Something Only We Know (9 page)

‘Jesus. I didn’t know about that. I don’t know most of it. Not the beginning and the middle. I came in towards the end, when she was getting better.’

‘Oh, it’s shrouded in mystery and you still haven’t to ask. Once upon a time you might have got some sense out of Dad, except he doesn’t want to go there because for a
while he was the villain of the piece. He always had a whole lot less patience with the anorexia, used to reckon we should just be holding her down and force-feeding her. Like that would sort it!
But he was desperate and frightened. And because Mum always takes the opposite side to whatever Dad thinks, she used to be super-protective of Hel, all softly-softly-let-her-be, and then beat
herself up in case she was aiding and abetting the illness. So they were always falling out. There was some sort of crisis or row every day. I’d say I was about ten before I had an idea what
was going on, and only then because I’d heard one of my friend’s mums talking about it in the playground. No one thought to tell me outright.’

‘Maybe they didn’t know how. It’s not something that’s very easy to explain.’

‘Maybe. You came on the scene about then, so I bet you know as much as I do. She really won’t talk to you about it?’

‘Nope.’

I looked across, and the fair skin of Ned’s brow was crinkled. I wanted to reach over and smooth it for him, straighten his blond hair where it stuck up on the crown. Over the
café’s radio, Simply Red was playing
Holding Back the Years
; it made me think of an evening long ago when I’d been at the kitchen table revising for my GCSEs and Ned had
wandered in to make a coffee. The song had been playing then, and Ned had swayed about in front of me cartoonishly, then grasped his earlobes and pulled them out from the sides of his skull as far
as they’d reach. ‘Holding back the ears,’ he’d sung at me. Daft, but I was so wound up with exam nerves it had seemed hilarious. Even sitting in the school hall next day
with my Eng Lit paper in front of me, I’d kept recalling the incident and giggling. I think now that was the point when my crush on Ned began.
This song
, I wanted to say to him.
Do you remember an evening when you mimed Mick Hucknall into a pan scrub for me?

I reached out and took his hand. ‘Let’s not go backwards. It’s not helpful. For what it’s worth, I don’t think Helen’s ill again. I think she’s a moody
madam – I’m allowed to say that, I’m her sister, and anyway I’ve said as much to her face – plus we both know she’s weird and obsessive. That’s just her.
But I honestly don’t think she’s sliding into anorexia again. I truly don’t. I’ll keep a close eye on her, if that’ll make you feel any happier.’

‘Would you, Jen?’ He squeezed my fingers. ‘It’d be a load off my mind. And obviously don’t let on to her I’m worried. That wouldn’t help.’

‘No.’

Like some delicate piece of antique machinery, my sister, all finely-balanced cogs and springs wound up to the nth tension and tiny ticking parts. One of those brightly coloured miniature
mechanical singing birds. Sometimes you’re worried to even breathe near her.

After a moment, Ned drew his hand away. I’d like to have said he looked happier, but he didn’t.

I nodded at his toastie. ‘Aren’t you going to finish that? Because I’ll have it if you don’t want it.’

He blinked, smiled, then pushed the plate towards me. The radio had changed to the Kooks, ‘She Moves in her Own Way’.

‘It’ll be OK, Ned. She’ll pass through whatever’s bugging her, she always does.’

‘Yeah, I’m sure you’re right.’

But his eyes were clouded, as if he was focussing on some sort of interior film clip being played out.

‘The trouble is, Jen, I’ve been dating your sister for ten years, and yet sometimes I feel I don’t know the first thing about her.’

I took my time walking back to the office, mooching down narrow Tudor alleyways clogged by foreign students with their humongous rucksacks, by businessmen and -women shouting
into mobiles, by shoppers laden with smart carrier bags. I pictured Ned walking in the opposite direction, headed for his car and an afternoon of furniture removal.

What it could be with Hel
, I might have said to him,
is that she’s been obsessing about a boy she went to school with. Has she ever mentioned him? Left her for a girl called
Saskia? A boy who she apparently dated for a mere six weeks, and who, after they broke up, spread it around that she was a ‘nut-case nympho’.

Helen had been grudging in the detail she’d give me; I’d had to push for anything at all. But I’d said to her, ‘If you’re going to implicate me, the least you can
do is be honest.’ Then, of course, when I heard how he’d behaved, I’d laid into her.

‘He said what? The dickhead! For God’s sake! How can you still be in love with a man like that?’

She went, ‘I don’t love him, Jen, I hate him.’

‘So why are we doing this?’

And she’d just looked sad and confused, as if she couldn’t fathom the answer either.

Instead she’d switched to telling me a story about him: how he’d once followed an elderly teacher down the corridor, mimicking the man’s slightly limping gait. The teacher,
suspecting something, had whirled round, and on impulse Joe had thrown himself to the floor and pretended to be having some kind of a fit. He’d bitten his cheek as he fell, either
accidentally or on purpose, so he was able to spit real blood onto the lino. The teacher had been so convinced by the performance that he’d bundled his own jacket under Joe’s head and
knelt by him while they waited for the dedicated-first-aider to come. At the end of the day he’d even popped into the sick room to see how the lad was doing.

‘It was funny,’ Hel said, ‘even though it was cruel. The whole corridor was laughing over it.’ When she saw my face she said, ‘Everyone thought like me, the whole
class. It wasn’t just because I had a crush on him. Joe was
so
popular. He had this confidence, it drew people, boys and girls. He was magnetic.’

Again I’d scoffed. But a tiny part of me tingled with a kind of guilty recognition. How many times had I checked his Facebook pages over the last fortnight? Carefully noting the updates
– Joe had bought a Snow Patrol album, been jogging along the canal, had joined Sports Locker’s loyalty card scheme. What was I looking for? What did I think I’d find? One week
ago, when my job had taken me out towards Chrishall for the afternoon, I’d found myself parking my car outside his daughters’ primary school while he and his wife picked up the kids.
I’d even tried to take a photo (why? For Helen?), but he’d moved at the last second and I’d only snapped her, in her purple striped tee and cropped leather jacket. I’d
watched as the family climbed into their shiny 4x4, the older girl struggling with a guitar case. Joe was wearing an open-necked plaid shirt and cut-off jeans with trainers. After they drove away I
deleted the picture.

And I’d felt, sitting in the driver’s seat with the sun blazing through the windscreen, as if Hel had infected me with her own mad brain-itch. Because whatever Joe had, he had
something. I didn’t like him – I loathed him – yet I too was falling under this compulsion to know what he was up to, to get inside his life and see how fate was really treating
him. And when I thought of how often this man was invading my head, I’d told myself there and then to get a grip and I’d gone that same night to Helen’s room and laid out
everything I’d discovered. I made sure to use the blandest, most direct language to explain about his status, job and family. I tried to avoid specific detail and words which were in any way
loaded – I said he had two young children but I didn’t say they were angelic, like pretty dolls, the image of their mother. I made no comment about Joe’s good looks having lasted.
Nor did I name the branch of the bank where his wife worked, or his web design company. I just set the facts out for her as neutrally as I could manage. Helen had been good. She hadn’t
interrupted to ask for information which would have caused extra pain. She made me pause only once, when I was telling her how he played football for a local amateur team. ‘At school they
thought he might make a professional,’ she said. ‘He went for trials.’

When I’d finished, I asked if she was OK. She thought about it for maybe half a minute – it felt like half an hour – and then declared she was. I said, ‘Is that it, then?
Is it over? No more digging?’

‘I promise,’ she said.

Now it seemed, from what Ned had confided, that despite her vow she hadn’t been able to resist a peep herself. I suppose it was inevitable. I just hoped that was as far as it went. A few
photos printed out and sighed over, a few days of unsettled, non-specific heartache. Perhaps if I’d stayed to talk it through further with her, ask how she was feeling about the news, I might
have stalled her. But she’d closed down on me. Nothing more to be said, dear sister. Thank you for your detective work, and good night. I’d left her sitting under her duvet, pulling her
fingers through her long red hair and staring abstractedly at a poster of The Lady of Shalott.

All Gerry had a chance to do was flash his eyebrows at me in warning before Rosa came storming up to my desk, a scrap of paper clutched to her chest. She’s no sylph, but
my God she can move fast when she wants to.

‘It looks as if I need to spell something out to you,’ she said, slapping the paper down on my mouse mat so that I flinched.

Fuck-fuck-fuck, I was thinking. What had I done? What had she found? Had I somehow missed a deadline or appointment? Had I said something inappropriate during an interview? Or was it – oh,
dear God, no – was it that she’d found out I’d been browsing her dating website and poking about her personal business? She must have been checking my internet history while I was
out and seen the URLs. In which case I was toast. I was out, and goodbye internship and decent references and any chance of getting another reputable job in the field of journalism for which
I’d spent three years studying. I sat there wide-eyed and horrified as she towered over me, her beaded necklace swinging past my nose. And I wondered, during that second before she spoke
again, whether I’d be heroic enough to take the blame for the whole thing, or if I’d try and save my skin by blaming Alan too.
He spotted the site to begin with, Rosa. He was the
one snooping about your office. He’s senior sports editor, I’m just a trainee. Take it up with him.

But before I could marshal my thoughts, she was off again, stabbing at the paper with a manicured nail. ‘This note I found on my desk twenty minutes ago. What do you think it says,
Jennifer?’

Not being a mind-reader, I couldn’t possibly say.
‘I don’t know, Rosa.’

‘Don’t you?’

Well obviously fucking not.
‘No.’

‘Did you or did you not tell the Revolution bookshop we would be sending out a press team to cover the opening of their café? Well, did you?’

My mind struggled to make a narrative out of the words. Hazily it formed: last month, me and Keisha and Vikki sitting round a pub table while Owen and Chelle preached about GM crops. Keisha
telling me about how they were going to rearrange their ground floor to make room for tables, me casually promising to send a photographer round if they just rang in and gave their details to the
desk.

‘Yes, I did. What’s the problem?’

She stood up to her full height, sighing exaggeratedly. ‘Because if they want an advert, they can damn well pay for one, like everyone else. Who are you to give away free advertising space
on our pages? What made you think you had the authority?’

‘But we often send out reporters to cover that kind of event. That nursery allotment last week. And the charity fun day outside Sainsbury’s, we did a full-page spread on that. I
thought it was about supporting local businesses.’

‘My God, Jennifer, are you really so dim?’

‘Evidently yes.’

I couldn’t believe I’d said the words aloud, but I was glad I had. I was sick of being spoken to as if I had no right to answer back. Rosa’s nostrils flared, and she leaned in
again.

‘Let me explain in nice, simple language, then. If
The Chester Messenger
decides to report on the shifting of a few tables at the rear of a cupboard-sized hippy store, then what
do you think will happen next? I’ll tell you. We’ll have every shop in the district on the phone telling us to come out and see they’ve painted a wall, or hung up a new painting.
Expecting a column and a photo on the strength of it. So then the people who actually pay for genuine advertising space – who keep the damn ship afloat, in other words – will withdraw
their custom because why should they put their hands in their pockets when we’re dishing it out for free? Yes? Can you grasp that? Do you need me to go over it again?’

My face bloomed with heat.
But then why is the supermarket different?
I wanted to ask.
Or the nursery? Doesn’t the same rule apply to them?

She must have read my mind. ‘The nursery and all the major supermarkets round here are regular advertisers with us. They generate thousands. Without them, our newspaper would go bust. We
have a relationship, links, history. They are reputable and established companies. Names that local people know and trust. Whereas your tin-pot Revolution bookshop are a bunch of freaks peddling
joyless dogma. We don’t want the association. Unless, of course, they can stump up the fee for a conventional advertisement.’

She knew perfectly well they couldn’t. A single full spread cost five hundred quid, and even a quarter-page was beyond the means of Keisha and Vik’s budget. The shop made a pittance,
there just wasn’t anything left over for advertising. Sometimes they got lucky: I do know that once – and I didn’t ask the details – some flyers magically reproduced
themselves on the photocopier of a nearby private school, and on another occasion Vikki spotted the owner of the regional free paper in a bar with a woman who wasn’t his wife, and thereafter
got six weeks’ space in his business section. But mostly they had to do without, and the shop was on the edge of the city centre and its customer base ‘niche’. The margins were so
slender they were nearly invisible. That’s why the promise of even a tiny bit of press coverage had meant so much.