Noughts and Crosses (45 page)

Sometimes when it’s late at night and I’m all alone in a room or sleeping rough on the streets, I look up at the moon or one of the stars and imagine that at that precise moment,
she
is looking at the very same thing.

Why did she cry?

I guess I’ll never know. I doubt if I’ll ever see her again.

I’ve finally figured it out. I’m dead. I died a long time ago, woke up in hell and didn’t even realize. Thinking about it, I must’ve died just before I started at Heathcroft school. That’s what happened.

I know I’m right.

There came the lightest of taps at the door. I quickly wiped my eyes and jumped off the bed to sit at my dressing-table. I picked up the first thing to hand, a comb, and began to comb my hair.

‘Come in.’

Minnie entered my room, closing the door quietly behind her. I watched her via my dressing-table mirror. She’d been watching me very strangely for the last few days. Or was it the last few weeks?

‘Sephy, are you OK?’

‘Is that what you came in here to ask me?’ I frowned.

Minnie nodded.

‘Yes, I’m fine. Now stop asking me that,’ I snapped.

‘I’m concerned about you.’

‘Well, you’re wasting your time. I’ve already told you, I’m brilliant, wonderful, marvellous. I’ve never felt better in my life. So back off.’

Minnie gave me a deeply sceptical look. ‘Then why haven’t you gone back to school?’

‘’Cause I don’t want everyone pointing their fingers at me and whispering behind my back and feeling sorry for me.’

‘And why do you always look like you’ve just stopped crying or you’re just about to start?’

‘You need to get your eyes tested.’

‘And why have you taken to wearing leggings and baggy T-shirts and jumpers?’

I was really beginning to lose it now. ‘Minerva, what’s the matter with you? Since when have you been the least bit interested in what I wear?’

‘You
are
pregnant, aren’t you? The T-shirts and jumpers are just to hide the fact that your pregnancy is beginning to show.’

‘No, they’re not. I’m only wearing them because . . . because . . .’ And like a moron, I burst into tears, burying my head in my hands.

Minnie was immediately at my side, her arm around my shoulders.

‘Oh, Sephy, you idiot! Why didn’t you just come right out and say so? I could’ve helped you. We all could’ve helped you. Why d’you always insist on doing everything the hard way?’

‘Minnie, I don’t know what to do,’ I sniffed. ‘I’ve thought and thought and there’s no way out.’

‘Ignoring your growing stomach isn’t going to alter the fact that you’re pregnant,’ Minnie said, exasperated. ‘What were you thinking?’

‘It’s all right for you. You’re not the one who’s pregnant. I am,’ I said angrily.

‘You’re going to have to tell Mother . . .’

I pulled away from Minnie and stared at her. ‘Have you lost your mind?’

‘Sephy, sooner or later she’s going to find out for
herself. Even if you manage to hide your entire pregnancy, how d’you expect to hide a baby?’

‘I don’t know. I haven’t thought that far ahead.’

‘Well, you’d better start.’

‘Minnie, promise me you won’t say a word to anyone,’ I begged.

‘But Sephy . . .’

‘Please. Promise me. I’ll tell Mother but it has to be in my own time and in my own way. OK?’

‘OK, I promise. But don’t leave it much longer or I may change my mind.’

I nodded gratefully. I’d bought myself a few more days, possibly a few more weeks.

‘D’you want to talk about what happened with the kidnappers?’

I shook my head.

‘I take it the father is one of your kidnappers?’

I didn’t answer.

Minnie stood up. ‘Well, just remember, if you do want to talk, my bedroom is right next door to yours. OK?’

‘OK.’

The moment Minnie left my room, I flung myself down on my bed, weeping like I’d only just discovered how to do it. All my plans had turned to ashes and dust. All my dreams and schemes for the future had turned into . . . a baby.

‘What about you, Callum? What would you do with all the money in the world?’

Gordy must’ve seen from my face what I thought of the question.

‘Oh, come on. It’s just a bit a fun,’ Gordy teased.

Four months had passed since . . . since the kidnapping. I was working as a car mechanic three hundred kilometres away from home in a place called Sturham. The December afternoon was already getting dark. The heating in the garage was supposedly turned right up, but it was still chilly, and the work was mind-numbingly boring but I was glad of it. It stopped me from brooding all day, every day. And the guys I worked with weren’t bad. Gordy was a nought who’d worked as a car mechanic since he was thirteen. He was now fifty-seven and he was still a car mechanic. Nothing had changed for him. Tomorrow was going to be the same as yesterday as far as he was concerned. He was just punching time until he died. I looked at him and saw my uncles and Old Man Tony and even my dad – until Lynette had died. I looked at him and was so afraid I was seeing myself in ten, twenty, thirty years time.

Rob was a couple of years older than me. He was a talker. He was going to change the world by using the only means at his disposal, by grumbling about it. I’d only been working here for three weeks and already I’d had to hide my fists behind my back and go and sit in the toilets for a good ten minutes to stop myself from swinging for him. He drove me nuts.

‘Well? Don’t you have any dreams – or are you too good to share them with the likes of us?’ Gordy teased.

I forced myself to smile. ‘I don’t like to dwell on what I’ll never have,’ I shrugged.

‘You never know,’ Rob said, inanely.

‘So what
would
you do?’ Gordy urged.

‘Build a rocket and leave this planet. Live on the moon or some place else. Any place else,’ I answered.

‘If you had all the money in the world, you wouldn’t have to live on the moon. You could do whatever you liked right here,’ said Rob.

‘D’you know what they call a nought with all the money in the world?’ I asked.

Rob and Gordy shook their heads.

‘A blanker,’ I told them.

They didn’t laugh. They weren’t supposed to.

‘Things would change if we had a ton of money,’ Rob tried to tell me.

I tried – and failed – to keep the pitying look off my face. ‘It takes more than money, Rob. It takes determination and sacrifice and . . . and . . .’

Rob and Gordy were both looking at me like I’d lost my mind. I shut up.

‘Just ignore me,’ I told them ruefully.

‘We’ll have to call you the deep one,’ Gordy said. ‘Or better yet, the
profound
one.’

‘Don’t you dare,’ I warned him.

‘We will come to you for spiritual guidance!’ Gordy bowed low, his hands together as if in prayer. ‘Oh, profound one, share your mystical insights with us. Enlighten us . . .’

‘If you three can’t be bothered to get on with your work, there are hundreds of others out there who’d be only too happy to take your jobs,’ Snakeskin emerged from his office to holler at us.

Without a word we got back to work, waiting until Snakeskin had slammed his way back into his office before adopting our previous positions.

‘What a horse’s ass!’ Rob sniffed.

‘There’s a lot of it about,’ I said.

‘Amen to that,’ Gordy agreed.

‘What I want to know is, how does . .?’ Rob began.

‘Shush!
Shush!
’ I hissed at him. I moved over to the workbench to turn up the volume on the radio. Something on the news had caught my attention.

‘. . .
has refused to confirm or deny that Persephone Mira Hadley, his daughter, is pregnant, and that this is the result of her ordeal a few months ago at the hands of her kidnappers. We can only speculate as to what this poor girl has been subjected to at the hands of the nought men who abducted her. Persephone herself has so far refused to speak of her two terrifying days in captivity, the memories being obviously too painful, too shocking . . .
’

‘Hey!’ Gordy was staring at me and I had no idea why, until I saw the radio lying on the floor, smashed to smithereens where I’d thrown it against the wall.

‘I’ve got to get out of here.’ I headed for the exit.

‘Er . . . Callum, where d’you think you’re going?’ Snakeskin called after me.

‘I’ve got to leave.’

‘Oh no you don’t.’

‘Watch me!’

‘If you go out that door, don’t bother to come back.’ I carried on walking.

Mother sat down beside me in the family room. Dad paced up and down in front of me. I turned to glare at Minnie.

‘So much for your promises,’ I said bitterly.

At least she had the grace to be embarrassed and look away, unable to meet my stare. I should’ve known she wouldn’t be able to keep her mouth shut. Some secrets are obviously too juicy to keep. And no doubt this was her chance to get back at me for all those years of ‘Minnie’ instead of ‘Minerva’. As well as telling Mother and Dad, she’d probably told one person, who’d told someone else, who’d told someone else and before you knew it, it was the world’s best-kept shared secret. It was inevitably only a matter of time before the press found out. Maybe that’s
what Minnie wanted all along. Whatever else happened, I’d never forgive her for this, never if I lived to be five hundred.

‘What we have to do,’ Dad began, ‘is deal with this situation as quickly and discreetly as possible.’

‘It’s for the best, darling,’ Mother took one of my hands in hers and patted it gently.

‘We’ve already booked you into a clinic for tomorrow morning,’ said Dad. ‘By tomorrow evening it will all be over. You won’t be pregnant any more and we can all put this whole thing behind us.’

‘I know it’s hard, love, but it’s definitely for the best,’ Mother agreed.

‘You want me to have an abortion?’ I asked.

‘Well, you don’t want to keep it, do you?’ Mother said, puzzlement in her voice. ‘A child of your kidnapper? The bastard child of a raping blanker?’

‘Of course she doesn’t,’ Dad said brusquely. He turned to me. ‘You should’ve told us, princess. You should’ve told us what they did to you. We could’ve sorted all this out so much sooner and avoided all this press speculation.’

‘I’ll take you to the clinic myself,’ said Mother, trying to dredge up a smile from nowhere.

‘We’ll both go,’ said Dad. ‘This time tomorrow, it will all be over.’

‘Leave everything to us,’ said Mum.

‘You can hardly be expected to make decisions for yourself or even think straight at a time like this,’ Dad said.

Mother and Dad – together at last. Reunited. Acting, moving, thinking as one. And I’d done that. I couldn’t
help but wonder. The thoughts going through my head, were they the result of straight thinking or crooked thinking? How could I tell which was which?

‘We’re all behind you on this, love,’ said Dad. ‘And once it’s over we’ll all go away somewhere on a holiday. You can put it behind you and get on with the rest of your life. We all can.’

Put it behind me . . . Is that what he thought? A quick operation and just like that, my baby would be gone and forgotten? Looking at Dad was like looking at a stranger. He didn’t know me at all. And I couldn’t even feel sad about it.