Crossing the Line (18 page)

‘They put her in a home,' I said.

He twirled his pen in his fingers, made marks on the paper. ‘This is your grandmother.'

‘Yeah,' I said.

‘That's a shame. How's your sister?' he asked. Sketch, scribble.

‘Mad,' I said.

‘Well,' he said. ‘That's a little awkward for everyone, isn't it?'

‘You're telling me.' I scowled at the Bonny Banks.

‘Your parents,' he said. ‘They must be under a lot of pressure.'

‘Oh yeah,' I said bitterly. ‘Oh yeah.'

‘You too, of course.'

There was something in my throat, something sharp and obstructive that stopped me swallowing. I thought about Lola Nan. Before and after.

‘I just,' I said. ‘I just sort of. I just sort of don't want to see her again.'

Scribble, scribble, sketch. He turned slightly, raised one eyebrow.

‘Your grandmother, I take it. Not your sister.'

‘Uh-huh.' I glowered.

‘Joke, Geddes.'

‘I don't want to go and see her,' I said, biting my lip. ‘Maybe I think. Maybe I think she's better to just die now.'

‘Uh-huh. That's understandable.'

‘Are you taking the piss …Are you taking the mickey, sir?'

‘No. Do try and realise you're not God, Geddes.'

‘I thought that was your delusion, sir.'

‘Ha ha.'

‘I'm not trying to play God,' I said. ‘I'm not going to put a pillow over her face or anything.' I blushed, seeing as it had fleetingly occurred to me.

‘I never said you were. Stuff happens, Geddes. You can't stop it. It's not your fault.' His pen hovered in mid-air, and he growled, ‘Not
always
your fault.'

‘Oh, aye?'

‘Oh, aye.' His turn to mimic me. It made my eyes burn.

‘Know what? Everyone's breakable. Everyone's so fecking breakable.'

And then I burst into tears. Well, it wasn't that dramatic. I just felt my eyes fill, and when the lids couldn't hold any more the tears slid down my skin. I was horrified, mortified, but I couldn't stop them.

McCluskey let me cry for quite a long time, while he sat at his desk scribbling on his loose-leaf pad. When I blinked, rubbing my eyes with the flat of both hands until the paper swam in my vision, I noticed he was drawing clever little cartoon animals.

‘OK, Geddes.' He set down his pen at last, closed the pad and stood up to pull on his jacket. Patting his pocket, he frowned and looked around his desk, till his eyes lit on a packet of mints. He stuffed them in his pocket. Still trying to quit, then. ‘Miss your last class.' He glanced at his wall planner: council issue, teachers, for the use of. ‘Biology, is it? I'll give Mrs Monaghan an excuse for you.'

Turning, he looked for a moment as if he'd like to put an avuncular hand on my shoulder. But he also looked as if he knew how much I'd hate that.

‘You all right, Nick?'

I'd stopped crying by now. I stared at the ladder of sunlight across the window. ‘Yes. Fine.'

‘Well, you look like hell. Stay here till everyone's gone. Go out like that, you'll be dead in thirty seconds.'

‘Thanks, Mr McCluskey.'

‘OK. This too will pass, Geddes.'

He left me on my own then. After a few minutes my body unfroze and my eyesight cleared a bit more. I noticed his unwashed mug, stained with a ring of half-dried coffee at the bottom, and realised he wasn't that much of a control freak.

I really liked McCluskey a lot. For a bloody despot.

Every night for the rest of that week I left it till I knew Mum and Dad would be in bed, if not asleep – how could they sleep? – before going home. Mum would worry but I wanted her to worry. I called Orla, but I didn't get a chance to see her. Her mum had been frantic that night she came home so late – aye, that night
she
nearly drowned
me
– so Orla didn't like to go out again before she was due at her dad's. She was going to his place again this weekend, and I tried not to show my disappointment. She was going two weeks in a row because after that he was away for a month. Maybe I'd see plenty of her then. Meantime she went straight home from school and stayed in with her mum and her homework and some mutually agreeable DVDs.

When I closed the door on Friday night and stood in the hall, exhausted by late nights and walking, empty of anger, empty of everything but misery, the phone rang so abruptly and unexpectedly I couldn't for a moment think what the noise was.

Then I realised. I snatched up the handset before either
parent could have reached the one in their bedroom.

‘Nick? Is that you, Nick?'

I'd known before I picked up, because who else would phone at this hour? But this was unexpected. She recognised me. She remembered me. The pain of my betrayal of her took my breath away.

‘Nick?' she said again, and she sounded less certain of herself.

‘Lola Nan,' I said. ‘Yes. It's me.'

‘I don't know where the fridge is!'

‘Lola Nan, it's the middle of the night. Are you in trouble? Are you sick?'

‘No.' Hesitation. ‘I don't think I'm in trouble. Am I in trouble?'

‘Lola Nan, listen. You have to call a …' Call a what? A nurse, a carer, a warden? What did they even call these people? I'd never asked. ‘Call somebody. Is there an alarm?'

‘A what? Where am I?'

‘A cord or something. A button? Beside your bed. Please, Lola Nan …'

‘I don't need a button! Why would I need a button?' Her voice grew sharper, with an undercurrent of whine. ‘Boy! Is that you? Will you come and see me? I don't know what I'm doing here! I'm all alone! I haven't got anyone to talk to!'

‘What about … what about Geoffrey, Lola Nan?' I bit my lip and shut my eyes tight, feeling cruel.

‘Geoffrey's dead.' There were tears in her voice now. ‘Geoffrey's dead.'

Oh, hell. So she hadn't been talking to Granda, only to herself. No imaginary friend for poor Lola Nan.

‘I had someone to talk to at home. That nice boy. He doesn't come here, he doesn't come any more. Perhaps he can't find the way.'

‘I'll come. Honest I will, I promise. Just go to sleep, Lola Nan. Go to sleep or call somebody.'

‘What if he just can't find the way?'

I bit my lip harder. ‘Please, Lola Nan. Go to bed. Go to sleep. I promise I'll come.'

There was a long silence that made my heart slow to a painful aching throb.

‘All right. All right, boy. All right.'

My head swam with relief. Then I glanced up and saw with a sickening jolt that Dad was standing halfway down the stairs, staring at me. He was barefoot and he wore a pair of baggies and a thin misshapen Stone Roses T-shirt. His faded hair hung loose.

Swiftly I said, ‘Bye now,' and hung up.

‘Who was that?'

‘Nobody,' I said. He must have appeared in the last few seconds. All the same, I don't know why I was lying.

He took a breath, angry red dots blossoming on his cheekbones, but I knew he was trying to be civil. His lips, pressed together, had dark wine stains in the creases. When he opened them I saw his tongue, dark red too with
a stain his toothbrush hadn't shifted. ‘Nick …'

‘It was nobody,' I said again. ‘Nobody you know.'

Frowning slightly, Dad shifted his eyes to my left, but I willed him to look at me and he did. There was bemusement as well as annoyance in his expression.

‘Nick,' he said. ‘Nick, your mother says I didn't listen to you the other night and I don't suppose I did and I wonder if we could …'

A phone interrupted him. For a horrible instant I thought it was Lola Nan calling back, and I knew I couldn't bear to talk to her in front of Dad. In fact I just couldn't bear to talk to her, not again. Luckily, it took only a fraction of a second to recognise my own ringtone.

It could only be one person. Tugging out my Sellotaped phone, I turned my back on Dad, facing the front door and the world beyond.

‘Yeah, Orla,' I said.

After a little while I heard the stairs creak. Gazing into the pane of glass on the door, I saw his distorted reflection climbing slowly back up to his room. He didn't look back, and when he turned the corner at the landing I closed my eyes and leaned my forehead against the cool glass, giving myself an instant headache.

‘Orla,' I said. ‘I really need to see you.'

‘So what changed?' I asked her.

She shrugged. ‘My dad's work. He had to go away earlier than he thought. He cancelled.'

‘He shouldn't have done that.'

Her fingers went lifeless in mine, and her voice cooled.

‘My dad needs his work. It's important to him. Very important.'

Keep your mouth shut, Nick.

I squeezed her hand to make it mine again. ‘Well, I'm glad anyway.'

When in a hole, Nick, stop digging.

‘I'm glad you're still here,' I clarified. ‘I'm glad I could see you.'

Why was it that around Orla I was lamer than a three-legged dog? But she said, ‘Yeah. I know,' and her fingertips curled round the edge of my hand.

The early September sun was out, giving the grey sea a skin of light. We leaned on the chipped handrail watching the tide, which was right in, small dirty waves slapping the sea wall. A fag end, a plastic bottle and a piece of dirty orange rope rocked in the swell, sucked around in the motion of the water.

‘Why is that?' said Orla.

‘What?'

‘Why is there always a bit of orange rope? When you go to the seaside there's always a bit of orange rope.'

‘And half a tyre.'

‘Yeah, that's right.' She scraped up a handful of small stones and started to use the bottle for target practice. ‘And I dread to think what else.'

I thought, I went swimming in that. To impress this wumman, I went in there. Made my side itch just thinking about it.

‘I'm glad you never let me drown.'

She gave me a sidelong look that was almost a smile. ‘Me and all.'

I put my arm across her shoulders, happy when she leaned into me. A slight shiver ran across her skin, picked up and transmitted by my nerve endings. I liked this cooler weather.

‘How's your sister?' Orla flung the rest of her gravel. It spattered on the water's surface and sank.

‘Fine.' I was almost afraid to ask, in case she'd evaporated into small particles overnight, but I managed to say:
‘How's your mum?'

‘Kind of better.' Orla paused. ‘She's at work. Works Saturdays.'

‘I knew that.'

‘She wanted to take the day off. Y'know, when Dad cancelled, she thought she should spend time with me instead. Said she felt guilty, but I told her not to be stupid. Like she has anything to feel guilty about.'

We watched the milky sheen of light undulate on the water.

‘You know what she's really guilty about? Not coming to the trial. I talked to her yesterday.'

No comment, no comment, for God's sake. ‘At least you and your dad were there.' And me and Mum, sitting one row behind and six chairs along. Even at the trial I could barely take my eyes off Orla.

‘She should have been there from the start,' said Orla flatly. ‘Couldn't face it, couldn't face Kev. I could see that, but it was wrong. No, not wrong, a bad decision. I kind of fell out with her yesterday, about that and … about Allie.'

‘Did you?' I wasn't sure I wanted to hear this.

‘I don't think Mum should give her a hard time. Because, you know, she's fine, Allie. Far as I'm concerned, if she needs my brother she can have him. Because of what she did.'

What she did.

Whispered the last words he'd ever hear and told him
he wasn't going to die? Held him in her arms as he died anyway? Lied to him? The last thing the boy ever heard was a lie.

Little white lie.

‘Not that,' said Orla, like she could read my mind. ‘The trial, I mean.'

What Allie did at the trial, then. And that was to look into Kev's eyes with her own dead black ones, make him look away, make him shiver and rub his neck and scowl. And then she looked at the judge and she said:

He meant to do it
.

Kev said he didn't mean to do it. He panicked. It was an accident. He was defending himself, said Kev.

From the advocate depute's dark pessimistic scowl, I knew what she was thinking. She was thinking Kev was going to get off with culpable homicide and she was already seeing the tabloid headlines about his tiny wee sentence. She'd stopped making eye contact with Orla and her father, and I had a feeling that was a bad sign.

Mickey and his mother were in the front row, Mrs Naughton dabbing her eyes and occasionally blowing her nose. She looked gaunt and ill. Mickey, smart and well-groomed, frowned with concern for his mother. When he wasn't clasping her hand to his chest, he had his arm around her shoulder, squeezing her very, very gently as if she were made of delicate sentient crystal. Occasionally he threw troubled looks at his little brother, a picture of
respectable concern. They were doing their damnedest to look like the kind of Good Family a boy like Kev might come from (aye, in a parallel universe). And they were succeeding spectacularly – in my view, in the advocate depute's, and quite obviously the jury's. There was one straggle-blonde middle-aged woman in the second row of the jury whose big blue eyes just about filled every time she looked at Kev. And she looked at Kev a lot.

You ask me, Orla was right. Mrs Mahon made a bad mistake not turning up that morning. She couldn't face the post-mortem evidence, and she couldn't be in the same room as her son's killer. But the trouble was, the only grief-stricken mother in the place was Kev's, and you could feel sympathy leaking her way from the jury. Some of them probably had teenage kids. (Straggle-Blonde undoubtedly did.) They knew how easy it was for them to get in trouble (ain't it just). They knew a boy could go bad just through the company he chose to keep (really). They knew some kids were stuck between a rock and a hard place. Felt threatened and scared. Lots of kids carried knives. Maybe theirs did too. A tragic case, but there but for the grace of God …