The New Neighbours (8 page)

There were murmurs of, “Yeah, Scott. OK man. Didn't know she was one of yours,” as they dragged their leader to his feet and shuffled off down the road.

Annabel, still bemused at the speed and the weirdness of the whole incident, watched them disappear round the corner, and then turned back to her rescuer. She saw Scott Manders and fell in love.

“They won't come near you no more,” he said. “'Ere, pack up your stuff and I'll take you 'ome.”

Still in a daze, Annabel shoved the pile of books back into her ripped duffel bag, and at a nod from Scott climbed into the passenger seat of the Bedford. He drove to the entrance of Dartmouth Circle without saying anything else, and when he pulled up outside her house, Annabel stared at him.

“How did you know where I live?” she asked.

“Seen you around,” Scott replied. “What's your name?”

“Annabel,” whispered Annabel. “Annabel Haven.”

“See you around then, Bel,” he said, and reaching across her he opened the passenger door.

For one wild moment Annabel thought he was going to kiss her; his face was so close she could feel his breath on her cheek, but he simply pulled the strap that served as a handle and the door swung open. For a moment more, Annabel sat unmoving, then she slid out on to the pavement, reaching back for her bag, and closed the door behind her. She looked back at Scott through the open window.

He grinned at her. “See you little girl,” he said, and she heard a voice quite unlike her own say, “See you, Scott.” He nodded as if in confirmation, and then letting in the clutch, he pulled away, round the Circle and out on to the main road.

Annabel stood staring, long after the van had disappeared. It was April, she was seventeen and Scott Manders had entered her life. When she finally turned and went into the house, it was as if she were a different person. Everything looked familiar, but smaller somehow, and of no substance or consequence. She went upstairs to her room and with great care mended her school bag. She had no intention of mentioning the incident to Mum or Chantal. Her own world was still spinning round her, but of one thing she was certain, they should know nothing of Scott. He was hers and to share him and what he had done for her, putting him up to public view, would diminish him.

She looked at herself in the mirror, trying to see herself as he might see her, but her face looked the same. Her dark shoulder-length hair was scraped back off her face, and knotted into a careless bundle at the nape of her neck. The short side-pieces had escaped and hung round her face in untidy spirals. She wasn't allowed to wear make-up at school, and her face looked washed out. She had large dark eyes, which she considered were nothing until she had outlined them in heavy eyeliner and mascara. She stared hard at her reflection. Scott had warned the Pack to stay away from “this woman”. Annabel had never been referred to as a woman before—girl, of course, young lady, all too often in that patronising way so many adults have, but woman? No.

She said the word aloud, slowly, letting it sit on her tongue: “Woman.” And although nothing had happened to her physically, Annabel felt quite different.

So it began, Annabel's secret life, the life where she was Bel and she rode round in a clapped-out Bedford van; when A-levels were forgotten or dismissed as irrelevant. Not for Scott the wasted hours spent labouring over essays.

“Get real, Bel!” he laughed. “What good is mouthing off about Macbeth going to do me? No profit in that! Me, I'm going to be a millionaire by the time I'm twenty-one.” Three years to go—Scott was eighteen, now living alone in a bedsit at the Friary end of Belcaster, and Annabel envied him the place of his own, his privacy and his independence. There was no one to nag Scott about tidying his room, or tell him what time he must be in, or that he treated the place like a hotel. Scott could come and go as and when he chose, and the difference that Annabel perceived between their lifestyles, seemed to her a gulf the size of the Grand Canyon. Scott was a man, with the freedom of a man, while she was still a schoolgirl and generally treated as such.

Nobody else noticed the transition of which she was so aware. Mum and Chantal treated her as they always had done, and Dad, when she saw him, gave her hugs and treats and called her his beautiful girl, but he did that to Chantal as well, so it meant nothing. The only person who saw her as she now felt herself to be, was Scott, and the fact that their meetings were spontaneous and casual, made them even more addictive. Annabel woke every morning with the agonising uncertainty of whether today might be a “Scott day”. Nothing was ever arranged between them, Annabel knew that wouldn't do for Scott, so she never knew when he might put in an appearance. Sometimes she didn't see him for days and she would wander round the streets of Belcaster after school in the hope of bumping into him. She never did, and he never offered any explanation for these absences. He just turned up again another day and waited, parked in his old Bedford van round the corner from the High, and in the mass exodus at the end of the school day, she would slip into the passenger seat and they would be away.

Sometimes they drove to the broad beach at Belmouth, where Scott was teaching her to drive; others to somewhere he had “a meet”. Then she would sit in the van while he did whatever business he had to do, and then drive home. She never questioned what his business was. It was enough to be with him for an hour or two; to exchange passionate kisses in the back of the van before he brought her home, dropping her at the entrance to Dartmouth Circle. Then with carefully adjusted dress, Annabel would revert to Belcaster High School girl, sling her disreputable duffel bag over her shoulder and slouch her way into the Circle and home to another evening of homework and kitchen supper.

There were some evenings when Annabel's lips felt so bruised that she was sure they must be swollen and her mother must see, but Angela had problems of her own and greeted the girls absently when she got in.

It worried Annabel sometimes that Scott never did any more than kiss and fondle her. He would sometimes take her blouse and bra off and nuzzle against her, but he never seemed to want to do It. At first the thought that he might, and that she might not do it right scared her, but as they met more and more often and he still didn't do It to her, or even try, this worried her much more. Maybe he didn't find her attractive after all. She knew that other girls at school had done It, at least they said they had, and discussed with stifled laughter the different attractions of various types of condom—raspberry-flavoured, ribbed, or studded for extra pleasure. Annabel would join in cautiously, anxious to be included so that she could learn from their experience. She bought three different types of condom from a machine in the public loos in the shopping centre, and in the privacy of her own room got one out of each packet to compare them. She blew into each to see its shape, and rubbed them against her cheek to see how they felt. She touched the flavoured one with the tip of her tongue and a faint raspberry taste lingered for a moment.

“How do you get them on, for goodness sake?” she wondered aloud. “Do I do it? Does Scott do it himself?” Again, she was in agony in case when the time came, as she fully intended it to, she got it all wrong and Scott turned away, or worse still, laughed at her inexperience. However, she always carried one packet with her now, and not knowing which were the best, she chose the one that promised “Exquisite sensation for both partners”. She kept it in the little bag in which she carried her Tampax and waited in an torment of anticipation and fear, as she slipped between her secret life, her Scott life, and the mundane life of home and school.

Avril, her best friend since infant school, was her alibi. Annabel had to confide in her to cover her meetings with Scott, but not even to Avril did she tell all. She simply told her enough to enlist her excited aid, but she did not, could not, speak of how she changed the moment she was with Scott; how she became Bel, with Annabel sloughed off like a constricting skin. All Avril knew was that Annabel was meeting a guy Angela Haven would not approve of, and overcome with the romance of it all, Avril was prepared to cover for her friend.

“I went round to Avril's to discuss our history project,” Annabel would say to her mother, when Bel had actually been learning to control high-speed skids on the wide sands of Belmouth Bay. “We have to get it done by half-term, so we're dividing the research and sharing our findings.” Angela Haven believed her, she had no reason not to. Most evenings she wasn't home from work herself until six-thirty. Annabel was careful about time and so far Angela did not know that the daughter she found dutifully sitting at the desk in her bedroom struggling with an essay on Keats, had scurried into the house and up the stairs only momentsbefore her own arrival.

Chantal continued to smile sweetly at her. “Scott Manders,” she repeated. “I've seen you get into his van.

“Oh him,” Annabel said carelessly, “he just gives me a lift home sometimes.”

Chantal looked at her pityingly. “I'm not stupid you know,” she said.

“I do notice when you only get home minutes before Mum.”

“I go round to Avril's. We're working together on our history project.”

“Yeah?” Chantal was unimpressed. “And I'm Pamela Anderson. Get real, Anna, I know you're off with Scott Manders. He's your bit of rough.” Chantal was not exactly sure what this phrase meant, but she'd heard it on TV as a description of someone who looked remarkably like Scott and it seemed appropriate. She was not prepared for Annabel's reaction. Annabel picked up the jug of water she had just put on the supper table and with great deliberation, poured it all over Chantal's head. Chantal spluttered and shrieked with rage as Annabel grasped her by her wet hair and pulled her head back so that she had to look up at her.

“If you say one word to Mum, or anyone else, about Scott Manders or anybody I chose to go about with, I will tell her about Mike Callow's New Year party.”

It was a dire threat and Chantal put up her hands in mock surrender. “OK, OK, it was a joke. You keep quiet about New Year's Eve and I won't tell Mum.”

“Won't tell Mum what?” asked Angela struggling into the kitchen, her hands full of supermarket bags.

“That I upset a jug of water over her,” Annabel said smoothly as she refilled the jug and set it on the kitchen table in readiness for the evening meal. Then she relieved her mother of some of the bags.

“How on earth did you come to do that?” Angela asked wearily, surveying Chantal's wet head and clothes and the puddle on the kitchen floor.

“She was cheeky,” Annabel replied lightly. “She won't be again.”

“You mean you did it on purpose?” Angela was exasperated. “For

God's sake, Annabel, grow up. Chantal, go and get dry. I really have got enough to do without having to act as referee to you two. Annabel, put the potatoes on and then put this shopping away.”

Annabel, pleased to have escaped further explanation, changed the water in the saucepan of potatoes she had peeled before school that morning and put them on the gas. Since Dad had left and Mum had started to work full-time again, the girls were much more involved with household chores.

It was odd without Dad; Annabel was still not really used to it and missed his company with a dull ache of longing. She didn't like living in an all-female household, or being a statistical “one-parent family”, but at least she could escape from time to time, escape from being Annabel Haven, lower-sixth pupil at Belcaster High and become Bel, who was now a competent high-speed driver, who had a packet of condoms in her duffel bag and intended to put them to use in the very near future.

“Did you know that number seven is going to be student house, Mum?” asked Chantal at supper.

“Is it?” Angela was not that interested. “From the university?”

“Yes, most of them have to live out after their first year. It'll be great having some people our age in this geriatric place.”

“Hardly your age, darling,” Angela smiled. “You're only just fifteen, and if they're second and third years they'll probably be in their twenties.”

Annabel smirked across at her sister at this remark, but Chantal was undeterred. “Even so,” she said, “it'll be nice to have someone between Jon Forrester and old Mrs Peters.”

“There's always Emma and Oliver Hooper,” Annabel said evilly and drew a look of loathing from Chantal.

“I'm sure you'll get to know them, darling,” Angela said, unaware of the undercurrent around her.

At that moment the phone rang and Chantal jumped up to answer it. “If that's David,” hissed Angela, “say I'm busy. I'll call him back.”

“Hallo.” Chantal's face broke into a wreath of smiles as she heard the caller speak, then without covering the mouthpiece to protect anyone's privacy, she called out clearly, “It isn't David, Mum. It's Dad.” Later that evening, when Chantal had gone to bed and Annabel was in her room wrestling with a French translation, Angela poured herself a large whisky and ginger and curled her legs into the big armchair. The phone call from Ian had unsettled her and the phone call from David had not come.

It was over six months now since Ian had left and the wound of his going had only the softest of scar tissue protecting it. The cold empty space he had left in her life, in the fabric of her being, was as cold and empty as the day he had gone to move in with Desirée. When she had heard the name of her husband's mistress, Angela always used that word with its sordid overtones in preference to “girlfriend” which sounded cosy and romantic, when she had heard Desirée's name it drew a harsh laugh.

“Desirée! The desired one!” she barked. “How appropriate!”

“She pronounces it Deseray,” Ian replied calmly.

“I don't give a toss how she pronounces it,” Angela snapped. “You certainly desire her.”