Noughts and Crosses (8 page)

I shook my head.

‘Your mum will hit the roof and then the nearest orbiting satellite!’

‘It’s Monday. She’s visiting friends,’ I told him.

‘What about your dad?’

‘You know he’s never home during the week. He’s at our town house.’

‘And Minerva?’

‘I don’t know. Probably with her boyfriend. Don’t worry about me, Callum. I’ll stay here for a little while longer.’

‘Not for too long, OK?’

‘OK.’ I handed back his jacket.

Almost reluctantly, he took it. Then he walked away. I watched, willing him to turn around, to turn back. But he didn’t. It was as if I was outside myself, watching the two of us. More and more I was beginning to feel like a spectator in my own life. I had to make a choice. I had to decide what kind of friend Callum was going to be to me. But what surprised – and upset me – was that I even had to think about it.

‘D’you know what time it is?’ Mum ranted the moment I set foot through the door. She and I rarely had any other conversation.

‘Sorry,’ I mumbled.

‘Your dinner’s in the oven – dried out and not fit for eating by now.’

‘It’ll be fine, Mum.’

‘So where have you been until ten o’clock at night?’ Dad surprised me by asking. He didn’t usually nag me about coming home late. That was Mum’s department.

‘Well?’ he prompted when I didn’t answer.

What did he want me to say? ‘
Well, I said goodbye to Sephy at the beach almost two hours ago, but then I hid in the shadows and followed her home to make sure she got back OK. Then it took me over an hour to walk home
.’ Yeah, right! That little snippet of truth would go down like a lead balloon.

‘I was just out walking. I had a lot to think about.’ And that part at least was the truth.

‘Are you OK, son?’ Dad asked. ‘I went down to Heathcroft as soon as I heard what was going on, but the police wouldn’t let me in.’

‘Why not?’

‘I had no official business on the premises – unquote.’
Dad couldn’t mask the bitterness in his voice.

‘Those rotten, stinking . . .’

‘Jude, not at the dinner table please,’ Mum admonished.

Glancing at Jude, I saw he had enough anger in him for everyone else around. He was scowling at me like I was the one who’d had Dad kept off the school premises.

‘So how was school? How were your lessons, son?’ Dad asked quietly.

The honest answer or the acceptable one?

‘I was OK, Dad,’ I fibbed. ‘Once we got into school it was all right.’

Except that the teachers had totally ignored us, and the Crosses had used any excuse to bump into us and knock our books on the floor, and even the noughts serving in the food hall had made sure they served everyone else in the queue before us. ‘It was fine.’

‘You’re in there now, Callum. Don’t let any dagger swine drive you out – you understand?’

‘I understand.’

‘Excuse me.’ Mum rounded on Dad. ‘But when I say I don’t want swearing at the dinner table, that applies to everyone – including you.’

‘Sorry, love,’ Dad said ruefully, winking conspiratorially at us into the bargain.

‘You were on the telly,’ Jude told me. ‘So was your “friend”. The whole world heard what she said . . .’

‘She didn’t mean it like that.’ The words slipped out before I could stop them. Big mistake.

‘She didn’t mean it?’ Jude scoffed. ‘Have you lost your mind? How can you not mean to say something like that?
She meant it all right.’

‘That family are all the same.’ Mum sniffed. ‘I see Miss Sephy is growing up to be just like her mother.’

I had to bite my lip at that. I knew better than to argue.

‘You’re better off out of that house,’ Dad told Mum vehemently.

‘You don’t have to tell me twice,’ Mum agreed at once. ‘I miss the money but I wouldn’t go back for all the stars in space. Anyone who can put up with that stuck-up cow Mrs Hadley is a better person than me.’

‘You were friends once . . .’ I reminded her, spooning some totally dried out mashed potato into my mouth.

‘Friends? We were never friends,’ Mum snorted. ‘She patronised me and I put up with it ’cause I needed a job – that’s all.’

That wasn’t how I remembered it. A few years ago and a lifetime away, Mum and Mrs Hadley had been really close. Mum was Minerva’s, then Sephy’s, nanny and a general mother’s helper from the time Minerva was born. In fact, I was closer to Sephy than I’d ever been to anyone, even my own sister Lynette who was my best friend in this house. I remembered when I was a toddler and Sephy was just a baby – I’d helped to bathe her and change her nappy. And when she got older, we played hide-and-seek and catch and tag in the Hadley grounds, whilst Mum and sometimes Mrs Hadley watched us and chatted and laughed. I still don’t know what happened to change all that. One week Mrs Hadley and Mum were like best friends and the next week, Mum and I were no longer welcome anywhere near the Hadley house. That was over three years ago now.

I still sometimes wondered how Mrs Hadley expected Sephy and I to go from being so close to not seeing each other at all? Sephy told her it was impossible. I told my mum the same thing. Neither of them listened. But it didn’t matter. Sephy and I still saw each other at least every other day and we’d never stop. We’d promised each other. The most sacred of promises – an oath sealed with our blood. We just couldn’t tell anyone about it, that’s all. We had our own world, our own secret place on the beach where no-one went and where no-one would ever find us – not if they didn’t know where to look. It was a small space, tiny really, but it was
ours
.

‘Shush, everyone. The news is on,’ Dad admonished.

I held my breath.

What happened at Heathcroft wasn’t the first item of news at least. The first item was about the Liberation Militia.

‘Today Kamal Hadley, Home Office Minister, declared that there would be no hiding place, no safe haven for those noughts misguided enough to join the Liberation Militia.’ The newscaster’s face disappeared to be replaced by that of Sephy’s dad outside the Houses of Parliament. His face seemed to fill the whole screen.

‘Isn’t it true, Mr Hadley, that your government’s decision to allow selected noughts in our schools was as a direct result of pressure from the Liberation Militia?’

‘Not at all,’ Sephy’s dad immediately denied. ‘This government does not allow itself to be blackmailed by an illegal terrorist group. We acted on a
P.E.C.
directive that this government had been on the verge of implementing anyway.’

My dad snorted at that.

‘Our decision to allow the crème-de-la-crème of nought youth to join our educational institutions makes sound social and economic sense. In a civilized society, equality of education for those noughts with sufficient aptitude . . .’

I tuned out at that. Sephy’s dad hadn’t changed since the last time I’d spoken to him which was yonks ago now. He never used one word where twenty patronizing ones would do. I didn’t like him much. Correction! Pompous twit! I didn’t like him at all. I didn’t like any of Sephy’s family. They were all the same. Minerva was a snob. Her mum was a bitch and her dad was a git. They all looked at us noughts through their nostrils.

‘The Liberation Militia are misguided terrorists and we will leave no stone unturned in our efforts to bring them to justice . . .’ Sephy’s dad was still at it. I was about to mentally switch off again, but then Jude did something that brought me out of my daydream.

‘Long live the Liberation Militia!’ My brother punched the air, his fingers locked in a fist so tight that I reckoned it would surely hurt to straighten them again.

‘Too right, son.’ Dad and Jude exchanged a knowing look, before they both turned back to the telly. I frowned at them, then turned to look at Mum. She immediately glanced away. I looked back at Jude and Dad. There was something going on. Something to do with the Liberation Militia and my brother and my dad. I didn’t mind that. What I did mind was that I was being excluded.

‘There have been unconfirmed reports that the car bomb found outside the International Trade Centre last
month was the work of the Liberation Militia,’ the newscaster continued. ‘What attempts are being made to find those responsible?’

‘I can tell you that our highest priority is to find those responsible and bring them to swift and irrevocable justice. Political terrorism which results in the death or serious injury of even one Cross always has been and always will be a capital crime. Those found guilty will suffer the death sentence, no two ways about it . . .’

Blah! Blah! Blah! Sephy’s dad droned on for at least another minute, not letting the newscaster get a word in edgeways, sideways or any other ways. I tuned out again, waiting for him to finish, hoping he wouldn’t.

‘Sephy, your dad’s on the telly.’ Mother opened my bedroom door to tell me.

I mean, big deal! Mother still thought I was five, bouncing up and down with excitement at the sight of my daddy on the TV.

‘Sephy!’

‘Yes, Mother. I’m watching.’ I pressed my TV remote control to switch it on. Anything for a quiet life! I got the right channel first time. How lucky!

‘. . . is misguided to say the least.’ Dad didn’t look too
pleased. ‘Minister Pelango is very young and doesn’t realize that the rate of change in our society needs to be slow and steady . . .’

‘Any slower and we’d be going backwards,’ Minister Pelango interjected.

Dad didn’t looked too pleased at that either, though it made me smile.

‘We call ourselves civilized, yet noughts have more rights in other
P.E.C.
countries than they do here,’ Pelango continued.

‘And in plenty of other countries they have a lot less,’ Dad snapped back.

‘And that makes the way we treat them right, does it?’

‘If our ruling party politics don’t gel with Mr Pelango’s beliefs, then maybe he should do the honourable thing and resign his seat on the government,’ Dad said silkily.

‘No chance!’ came the immediate reply. ‘Too many people in this government live in the past. It’s my duty to drag them into the present or none of us – noughts or Crosses – will have a decent future.’

Mum left my room. The click of my bedroom door closing was immediately followed by the press of another TV channel button. I didn’t care which one. Any other channel would do. I’d grown up with politics, politics, politics being rammed down my throat. I wasn’t interested in being caught up in it in any manner, shape or form. Why couldn’t Mother understand that?

When at last Kamal Hadley had stopped dribbling on, Heathcroft School appeared on the telly. Of course, they didn’t bother showing the fact that the police officers who were meant to be guarding us were letting the crowd get to us to poke and pinch and punch. Somehow the camera was never in the right place to show that the whole back of my jacket was awash with Cross spit. Surprise! Surprise! There wasn’t even a hint of any of that.

‘The noughts admitted to Heathcroft High School met with some hostility today . . .’ the news reporter began.

Some hostility? This reporter’s middle name was obviously ‘Euphy’, short for Euphemism!