Phosphorescence (2 page)

When I was much younger, as soon as I could come back from school I would run up to Dad's study, where the curved window and the large telescope gave a wide panoramic view of the marshes. If I saw his familiar figure somewhere out on the edge of the water, light dancing silver streaks around him, I would hurry out with Cactus, following the path between pink-tinged heather clumps, sometimes taking half an hour or more to reach him.

These days I find some parts of Dad's job really embarrassing: for example, in the summer he drives around with binoculars on the beaches and if he sees
a plume of smoke he zooms across and throws sand over people's barbecues.

‘I'm sorry, it's the Trust's policy, and we've had problems with fire every summer,' he always says. If they're understanding and easy with him, he stands at a distance and lets them finish cooking, but if they're rude or try to threaten him, he pours a bottle of water right into the flames and he doesn't even move the sausages or whatever they're cooking. I try to avoid going with him when he's doing this sort of beach patrol, it's just too cringe-making, and I don't like to get involved when he takes school parties out on to Salt Head and he tells his repertoire of a whole lot of lame jokes which I have heard too many times before. But when we go out on our own together, and he shows me where the seals go to have their pups and he tells me how a sea mist comes in on a hot summer day when the wind is in the north, I am caught up in the magic of the coast that is my home and I succumb to its spell. Today is not magical, although spring beckons. A cloud like a purple bruise hangs over the village. The air is mild and the wind has dropped to a breeze which catches my hair and whips it into my eyes.

I wiggle the front wheel of my bike hopefully. Perhaps it will fix itself in a minute. A boy skims past on a skateboard, but U-turns gracefully back to me.

‘What's happened?' He crouches by my bike. He has thick hair flopping over his forehead and I am struck too by the hollow of his cheekbone and his mouth. He looks at me and a grin bursts on my face involuntarily and unstoppably. I can't stop grinning
as he takes my bike and turns it upside down on the edge of the road. In fact I have to turn away and push my hair back from my face, dragging my hands across my eyes and mouth to make myself sensible again. A small self-administered slap helps, but I have a sneaking feeling that he might have seen me do it. So now he will think I am a total weirdo. I turn back to him, suddenly aware again that he is very kindly fixing my bike and needs praise and attention.

‘You've bent the wheel,' he says, spinning it with his hand flat, hovering just above the ridged rubber of the tyre. ‘Come back with me, and I can fix it for you in the workshop.' He gestures over his shoulder. I know where he is pointing. I know who he is. How could I not in such a small village? His name is Josh Christie, and his dad is a fisherman and a boatbuilder called Ian. The Christies used to live a few miles away in a smaller village than Staitheley but recently they moved into a big boatyard which sprawls on to the road between wide cobbled walls just along the quay from our house. I know all about them, or a version of them, because Ian Christie grew up with my dad, and they were friends once.

Josh gives me his skateboard to carry, and he wheels my bike into the boatyard. In the open shed, the hull of a boat is suspended from ropes that are wrapped around the beams, and curls of wood shavings litter the floor. Outside, a line of different-coloured buoys glow red and orange against the flint wall. I have been to this boatyard many times, before the Christies came to live here, but now my dad prefers to drive to Salt. He avoids Ian Christie like a
bad smell, and says I'm imagining it when I challenge him. I can't be bothered with the way grown-ups fall out. It obviously happens more and more as you get older; just look at all my grandma's cronies, arguing and having feuds. Everyone knows everyone here, and although I find it pretty annoying at times, mostly it is a friendly feeling.

Josh has the wheel off my bike, and whistling absently he clamps it into a vice on the workbench.

‘How do you know what to do?'

I wasn't really expecting to bump into a boy today, especially not Josh Christie, although as he is the only boy anywhere near my age around the village, I suppose he is the only one I am at all likely to see. But me and Nell, who is the person apart from Cactus that I am closest to on earth, and who I have sat next to at school in every class since we started at primary together, have been eyeing him up on the bus for a while. Not that he'd have noticed us lowly fourteen-year-olds. But it's so weird that now here he is, very interested in my bike but not actually saying anything to me. The silence yawns between us and I babble to fill it.

‘I'm catching the bus to Flixby to meet my friend Nell at the cinema. Do you want to come?'

Ohmigod. I have to dig my fingernails into the palm of my hand to stop myself apologizing straight away, and I bite my lip so as not to take the words back. That will only make things worse. Of course he will say no. What an idiot I am. Nell will crucify me. I can just imagine exactly what she'll say: ‘You can't just invite boys to come to the cinema with you! It's
like going on a date, to be anywhere near a cinema with a boy. You know that, Lola, don't you?'

Josh straightens up from gazing intently at the vice and the bent wheel and looks at me.

‘What are you going to see?'

‘Err, umm, yess . . .' Oh God. Why did I say the cinema? I suppose it made sense because it is where I'm meeting Nell, but we haven't planned to actually
see
anything. We might go to Woolworths and look through the CDs. Maybe buy one. But seeing a film? Not a priority today, not with only five pounds left to last me until the end of the holidays, unless I get a job. I could kick myself. Of course he would want to know what we are seeing. What might be on? Think of a film. There must be a film title somewhere in my brain. Any old one will do. I shift from foot to foot, rolling my eyes. Josh, looking perplexed, stares at me then turns back to the wheel.

‘I've straightened this, and I've moved the brake pads, so I think it'll be OK now.'

He begins to untwist the vice, spinning the bar, bouncing the tyre and whistling.

‘Oh no!' Accidentally my thoughts erupt out of my mouth: the only film title to ping into my otherwise blank and panicking mind is a French one. The one I read the review of this morning in the paper. How could anyone possibly try to speak even two or three French words to a boy they have just met? I'll have to get round it somehow.

‘It's that French one about . . . about . . .' Shit! I should never have pursued this line of chatting. Never. The French film is about kissing. Nothing else,
just kissing. The reviewer was scathing about it. Said it was a teen flick all dressed up and nowhere to go and it would give you glandular fever just to watch it. Oops, how do I convey this to Josh without mentioning anything about snogging? Impossible. Gulping, I grab the handlebars of the bike as Josh tightens the last nut, and mumble, ‘Better go. Thanks. G'dbye.'

‘Hey. Wait.' Josh stands in front of my bike, blocking the path to the road. His hair flops across his forehead, and he pushes it back impatiently. ‘I'd like to see the French film. I'll meet you outside the cinema at two o'clock.' He grins suddenly. ‘You do mean the one about . . . ?' and he pauses, his eyes lit with laughter.

I can feel my face turning scarlet. I press my hands on my cheeks, but I feel as if I am about to melt, and escape is the only answer. Anyway, I am late for the bus. I'm going to have to pedal like a lunatic to get there on time. I swing up on to the bicycle and, wobbling into my stride, say, as casually as I can muster, ‘Mmm. Yes. That one. I'm really glad you can come. Good.'

So off I go, blathering away like a total idiot, as I explain to Nell in Burger King opposite the cinema. Nell drains her Coke and rolls the paper beaker along the table towards me. ‘Well, you're not a total one hundred per cent idiot, because he's coming, isn't he?'

Mindlessly, I roll the cup back. ‘I don't suppose he'll turn up.'

‘Well, so what?' Nell stands up, looking at her
watch. ‘It's not like we came specially to meet him, or planned the whole thing around him, is it? If he doesn't come, we're saved the embarrassment of sitting with a boy watching snogging for two hours.'

Collapsing on one another, giggling, we stagger out and across the road to the cinema. No one is waiting for us by the door.

‘He's late,' I point out. Nell does not reply. I nudge her. ‘He's late, I said. I don't think he's coming. We should go in or we'll miss it.'

Nell grabs my hand and pinches it.

‘No he's not late,' she says under her breath. ‘He's there.'

The Hollywood cinema fills the block in the small terraced side street of Flixby. At one end the road gives way to the main street down to the station, at the other a car park defined by high flint walls is the site of the Tuesday market. Today, though, under the spilling weight of a blossom-heavy cherry tree, a small, dark blue motorbike has drawn up. Opening the box on the back of the bike, the rider takes off his helmet and gloves and stows them away before turning towards the cinema, unzipping his jacket as he approaches. It is Josh.

How could anyone have ever imagined that Josh Christie would become friends with me? Nell says it's because it's the holidays and none of his friends live as near as I do, but she admitted she was only jealous, so I just giggle when she says it on the phone a week after the cinema. As I put the phone down and rush
through the kitchen, I shout to Mum, ‘I'm going round to the Christies for tea.'

Mum is lying on the sofa doing nothing, which seems to be the way she spends most of her time at the moment. In a way I am grateful because it means she isn't being nosy about my life. Normally she would want to know what it was like there, what we talk about and, nosiest of all, what I feel about Josh. Mum is one of those people who like to talk about feelings. She used to hate me watching television on Saturday mornings until one day she sat with me through an episode of
Sabrina, the Teenage Witch
, where Sabrina went on a Guilt Trip on a bus. Mum was fantastic.

‘God, I wish there'd been programmes like that in my day to help me deal with adolescence,' she said after the programme was finished. ‘Tell me, Lola, how do you sort out that sort of thing? Are you and your friends open about it?'

‘Er, yup.'

I am hoping this is the answer which will get her off my back quickest. Sometimes I feel she is trying to get a torch and look at all the corners of my mind that I don't think about, and I wish I was not an only child so there'd be someone else for her to focus her attention on. Or else I wish she would get a job, but when I suggest it, she rolls her eyes and says, ‘There isn't much I can do here apart from waitressing in the pub. The media world is limited to the church newsletter and I don't think Enid Selby would like me to help with that, do you?'

It's true, I can't see Mum reporting on local jam
sales at the Women's Institute and taking what she finds out back to Mrs Selby, widow of a former rector, to edit for her. It is a long way from news documentaries, I guess. She may as well stick with the self-help books I have noticed piling up around her bed. The latest is called
Boundaries: Where I End and You Begin
. I am grateful to this book, however daft it sounds, because I think it must be what has stopped her cross-questioning me about Josh.

It is only a few minutes from my house on the quay to the Christies' and I run most of the way, wanting as much time there as possible today because tomorrow I am meant to start work on Salt Head with Dad. He's going to pay me to help him log the birds and other wildlife for one week. He is supposed to be doing some sort of report for English Nature about the seals and their environment. Although I love it on the island, and I have been looking forward to working with Dad, I am a bit torn now. I just want to hang out with Josh and Nell and listen to music and stuff. I have spent so much of my time with Dad out on the marshes, I can't help feeling it will be a bit lonely and quiet. And I'll have to wear wellies and an anorak all the time, which is such a waste of all the new clothes I bought with my Christmas money and have hardly worn as I am always in school uniform or wet-weather kit.

Josh's mum, Caroline, is making bread when I arrive there, and the kitchen is warm and friendly and very untidy.

‘Hello, Lola, come and have some tea.' She
smiles, and I sit down in front of a patch of flour. ‘Do you fancy doing some kneading?'

She gives me a piece of dough, and I cut a bit off for Sadie, Josh's five-year-old sister, who has sidled up next to me.

‘What shall we make?' Sadie whispers. She has the cutest dimples. I grin at her and we start making a fat dough mermaid. Something about Caroline is so warm and encouraging that I start telling her about the work I am meant to be doing.

‘I feel a bit guilty saying to Dad that I don't want to do it, and it would be nice to have the money,' I explain, almost telling myself as much as her, ‘but he only gave me the job to be kind, because he doesn't really need me. There is a proper student coming to help tomorrow. He just thinks he shouldn't let me down.'

Caroline squidges the dough into bread tins and slides them into the oven. She looks at me with a kind of arrested expression then she says, ‘Lola, I've got an idea. Why don't you work for me? I need some help with Sadie this holidays while we are getting the sailing school up and running. I can help Ian in the office if you could have Sadie for a few hours every day.'

I cannot believe my luck. To be paid for looking after Sadie, who is really adorable, in Josh's house with Josh around is brilliant.

Nell is almost sick with envy when I phone her to tell her.