Goose (5 page)

‘Come on, Nana. Let's go and get a burger,' I say, rolling out of the back of Aunty Jo's car when we arrive at L'Ancresse, where about twenty-five other cars are lined up with their boots open.

‘It's ten o'clock in the morning. You had your second bacon sandwich half an hour ago. Are you serious?' questions Aunty Jo.

I am deadly serious. I don't know what it is about hangovers that means my stomach loses the capacity to feel full, but I need to keep consuming or I might collapse. I lead Nana by the elbow and steer her to the burger van. She stands and watches me eat my body weight in beef, ketchup and bread, all the while telling me that it is important for me to breathe into my food.

By the time we get back to Aunty Jo she has organised all of our bits and bobs in the boot of the car, put a little deck chair out for Nana and is pouring cups of tea from a flask for us all.

‘Sit here until you get too cold, Mum,' she says. ‘Then you can sit in the car with the heating on.' She turns to me and says, ‘She could sit out all night in that fur coat of hers. It's either warm blood or the fact she can't remember from second to second that she is freezing. In case it's the latter, keep your eye on her. If her lips go blue we will get her in.' Aunty Jo stuffs a blanket around Nana's legs and carries on arranging things. It's surprisingly chilly for April.

There is everything. Old clothes, books, kitchen things. ‘A lot of this was left in the house before we moved in,' Aunty Jo tells me, passing me a kettle that's so black on the bottom I wonder why anyone would buy it. She whacks a sticker on it that says £1 and tells me to put it to the front.

‘What's this?' I ask, pulling a picture frame out of a bag. There is a picture of her and Uncle Andrew in it.

‘Oh, that. Take the picture out and put it in the bin. We could get a tenner for that frame, it's solid silver.'

I do as she says, but carefully. As the photo comes out a key falls to the ground. On the back of the photo is some writing.
Two Peas in a Pod, The Crane 1984 – our honeymoon. Room 341.

‘What does the “Two Peas” mean?' I ask her, mesmerised by how happy they look in the photo.

‘It's what I used to call us, because I thought we were so similar. Like two peas in a pod. But it was all wrong.'

‘What do you mean? How could being the same be all wrong?'

‘Because we weren't similar at all, we were completely different,' says Aunty Jo. ‘But I changed myself to try to be like him so he would love me. I never trusted that he loved me so I tried to be someone I wasn't, someone like him. That didn't excite him, so hate became the only way to get passion into the marriage.' She pulls a cable from a bag and seems upset when there is nothing attached to the end of it. ‘So he started to hate me.'

I can't imagine anyone hating Aunty Jo. She is the best person in the world.

‘Do you believe that everyone has one person they are supposed to be with for life?' I ask her. ‘It feels like such an impossible thing. Men and women are so different.'

‘I think it is good for everyone to have one person they can rely on, no matter what,' says Aunty Jo. ‘And being different is no bad thing. Men are hard work, though; if you don't find the right one, you can live a life of misery. You have to find one who accepts you for everything that you are, and not what they would like you to be. And you have to find one who thinks your experience of life is as important as theirs, otherwise you will resent them, and that's the worst way to be. But I would like to meet someone, and get it right next time.' Her eyes well up a little. She shakes her face and snaps herself out of it. ‘But I have you and Mum and the geese. What more do I need, really?' she finishes, managing a smile.

‘Yes, you have us,' I say, knowing that Nana won't be around forever and that in six months' time I will be off to start the next chapter of my life. For the first time I find myself worrying about her. Who will look after Aunty Jo when we have gone?

I hold the photo in my hand and try to imagine who my ‘One' will be. Will I choose him right? And if I don't, will I end up alone, or will I just live with someone forever that I find boring and who doesn't interest me at all? I see both Nana and Aunty Jo and how they married the wrong people. How can you not be angry that you wasted all of that time?

‘Well, I'm glad it didn't work out, because if it did then God knows where I would be if you hadn't come home,' I say, putting my arm around her shoulder and kissing her cheek.

‘Me too,' she says. ‘And it didn't kill me, did it? Coping with a bit of heartache is the least I can do.' She holds a scarf that belonged to Mum. ‘I don't know what I should keep and what I should get rid of. It seems so strange that this could be worn by someone else, who has no idea that it was hers.'

‘Then let's keep it,' I say. ‘Let's keep everything we have left. Pop threw so much away when she died and he shouldn't have. We don't have to look at this every day, but we can keep it. And those dresses in your wardrobe, and her jewellery. Let's pack it away when we get home, but let's not sell anything else.'

Aunty Jo agrees. It is strange that she even brought the scarf today, but I think she thought maybe getting rid of stuff was a good idea. It isn't, though. We have already lost enough.

‘I miss her so much, Renée,' she says. ‘My darling sister, the poor girl. There was nothing I could do to protect her when she got sick. We looked out for each other all our lives. I felt so useless.'

She is crying now, trying to hide it from Nana who is watching everyone busy around. It's weird for me when Aunty Jo cries about Mum. It reminds me that she wasn't just my mum – she was someone's daughter, someone's sister. It's as hard for Aunty Jo as it is for me. Maybe harder, I don't know. She knew her longer than I did.

‘You must call Nell,' she says abruptly. ‘I know you girls didn't get on, Renée, but she is your sister. You two don't realise how precious you are to each other. If I had known I would lose Helen I don't think I would ever have left Guernsey. It all just feels like such a waste of time now. I left to be with a man who didn't even want me, and because of that I missed out on the last few years of my sister's life. You and Nell have to make the most of each other, be friends. No one will ever be to you what your sister can be. One day you will realise how much you love her and you'll understand why you have to stick together.'

I hug her. Making promises about my relationship with Nell isn't something I am comfortable with, so I don't say anything. I don't know if Nell and I will ever be what Mum and Aunty Jo were.

She pulls herself together, smiles at Nana and passes me a bag of stickers and tells me to make up prices for everything. I stick £40 on the silver photo frame and turn to see if anyone is looking like they might buy something. A lady carrying a basket full of little brown paper bags walks past shouting, ‘Homemade fudge!' I pretend not to notice, but Nana's face lights up like she just won a million pounds.

‘You remember what fudge is, don't you, Mum?' says Aunty Jo, laughing and handing me a fiver.

Brilliant, I think. I haven't eaten anything for at least fifteen minutes.

‘So the banana bar symbolises a penis and how the two lesbians in the shop and Jeanette will never marry men?' asks Meg.

‘Exactly,' says Mr Frankel. ‘The author is making subtle references to the phallus here, and setting up for the revelation of Jeanette's sexuality later in the story.'

I watch Meg from across the classroom. All I can think about is her and Dean and how I am determined to find out if he is her boyfriend or not. I've asked almost everyone in our year if she is going out with anybody, but no one knows anything about her. Dean had looked so happy to see her that night at The Monkey. I didn't see them kiss, but they stayed together all night and neither of them spoke to anyone else. They left together about half an hour before the club shut, but I couldn't tell if they were holding hands or not.

It's doing my head in. He was obviously flirting with me that night and he comes into the pub on his own all the time and eyes me up – he can't be in a relationship. I have such a massive crush on him. I need to know if he is single or not. I have to be brave to find out. I tear a piece of paper out of my notebook.

Hey Meg, how are you? Wanna come to the lay-by with me after English? Renée x

I throw it at her and wait for a response. Even by my standards this is very random and she is fully entitled to ignore it, as we go to the lay-by almost every time after English, so this note is creepy and unnecessary. I watch her read it. She looks at me, nods, then starts to write. A minute or so later she chucks the note back. Mr Frankel turns round seconds later, but Meg seems completely unfazed about the idea of getting caught.

Sure. And are you free Saturday night? Dean asked me to invite you to see the play he has written. There's a performance of it at the Youth Theatre at 7.

My eyeballs nearly fall out of my head. He asked her to ask me? Did this really just happen? If that wasn't a lesson in the value of being bold I don't know what is. I could do a star jump here and now. They are just friends. Breathe, Renée. Oh my goodness, he is so obviously going to be the father of my children. I instantly devise an excuse to get out of work on Saturday night and throw a note back to Meg saying,
Cool, yeah. I'd love to, thanks.

I open my copy of
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit
and try to focus on what Mr Frankel is saying.

‘A girl is particularly vulnerable when she can't rely on the support of her mother,' he says, posing a question to the class about whether the mother's treatment of Jeanette is cruelty or just tough parenting. But my focus is elsewhere. I spend the rest of the class staring out of the window imagining Dean putting shelves up in the big house we will live in when we get married and have babies.

In the lay-by after class I manage not to fire a load of questions at Meg about Dean. I can wait until Saturday now. I must try to be cool. We stand smoking a fag, listening to Pete and Marcus talking about a girl that Pete claims to have fingered at the weekend whose fanny smelt of blue cheese. It's so obvious he hasn't got a clue what he's talking about.

‘It's out of order, you know? The way you talk about girls. It's actually your dicks that smell of cheese, so you can shut up,' I say.

‘Oooooo, got your period, have you?' retorts Pete. That classic immature response from a guy when they have no better come-back but to humiliate a girl about her vagina or womb. I can't wait to leave school and be surrounded by adults so I never have to listen to this crap again.

‘Boys our age have no idea,' Meg tells me. ‘They're so immature it's painful. You don't get that with older guys, especially the ones who have been in relationships before. They don't talk about periods like it's a disability, and they wash their dicks.' She takes a long, deep tug on her cigarette and stubs it out under her foot. ‘Anyway, I have to go. See you in English on Thursday, and that's really cool you can make it on Saturday. Dean will be happy.'

She walks away. I want to scream after her, but I manage to contain myself.

I watch her walk. It's slow, relaxed, almost a swagger. She is probably stoned – she doesn't hide the fact she likes getting high. One time she came into English, sat next to me and said, ‘I haven't slept in two days. I'm quite off my face. How are my pupils?'

Her pupils were massive and she looked like she had been attacked, but I told her she looked fine and she still answered every question Mr Frankel asked correctly and had obviously done all of her coursework. I don't know how she does it.

‘Who is up for chicken?' bursts Pete, full of confidence and an incessant need to show off.

‘Chicken is stupid,' I say. ‘What is the point of driving at each other like that? You either pull away and look weak, or you keep going and die. It's such a stupid game, can't you just go and get pissed in town instead?'

‘All right, mardy pants,' says Marcus. ‘You should do it in your car, that would be funny. Actually, there are quite a few things I would like to do in your car. Like shag you.'

‘In your dreams,' I say, walking off. Is that seriously how he expects to get sex?

I get to my car and throw in my bag. When I put the key in I turn and pump my foot, but nothing. It's failed again. Having to go back to Pete and Marcus and ask them to bump-start me is mortifying, but needs must.

‘I'll do it for a squeeze of your tits,' says Pete.

‘How about you just do it to be nice?' I say. They both nod and agree that's reason enough. They are not bad people, just clueless.

As they push my car down the road my engine eventually kicks in and I make it home in one piece, avoiding all major hills so I don't have to use my brakes. I love my car, but it really is a pile of crap.

Sitting in the window of Christies, Renée and I spend another two hours of our lives watching people we recognise walking up and down Guernsey High Street. It's the same faces every time. We know what time that blonde with the burnt orange cheeks leaves work at the hotel opposite, and when the sexy guy from the estate agents walks past on his way to the car park. We see random people with no schedule, very often from whom Renée has to hide because she snogged them the weekend before in The Monkey. Or girls she has to avoid because she got off with their boyfriend once. She does that sometimes. It sounds worse than it is. Renée is an opportunist. If something fun is staring her in the face she grabs it, not worrying about the consequences. She is a good person, sweet, loving, but capable of throwing her morals up in the air and not caring where they land. I know her well enough to know she's not a bad person. She just can't say no.

‘Weird, isn't it?' I say. ‘Our UCAS forms are being passed around to all those universities and people are judging us without ever having met us.'

She grunts and puts far too many chips in her mouth, even for her.

‘You need to revise so you pass these exams, Renée. Or you won't get in and we won't have any chance of going to the same uni town. Can you imagine if you pass and I don't? That would be funny.'

‘That would be unlikely,' she says, looking bored. ‘Wait, weren't you going to do life-saving or something?'

‘Yeah. I went once, but I hated how people can see you in the pool. There's that balcony and loads of boys gather on it while the lesson is on and laugh at all the girls' bodies. I felt way too self-conscious to save anyone's life. So I quit that. I hope I never come across anyone who's drowning. I'll feel so guilty watching them sink.'

Renée giggles. I love it when I make her laugh. She is the funny one, not me. It's always such an achievement when I crack a successful joke.

There is a pause in the conversation. A chance for me to tell her what's been happening in my life over the last few weeks, the side I haven't really told her about yet. The side I know she won't like.

‘But I am going to keep going to church,' I say.

‘Another “Flo fad”?' she says, undeterred and continuing to guzzle her fried potato like her life depends on it.

‘This isn't a fad, Renée. Not this time.' I don't pick up another chip. I don't do anything to distract from what I am saying. I stare at her until she has no choice but to stop eating and listen to me.

‘I believe in God. The last few weeks have been incredible for me,' I say. ‘I go to church every Sunday, and to a friend's house every Thursday to pray and discuss the Bible. I am learning about Christianity, and it's changing my life.'

Silence.

A bit more silence, then  … 

‘What
friend's
house?'

‘No one's in particular  …  There are five of us. We take it in turns to meet at each other's houses on Thursday nights. Well, everyone's house except mine, because, well, you know my mum doesn't want me having people over. But we sit around, drink tea and talk about the Bible. We pray too, which at first I thought would be weird, but I really like it. One of us says what is on our mind and we hold hands and pray for them.'

‘And then what happens? Does God appear floating on a cloud with a big white beard and tell you all how to live your lives?' she says, much more sarcastically than I was expecting.

‘No, Renée, God doesn't just appear. But we all get some clarity and it helps us focus on what is important.'

‘So, what is important then?'

‘Our faith.'

‘Oh right, of course.' She shrugs. ‘Well, I give it a month.'

We sit there staring out of the window. Is she not even going to try to understand the positive effect this is having on my life? I am pleased for the break in tension when I see my friend Matt. I wave. Renée looks stunned, almost offended.

‘Wait, who did you just wave at?' she asks, accusingly.

‘Matt Richardson. He goes to my church.'

Her eyes start bulging, like I've taken all of my clothes off in front of her.

‘Matt Richardson goes to church? But he smokes in the lay-by. And he's weird.'

‘Well, you think that people who go to church are weird, don't you?' I say, giving her a moment to think about that. ‘But he isn't, Matt is lovely. Ooh, he's coming in. And his mum is with him. Yay.'

Renée has gone stiff, like a scared cat. Only her eyes are darting around.

‘Hi Matt, hi Mary,' I say as they come in. ‘This is my best friend, Renée.'

Mary Richardson shakes Renée's stiff hand, and Matt just nods at her.

‘We have come in for a hot chocolate,' says Mary. ‘We will see you later on, though, Flo? Matt is happy to be having the group at our house tonight.'

‘Lovely,' I say. ‘Enjoy your hot chocolate. See you at seven.'

They go to the back of the café and we sit back down. I take the last chip from my bowl.

‘What the hell just happened?' Renée asks, as if I just did something really inappropriate with Matt and his mum.

‘What do you mean?'

‘Matt? I'm just trying to get my head round it.
He
goes to church?'

‘Yep. He doesn't want to get teased for believing in Jesus, so he has this character that he plays at school that is not the Matt I know. We don't judge him for it, he just wants to fit in. But when he is with us he is so different, he's lovely. We respect that he doesn't want to be teased.'

‘Who is this
we
?' asks Renée, clearly trying to deal with this conversation bit by bit. I know I am giving her a lot of new information all at once, so I hadn't expected her to take it on the chin.

‘I told you  …  My friends and I – that
we,
' I say.

‘Who are these people, exactly? You suddenly believe in God, you go to church? You have a load of new friends you pray with and Matt Richardson is lovely? Christ.'

Renée puts a fiver on the table and goes outside. I watch her walk to the other side of the road and light up a cigarette. Her arms are crossed and the hand holding the fag is up by her mouth. She is tapping her teeth with her fingers, lost in thought. It's what Renée does when she is trying to work something out. I don't go out to her. I will leave her to it, pay the bill and go home to get ready for tonight. Hopefully she will calm down soon.

I lie back on my bed staring at the ceiling. It's my favourite place, where I do most of my thinking. My bedroom was never somewhere I could relax before. Sharing a room with Nell was stressful. Not to mention the fact that my mother died in that room at Nana and Pop's house. But this room at Aunty Jo's is clean, mine, no history. It's where I can relax, chat to Mum without anyone hearing me.

However, right now, I feel quite stressed. Flo is religious. What is that about?

I am so used to Flo going through phases. Last year she got really into witchcraft. There is loads of it on Guernsey: a witches' circle that you are supposed to run around three times and make a wish, and in a bush somewhere there is a massive cauldron that has apparently been there for hundreds of years. Flo became obsessed with it all and got loads of books out from the library on local witchcraft. That phase was entertaining. We went on loads of adventures and it was exciting.

But then it turned into her being obsessed with magic. She saved up and bought a magic kit and started trying to teach herself how to do tricks. Every time I went round she would try a new one, but she was rubbish at it. Not to mention the fact that Flo is really shy, so any hobby that involves having an audience is never going to work. She would never have the guts to do it in front of anyone but me and Abi. When I told Aunty Jo about Flo and all of her fads she said, ‘It's just her trying to work out who she is. She is looking for an identity. It's normal for girls your age. All of those teenagers walking around with pink hair and studs through their noses? Most of them will be plain as anything by the time they get to my age. They are just hiding behind an exterior while they work out what is going on inside their heads.'

As usual I am sure Aunty Jo is totally right, but Flo isn't like other teenagers. She is more grown-up than anybody else, more grounded, more secure, even though she is paranoid. She doesn't try to be anyone she isn't in the way that everyone else does. Sure, she has her fads, but she is fundamentally always just Flo. She doesn't show off or try to be cool to fit in – she just needs distracting, I think, from her morose thoughts about her dad. I know she thinks about him all the time and feels guilty about how sad he got before he had the heart attack. I know she feels that if she had made him happier it wouldn't have happened. So she gets obsessed with things to keep her mind off it. I understand it, I think it's actually quite admirable that she looks for things to perk herself up rather than wallow in the things that bring her down, but God? This is different. I don't like it. I just don't get it. And I have thought about it a lot.

When Pop died and I went to his funeral I thought about every word the vicar said. Pop spent his life grumbling about religion and how ‘Holy Willies' were ‘lunatics', but there he was being cremated in a church with a vicar saying he was off to be with God in heaven. Pop didn't even believe in heaven, so it all felt so insincere. I was very comfortable with the fact that Pop had gone and that was that. He was too – he told me that loads of times when he was dying. He didn't believe in heaven and didn't want to go there, even if there was a chance that he might see Mum when he got there, or that Nana would be up soon. His life was lived, it was time to say goodbye, he didn't want to carry on. I think the way religious people obsess about getting into heaven is just a romantic way of dealing with their fear of death. Who cares about what happens when we die? I say we should just focus on the life we live right now. If I go to heaven, bonus. If I don't, then I will have made the most of my time on earth. Religion just doesn't make sense to me. And like I said, I have thought about it a lot.

How can God be real when he allows people's mums and dads to die too young? When he makes people sick and tortures people? I see all of those children in Africa who are starving and covered in flies, and they die, all the time. If the bad stuff is the work of the devil, then the devil is winning and God's doing a really bad job. If God is real then I don't want anything to do with him – he doesn't seem like a very nice person. Constantly feeling like he has to prove to people that he is boss, always teaching people life lessons that are really no more than cruel abuses of his power. And what is he anyway? Is he the clouds? The stars? Is he the wind? Or is he an old man with a stick who watches over us? And why is He a he? I think children were once told a story about an old man in the sky and they believed it, like they did about Father Christmas. But it was so long before anyone worked out that this person doesn't really exist, so adults, not just children, believed these ridiculous stories, and then it was too late – it was embedded into human existence.

I need to distract Flo. As her best friend I have a duty to keep her mind off the things that upset her. I need to step up the fun, be naughty, keep life exciting. Remind her how far we have come in the last two years, really make her laugh. I go downstairs and get the phone book. I go straight to R.

Richardson. M

That must be them. I am sure Flo called Matt's mum Mary. I dial the number.

‘Hello? Mary Richardson speaking.'

Bingo!

‘Sorry about that,' I say to everyone as I come back in. ‘Renée wants to meet me later.' Everyone smiles kindly like it doesn't matter. No one seems to think it's weird that she called me at Matt's house. But I suppose their focus is on other things.

‘Carry on, Gordon,' says Sandra.

He gathers his thoughts and continues with what he was saying.

‘Esau knew that to have the grace of God, he must forgive Jacob. So he did. God forgives those who trespass against evil, and to have his grace, we must do the same.'

Gordon is leading the group this week. Actually, he always leads the group. Not just because he is the oldest, but because he is obviously the most religious out of all of us. He knows every inch of the Bible and he is really good at making sense of it all. Today he is talking about forgiveness. I sit back down on the floor and try to get back into what he is saying, but Kerry interrupts.

‘Does Renée believe?' she asks me.

They all, including Gordon, wait for my answer.

‘She believes we're all mental,' I tell them and they laugh. This is nothing new to them.

‘That's why I keep it quiet at school,' says Matt. ‘I like going to the lay-by and joining in with everybody. If they knew about my relationship with God I would get teased for it. People don't get it, they don't like it.'

‘You can't deny who you are,' offers Gordon, like a parent. ‘If you are not honest about who you are then how will you ever accept yourself? I stopped caring about people having an issue with my faith a long time ago, and just surrounded myself with people who feel the same way. I never have to lie about who I am now.'

‘To be fair, though,' says Kerry, ‘it's quite hard to do that at school. You either fit in, or you don't. It takes guts to be different. I get why you want to keep it quiet there, Matt. You know who you are really.'

‘I got teased at school,' interjects Sandra with a mouth full of biscuits.

‘Why?' I ask. ‘Because of God?'

‘No,' she says, swallowing hard, ‘because I'm fat. But I can hardly hide that, can I?'

We all laugh. There is something strangely endearing about a fat person who laughs at themselves.

‘Shall we pray for Renée?' suggests Kerry.

I don't know what to say. The idea of it seems so weird.

‘I don't think she needs praying for,' I say, hoping Kerry will move on, but instead she says, ‘Everyone needs praying for. Tell us more about her.'

‘She's fit,' says Matt. ‘I see her in the lay-by all the time. She's really pretty, but a bit cool for school sometimes, and she flirts with everyone. Well, except me.' I can't help but laugh, although I seem to be the only one who thinks Renée being such a flirt is funny. But then my smile disappears. And without really planning what I am going to say, I start to describe my best friend.

‘She is very special,' I say. ‘Renée's mum died when she was seven and she doesn't really know her dad. Her sister moved to Spain to be with him a couple of years ago, but Renée would rather pretend he doesn't exist than deal with how much it would hurt her to see her dad. Renée's complicated. She is really confident, but a bit lost at the same time. It's like she doesn't really have any major ambition – like she just wants to have fun, you know, grab life by the horns? But deep down I think she'll be disappointed in herself if she doesn't achieve something. She's much more fragile than she lets on. So much of what she is about is wanting people to love her, because I think she feels like the person who loved her the most let her down. I don't mean that she blames her mum for dying, but if she was honest I think she would admit that the way she is a lot of the time is a result of what happened when she was seven. She basically watched her mum die. How can that not be the underlying thought behind everything you do?'

I stop talking and realise that if I let myself, I could cry for my friend, but I don't want the group to see Renée as sad, because she isn't. I feel odd about telling them such personal things about her when she isn't even here. It seems disloyal, but at the same time really nice for me to put Renée into words like that. She is very hard to define.

When I look at the others they are already holding hands. ‘Come, join in,' says Kerry, urging me over. I take my seat and hold out my hands. When we are all connected Kerry starts. ‘Dear Lord, please watch over Renée  …  '

If Renée could see this she would be really freaked out. But whether she likes it or not, I guess it can't do any harm to pray for her, can it?

No matter how many times I try, my car just won't start.

Chugchugchugchugchugchugchugchugchugchug

Urgh!

Chugchugchugchugchugchugchugchugchugchug

Then there is a tap on my window. ‘Need a lift anywhere?'

It's Gordon.

‘So where am I taking you?' he asks when we are in his car.

‘Tudor Falls. Renée said we should just meet there,' I tell him, knowing it's a weird place to be going. He asks why, but she wouldn't tell me so I can't tell him. I presume we are just going to a pub nearby.

Gordon pushes a tape into his stereo.

‘We recorded this a few months ago,' he told me. ‘I'm in a band. We're called The Trinity.'

I listen to the words, which are all about Jesus.

‘It's a religious rock band,' Gordon confirms.

I don't know what to say about that, so I sit quietly and just listen to him sing along. The tunes are quite catchy, but although I have really embraced my faith in the last few weeks, I would still much rather listen to the Spice Girls.

I watch him drive. He has long, thin fingers, and his legs don't touch each other on his seat because he is so skinny.

‘I am really enjoying having you in the group,' he says, ejecting his tape.

‘Oh thank you, I'm enjoying it too. I can really be myself with you guys.' That's true. It's nice being with a group of people who are all comfortable with the fact that someone is bigger and better than all of us, so having a massive ego and trying to be the most important person is kind of pointless.

‘I can always drive you on Thursdays if you like?' he then adds, which I take as flirting, which makes me blush. Thank goodness it's dark and he can't see.

‘That would be really nice. Thanks.'

‘And I have a gig on Saturday night, if you want to come?'

‘You play gigs? Normal gigs? With this music?' I ask, wondering how The Trinity goes down in a Guernsey pub on a Saturday night.

‘Ha, no. Maybe Guernsey isn't ready for that yet. It's in St James, and it's only promoted in churches, so everyone there will be Jesus-friendly. Come. I'll get you in free.'

I accept happily, despite my nerves. Already the fear of finding an outfit is crippling me.

‘Well, here you go. Do you want me to just drop you here?' he says, pulling in next to the Tudor Falls gate. It's closed, and he looks confused. His headlights shine directly onto Renée who is sitting in the bushes. She has a saw in her hand. She couldn't look more like a murderer if she tried.

‘Who's that?' says Gordon, squinting to see.

‘That's Renée,' I tell him awkwardly.

‘What is she doing?' He turns to me. ‘Perhaps we should pray for her every week. She does look a bit strange.'

‘Nah, she's fine, really. She, um, loves woodwork, that's what the saw is for. She obviously hasn't been home since school.'

What am I talking about? And what
is
that saw for?

‘You can study woodwork at the grammar now?' he asks, surprised.

‘Yeah, it's a module option. She loves it. She made all her own wardrobes.' OK, Flo, just stop talking. ‘Anyway, I'd better go. Thanks for the lift.'

‘No problem,' he says, pulling the tape out of the stereo. ‘And have this – it will be more fun if you know the words at the gig. God bless.'

‘God blugh  …  ' I say, chickening out of saying bless because it feels so silly to say it.

Gordon drives away and I turn to Renée.

‘What are you doing?' I ask her, laughing.

‘This is going to be FUN,' she says, walking towards the gate.

‘Wait, what will be fun? What are we doing?' I ask, hoping she doesn't mean what I think she means.

‘We're breaking into Tudor Falls,' she says, waving her saw. ‘Come on.'