“Tess? What the—?” Isabel cries because I’m darting across the road.
“The Bible is the key to your salvation!” the man cries.
Pretending to be interested in the Eternal Kingdom of Heaven, I move closer to inspect his eyes. There they are, lighting up as I approach of my own accord and take a leaflet like a miracle teenager sent from Jehovah or what have you, but his eyes glint green not brown so he isn’t the one.
All the feeling trickles out of me until I’m more of a dummy than the mannequin in the shop window. The man’s loving it, this captive teenage audience, no idea at all that I’m not listening to him describe my ticket to salvation because I am too busy thinking about a ticket to London. I have to go. I need information to narrow down my search.
“What was that about?” Isabel asks when I return. She snatches the leaflet and starts to read. “The good news of the Kingdom will be preached in all the inhabited Earth. Matthew’s Gospel, chapter twenty-four, verse fourteen, apparently. My friend is completely mental. The Gospel of Isabel, chapter one, verse one. She’s totally and utterly lost her mind. Verse two. I have no idea what’s going on but she’s going to confide in me, her only friend in the world, right this very second.” She pokes me as we walk into the park. “That was verse three. You can’t argue with verse three. You have to tell me. The Bible says so.”
We make our way to the play area.
“I thought you weren’t supposed to be badgering me.”
“I’m an irrepressible badger. You should know that by now.”
I perch on a swing as a man appears, holding the hand of a little girl with auburn pigtails. She sprints toward the seesaw and her dad follows just as quickly. He scoops her up and she shrieks in delight as he puts her on one end then hurries around the other side to sit down himself. They’re giddy with excitement. Giddy about each other. It hurts, but in some faraway part of me. My body’s dispersing, my head wafting away… away… away as my limbs drift apart. I am not Tess Turner. I am not anyone. I float in bits beneath a sky the exact color of a bruise.
“Tess?”
It doesn’t even sound like my name.
“I’m sorry.” I really am too. Isabel’s my best friend, my only friend, and she deserves an explanation. “I know I’m being weird. It’s just that—”
“What?” Isabel interrupts, pointing at her ear even though she heard me just fine. “What did you say?”
“I’m being weird, but I—”
“What was that?”
I grind my teeth. “I’m being weird.”
“Oh, you think?” She starts to laugh. “Tess, you have never acted more freakishly in your life and that is saying something, trust me.”
I bite the bullet one more time. “The thing is—”
She yawns loudly. “You know what? I’m not that interested anymore.” I look at her in dismay. “I mean, why would I care what’s going on, hmm? Hmm? Hmm?”
“Be serious, will you?”
“Fine. I’m ready, Tess,” she chants in a monotone. “I’m serious enough to hear whatever it is you have to say.” My eyes fill with frustrated tears. “All right, all right. That was the last one, I promise.” I glance at her warily but she’s quiet now. Listening. I’m just about to speak when her phone starts to ring.
“Sorry, sorry!” She pulls it out of her coat pocket. “Give me a sec. Hiya, Dad.” Her voice is casual, unconcerned, because absolutely without question, Dad is what he is. She smiles at something he says and it’s warm and easy, oh so full of trust. “With Tess. In the park. No. No young men, Dad.” She rolls her eyes for my benefit. “Apart from the rapist. There is him, but no one else.”
The seesaw’s creaking, the little girl giggling as her dad bounces her up and down. In the distance, a man and a boy my age are walking a dog into the woods. The bruise darkens, the treetops turn black, and I ache with longing to swap places with the boy or the little girl or Isabel telling her dad that she’ll see him at home.
She hangs up with this strange expression, sort of nervous but pleased.
“He’s got tickets. For tomorrow night. Peter Pan. I asked him if he would buy them this morning. You don’t mind, do you?” Jack’s disapproving face wafts before me. I blink to get rid of it. “I know you said not to bother,” she says quickly, “but I want to be there. You, dressed as a Lost Boy, Tess? I wouldn’t miss that for the world. Tell me you’re okay with it.… It’ll be fine, honestly. I’ll give you the biggest cheer.”
I don’t want to hurt her so I smile. “All right.”
“And afterward I’ll introduce myself to your parents and you can finally meet my dad,” she says happily. “You’ll love him, Tess. I’ve told him all about you.”
10
Maybe I’m overreacting.
Maybe Jack will love Isabel and Isabel will love Jack and they’ll tease me about how worried I’ve been. She’ll laugh at his bad jokes and he’ll laugh at her bad jokes and I’ll laugh at my own stupidity for ever keeping them apart.
I’ve got a good one. What did the drunken hobbit say when he bumped into the wizard? Saruman, I didn’t see you there!
She’s so great! Jack will tell me after giving Isabel a high five. Much better than that Anna girl.
I can’t believe you pretended she was your best friend, Tess! How long has that lie being going on, then?
Since the Year Seven welcome dance.
Hilarious! Isabel will shout, slapping her thigh.
She even showed me photos of Anna. Online, you know? She often talked about how pretty she was.
Stop it. Oh, stop it. It’s too funny! Isabel will laugh, wiping away silver tears of mirth.
I know, Jack will reply. And she also said they sat next to each other in class and went for lunch every day in the cafeteria and talked endlessly about boys and blush because she’s far more interested in that sort of stuff than Balrogs and bestiality.
Isabel’s smile will fade. But she loves talking about Balrogs and bestiality.
She doesn’t, Jack will say, and Isabel’s tears will start to rust. Why do you think she invented a friendship with another girl? She’s bored of you, Isabel. Bored and ashamed. His expression will harden. And I can see why.
It’s not true! I’ll cry as Isabel’s tears corrode her lovely face. Our friendship is the best thing in the world! The very best thing!
I have to protect it, and this is just one more reason to make sure I disappear to London. I’ll go tomorrow, before the play—and that’s a promise I tell the goldfish as I nip into the supermarket to buy some chocolate biscuits for Gran. On Fridays I always drop off a packet with a pint of full-fat milk on my way home from school.
I hurry down her driveway and let myself in. “It’s just me, Gran!”
It’s getting dark now and there’s a lamp shining in the hall that smells dusty and old, like time is crumbling second by second to form a powdery coat over the ornaments on the side table. I check that the coast is clear then wipe the dust with my sleeve because this right here is what Mum and Jack would call a sign that Gran is no longer coping. They started saying it a couple of months ago, snooping on her, checking her fridge for moldy food and the kitchen for grime. I can’t stand it, Jack wiping his thin finger over the surfaces the same way he drags it across my homework.
Well, they won’t find any mess in the kitchen after my visits. I clean it with the secret spray I bought from the supermarket, hiding it at the back of the cabinet under the sink where definitely Gran’s too old to stoop down and discover it. When I walk into the kitchen to drop off the biscuits and turn on the kettle, I wipe up a dollop of yogurt and throw away the empty carton before popping my head around the living room door.
“Hello, dear.” Gran lifts a wrinkly hand then returns it to her round belly. The gesture is so familiar and comforting I well up, giving thanks that Gran is on Mum’s side of the family. I’m no less her granddaughter than I was yesterday afternoon and it’s a relief to see her, this woman whose b
lood throbs in my veins.
“I’ve put the kettle on,” I shout so Gran can hear me, the only time I don’t mind raising my voice.
“You are good, dear. I’ll make us some tea, shall I?” She’s wearing a fluffy pink cardigan and the warmth of her voice makes me feel as if I’m snuggled up in it too. “And don’t you dare offer to help. I can still make a pot of tea, you know.”
I look away out of respect. I wouldn’t want an audience if I had to struggle to get out of my chair and Gran is no different. She’s human, isn’t she, a thing Mum and Jack seem to forget when they talk about her cleaning habits as if Gran is out of earshot rather than sitting right in front of them.
She grips the wooden arms then heaves herself to standing. It’s an effort and she staggers, unsteady on her feet, round-shouldered and shuffling as she leaves the room. It will take her a while to make the tea so I have a few minutes to tidy up, nothing too obvious so Gran won’t notice.
On the mantelpiece, there are twenty porcelain animals that need dusting. It’s hard without polish but I do my best with my shirtsleeve. As always, I’m drawn to the lion without really knowing why.
“You’ve always liked that one,” Gran says, reappearing with a tray that shakes in her wobbly hands. I don’t take it from her though. If Gran says not to help then Gran means not to help, let’s be clear about that. “Do you remember? You always chose to play with it when you were small. Making it purr. Giving it a saucer of milk. That sort of thing.” I smile at Gran, amazed I have no recollection of it. “But lions aren’t tame, Jack used to say. They’re dangerous, Tess. They roar. But you wouldn’t listen. You saw a cat. Jack saw the King of the Jungle. But that’s family for you. It wouldn’t do for us all to be identical, would it?”
I’ve always known we were different, but I didn’t think other people had noticed it too. It’s frightening how little we’re alike, how little I know about my true identity.
“Are you okay, dear?”
I want a dad. A real one. I want to look at him and know who I am, to be able to make sense of the awkward parts of me by seeing how they’ve come together in a man who’s got it all figured out. I want to watch how he works through things with a brain just like my brain, and how he copes with our peculiar brand of shyness, and how he lives with the DNA I share, a tangle of codes that confuses the hell out of me, giving me a thousand contradictory impulses every minute of every day.
Like now, for instance. I want to ask Gran about Jack and never hear his name again. I want to scream in Jack’s face and also disappear for good so I never have to face up to the truth. I want to parade Isabel onstage in front of an audience of millions and also hide her away to protect her from Jack. I want to impress him and defy him and hate him even though I love him in a muddle that hurts my brain.
“I’m fine.”
I don’t know what else to say.
And I don’t know what else to do except sit with Gran and eat a chocolate biscuit.
11
“You’re here early,” Jane says when Jack and I walk into the theater that’s not a theater at all but a Methodist church in Didsbury.
Everything I need to get to London is hidden in my bag beneath my costume and my makeup case. I’ll put on my Lost Boy outfit so as not to rouse suspicion, but slip out before I go onstage, changing back into my normal clothes at the train station where definitely I will be buying a ticket in precisely two hours and twenty minutes.
Jane stares at us through the dead center of a square pair of glasses. “I haven’t even set up the ticket desk yet.” She grabs a stack of pink tickets then perches behind a table.
“That was difficult,” Jack says. I laugh without meaning to. It rings out over the church, this blessed holy noise, and for the tiniest instant it’s just like old times. It’s been happening all day, these moments where everything seems normal and I almost forget.
“The dressing room isn’t ready. I haven’t even had chance to turn on the space heater.”
“In that case, I’m leaving,” Jack says, and I snort again. “We can’t work like this, eh, Tessie-T?” I can’t help playing along, giving my head a quick shake. “Take no notice of us, Jane. We’re pulling your leg.”
She sniffs. “Are you staying or not?”
“If you don’t mind. Sorry to be a pain. I’m the same on set, I’m afraid. They got to know my ways on Lewis. They used to let me arrive a couple of hours early when I had a big scene,” Jack says, and the moment passes, just like that. He never had a big scene, and I wait for a hint of embarrassment at the lie, but it doesn’t come.
Jane’s intrigued without wanting to be. “Did you meet him, then?”
Jack scratches his cheek then gives his fingernails a brief once-over. “Who?”
“What’s his name? Kevin… Wheately, is it?”
“Oh, Kevin Whately. Oh yes. I know Kev.”
“Really?” Jane replies, dropping any pretense of disinterest now. She leans forward, her large chest squishing against the table.
“Yes. He’s a great guy. A really great guy. Great actor too, of course. On the screen.”
“Is it very different then, being onstage to being on television?”
“Apples and oranges, Jane.”
“Really?”
“Oh, absolutely.”
She beams at him with all her teeth. “Fascinating.”
“So, how’re the sales going? Picked up yet?” For some reason Jack glances at me.
“A little,” Jane says in a way that makes me think they haven’t at all. “Thirty-two.”
“That’s not bad,” Jack replies, sounding like he thinks it is. “Thirty-two’s an audience.”
“Thirty-two’s plenty and we could still sell more. Bob, the lighting guy, said a couple of his sisters might come along with their kids, so that’s another five or six if they make it.”
“And my agent might turn up. Dropped him a line a couple of days ago.”
This is news to me. I imagine Jack finishing the blog and switching to his e-mail in the study where clearly he gets up to all sorts of secret business.
Jane looks impressed. “Your agent, hey? Very glamorous.”
“Invited him up from London. Thought it would be good to remind him I can do theater work as well as TV because it’s, well, not exactly difficult. I wouldn’t say that.” He grins. “It’s been a good year if anything.”
It’s unnerving, how easily Jack lies to everyone about everything and me most of all, every day of my life, which is five thousand five hundred and seventy-one. I calculated this morning. If I lined up the false words that have emerged from his lips, I reckon they’d stretch at least twice around the Earth. That’s how it feels, like my world is surrounded by lies and made up of fibs and built on mistruths. I need facts—facts that can’t be denied, written down in black and white in an official file with an index where I can look up the secrets of myself and find the answers.
“Still, it can’t be the easiest way to make a living,” Jane says.
“It’s the road less traveled, certainly. You know the Robert Frost poem? ‘The Road Not Taken’?”
“No, I’m not familiar with it.”
“It’s about the importance of doing things differently, getting off the beaten track. This man stands in the woods at a fork in the road. One path is clear, downtrodden by hundreds of pairs of feet, and the other is overgrown. Untried. Untested.” He makes a grand, sweeping gesture down at himself. “That’s the route I’ve chosen, obviously. It isn’t easy, but I thrive on it. The unpredictability. The unexpected twists and turns. The chance to be great, to do something great, to challenge myself and prove what I can do in front of an audience, you know? Silence the doubters, that sort of thing?”
“I can’t imagine you have many of those,” Jane says in this voice that’s half a flirt.
Jack gives her more than half a smile. “It will be nice for my agent to witness this. Homegrown drama. Grassroots stuff.”
He look
s around, taking it all in like he’s trying to imagine it through his agent’s eyes. I take it in too: the programs printed off someone’s computer; the pretty-decent homemade set; the foyer of the church, repainted especially for tonight. I don’t know what’s worse, how bad this whole thing is or how good everyone’s tried to make it.
“I’ll reserve a ticket for your agent,” Jane says, but Jack doesn’t respond right away. He’s lost in some thought that creases his brow.
“That’s good of you,” he says, straightening it out. “Thanks.”
“And are you looking forward to it, Tess?”
“She can’t wait,” Jack replies before I’ve even had chance to consider the question. Irritation tingles my skin. “She’s really excited, aren’t you? Aren’t you, Tess? Don’t mumble. No one will hear her in the audience if she speaks like that, will they? She is excited. Always going on about it at home, aren’t you?”
The irritation’s burning now. I swallow hard, resenting Jack, hating him, but forcing out the word he wants to hear. “Yes.”
“She’s loved it, being in a play with her old man. It’s been a treat for both of us. Just nervous, that’s all. Opening night of the first play she’s ever been in. Debut performance. It’s a major deal.”
“Yes, it is,” Jane agrees. “Well, good luck, both of you. Enjoy your big moment, Tess.”
“Oh, I will,” I say more loudly. Clutching my bag, I follow Jack into the dressing room to wait for that big moment to come.
“I need Nana the dog as well. Has anyone seen him?” Derek asks. “Where is he?”
Daniel shuffles out of the toilet, cue the laughter, because a man in a dog costume is automatically hilarious and this is just one of the rules of the mainstream universe that I don’t have access to, being Pluto, thousands of miles away, floating out here on the very edge of things. It’s just not funny, Jack woofing his approval as Daniel wags his tail and spins in a circle, but everyone’s rolling around. These are Jack’s people, all right, and I am not going to join them. I stand alone and it feels good, like I’m remaining true to myself at long last. I am a storm cloud and I am thunder and I am big and black and angry, lurking on the horizon.