No Place For a Man (30 page)

‘Coffee? Herbal tea?’ Bella the mystic (in jeans and a tight pink tee shirt) offered as Jess settled herself next to a massive tabby cat.

‘Er, no thanks, I’m OK.’ Jess smiled and stroked the cat which stretched itself out to its full length and took up most of the sofa.

‘This must be about the biggest cat I’ve ever seen,’ she commented as Bella sat down opposite her and started shuffling the tarot cards. Her nails were spectacularly long, Jess noted, and painted with pale blue shimmery varnish and her hands were loaded with thick silver rings studded with chunky opals and amethysts.

‘He wasn’t very well, as a kitten.’ Bella smiled fondly at the cat. ‘So I treated him with reiki healing. It makes them grow, you see, all that stroking. Would you like to try it? Reiki? It helps with emotional problems as well as physical.’ Jess turned the offer down as politely as she could, making a light joke about not wanting to grow any more thank you, which seemed to go right over Bella’s head. She did wonder though if it was really that obvious that she wasn’t currently in the most settled frame of mind, or if Bella was truly psychic. Ashamed of her cynicism, for Bella was gentle, hospitable and genuinely certain of her powers, Jess found herself seeking out the party-trick aspect of the business: surely it was easy enough to guess that any suburban working mother/journalist was going to have the odd emotional problem. There were whole hospitals in the area set up for just that kind of sorting out; Yellow Pages had several pages of private counsellors well able to afford the cost of the advertising.

‘I can’t tell you anything you couldn’t work out for yourself really,’ Bella said as she laid the tarot cards out. ‘We lose the habit of trusting our intuition far too early. It needs nurturing, just like other skills do. We’re all born with the ability to see into the future. Those people who somehow didn’t get on that plane that crashed, the ones who say “I had a feeling about that”, they’re clinging onto the last of their power.’ She
looked up suddenly at Jess. ‘You have a man in your life who is a very powerful support to you. He is on your side, an indispensable help.’

‘My husband?’ Jess couldn’t help sounding incredulous. ‘Quite possibly.’

Bella nodded solemnly. ‘You would be the one to know, not me.’ She gave a little smile, full of suggested mystery, and Jess again felt guilty for her lingering doubts. Bella had seen Matthew drop her off at the house on his way to take Natasha to the doctor to have her stitches out. It could easily be an exaggeration of how ‘helpful’ that could be.

The cards did not promise massive unexpected riches, that the girls would be married off into the royal family or that Matthew would be any nearer finding something useful to occupy his time after the next few months. ‘Money will not be a problem for you,’ Bella told Jess as, the cards finished, she began backing up her findings with a palm reading.

‘Is that because I’ll be so rich I won’t
need
to worry or because I’ll be so poor I won’t have the burden of wondering how to deal with wealth?’

Again came the smile full of secret knowledge, as if the information could be trawled out of Jess’s own brain if only she could kick-start the right dormant cells.

‘Oh and there’ll be travel,’ Bella said, by way of a farewell.

‘Isn’t there always?’ Jess laughed, wondering if she should start thinking about booking a holiday, which would be more than rash with Matt no nearer to thinking about finding a job, or if the four-mile journey home counted. It was certainly all the travelling she’d be doing for now.

*  *  *

‘It’s just like on
Casualty
. They move pretty fast when you get brought in by ambulance,’ Matt was telling his usual audience at the Leo.

‘They do but I don’t recommend dialling 999 if you’ve only got a cut finger though,’ Micky said.

‘I feel a bit sorry for the kid, Tom, you know,’ Matt admitted over his first beer of the day.

‘Why? He nearly killed your Natasha. I’d want to wring his evil little neck.’ Eddy made wringing movements with his hands, then grimaced. ‘Bloody arthritis,’ he said, ‘I’m awash with glucosomites and cod liver sodding oil and it’s still a bloody pain in the morning. If Paula gets frisky before the first Nurofen kicks in it’s fucking agony. So why do you feel sorry for him? You turning into a social worker?’

‘No, it’s because he’s got to go back into custody. Turns out he was on the run from a sort of young offenders’ halfway house and had a string of previous going back to sometime around his twelfth birthday. Now he’s gone into a serious lock-up. Young lads kill themselves in those. You always imagine kids like him, you think they’re some kind of alien beings that you’ll never come into contact with, but well, he was quite nice really. It’s a shame.’

‘Jesus Matt, you’re softening up in your old age.’ Micky shook his head in despair. ‘You’ll be looking for a proper job next.’

‘Me? Never! I want something where I can do just what I’m doing now.’ He raised his glass in a toast to Ben behind the bar.

‘You should take over from Micky then; he’s off to see the world at the end of this summer. I might have to sell up,’ Ben said gloomily.

* *  *

Natasha didn’t want to go back to school. The bruises had started to go down and she could now bear to touch her skin enough to cover the worst of the marks with make-up. But it was a strain, the way her parents were being so perpetually nice to her, and she really needed to escape. She could understand that they were hugely relieved that she hadn’t been killed but there hadn’t been even the slightest bit of blame, not even the hint of a telling-off. Somehow it made her feel worse – a massive row would have been better all round; there wouldn’t be this strange whispery atmosphere in the house. They kept asking her if she was all right. All she could say was ‘Yes I’m fine, honestly,’ and hope they wouldn’t give her that look, that probing, ‘how do you
really
feel’ look that was pushing her to confide things that she was quite sure they didn’t really want to know.

There was nothing
to
confide, that was the truth. Tom had gone now, so end of story. There wasn’t much chance of her ever seeing him again. For the first few days after the crash she’d made sure she was the one who picked up the mail from the mat in the mornings, but he hadn’t written. It was his left arm that would be in a sling, and she didn’t even know if he was left- or right-handed. Perhaps he hadn’t had much of an education though, she thought, perhaps writing wasn’t something he was good at. She hardly knew anything at all about him, really, when it came down to it.

Natasha was glad to have Zoe with her when the next Monday came and she couldn’t put off going back to school any longer. On the bus, one or two of the younger girls nudged and whispered and pointed but
they were easy to ignore. Zoe was doing her best, chatting away about Oliver and trying to imagine where he was and what he was doing. When they arrived, Claire was waiting by the gate, claiming Natasha as her friend again in a way she hadn’t done for quite a while now.

‘You don’t actually look too bad.’ Claire scrutinized her closely, gently running a finger over the bright pink scar just above her eyebrow where the stitches had been.

‘You sound disappointed! Did you hope I’d look all beaten up and be walking on crutches?’ Natasha laughed. ‘Tell me what I’ve missed.’

Claire shrugged. ‘Nuffin. Usual stuff, a new maths investigation and they’ve sorted out a geography field trip for next term: Swanage, surprise, surprise. My sister went there and she said the whole place is
stuffed
with geography field-trip people trying to accost the residents for stupid surveys and counting cars.’

‘Can’t wait.’

Jess had been half-expecting the phone call. She knew this was going to be one deed of misbehaviour too far for the Julia Perry School. The school was very keen on ‘standards’, the head said as Jess doodled on a Post-it note and only half-listened. Standards were to be ‘upheld’, which inspired Jess to draw a flagpole with a skull and crossbones at half mast. Natasha’s position in the school was to be reviewed, apparently. Jess and Matthew would be informed in ‘due course’ (she added a pirate ship) of the decision that came out of this process.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Jess heard herself say as she sketched in Captain Pugwash. ‘She and Zoe will be
leaving the school at the end of the summer term.’

After she’d hung up, Jess went into a sweaty panic. ‘Where did that come from?’ she asked Matt, who’d just strolled in from the Leo. ‘I’ve just told the head of Julia Perry that Tash and Zoe will be leaving the school.’

‘What, before they’re publicly flogged and thrown out? Good thinking,’ he laughed.

‘But what about them? Where will they go? Won’t they be furious?’ She shouldn’t have done this, she thought, not without consulting the girls. Natasha was halfway through her GCSE courses. But then no-one had ever questioned the assumption that she was likely to get the desired full-house score of nine A* grades, so surely she’d be all right anywhere.

‘Furious? Those two? You really haven’t been keeping your eye on the ball have you, Jess, they hate it there. They’re only sitting it out because that’s where all the nice rich little middle-class girls like them go to school from round here. Though, where did you have in mind for them?’

‘Briar’s Lane, they mostly seem to do OK there.’

‘Good idea.’ He hugged her. ‘And your dad will be delighted. It’s one small step towards your party membership card.’

At least that day was over. Hundreds more to go. Natasha trudged home, lugging the eternally bulging bag of homework. She made her way from the high street into the square. Mel was there, sitting by herself on the twisted and battered bench opposite the Leo that had been restored to its approximate right way up by Eddy and Ben after the crash.

‘Y’all right Tash?’ Mel called. ‘Want a cig?’ She
offered the packet. Natasha shook her head but went to sit beside her.

‘I’ve got a message for you. I saw Tom,’ Mel told her.

‘Where? At the prison?’

‘He’s in a Young Offenders, quite a long way out. I went on a visit.’ Mel crossed her long pale legs and stared at the floor.

‘How did you manage that?’

‘He wrote and asked me, sent me a VO.’

‘And that’s a …?’

‘Visiting Order.’ Mel giggled. ‘I felt like one of those women off
Birds of a Feather
lining up with all the mums and girlfriends.’ Then she looked at Natasha. ‘Er, he says he’s really sorry and he hopes you’re all right.’

‘Does he want me to see him?’ Natasha’s voice, even to her own ears, sounded flat and dull.

‘Er no, that’s the bit you might not like. He says it was just for then, it was great but you should find someone else.’

Natasha stared at the mottled grey paving stones. She felt tears pricking. ‘So he was with you, as well as me, all the time.’

Mel put her arm round Natasha and hugged her close. ‘No. We were just mates. Truly. I think he really loved you, but he’ll be gone for ages. And we’re young.’ She grinned at Natasha. ‘Come on, you’ll be OK. And so will he in the end. He’s got a nice mum, you know, I met her up the prison. He’s just a bit wild.’

‘A bit!’ Natasha giggled.

‘OK, a lot!’ Mel laughed.

‘… a helpline for those who think they’re the Worst Parents in the World. We suffer in silence, too scared of being judged to confess our failings to even our closest
friends, lying that everything’s fine and keeping all the problems locked up behind the prim suburban windows. We are isolated and nail-biting, sure that everyone else’s fifteen-year-olds are immersed in coursework, intent on cracking the central dilemma in
Macbeth
while ours are marauding the streets up to all kinds of no good. We wonder will tonight’s collection point be the police station again, or perhaps the hospital this time for a welcome change of venue …’

Well, Paula had wanted the truth. This would be the last Nelson’s Column that involved Jess’s family. It wasn’t a confessional, certainly not in the sense that she’d shopped Natasha to the Sunday-paper-browsing public, but it was an admission of parental imperfection on an uncomfortably grand scale. It would, she knew, ring a lot of bells. The broadsheet readers of Britain surely shouldn’t have to do their agonizing all in secret, having to put up with jolly columnists like her pretending that the worst that could happen after a teenager’s night out was that they’d use the parental minicab account to ferry five friends to various homes over a forty-five-mile radius. Everyone knew, deep down and in the turbulent cage of their own homes, that things got an awful lot worse than that.

… After all that’s happened the girls shouldn’t have to wait till they hit nineteen and have done their A levels to see this place. Tash and Zoe would love the surfing. Even you and Dad could do it here. Western Oz is just the best place. I’m running low on cash so if you feel like getting on a plane I could show you round for a price (short term only, I got stuff to do, people and places to see) …

*  *  *

‘It’s a bugger of a long way. Tell me you won’t die of boredom or thrombosis before we get there,’ Matt said to Jess as the safety-belt sign went off.

‘I promise I’ll try not to,’ she reassured him. It
was
a long way, just about the furthest you could go in the world. Jess could hardly wait to see Oliver again; he’d be there, he’d told them, with a car to take them to the hotel. Natasha hadn’t been sure: will he want us lot turning up, really, she’d wondered? Good question; but Oliver was easily bought with the promise of temporary escape from the privations of hostel life, with the temptation of hotel rooms with constant water supplies, with not having to eke out his precious savings for a few weeks. Then he’d be on his way again, on the backpack trail onwards to New Zealand and the snowboard season. Jess wondered what he’d look like now, how tanned he’d be, how much the sun would have bleached his hair.

From the seat behind, Jess could hear the pecking sound of Zoe’s Gameboy. There was the familiar bass thud-thud of music from Natasha’s headphones. She sipped her champagne (so you should avoid alcohol on long-distance flights, she’d read, but this was such a one-off) and looked at the menu.