don’t like being stalked, then, Doner?’ Katy said.
‘Lesbian,’ Beth added.
I looked at Alice. She was watching me, but not like the others. Her eyes weren’t sparkling with the same viciousness. I don’t think she even wanted to be there.
‘I wasn’t stalking anyone,’ I said.
‘You’re a liar,’ Katy spat, leaning in. She twisted her face at me. ‘I saw you. In the window of Gap upstairs in the kids’ department, staring down at Alice like the saddo you are. You make me sick.’
‘Alice was scared,’ Sophie said.
‘Alice is scared,’ Katy cut in. ‘Jesus, I’d be scared too. Look at you! You’re a freak. You’re disgusting.’
Tears stung my eyes. Not because of what they were saying. I didn’t care what they said. They’re idiots, and I’d heard it all before anyway. It was because Alice was there.
‘Leave me alone,’ I said and I walked back past them. I thought one of them’d shove me, but they didn’t – they let me through – and for a second I thought I’d got away.
But then Katy said, ‘Oh, I don’t think so,’ and I heard her shoes scuffing the concrete as she ran up behind me.
I turned, but too late, crying out as her fingers stabbed into my neck, in the place where it kills, my knees giving way. I grabbed for her jumper, but she threw my arm off going, ‘Eurgh’, so I fell onto my hands.
‘I didn’t do anything!’ I said, standing up again. ‘I was trying to protect her! There’s a man . . .’
Then she gobbed – right in my eye where she’d aimed it. ‘Just fuck off,’ she said. ‘Leave us alone. Leave Alice alone.’
After I’d rinsed my eye in the toilets, I left. I just walked out the school gates. I couldn’t stay, especially not for PE where Mr Faraday wouldn’t care if they carried it on.
I crossed to the bus stop over the road. I wanted to go home, but Gary might be there and I couldn’t face him. So I thought I’d go into town to kill the time, calm down a bit. I thought I’d get myself a Yog in the shopping centre, or some churros with hot chocolate sauce that smell so good it makes you want to empty your pockets on the spot. If I’m ever rich (which obviously I won’t be), I’ll have to live somewhere they don’t make churros or I’ll end up so fat I’ll be like those people that can’t even get up anymore and have to lie on their beds staring at the ceiling till the day they die.
I sat in the bus shelter and tried to blank Alice from my mind – how she’d looked when Katy spat. I couldn’t do it, though. I kept seeing her face over and over – the shock in her eyes as her mouth opened wide, the laugh stifled behind her hand – so I only saw the bus at the last second, just as it was about to fly past. I stuck out my hand.
It lurched to a stop, squealing and bouncing on its wheels.
The driver threw his arms up when I got on, like to ask is this how I get my kicks, hanging round bus stops hailing buses at the last second, and when I got my pass out he wouldn’t look at it. He jammed his foot on the accelerator so I had to grab for the pole.
I went upstairs where it was empty and looked out through the scratched plastic window at the trees and the people, at mums pushing pushchairs, joggers jogging and dogs chasing Frisbees on the common. It all looked so beautiful, so green and blue and full of life, but also like it wasn’t real – like it was a dream or a memory of some place I’d been before, long ago. And it was. It was the world I used to live in, when Dad was alive.
I wished he could come back and everything could be like it was before he got too ill to stay at home. I wished he could come back for just one minute so I could feel his arms round me, holding me tight like he used to, because if that happened I’d be so grateful I wouldn’t care if everyone else I ever met hated my guts. And then I was pressing the bell to get off because suddenly I knew where I wanted to go.
I didn’t remember the gates because I hadn’t been there for years – not since I was about ten. They were like those gothic ones you see in films that have a winding path beyond them, leading up to a scary house on top of a rock. The metal letters in the top spelt out Bushgrove Cemetery.
I went through. Everything was quiet and still. It was so neat, the grass all mown, the flowers all red and pink in the beds along the driveway. I walked past the low brick building. Three pathways led off into the distance like massive wheel spokes through a hundred thousand graves. It was just as big as I remembered, and being the only person there that was actually alive made me feel a bit weird – like that if I stood still too long, I might start sinking into the ground without even realising what was going on till it was too late, and I was under a headstone too. Like the graveyard would swallow me.
I went down the left path. I wasn’t sure, but I had a feeling it was Dad’s. The only thing I could remember from the funeral was a big tree near where they put him. I remembered sitting under it away from the huddle of people round his grave. I’d picked the petals off daisies, whispering that old-fashioned thing ‘He loves me, he loves me not’ – only I kept saying, ‘He loves me, he loves me, he loves me . . .’ Maybe that was the day I started with the whispering thing.
I looked at the gravestones as I walked. They were either incredibly old or just quite old – like either so old you couldn’t see what words had been engraved on the stones anymore, or like people that’d died in the ’70s or ’80s, like Annie Stott who was nineteen when she died. Her grave had fresh flowers on it – yellow and white ones – and little china fairies were sat all round the headstone. I wondered who’d keep coming all those years with fresh flowers. Someone who really loved her. Her stone said 1959–1978: Snatched away too soon. But it didn’t say how. They seemed like funny words to put on a gravestone – ‘Snatched away’ – as if the person who’d chosen them (probably the same one that was still bringing flowers) was pretty mad. Mad at God – or mad at someone, anyway. I wondered if Annie had literally been snatched away by someone like you – maybe even by you. Maybe you’d been taking girls for years and years and years . . . so long you couldn’t even remember how many you’d snatched away. If that was true, I thought you must be really clever, not getting caught.
The tree I remembered was up ahead, off the path on the left. It was big with a great thick trunk. An oak, I think. Actually I have no idea what it was. Maybe it was an ash or a cedar or something else. Tree identification isn’t one of my stronger points – not one of my areas of personal expertise. Anyway, I traced an imaginary line from it to the place where I remembered everyone standing, and there it was. I saw it even though I was still quite far away – standing out from all the pale stone ones round it – black and shiny like a rich person’s kitchen worktop: Dad’s grave.
I turned away, my cheeks burning. I thought, what am I even doing? He won’t want to see me – not like this! What if he doesn’t recognise me? And I wanted to run, but then I thought, oh God, what if he’s seen me and he does know it’s me? I thought how awful it’d be if, after five years of waiting and waiting for me to come, he had to watch me running off, having no idea why. So I pressed my cuffs into my eyes till I could breathe again and told myself to turn round. ‘Turn round,’ I whispered, over and over. ‘Turn round, you useless cow!’
So I did (after about five minutes) and I made myself walk straight over to him, gripping my hands in fists and clenching my teeth so I wouldn’t chicken out.
The gold letters shone out of the smooth shiny black:
Thanos ‘Terry’ Laksaris
1963–2006
Beloved husband to Jennifer
And dad to Yasmin
Forever in our hearts.
The ground over his coffin was filled with that grey gravelly stuff that looks like cat litter. There was grass growing up through it and a rusty metal vase on top.