Victory for Andy! The diamonds were sitting in the fork of the pear tree. I put them on, fastening the clasp around my neck, and then I took off my shoes and climbed up. Through the first-floor window, I could see Em and Marcus. They were on their hands and knees peering under dust-sheeted furniture.
“Oi!”
When they turned, I indicated my neck with a finger and watched their faces sink. Then I went on up, taking the drainpipe again. Only when I got to the roof, I couldn’t get up. I just couldn’t make my legs do it. Strange. I gave the order again, but my body said no.
I went back down. David was waiting at the foot of the tree.
“Lost your bottle?”
I sailed past him. What did it mean, the nerve being gone? In stories, there were magic mirrors that showed what was inside people. In reality, you couldn’t see. It was dark in there and you were left to guess.
I took him by surprise, putting a foot behind his and pushing. He went down into the grass easily. I knelt over him.
“No.”
“I see.”
I watched his chest rise and fall. His lips were coral pink. His eyes shifted color depending where he was. Now they were blue-green, like spring grass.
David put a finger up to touch the necklace. “They suit you.”
* * *
The keeper booted the ball long and it came down over the halfway line. Marcus got a toe to it, but one of the Pewsey players barged him and sent it back up the pitch.
Em and I were sitting with Darren on a wooden bench they’d brought out of the club hut. Every time something exciting happened, Darren stood up and the bench heaved like a seesaw. It was Saturday afternoon, a grudge match, and we were two-nil down near the end of the first half.
Darren rubbed his face with his hands. “That ref got dropped as a baby.”
The whistle blew and someone’s gran brought out the orange slices and squash. I wondered what Peter and David were up to. What I saw in my mind’s eye made my cheeks burn.
An ice-cream van pulled up and Darren dug out a tenner. “I’ll have a Mr. Whippy.”
“With a Flake?”
“Don’t be daft. Of course, with a Flake.”
I got three. On the way back, one of the Pewsey players jogged past. “I’ll give you something to lick if you want.”
Marcus came over. “What did he say to you?”
“Forget it, Marc.” But he made me tell him and when he went back on the pitch, he was a bottle of rage.
“Shouldn’t let hisself be wound up like that. He’ll get sent off.” Darren ate the last of his cone with a crunch. Em screeched in my ear as Marcus took a shot at the goal, but he was miles off target. Then he got a yellow card for elbowing. “Wait for it,” Darren said.
But Marcus was carried off, not sent off. An opponent went in with a two-footed tackle. “Foul,” Em howled, “that’s a fucking foul! Sorry, Uncle Darren.”
It was his ankle. He lay there clutching it and writhing. Darren was all over the ref. By the time they brought him into the clubhouse, the joint was swollen up like a grapefruit. Marcus held a bag of ice to it, jaw set.
“I can’t play with you here.”
Darren whipped round, voice molten: “Don’t you blame her because you can’t control yourself!”
We went back in Darren’s car. Em in the front, me with Marcus’s head in my lap in the back. The house Marcus shared with his mum was a new build, one of Darren’s, with thick carpets, a fancy kitchen, and dimmers on the lights. The double glazing was so thick, you couldn’t hear anything from outside.
Marcus’s mum was home. She always seemed to be home. All those white goods to look after. I think I made her nervous, but then what didn’t?
Em had a shift at The Polly at four. I was relieved when Darren put his head round the living room door and said he’d drop us both back in town.
“Come see us yeah? Tomorrow?”
I dropped a kiss on Marcus’s forehead. “Course.”
Traffic was heavy. Darren pulled into the market square and Em hopped out. They docked her pay if she was late.
“How’s Peter? What’s he up to today?” Darren was always asking about Peter. Back when he took us trampolining, he used to call him the Professor.
“He’s all right.”
“Reading a book somewhere I ’spect. And you, Andy? Things all right with you?” As I got out, he beckoned me back. He wasn’t smiling now. “You ever need anything, you come to me.”
* * *
Two days of getting the bus out to see Marcus was enough. His mum didn’t want us up in his room, so we sat on the cream sofa, Marcus with his leg up on a pouf. His ankle was all the colors. There was nothing on telly. We couldn’t even talk about the manor because his mum was always in and out, giving a little cough in the doorway in case she was interrupting anything.
We ate lunch at the table. “Markie likes his yolks runny. What about you, Andy?”
There were photos everywhere, mostly of Marcus, a couple with Darren and some old people. My eyes lingered on a picture of his mum in her wedding dress on her dad’s arm. It was up on a top shelf and turned a bit to the left, like whoever put it there wasn’t sure they wanted it to be seen. I moved closer.
“Andy! Put it back.” In the photo, she looked about twelve with long, straight seventies hair. Her smile went from ear to ear. Marcus was struggling to his feet.
“All right, all right.” I set it down and came and sat down next to him. “You never hear from your dad?”
Marcus shook his head. “Don’t want a bar of him. She says the only good thing came out of it was me.” He took my hand. “When you marry someone, you look after them. Treat them right. And you should wait, shouldn’t get married young. You should be at least twenty-one.”
The bus didn’t come for another hour.
I chose a seat on the top deck on the way back, feeling the breeze pour over me, listening to the twigs scratching on the roof. There weren’t many people on. Two ravers a few rows back were talking about e; Double Doves and Mitsubishis; how you wanted a line of whizz on the way up and a bong for the way down; Lakota vs. the Brunel vs. Gold Diggers; the trippy carpet at Membury Services.
“You want to listen, you come sit with us.”
So I did, sliding across the seat as the bus shook round the corners, and listening to Scuttler and Lee—both on the simian side, both wearing clothes sizes too big—tell me about their weekend adventures like soldiers recounting legendary battles. They worked at B&Q in Swindon and spent most of the time smoking weed in the stores, or sleeping off their comedowns in the cardboard recycling container.
“It’s quite comfy in there,” Scuttler said.
There were summer jobs going if I was interested.
By the time I got off in Marlborough, I was twenty quid lighter and with three pills, brown-speckled like hen’s eggs, in my back pocket.
* * *
“Best not tell Marcus, because of Uncle Darren.” Darren didn’t hold with chemicals. A bit of hash was okay, but that was it.
Peter surprised me because he said, “Fuck Darren.” He’d not been keen to try e before, but now he was. Em had a shift at The Polly, so it was just me, Peter, and David. We dropped a half each in the manor’s kitchen.