thirty-one

 

 

Marcus was finding it hard to get used to the idea that winter was over. Pretty much everything Marcus had experienced in London had taken place in the dark and the wet (there must have been a few light evenings right at the beginning of the school year, but so much had happened since that he no longer had any recollection of them), and now he was able to walk home from Will's place in the late afternoon sunshine. It was hard not to feel that everything was OK the first week after the clocks had gone forward; it was ridiculously easy to believe that his mum would get better, that he'd suddenly age three years and suddenly get cool so that Ellie would like him, that he'd score the winning goal for the school football team and become the most popular person in school.

    But that was stupid, in the same way that star signs were stupid, in his opinion. The clocks had gone forward for everybody, not just him, and there was no way that every depressed mother was going to cheer up, there was no way that every kid in Britain was going to score the winning goal for the school football team — especially every kid in Britain who hated football and didn't know which end of a ball to kick — and there was certainly no way that every single twelve-year-old was going to become fifteen overnight. The chances of it happening to even one of them were pretty slim, and even if it did, it wouldn't be Marcus, knowing his luck. It would be some other twelve-year-old at some other school who wasn't in love with someone three years older than him, and who therefore wouldn't even care very much. The injustice of the scene that Marcus had just pictured made him angry, and he marked his return home by slamming the door in a temper.

    'Have you been round to Will's?' his mum asked. She looked OK. Maybe one of the clocks-forward wishes had come true.

    'Yeah. I wanted to . . .' He still felt he should come up with reasons for why he went round, and he still couldn't think of anything to say.

    'I don't care. Your dad's hurt himself. You've got to go up and see him. He fell off a window-ledge.'

    'I'm not going while you're like this.'

    'Like what?'

    'Like crying all the time.'

    'I'm OK. Well, I'm not OK, but I'm not going to do anything. Promise.'

    'Is he really bad?'

    'He's broken his collar bone. And he's a bit concussed.'

    He fell off a window-ledge. No wonder his mum had cheered up.

    'What was he doing on a window-ledge?'

    'Some sort of DIY thing. Painting, or grouting, or one of those Scrabble words. For the first time ever. That'll teach him a lesson.'

    'And why do I have to go up?'

    'He was asking for you. I think he's a bit doolally at the moment.'

    'Thanks.'

    'Oh, Marcus, I'm sorry, that isn't why he's been asking for you. I just meant . . . I think he's feeling a bit pathetic. Lindsey said he was quite lucky it wasn't worse, so maybe he's having this big think about his life.'

    'He can piss off.'

    'Marcus!'

    But Marcus didn't want an argument about where and why he had learnt to swear; he wanted to sit in his room and sulk, and that's exactly what he did.

    He's having this big think about his life . . . That had made Marcus so angry, when his mum had told him, and now he was trying to work out why. He was quite good at working things out when he wanted to: he had an old bean bag in his room, and he sat on it and stared at the wall where he had stuck up some interesting stories out of the newspaper. 'MAN FALLS FIVE THOUSAND FEET AND LIVES'; 'DINOSAURS MAY HAVE BEEN WIPED OUT BY METEOR.' Those were the sorts of things that made you have a big think about your life, not falling off a window-ledge while you were pretending to be a proper dad. Why had he never had a big think before, when he wasn't falling off a window-ledge? Over the last year or so it seemed like everyone had been having big thinks, apart from his father. His mum, for example, never did anything else other than have big thinks, which was probably why everyone had to worry about her all the time. And why did he only want to see his son when he'd broken his collar bone? Marcus couldn't remember ever having come home before and his mum telling him to get on the train to Cambridge because his dad was desperate. All those hundreds and hundreds of days when his collar bone was all right, Marcus had heard nothing.

    He went downstairs to see his mother.

    'I'm not going,' he said to her. 'He makes me sick.'

     

It wasn't until the next day, when he was talking to Ellie about the window-ledge, that he began to change his mind about going to see his dad. They were in an empty classroom during the morning break, although it hadn't been empty at first: when Marcus had told her he wanted a chat, she'd taken his hand, led him inside, and scared off the half-dozen kids messing about in there, kids she didn't know but who seemed perfectly prepared to believe that Ellie would follow through with the terrible threats she was making. (Why did that happen? he wondered. She wasn't much taller than him, so how did she get away with this stuff? Maybe if he started to wear that sort of eye make-up and cut his own hair he'd be able to make people scared of him, too, but there would still be something missing.)

    'You should go and see him. Tell him what you think of him. I would. Jerk. I'll come with you, if you like. Give him what for.' She laughed, and though Marcus heard her he had already drifted off by then. He was thinking about how nice it would be to have a whole hour on a train with Ellie, just the two of them; and then he was thinking how great it would be if he let Ellie loose on his dad. Ellie was like a guided missile in school, and sometimes it felt as though she were his personal guided missile. Whenever he was with her he could point her at targets and she destroyed them, and he loved her for it. She had beaten up Lee Hartley's mate, and she stopped people laughing at him quite so much . . . And if it worked so well in school, why wouldn't it work away from school? There was no reason he could think of. He was going to point Ellie at his dad and see what happened.

    'Will you come with me really, Ellie?'

    'Yeah, of course. If you want me to. It'd be a laugh.' Marcus knew she would say yes, if he asked her. Ellie would say yes to just about anything, apart from a dance at a party. 'Anyway, you don't want to go up there on your own, do you?'

    He always did things on his own, so he had never bothered even thinking about whether there was a choice. That was the trouble with Ellie: he was frightened that when and if he didn't see her any more, he'd still be aware that there were choices, but it wouldn't do him any good because he wouldn't be able to get at them, and his whole life would be ruined.

    'Not really. Would Zoe come?'

    'No. She wouldn't know what to say to him, and I will. Just us.'

    'OK then. Brilliant.' Marcus didn't want to think about what Ellie might have to say. He'd worry about that later.

    'Have you got any money? 'Cos I haven't got the train fare.'

    'I can get it.' He didn't spend very much; he reckoned he had at least twenty pounds saved up, and his mum would give him what he needed for the trip anyway.

    'So shall we go next week, then?' It was nearly Easter, and they were on holiday next week, so they could stay overnight if they wanted. And Marcus would have to ring Ellie at home to make arrangements — it would be like a proper date.

    'Yeah. Cool. We'll have a great time.'

    Marcus wondered for a moment whether his idea of a great time would be the same as Ellie's idea of a great time, and then he decided not to worry about that until later.

     

Fiona wanted to come to King's Cross with Marcus, but he managed to talk her out of it.

    'It'd be too sad,' he told her.

    'You're only going for a night.'

    'But I'll miss you.'

    'You'll still be missing me if we say goodbye at the underground station. In fact, you'll have to miss me for longer.'

    'It'll seem more normal to say goodbye at the underground, though.'

    He knew he was overdoing it, and he knew what he was saying didn't make much sense anyway, but he wasn't going to risk a meeting between Ellie and his mum at the station. She'd stop him from going if she knew he was taking Ellie along to Cambridge to blow up his dad.

    The two of them walked from the flat to Holloway Road station, and said goodbye in the tube entrance.

    'You'll be OK,' she said to him.

    'Yeah.'

    'And it'll be over before you know it.'

    'It's only for a night,' he said. By the time they reached the underground he'd forgotten he'd told her how much he would miss her. 'It's only for a night, but it seems like forever.' He was hoping his mum wouldn't remember this when he came back. If she did, he probably wouldn't be allowed down to the shops on his own.

    'I shouldn't be making you go. You've had such a rough time lately.'

    'I'll be fine. Really.'

    Because he was going to miss her so much, she gave him an enormous hug that went on forever, while everyone walking past watched.

    The tube wasn't crowded. It was mid-afternoon — his dad had worked out the train times so that Lindsey could pick him up from Cambridge on her way home from work — and there was only one other person in his carriage, an old guy reading the evening paper. He was looking at the back page, so Marcus could see some of the stuff on the front; the first thing he noticed was the photo. It seemed so familiar that for a moment he thought it was a picture of someone he knew, a member of the family, and maybe they had it at home, in a frame on the piano, or pinned on to the cork board in the kitchen. But there was no family friend or relative who had bleached hair and half a beard and looked like a sort of modern Jesus . . .

    He knew who it was now. He saw the same picture every single day of the week on Ellie's chest. He felt hot all over; he didn't even need to read the old guy's paper, but he did anyway. 'ROCK STAR COBAIN DEAD', was the headline, and underneath, in smaller writing 'Nirvana singer, 27, shoots himself'. Marcus thought and felt a lot of things all at once: he wondered whether Ellie had seen the paper yet, and if she hadn't then how she'd be when she found out; and he wondered if his mum was OK, even though he knew there was no connection between his mum and Kurt Cobain because his mum was a real person and Kurt Cobain wasn't; and then he felt confused, because the newspaper headline had turned Kurt Cobain into a real person somehow; and then he just felt very sad — sad for Ellie, sad for Kurt Cobain's wife and little girl, sad for his mum, sad for himself. And then he was at King's Cross and he had to get off the train.

    He found Ellie underneath the departure board, which was where they had arranged to meet. She seemed normal. 'Platform ten b,' she said. 'It's in another part of the station, I think.'

    Everyone was carrying an evening paper, so Kurt Cobain was everywhere. And because the photo in the paper was exactly the same picture that Ellie had on her sweatshirt, it took Marcus a while to get used to the idea that all these people were holding something that he had always thought of as a part of her. Every time he saw it he wanted to nudge her and point at it, but he said nothing. He didn't know what to do.

    'Right. Follow me,' Ellie shouted in a pretend-bossy voice that would have made Marcus giggle at any other time. Today, however, he could only manage a weak little smile; he was too worried to respond to her in the way he usually did, and he could only listen to what she was saying, not the way she was saying it. He didn't want to follow her, because if she was out in front she was bound to notice the army of Kurt Cobains marching towards her.

    'Why should I follow you? Why don't you follow me for a change?'

    'Ooh, Marcus. You're so masterful,' said Ellie. 'I love that in a man.'

    'Where are we going?'

    Ellie laughed. 'Ten b. Over there.'

    'Right.' He stood directly in front of her and began to walk very slowly towards the platform.

    'What are you doing?'

    'Leading you.'

    She pushed him in the back. 'Don't be an idiot. Get a move on.'

    He suddenly remembered something that he'd seen in one of the Open University programmes his mum used to have to watch for her course. He'd watched it with her because it was funny: there were all these people in a room, and half of them were wearing blindfolds, and the other half had to lead the blindfolded half around and not let them bump into each other. It was something to do with trust, his mum had said. If someone could guide you around safely when you were feeling vulnerable, then you learnt to trust them, and that was important. The best bit of the programme was when this woman walked an old man straight into a door and he smashed his head, and they started having a row.

    'Ellie, do you trust me?'

    'What are you on about?'

    'Do you trust me, yes or no?'

    'Yes. As far as I can throw you.'

    'Ha, ha.'

    'Of course I trust you.'

    'OK, then. Close your eyes and hang on to my jacket.'

    'Eh?'

    'Close your eyes and hang on to my jacket. You're not allowed to peek.'

    A young guy with long, straggly bleached hair looked at Ellie, at her sweatshirt and then her face. For a moment it looked as though he was going to say something to her, and Marcus began to panic; he stood in between her and the guy and grabbed her.

    'Come on.'

    'Marcus, have you gone mad?'

    'I'm going to guide you through all these people and I'm going to get you on the train, and then you'll trust me forever.'

    'If I trust you forever, it won't be because I spent five minutes wandering around King's Cross station with my eyes closed.'

    'No. OK. But it'll help.'

    'Oh, fucking hell. Come on, then.'

    'Ready?'

    'Ready.'

    'Eyes closed, no peeking?'

    'Marcus!'

    They set off. To get to the Cambridge train you had to go out of the main part of the station and into another, smaller part tucked away at the side; most people were walking in their direction to get the train home from work, but there were enough people coming at them holding newspapers to make the game worthwhile.

    'Are you OK?' he said over his shoulder.

    'Yes. You'll tell me if we have to go upstairs or anything?'

    'Course.'

    Marcus was almost enjoying it all now. They were going through a narrow passageway, and you had to concentrate, because you couldn't just stop dead or sidestep, and you had to remember that you'd sort of doubled in size, so you had to think about what sort of spaces you could fit into. This must be what it was like if you started driving a coach when you were used to a Fiat Uno or something. The best thing about it was that he really did have to look after Ellie, and he liked the feeling that brought with it. He'd never looked after anything or anybody in his whole life — he'd never had a pet, because he wasn't bothered about animals, even though he and his mum had agreed not to eat them (why hadn't he just told her he wasn't bothered about animals, instead of getting into an argument about factory farming and so on?) — and as he loved Ellie more than he would ever have loved a goldfish or a hamster, it felt real.

    'Are we nearly there?'

    'Yeah.'

    'The light's different.'

    'We're out of the big station and now we're going into the little one. The train's there waiting for us.'

    'I know why you're doing this, Marcus,' she suddenly said in a small, quiet voice that didn't sound like her. He stopped, but she didn't let go of him. 'You think I haven't seen the paper, but I have.'

    He turned round to look at her, but she wouldn't open her eyes.

    'Are you OK?'

    'Yeah. Well. Not really.' She rummaged around in her bag and produced a bottle of vodka. 'I'm going to get drunk.'

    Suddenly Marcus could see a problem with his guided missile plan: the problem was that Ellie wasn't actually a guided missile. You couldn't guide her. That didn't matter so much in school, because school was full of walls and rules and she could just bounce off them; but out in the world, where there were no walls and rules, she was scary. She could just blow up in his face any time.