You Against Me (14 page)

‘No, I don’t want to make sauces all the time. I want to be a sous-chef, in charge of the whole meal from beginning to end.’

‘Well, you must work hard then. You must practise and listen well and when the time comes, the food will tell you what your specialism is.’

Mikey laughed, because the idea of food telling him anything was amazing and ridiculous all at once. Dex chuckled too. It was great standing there together laughing.

Jacko came in then. He was carrying a pile of salad boxes and gave them both a puzzled look. ‘What’s going on?’

‘Mikey is perfecting the art of the roux,’ Dex said, and he waved the dishwashing brush at Jacko like a wand. ‘He is whisking and whisking and ignoring the ache in his hand.’

‘Well, it’s really busy out there, you know.’

‘We know,’ Dex laughed, ‘which is why we are hiding in here.’

Jacko banged the boxes down. ‘So, am I supposed to chop these lettuces all by myself?’

All morning Jacko had been edgy and Mikey knew it was his fault. He’d been late for work every day last week and Jacko had covered for him. Today, he’d even lent him the car. Mikey had thanked him, promised him a game of pool and a pint after their shift, but maybe that wasn’t enough.

‘Come and have a go, Jacko,’ he said. ‘This needs attention for a while. You do the whisking, I’ll do the lettuce if you like.’

‘No, ta.’

‘You might love it.’

‘Why would I? I don’t want to be a chef.’

Dex frowned. ‘What finer ambition is there?’

‘Plenty. There’s a whole world out there.’

‘And yet you’re still here, the longest-serving kitchen assistant we ever had.’

Mikey watched Jacko stumble for words. He knew he’d gone to the job centre loads of times in an effort to get away from the pub. He hated peeling and chopping vegetables, said the smell of cooking got under his skin. But all he’d been offered was a job stacking shelves, and the woman at the job centre had said there was competition even for that. Mikey felt sorry for Jacko suddenly, and upset to see him blushing.

‘Maybe you’ll meet a girl,’ Mikey said, ‘and she’ll look after you.’

It was meant to be kind. It was meant to make Jacko smile, so that everything could be all right between them again, but the look Jacko shot him said he hadn’t taken it that way.

‘Talking about yourself, Mikey?’

‘What are you on about?’

‘’Cos you always meet plenty of girls, don’t you?’

Mikey stopped whisking. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

Jacko stepped back, hands raised as if Mikey was about to shoot him with the whisk. ‘Just saying we had a plan, remember?’

‘Yeah, I know.’

‘And you asked me to help you. But then you let a girl get in the way.’

‘It’s not quite that simple, is it?’

Jacko shrugged. ‘She didn’t tell you anything useful and now you’ve let another five days go by. She’s not the solution, Mikey. It seems pretty simple to me.’

‘I was busy last week.’ Mikey spoke very slowly, so Jacko would remember his mum had been AWOL and he’d had to cope with Holly and Karyn alone. ‘And I had a meeting this morning, remember? Or maybe you think I should’ve gone round his house before the meeting and kicked his face off in front of his parents?’

‘Maybe you should.’

‘Are you nuts?’

‘Boys, boys!’ Dex said. ‘Look, now you’ve brought the boss in with your noise.’

Sue stood there, arms folded, looking the three of them up and down. ‘I need a waiter.’

‘And every day I tell you, you’re looking at chefs,’ Dex told her.

‘Actually,’ she said, ‘I am looking at one chef, one kitchen assistant and one dishwasher.’ She took a step in and tapped Mikey on the shoulder. ‘And I think you know which of those three you are.’

Mikey shook his head at her. ‘I’ll be a rubbish waiter.’

‘You’ll get tips.’

‘I’ll drop stuff.’

‘I’ve got a shirt that’ll fit you and those trousers will have to do.’

‘But I’m in the middle of making a sauce.’

‘I’ll do you a trade. You do some waiting and I’ll turn a blind eye to your time-keeping.’

Jacko laughed as Mikey snatched the shirt and went off to change in the toilets. Sue hovered outside the door waiting for him, then took him into the bar and got him a name badge.

‘You’re called Tyler today,’ she told him.

There were loads of people in the bar area – tourists disappointed with the weather and holed up in caravans and chalets; this would be their day’s main event. One couple had wet hair from the mist, sitting together like a pair of seals, sleek heads bent over the menu. Such ordinary clean lives. It made Mikey feel entirely crap.

He wondered about his mum, whether she was awake yet, if Karyn had managed to sober her up, if Holly was enjoying school. He envied his little sister suddenly – all that glitter and finger paint and sitting about with your mates.

Sue took him with her as she went to greet a family loitering in the doorway. ‘Table for four, is it? Follow me, please.’

She led them to the back of the eating area – mum, dad, a couple of kids. Mikey trailed behind. He wondered what it would be like to be their son, their big boy, coming out with them for his lunch. But the fantasy only lasted until they’d sat down, when Sue turned to him and said, ‘I’m only going to say this once, so listen up.’

She gave them the speech about how they should help themselves from the starter bar, then go up to the carvery to get their main course and veg. ‘Tyler will look after you,’ she told them. ‘He’ll get you drinks and desserts and anything else you need.’

Mikey stood there watching them settle themselves down. They completely ignored him. The little kids fought over the free pencils and drawing booklet, the woman folded their wet coats onto the backs of their chairs and the bloke kept checking his mobile. Mikey smiled at the woman, wanted her to see he knew what an idiot her husband was. He didn’t want to be there, it was obvious. The woman smiled back. ‘What’s at the starter bar?’ she said.

The bloke picked up his menu and scanned it, like maybe he could answer the question, but Mikey jumped in first. ‘There’s different salads, melon, or hot soup.’

‘What flavour?’ the woman said.

‘I’ll find out.’

The bloke looked up. ‘Shouldn’t you know?’

He didn’t notice his wife smiling at Mikey as if she was sorry.
She knows he’s a git
, Mikey thought,
and she wants us all to forgive him
. He recognized the look from his mother’s face. She wore it whenever she got pissed and started getting nostalgic about some old boyfriend. Mikey wished he could gob in the soup. And that would just be for starters.

Back in the kitchen he envied Jacko, sweating now from the ovens, turning the parsnips off their baking tray, emptying steaming piles of peas into bowls. Dex was sprinkling cheese over the finished lasagne. It was familiar in here.

‘How’s the real world?’ Jacko asked.

‘Full of tossers.’

‘Could have told you that.’

Which was a small moment of warmth.

Maybe Mikey had been imagining the bad vibes, maybe everything was still OK between them. Just to check, he said, ‘I’m going to get the bastard, you know. I promised Karyn and I haven’t given up on it.’

Jacko shrugged. ‘You need to hurry up, that’s all I’m saying, or it’ll never be done.’

He made it sound as if he was in charge, as if Mikey hadn’t spent days churning all the details round in his head.

‘All right,’ Mikey said, ‘what about Saturday?’

Jacko nodded. ‘I’m up for that.’

‘We both get a half day. We’ll do the golf-club thing.’

They high-fived to seal the deal. Mates again.

Ellie sat on the harbour wall watching the boats bob up and down and listening to the rigging wires sing. She was cold and bored, because although the tide was going out and revealing the beach, nothing else was happening. The bloke fishing on the end of the jetty hadn’t caught a single thing in the last ten minutes, the sun wasn’t coming out and the mist wasn’t clearing.

The odd thing about it was that somewhere up there, the weather was fine. The sun was simply trapped behind a cobwebbed sky. Only a mile or two down the coast, the day was probably blazing. Perhaps Tom was enjoying a sunny game of golf with Freddie, or sitting in the clubhouse with a pint of cold cider in his hand.

She was still furious with him for leaving her in the middle of nowhere with only a fiver. There wasn’t a bus for hours and maybe he’d known that. He’d definitely known there was no way she was going to tell their parents he’d dumped her, because she’d get a massive bollocking for bunking school if she did.

She’d start walking back into town in a minute. It couldn’t be more than three miles and she thought she remembered the way. She’d wander round the shops, or maybe go to the library until school was out, then go to the gate and see if any of the girls in her year wanted to hang out. It was about time she had some friends. Maybe she’d even tell them about the river and the gatecrasher to make herself seem more interesting. They might not believe her of course, because no one believed her when she said she’d kissed Danny at the Christmas party. Sometimes she even wondered herself if any of the good things that happened to her were true, because they seemed fleeting compared to the bad things.

Even her amazing plan had gone wrong. She’d thought of it almost as soon as Tom had dumped her, and had immediately put it into action – the gatecrasher had said he worked in a pub by the harbour; well, then she would find him and spend the rest of the day sitting at the bar chatting to him.

The first pub she tried was the White Horse and it was full of old men clutching pints. They turned round en masse to stare at her when she opened the door, and although she managed to stutter that she was looking for someone who worked there, they all laughed at her, because the man behind the bar was about a hundred years old and was the only employee.

In the Earl of Mowbray, she was braver, even made it to the bar to ask if a boy worked there. She described him – dark, tall, about eighteen. The barman gave her a lewd smile and said, ‘Won’t I do, darling?’

She blushed furiously, and again she was laughed at.

‘What’s his name then, love?’ the barman said as she made her way back to the door. And Ellie realized that she still didn’t know, and the whole enterprise suddenly seemed ridiculous and humiliating. She’d wanted to walk in and see his smile, to sit down with him and have a drink. She’d imagined he’d give her a lift home, that they’d arrange to meet later. This day had seemed such a gift, but it was turning out to be worse than school.

She stood up to collect her bag, but was distracted by a sudden movement down on the jetty. The fisherman was unhooking his rod from its tripod and he must’ve caught something big, because the whole line was bending. Ellie leaned right over the harbour wall to see better.

And there, through the mist and cloud, a fish shimmered silver against the sky before crashing at the man’s feet. He bent down and grabbed it round the neck before it could slip back into the water. With his other hand he reached blindly down next to him and brought up a large stone.

Ellie leaned forward. He was going to kill it. Weren’t you supposed to chuck them back in?

The man lifted the stone above his head and, without even hesitating, smashed it down so hard that the fish’s head caved in. Even from where Ellie was standing, she could see its brains ooze onto the jetty.

She was stunned. One minute the fish had been thrashing and wild, gasping in air. And now it was dead. For the first time, the man looked up and noticed her.

‘Mackerel,’ he shouted.

Like knowing its name made a difference. She pretended she hadn’t heard because she didn’t want to have a conversation with a psychopathic fish-killer. She kept an eye on him while he put the fish in a bucket, then retied his line and whipped it back out to sea. Only when he sat down on his little seat, took out a lunchbox and unwrapped a sandwich did she stop watching him.

She sat back down on the wall for a second and wondered what would happen next. Maybe she’d plummet into the sea and get hypothermia. Or maybe psycho-man would creep up behind her and bash her on the head with his stone. Or maybe she’d be overcome by a vegetarian fury and creep up on him instead and kick him off the end of the jetty. Maybe she’d do something even braver than that – like steal a boat and sail to Scandinavia.

It began to amuse her. It was like that film
Sliding Doors
, where the tube doors closed on Gwyneth Paltrow. In one version of the story, she caught the train, met a lovely bloke called James and got home to find her boyfriend, Gerry, in bed with another woman. In the second version, she missed the train and ended up getting mugged.

Ellie had choices, didn’t she? Loads of them. Today, she’d expected to go to school, yet ended up at the harbour. Later, she’d go home and her parents would ask about her day and she could lie or tell the truth. Which course of action she chose would make an entirely different set of events occur.

That’s why Tom was mad at her – she could choose, and he couldn’t. She could agree to be his witness and say she saw nothing, or she could refuse. Maybe he was right and the police
would
question her again. They might even force her to go to court, but she didn’t have to open her mouth and say anything. How could they make her? What could they do?

She got up from the wall, determined. Here she was feeling sorry for herself, when all the time she had this amazing ability to decide what happened next. Well, she wasn’t giving up looking for the gatecrasher then, because he’d texted her five times, which meant he was keen, and over there was the tourist information office, and how many pubs could there be?

If she didn’t find him, time would have passed and then she’d get the bus home. If she did find him, she’d swish her hair about and lick her lips slowly and say,
Well, hi, fancy meeting you here
. Boys fell for that stuff.

Ellie opened the door of the Queen’s Head slowly and was immediately hit by the warm stink of food and beer. She felt primitive coming in from the mist, as if she was a wild girl and warmth and shelter meant little to her. She was a girl who invited boys to graveyards and dared them to jump in rivers. She was a girl who boldly entered the information office and demanded to know where every pub in the vicinity of the harbour was. The man had even let her borrow his pen so that she could mark them on the map with red ink.