn’t foreign. And there was no reason why his voice could ever have reminded me of the skinny nutter who’d pranced and danced outside Dad’s shop, kicking Hell Dog Hall to death.

‘Dave?’

‘Who speak? Who want Dave?’ The second time the man shouted there was no background rammy. Just a listening silence.

‘Claudia. Cloddy, I mean,’ I answered automatically although something was telling me I shouldn’t be saying anything back to the voice on the other end of the phone.

But it was too late.

‘Claudia.’ The angry, shouting, foreign voice repeated my name.

Deliberately. This time the silence behind him was a thinking one. It ticked for a few seconds. Ended with a noise that I just knew was someone being slapped. Hard.

‘Ayahhh!’
The cry from this new male voice
suggested pain on a par with my toothache. ‘Watch out, Cl-’ it went on before the angry shouting man shouted it down. Yelled, ‘Wrong number!’ at me.

Cut the call.