Another World (13 page)

THIRTEEN

Miranda lies on the lawn at the back of the house, sunbathing and listening to her Walkman. She sees herself, long and pale, with big sunglasses that look like insects’ eyes.

A cloud moves over the sun. The shadow starts at her feet and moves upwards, chilling her body inch by inch, until at last the orange glow behind her closed lids dies to a dull purple. She opens her eyes and watches the shadow creep over the garden, encroach on the terrace until it reaches the house and every rose is quenched.

The night Dad left, the house was full of bangs and shouts and screams and slammed doors. Then silence. Miranda stood covering her face with her hands in a corner, then, when she couldn’t bear it any longer, ran across the landing to Mum and Dad’s room. Dad had a suitcase open on the bed and his back was turned. She crept round the door, not knowing whether she was wanted or not. As soon as he saw her, he picked her up and hugged her tight enough to hurt. And then she looked over his shoulder and saw his suits and shirts and ties in the case, and a row of socks rolled up in pairs, all along one side, like a litter of dead puppies.

Dad said to her once, ‘You know, I wouldn’t blame you if you were angry.’

But she’s not angry. She’s never angry.

Dad calls, ‘Miranda?’

They must be nearly ready to leave. Reluctantly, she gets up and goes back into the house to find the usual chaos of preparations well advanced.

‘Miranda?’ Fran says. ‘Could you go into the living room and get Jasper’s bye-bye? I think it’s in there.’

His bye-bye’s a yellow blanket with a satin binding that he stuffs into his mouth and strokes whenever he’s tired. Most of the time he just ignores it, but if it’s missing when he wants to have a nap all hell’s let loose. She’s sick of fetching and carrying after Jasper, but she doesn’t say anything. Fran’s got Jasper
and
Gareth to cope with, and half the time Dad’s not here. It’s no wonder she grabs every bit of help she can get.

Miranda goes into the living room. It’s bright sun outside and the blinds are half closed, making a pattern of yellow and black wasp stripes on the floor, but she sees the bye-bye straight away, draped over the back of a chair. She’s just stretched out her hand to pick it up when she realizes she’s not alone.

There’s a girl at the french windows, shielding her eyes to peer through the slats of the blinds into the room. If it had been a man Miranda would probably have screamed, but because it’s a girl she’s not frightened. Though there is something horrible about this girl, the way she moves up and down along the window, scanning the room, her movements quick and eager, like a stoat outside a rabbit’s cage.

Miranda takes in very little about her appearance. Partly the blind obscures her, partly Miranda’s almost too shocked to register anything. She takes one step towards the window, intending to challenge her, then, realizing it’s locked, tears out of the room and races down the side of the house on to the terrace. Quick as she is, the girl’s gone before she gets there. She must have gone through the side entrance out into the road, though by the time Miranda opens the gate she’s already turned the corner, and there’s nobody in sight.

Miranda returns to the terrace and, on some obscure impulse, presses her own face against the window, peering into the room with shielded eyes, trying to see what the girl saw.

The door opens and Jasper comes trotting in – he’s probably decided to get his bye-bye himself. He runs towards it and then, exactly as she’d done herself, seems to realize he’s not alone. He raises his eyes to the figure on the other side of the glass, gazing in at him, and screams and screams and screams.

Miranda steps back, feeling as guilty as if she’d frightened him deliberately, then walks round into the house. Fran’s got there first, scooping Jasper up into her arms, where he sobs and clutches his bye-bye.

‘What happened to you?’ Fran asks.

‘There was a girl at the window.’

Gareth’s on to it at once. ‘What sort of girl?’

Miranda shrugs, furious with herself for mentioning it, because now Gareth’ll say she’s afraid of ghosts, like he did the night they found the painting. ‘Just a girl. I chased her, she ran away.’

‘How old?’

‘Twelve. Thirteen.’

‘Fat?’

‘I don’t know, Gareth. I only got a glimpse.’

She was wearing a long skirt, and her hair was long, but that doesn’t mean she was a ghost. A lot of girls wear long skirts, some of the time; nearly all the girls in Miranda’s class have long hair, including Miranda. She’s not going to say any more, because Gareth’ll only twist it. Though he doesn’t look capable of twisting anything at the moment. He’s so white you’d think he was car sick and they haven’t even started yet.

Two hours later, after Sunday lunch in a pub, they’re trudging across a car-park with the sun on their backs.

‘Are we going home now?’ Gareth asks.

‘No,’ Fran says. ‘We’re going to the seaside.’

Fran’s got prickly heat on the backs of her thighs, Nick’s shirt has sweat moons in the armpits. It takes them ten minutes to get Jasper into his seat. Gareth walks up and down the car-park, kicking an ice-cream carton. They’re always so patient – it never seems to occur to them to give the little bugger a good slap. When he’s finally strapped in, wailing, miserable, red in the face, pulling at his ears, Gareth slides in beside him. The plastic glues itself to the backs of his thighs. He winds the window further down and looks out, wincing at the glitter of sunlight on bumpers and windscreens.

They have to queue to get out on to the main road. Jasper cries. Miranda sits hunched up, ignoring Jasper, who flails his fists and hits her repeatedly on her bare arm. Whenever this happens, she gives a sickly smile. She always pretends to like Jasper – another reason why Gareth can’t stand her. He stares at her tits – not as big as the fat slag’s, but you can still see them. Once the car gets going on the main road and there’s air blowing through, Gareth shuts his eyes and forgets about her and Jasper.

That girl Miranda saw must have been the BFS, as he’s started to call her – Big Fat Slag. She’s found out where he lives.

He opens his eyes and sees tall fields of wheat on either side of the car. Further away there’s a field of stubble, with those big shredded-wheat shapes scattered all over it. Jasper’s gone to sleep. He pongs. When they get to wherever they’re going Mum’ll have to change him. Miranda’s been sunbathing in the garden for the past week, though her skin’s the wrong sort of skin, anybody can see that. It just turns pink and flakes. She’s scraping a tiny flake of skin off her shoulder now.

‘Don’t do that,’ Mum says automatically, catching sight of her in the mirror. ‘I’ll put some cream on it when we get there.’

Miranda flushes and doesn’t say anything. Gareth looks at her sideways, thinking she’s only two years older than he is and it’s stupid of her to pretend to be grown up, though she does it all the time, she thinks she can get away with it. He used to be able to frighten her, but now he can’t. She just smiles in a sort of tired way, like Nick, or gives him a long considering stare. He’s never liked her, but not being able to get at her any more makes him feel lonely.

The car goes over a bump. Jasper wakes suddenly and starts to cry. Mum twists round in her seat with a bottle of water in her hand and tries to reach his mouth, but the seat belt digs into the bulge, she can’t get anywhere near him. ‘You give it to him, Gareth.’

‘Do I have to?’

‘Well, it wouldn’t hurt you,’ Nick snaps.

Gareth looks up and sees Nick watching him in the mirror. He takes the bottle. Jasper’s lips shoot out towards it, he’s so eager, like a sea anemone, wet and pink and disgusting.

‘Tilt the bottle more,’ Mum says. ‘You’ll give him wind.’

‘I’ll do it,’ says Miranda, angling the bottle properly so the area behind the teat fills with water. Jasper’s mouth slackens, his eyes flicker upwards like a doll’s. Gareth aims a kick at Miranda’s shins, misses, hits the back of Nick’s seat.

‘Do you mind? I’m trying to drive.’

As if being the driver gives him a licence to be bad-tempered. He’s always more horrible in the car than anywhere else.

They’re just turning into another car-park. Nick drives up and down the aisles looking for a space. Gareth sees Mum notice one, open her mouth to point it out and shut it again. Nick hates backseat drivers. Gareth hates everybody. He doesn’t see why you have to have families at all. It’d be much better if people just spawned like frogs.

This is a place they often come to. Once you leave the car-park and walk across the road to the beach, there are miles and miles of pale sands, with the sea a narrow brilliant line far out, and grass waving on the tops of the sand dunes. Further along there are cliffs.

Gareth fidgets while Mum changes Jasper on the back seat, and Nick fumes because he’s fed up with it all, and Miranda mooches about four or five car lengths away, not talking to anybody, and Gareth suddenly thinks, Suppose somebody sees me? It’s true nobody’s likely to see him, but suppose somebody did? Walking down to the beach with a little boy and a bucket and spade. They might think he was going to make sand castles. And Miranda. Somebody might think she’s his girlfriend. Gareth goes hot and cold with the horror of it, and starts walking along the path, ahead of the rest of the family, trying to look as if he isn’t with them.

Mum and Nick sit down in a sheltered part of the sand dunes. Mum’ll go to sleep straight away, she always does these days. And Nick’ll pretend to read the paper, but really he’ll go to sleep too and Jasper’ll play with his bucket and spade. And batty Miranda’ll just wander about. He’s got to get away from them as fast as possible; he’s got to make it clear he’s not part of it.

The path from the sand dunes to the beach winds down among huge blocks of concrete. Tank traps – ‘dragon’s teeth’ – left over from the last war. Some of them are buried in the sand, with only three or four inches showing above ground. When he first came here, he was only a year or two older than Jasper, and jumping along the line of dragon’s teeth had been a triumph. Not that they were very far apart, but the sand was fine and silky and every surface you landed on was slippy.

Further along the beach, where winter storms have eroded the shore, there are the massive blocks that stand out uncompromisingly square and bleak. Narrow slits of machine-gun emplacements look out over the shelving sands towards the sea. When Gareth was little he used to like playing in them, though you nearly always hurt yourself, clambering over the rocks that choked the entrance, and even when you got inside there were only chip cartons, beer cans, a smell of piss. Condoms too, though he didn’t know what they were then. He picked one up once and ran back with it to Gran, trying to blow it up because he thought it was a balloon. Gran nearly had a fit.

He stands on the beach now, barefoot, with the waves creaming over his feet, feeling how much older he is, inclined to be contemptuous of his younger self. Behind him are the slit eyes of the bunkers and he feels sand slip beneath his toes, the land squirming away into the sea, as the tide pulls back. When the tide’s right out, even further than it is now, it uncovers rock pools, and you can find things in them, little grey-green crabs hiding under the seaweed. He liked making them do things, switching them from pool to pool, or marooning them far up the beach and watching them try to crawl back. You squat down and look into the pool and it’s a bit like
Jurassic Park
– you’re like a dinosaur looking through a car window at the helpless squealing wriggling pink kids inside.

He wants to be with the others, it’s not much fun on your own. He wades back through the sea, knee-deep, it’s easier than struggling through the sand. It might look as if he’s paddling, but he isn’t, he’s just walking with his feet in the water.

They’ve moved closer to the sea. Mum and Miranda are building a sand castle with a large moat round it, though they’re wasting their time, anybody can see the tide’s going out. Jasper’s fascinated. He wants to help, but when he tries, patting the top of a turret, it collapses and Miranda has to start again.

‘Just let him pat the bottom of the bucket,’ Mum says.

Miranda does as she’s told. Jasper squeals with delight.

‘I’ll get some ice-cream,’ Nick says. ‘Cornets everybody?’

He strides away up the beach. Gareth knows he’ll take a few minutes sitting on the sea wall, having a quiet smoke before he comes back. Might even sneak off for a pint, it’s been known.

Gareth finds an empty coke can, half buries it in the sand, about thirty feet from where they’re sitting, and starts lobbing stones at it.

‘Mind Jasper,’ Mum says.

He’s nowhere near bloody Jasper. Suddenly angry, he kicks sand in the direction of Miranda, who stops what she’s doing and looks up through the tangle of her hair. Something about her expression startles him. He understands suddenly that if Miranda did what she wanted she’d knock the sand castle over and jump up and down on the ruin. She’d scream and shout and kick sand into all their faces. She doesn’t say anything, she doesn’t do anything, but then she never does, only he sees her wanting to, and he backs away. She’s no right to feel like that. He’s the one who wants to smash things.

‘If you can’t play properly,’ Mum says, ‘just go away.’

Play. That just about sums it up. All at once the eyes are back, clustering on his head and neck. Look at Gareth playing sand-pies with his baby brother.

He turns away from Mum’s accusing look, Jasper’s stupid blue-eyed stare, Miranda’s sudden unexpected ferocity, and starts walking along the sand towards the cliffs.

‘What about your ice-cream?’ Mum calls after him.

‘Don’t want it.’

He keeps his head down, doesn’t look back.

The cliffs have warning notices with pictures of falling rock. He doesn’t care. He looks up, squinting into the sun, which is still fierce, and sees how, at the top of the cliffs, grass stems score the sky and seagulls soar far above with sunlight on their wings.

Cutting into the cliffs there’s a deep ravine, lined with wet ferns and mosses; a brown stream meanders between mossy stones out over the beach and down towards the sea.