Screen of Deceit (6 page)

That's if he actually existed. Because no one knew who he was. No one had ever seen him, other than in the shadows. No one had ever spoken to him. Could there really be one person with such immense power? Maybe he was just an urban legend … but, whatever the truth about the Crackman, big time drug dealers did exist in town and they made life a misery for hundreds of people, and Jonny Sparks was definitely a dealer, even if he wasn't big league.

Which, among others, was one of the reasons why Mark avoided him and why he could not believe Beth had been stupid enough to get involved with him.

Admittedly Beth had been really distant recently, more so than usual, but to be honest Mark hadn't been too concerned. But as he thought about it, he realized she had been acting a bit strangely, as though she was in a different world completely. She didn't spend much time in the house any more, but because she'd got a job on the tills at Tesco, Mark assumed she was out working. Maybe he was wrong. Perhaps she'd been knocking around with Jonny and had been dragged into his lifestyle.

Damn, I wish I talked to her more, Mark thought regretfully. He knew she had smoked a bit of dope in her time, but hanging around with Sparks would almost inevitably lead to much harder stuff. That worried Mark, made him quiver inside.

He had to do something about it. Not that he was into screwing up any relationship she might have with a boy, but Jonny Sparks was the exception to that rule and he decided there and then he would do whatever he could to make her dump him. He'd no idea what. That would come with time, but there was no way he was going to allow his big sister to mess up her life by hanging around with a shit-head like Sparks.

As his mind whirled Mark started to drift off towards sleep.

The sound of a key in the front door brought him back fully awake.

He shot upright, threw back the cover and sprang lightly out of bed. Keeping the light off, he crept to the window, peeled the curtain back an inch and peeked out through the crack.

There was a car outside the house with a couple of people inside. Mark stood on tiptoe and peered down to the front door, which he could just see if he squished the side of his face right up to the glass.

Bethany was down on the front steps.

So was Jonny Sparks.

They were embracing, kissing, body-to-body, tight, up close. Jonny's hands ran all over Beth.

Mark's face screwed up in revulsion.

Thing was, Bethany was giving as good as she was getting. Her hands were everywhere, too. She threw her head back and Jonny kissed her neck, slavering all over her chest. She blatantly rubbed her groin against Jonny's.

Mark's fists clenched in sickened rage.

Then they stopped and, forehead resting on forehead, they murmured intimately in low tones. Beth giggled, Jonny uttered a dirty laugh.

Mark's teeth grated and he growled deeply like a wolf, something primitive moving inside him. He wished he'd done a proper job on Jonny now. Not just one smack in the balls. He should've crushed them.

The driver of the car tooted the horn and shouted for Jonny to hurry up.

The lovely couple gave each other one last grope. Jonny then turned and sauntered down the garden path. He went a few steps, stopped, turned back and looked up at Mark's bedroom window. Mark reacted instantly by drawing his face back, but not before he saw Jonny's middle finger jerking up at him.

Mark flattened himself against the bedroom wall, teeth still grinding, fists balled up, every muscle inside him scrunched up, his nostrils flaring with rage.

He heard the front door open. With a snarl on his face, he pushed himself away from the wall and ran out of the bedroom. He was going to confront Bethany and have it out with her.

Mark was in her face the moment she stepped through the door.

‘What're you doin' with that piece of crap?' he yelled at her.

She looked at him strangely, forehead furrowed, her expression perplexed. Her eyes were watery and seemed distant, the pupils dilated unnaturally. She was looking at him but it was as though he wasn't actually there, she wasn't actually seeing him.

She screwed up her nose, gave a sort of shrug and shouldered past without saying a word, brushing him out of her way as though she was passing someone she didn't know in a crowd.

Astounded, he grabbed her, spun her round. ‘I said, what're you doing knocking round with Jonny Sparks, you idiot? He's trouble.'

She wriggled free from his grip. ‘Leave me alone,' she protested. ‘What the hell's it got to do with you?'

‘He's a shit,' Mark said fiercely. ‘He's no good and you're my sister.'

‘What?' she spat. Her face told him exactly what she thought about that sentiment. ‘Just get lost, Mark. Leave me be. I'm having a good time, OK?' She swayed where she stood, as if drunk. Only thing was, Mark couldn't smell booze on her, so he knew she hadn't been drinking. Mark wasn't thick. He could add up the sums – and the simple maths came to only one answer: drugs. ‘Just piss off, you pathetic dick-head,' she snorted.

Mark took a step away from her. ‘You be bloody careful,' he warned her with a dangerous whisper. ‘And he's only fourteen. You're seventeen.'

‘I've got along fine without a dad this long; I don't need one now,' she sneered. ‘It's none of your business. Stay out of it.'

He regarded her critically for the first time in a long time, standing under the bare light in the hallway. What he saw scared him. There were changes he'd not noticed before that moment.

Beth used to be on the chubby side. Not fat, but some of Mark's mates had passed lewd comments about the size of her boobs. As Mark quickly scanned her, he now saw a thin, pasty ghost of the girl who had once been a picture of health. She looked like a skeleton. Her cheekbones stuck out against her skin and her face had deep valleys in it, with gloomy shadows on it. Her eyes were sunk in, surrounded by unhealthy bags. Her mouth had become thin, almost lip-less and her neck was like a scrawny turkey. She looked dreadful. Mark knew intuitively that her condition was not because of smoking a few spliffs or going on a diet. Cannabis alone did not do this to a person. She was into hard drugs.

Why hadn't he seen the change?

He swallowed. ‘Please.' It was all he could think of to say. The word was barely audible.

It had no effect on Bethany. She shook her head. ‘Do me a favour – piss off and leave me alone. I'm old enough to know what I'm doing.'

‘Yeah, right.' His tone was sarcastic.

She ran upstairs and banged into her room, leaving Mark standing in the hall, staring after her. He sat down on the second step, elbows on knees, head in hands. He began to cry softly, somehow believing all this was his doing, his fault. If only he'd seen the signs.

The tears lasted maybe five minutes before he crept quietly upstairs. On the landing, he paused outside Beth's door, listening but hearing nothing. A few steps further and he was outside his mum's room. He tapped gently on the door and pushed it open, poking his head inside.

Her big double bed – unmade – was empty. He knew it would be. She was probably out at her latest boyfriend's. Mark would be lucky to see her even in the morning. She'd most likely be out all night. He slid into her room and perched on the edge of her bed, running his hands over the sheets, thinking about her. He had vague recollections of sneaking into bed with her when he was a lot younger. He had felt warm and protected and she had held him close against her in those days. That was just after his dad had done a runner. Those days hadn't lasted long. Soon, there was no chance of getting into bed with her unless you wanted to curl up with the latest ‘uncle'.

But now, sitting there, Mark wasn't too upset about the dim, distant past.

It was the here and now that terrified him.

N
ext day, school was a bit of a haze.

It began solemnly, with assembly, when the whole school was asked to stand for a minute of silence to show respect for a sixth-former – a girl called Jane Grice who had died from a drug overdose a fortnight earlier; today was the day of her funeral. The head teacher said a few words about her, warned everyone of the dangers of drugs and then led the school in an incantation of the Lord's Prayer after the minute's silence – during which there was a lot of farting, pushing and giggling going on. Some respect.

Mark went along with it, the little tirade about the dangers of drugs hitting a chord within him. He didn't know the girl who had died, though, and wasn't really affected by her demise. But he could see others who were. Some of her friends were openly weeping. He had a vague sort of memory of seeing her knocking around with Jonny Sparks before he got excluded.

After assembly, the kids all trooped to their classes as if nothing had happened.

Mark actually enjoyed school, couldn't understand anyone who didn't. He had some good mates here, had a laugh and sometimes even knuckled down and did some work and usually enjoyed the subjects. He was half-good at maths and sciences, not so brilliant at metalwork, adored Spanish, was ace at English – literature and language – and history … and, of course, sport. His perfect day would have been a morning reading and an afternoon playing footie.

He knew he would have liked school even if he didn't have any ambitions, but even at the age of fourteen he was planning ahead and saw school as the best way to cut free from Blackpool. He didn't want to end up in a dead-end job. He could easily have got work around the resort when he left school, even without any qualifications, but he had a different life planned.

First off, he was going to stay on for ‘A' levels, then he was going to go to university. Part of what he earned from his paper rounds was already going towards those costs. Yes, university, in a town or city far, far away.

Then a job in London, or New York, or Madrid.

At that moment he wasn't sure what sort of job. That would come, he thought.

For now, he was dreaming with his eyes open.

Except, in Mrs Fletcher's history class, he was actually
day
dreaming with his eyes open, staring out at the football pitch. And he wasn't thinking about London and the future. Nor was he thinking about the Victorians and the past, which he should've been doing. He was thinking about Bethany. And Jonny Sparks. And how to split them up.

A nasty crack on the head made him jump back to the reality of the classroom. Mrs Fletcher's ‘dink' with a pencil on the skull – her favourite means of getting someone's attention. His head spun around and he looked stupidly up at her, rubbing his head and saying, ‘Ow.'

‘Away with the fairies, Mark Carter?'

The rest of the class giggled.

‘Sorry, Mrs Fletcher.'

She regarded him warmly. She quite liked him. ‘So,' she asked, ‘what did the Victorians ever do for us?'

‘Brought sanitation?' he responded hopefully.

She blinked. ‘Yes, you're right. They got rid of poo.'

Inwardly, Mark was relieved, thinking he'd got off lightly. He shuffled cockily on his chair. But Mrs Fletcher wasn't to be put off by a lucky answer – even a good one. ‘And what else?'

He groaned and shifted in his uncomfortable chair, his mind now a blank.

‘Jet engines?' he guessed – an answer that received another pencil crack on the bonce.

Word travelled fast. Before he knew it, Mark Carter was a bit of a celebrity, albeit an infamous one.

He picked up the vibes during lunchtime as he walked with Bradley from the form classroom towards the dining room. Some year eight girls saw him and started giggling and whispering behind their hands; next a couple of year nine lads moved quickly out of his way, giving him more respect than he'd ever had before.

In the dinner queue, some guys behind him, who were in the year above him, scrutinized him strangely.

In the end, Mark gave up, turned and said, ‘What?'

They backed off a couple of steps.

‘What?' Mark demanded more fervently.

‘Sorry,' one of them said. He had real fear in his eyes. Mark didn't even know the lad's name, just knew he was a head taller than Mark was and pretty hard with it.

‘What you sorry for?' Mark shook his head and turned away.

Bradley laid a hand on Mark's arm.

‘What's going on?' Mark asked.

The dinner queue moved on a few feet. Mark and Bradley made up the distance, but not before a couple of year tens had seen the opportunity and cut rudely in.

‘Oi!' Mark snarled.

They spun with ferocity, ready to put him firmly in his place. Then they saw who he was, who they'd just transgressed. They mumbled some sort of pathetic apology and scurried away like mice.

Mark looked askance at Bradley, who had an amazed grin on his face. Mark gestured with his hands as though he was trying to grab something that wasn't there. ‘Help me here.'

‘Word is you battered Jonny Sparks, mate.'

Mark blinked.

‘Word is, he dissed you and you leathered him.'

‘Word is wrong,' Mark said quietly.

‘I know that … rumours grow. The real story gets twisted. Y'know – the fact that what you actually did was hit him and run for your life. Somehow that seems to have got lost in the mists of story-telling.'

Mark was thoughtful as he collected his tray and moved across the serving hatch, picking up his Jamie Oliver-inspired dinner of healthy stuff. Mark desperately needed a burger and chips, not rabbit food. He chose lasagne and boiled potatoes and sticky toffee pudding for dessert, which was the unhealthiest thing on the menu.

He ate in silence. The buzz, chatter and laughter of the other kids in the room was just background. He didn't even hear it. Bradley sat opposite him, knowing it best not to disturb his pal's thinking.

Mark was brought back with a bump when a year ten lad walked past him, again, someone he hardly knew, and gave him a slap on the shoulder.