Crossing the Line (15 page)

‘Yes,' said Orla, and kissed my other cheekbone.

I tightened my arms around her body. I didn't dare touch her breasts but my palms stroked her ribs and her shoulder blades and her upper arms, and the strong solid flesh that covered them.

‘I thought you were going to steal my clothes,' I mumbled.

‘I was,' said Orla.

‘Uh-huh,' I said.

‘That's before I thought you were going to drown, you stupid git.'

‘Uh-huh.'

‘It isn't that cold at all,' said Orla. ‘Is it?'

‘No,' I said. I kissed her again. My tongue found hers. Just to see if that was pierced, too. It wasn't. No stud or anything. I checked it again. Just in case I'd missed something.

Orla's fingers stroked down my chest, making me shudder with something that wasn't cold. Her strong hands moved out across my ribcage to hold my torso. I thought I was going to die of happiness, and I didn't want to wince, but I couldn't help it, because her black-glossed nails had scraped across my side.

‘What's wrong?'

‘Nothing,' I lied, then added: ‘'Tis but a scratch.'

She thought that was funny, and smiled, so I decided
she must like me a bit, because I'd never heard anything so lame in my life.

‘We'd better get out,' she said.

‘I'm not bothered,' I said. I touched her hard belly with my fingertips, fascinated by the little ring.

‘You're about to get hypothermia,' said Orla. ‘And it might be polluted and you'll get blood poisoning and die.'

I thought about that. ‘OK,' I said.

‘And I have to go home.' She backed away but caught my hand and kept holding it as she pulled me after her out of the water. She kept holding it as she picked up her jacket and rubbed herself dry after a fashion, then had a half-hearted go at me too. Which I liked. She only let go of my hand to tug her skirt back on, then she took her sandals in one hand and got my hand back with the other. We walked back up the beach like that and I thought, if anybody sees us I'm going to be arrested.

She let go of my hand again at the steps, watched my eyes for a couple of seconds, then climbed the steps alone. I stood there and let her. She could have got away, now that I wasn't going to drown after all, but she didn't try. She picked up the bundle of clothes by the railing and brought them down to me.

Brassily Orla watched me get dressed, then marched back up the concrete steps. I think she was wondering if she'd been too soft on me. Handed a chance to humiliate me or drown me, she'd decided to kiss me instead, and maybe she felt she'd betrayed someone, because at the
top of the steps she stared in the direction of town and said, ‘Don't talk about my brother.'

‘Fine,' I said.

‘Or about your sister.'

‘OK.'

‘In fact, just don't talk.'

Which I could have taken for a brush-off, except that she took my hand again and wound her fingers into mine, and she didn't let go of it all the way home.

It was well after midnight when I closed the door behind me, so I was surprised the light was still on in the kitchen. Mum liked an early bed and Dad, though he stayed up late, usually slumped with his nightcap in the front room, watching late-night Film Four. I didn't want to know what was going on so I headed quietly for the stairs, but I must have made some kind of noise, because the kitchen door opened very suddenly.

Dad stood there staring at me. It was a Shugs-without-the-glasses stare, his eyes focusing on a point ten centimetres beyond my actual face. His ponytail was coming loose from its elastic band and I realised the ashy fairness had, in the last few months, been threaded with true grey. His lips were tight and trembling and he looked very thin, so that his artfully ripped jeans hung unflatteringly low on his hips and his faded Che Guevara T-shirt looked
baggy. His ill-aimed gaze was accusing.

‘You kids,' he said. ‘You bloody kids.'

I could still feel the imprint of Orla's lips on my lips, and on my cheekbones, and on my neck. I wanted to go up to my room and lie like a corpse on my bed, not moving, so I could enjoy the lingering tactile memory. I wanted to imagine that wild, extravagant sex she insisted I was never going to get.

But Dad was still glaring at me. Mum had come to his shoulder, but he was obstructing her and now he gripped her hand, demanding parental solidarity. Oh, yeah. I was fluent in the two-way sign language they thought so cryptic and private.

Mum curled her fingers round his. ‘Where have you been, Nick? What have you been doing?'

‘How's that your business?'

‘How dare you tell your mother –'

‘Nick, love, I'm not trying to give you a hard time, I just –'

‘Is it Allie?' I interrupted. I didn't care what they thought of me. I didn't care what they thought I'd been up to; I just knew suddenly that this was something to do with Allie and we were wasting time here. I thought about shops and security guards. I thought about train tracks and cuttings. And then, oh God, I remembered Mickey. My thoughts were quick and savage and scary. ‘Is it Allie, Mum?'

‘What would you care?' snapped Dad.

‘
What?
'

The injustice of it took my breath away. I felt the blood drain out of my face, and my head whirled.

‘Terence, that's not fair. You mustn't –'

‘What's she done?' I said.

‘Who?'

‘Allie. What's she done?'

‘Allie?' Dad cried angrily. ‘Allie? Allie hasn't done anything. It's you. You. You bloody neds. You
yobs
. Work it out or go and ask your pals,
Nicholas.
Go and ask them.'

Yeah: what pals would those be,
Father
? How would he not know I was gangless and friendless? I'd kind of assumed he knew, and I was shocked to realise he didn't. So was Mum, by the look on her face. Swallowing, she looked from him to me and back again.

‘You bastard,' I shouted, incoherent, inarticulate, unimaginative. ‘You
bastard.
'

Had he forgotten? Or did the whole destruction of my life not make a blip on his Allie-centred radar? I wondered how to ask him which it was. I wondered how he knew even less about me than I thought he did. Imagine that being possible.

But his eyes were brimming with maudlin anger, and I didn't get a chance to say another word, and nor did Mum. He slammed the door in my face.

I whacked my fists against it. Then again, and again. I punched that door till it hurt – a lot – but I didn't try to open it. If I opened it I'd kill him.

Through the door I heard Mum's anguished sound of protest, then a half-hearted argument, but Dad was in high dudgeon and she was choosing not to damage his precarious pride or rub salt in his wounded feelings. I knew she wouldn't come out and talk to me because, after all, I was tough and Dad was fragile. I could take it, Dad was older and he couldn't. I had the resilience of youth and a rhino skin; he needed his dignity, some respect, he needed the prop of her loyalty and adoration because when did he ever get that from bloody Nick?

Besides, Mum's Words of sodding Wisdom didn't cover every eventuality and even if they did, she'd be wasting them on me. Wouldn't she? I shoved away from the door and stood in a daze in the hall, waiting for the world to make sense again. Well, that would be a long wait.

My gullet felt knotted and I couldn't see or breathe well. After a bit, though, I found I was still breathing and that I could focus clearly enough to hate the flower-sprigged wallpaper, and the calendar with the dolphin photos, and by the time I was hating those viciously enough, I found I could hate Dad. The hate was unencumbered. There wasn't room to like him any more, let alone love him. I couldn't feel Orla's kiss now, not anywhere. I felt like I'd been slapped and I wanted to go into the kitchen and hit him back, so I made myself climb the stairs one at a painful time till I got to the middle landing, and then I did it again till I got to the top. There. That wasn't so hard.

I stopped at Allie's door. Princess. Little Geddes goddess. My scraped side stung like hell, and so did my eyes. Instead of knocking gently, checking inside to make sure she was asleep – she always was, calm and conscienceless as a cat on standby – I shut my own door with something like a slam, got into my T-shirt and pyjama bottoms and crawled under my duvet.

From beneath ten-and-a-half togs I heard my door open quietly and close again, so I crammed my duvet against my ears and lay still. My teeth were gritted and I was holding my breath. Hey, Dad, guess what! Tonight I nearly drowned in the sea. Tonight I was kissed by the girl of my dreams. If you knew, would you have worried? If I'd told you, would you be happy for me? Annoyingly, tears were leaking out of my stinging eyes and soaking into the mattress, but I wasn't sobbing or bubbling or anything stupid. I didn't wonder who was in the room because I didn't care.

Somebody sat down beside me; I knew it because the mattress sagged. ‘Nick?'

Little goddess, little bitch. I ignored her; maybe she'd go away.

Fat chance. ‘
Nick
.' She tugged at a fistful of duvet. Then at two fistfuls.

‘Nick, stop crying and
talk to me
.'

Rubbing my eyes hurriedly on my T-shirt, I flung off the duvet and glared at her. ‘I'm not crying. Eff off, Allie. I've had it for tonight. Just piss off and leave me alone.'

‘I reckon you get enough of that,' she said.

I glared at her some more. ‘That wanker downstairs,' I said. ‘That tosser. That bastard.'

‘I know,' she said.

‘Where's Aidan?' I snapped. ‘Go and talk to fecking Aidan.'

‘He's not here.' Allie reached out tentatively and stroked the hair at my temple like I always did for her, only it didn't really work because my hair was so short. ‘This is none of Aidan's business.'

I hesitated, taken aback.

‘It's nothing to do with Aidan,' she said again. ‘This is you and me.'

She'd got me in a soft spot. I leaned back on my elbows, fists clenched tight, and ground my teeth less angrily. ‘Did something happen today?'

‘Between me and Aidan? Sort of.'

‘No, Allie, for God's
sake.
In real life. Did something just
happen
?'

‘Yeah,' she said. ‘Yeah.' Glancing up at me from beneath her blunt spikes of hair, she nibbled on her thumbnail, her manga eyes big and nervous. ‘Never mind that, Nick, I want to talk about you. Did you meet Orl—'

‘Allie, shut up! What happened to you?' I was tempted to grab her, but that might scare her away, so I sat forward, dug my fingers into my upper arms and tried to hold her with my gaze. It was OK, though: she wasn't trying to escape. She only looked sheepish.

‘I lost my phone,' she said.

‘You what?'

‘I lost my –'

‘Yeah, yeah. I mean, how?'

Nibble, nibble on the thumbnail. ‘Well. Somebody took it.'

‘
What?
'

‘I don't mind, Nick. Don't get angry, please.'

‘Who was it?' I was trying not to yell but I wasn't doing very well. Mickey, had Mickey hurt her?

‘Just some kids. Please don't get angry. I didn't like it. I didn't want it, I never used it.'

Quite. That was true, and I knew why. Look what happened last time.

I made a big effort to keep my voice down. ‘Who was it, Allie? Honest, I won't lose my temper. Please tell me who.'

She shrugged. ‘Didn't know them.'

I thought about the swaggering Reservoir Puppies on the High Street that day. Could have been them. Could have been anyone. ‘Didn't you?' I asked darkly.

‘No. I didn't. That's true, honest.'

‘Well, bloody Dad seems to think it was me.'

‘Dad's a bit irrational at the moment.' Nibble nibble. ‘He was upset.'

‘Princess,' I said. ‘Goddess.'

‘Yeah. I know.' She took her thumbnail out of her mouth. ‘I'm sorry, Nick. Sorry about that.'

‘It's not your fault.' I had never thought so, and I wasn't about to start now. ‘It's OK.'

We sat there in silence. I didn't feel so much like crying any more. The atmosphere was quite easy, considering I was blazingly angry.

‘Did you get hurt?'

‘Not really.' She pulled her pyjama sleeve down over her knuckles and I frowned, noticing for the first time the dressing on her hand. ‘Just my hand, a bit. They dragged it out of my hand and it scraped on a wall. That's all.'

Which meant, in Allie-speak, that they'd slammed it against the wall and it was badly grazed. Before I could stop myself it was out. ‘So where was your Aidan then?'

She didn't withdraw, all cold and hurt. She didn't bite my head off. She said, ‘He was scared, you can't blame him. Of course he was scared.'

I nearly said:
Yeah, but that's hardly going to happen to him twice …

I bit my tongue and restrained myself. Instead I said, ‘I wish you could let him go.'

‘So do I,' she said.

There didn't seem to be anything more to say, so we sat in our companionable silence for a while. Downstairs we could hear the parents moving around, subdued, uncommunicative. I heard the recognisable plop of a cork coming out of a bottle. A new one? At this time of night?

Not long afterwards the stairs creaked beneath Mum's tired tread, and then came the light drum roll of her fingertips
against Allie's door on the other side of the landing.

Allie's eyes met mine and we held our breaths.

‘Allie?' said Mum.

Allie's door creaked open. Silence. Then, very softly, it was closed again. Mum paused in the hallway outside my room and Allie clamped her lips together as if she might giggle. When I scowled she put her hand over her mouth, but her eyes were still crinkled with laughter. Grinning, I crossed the fingers of both hands.