Crossing the Line (2 page)

‘Allie,' I growled, then grinned. ‘You heard it, then.'

‘Oh God. Did I ever.' She pulled the duvet back up over her head. ‘Nick,' came her muffled voice, ‘I don't want to go to school today.'

‘Tough,' I said. I tugged the duvet down from her face.

‘We're not going. We talked about this already.' Back under the covers she went. ‘You can't make us go.'

‘Allie, you're beginning to sound like Gollum.
You can't make us, preciousss
.' I peeled back a corner of duvet to hiss it in her ear, and she squealed crossly.

‘Get lost, Nick.'

‘Allie, it's all right for Aidan. He can hardly get excluded, can he?'

‘Yeah, and they won't exclude me either. Just you watch.'

‘Allie,' I began, then stopped, too much of a coward to tell her off for being manipulative. My sister had Issues. Of course people didn't like to face up to her and tell her not to be so damn naughty. Anyway, it was everybody else who was uncomfortable with her Issues. Allie was perfectly fine with them.

Abruptly Allie flung off the duvet and sat up. Her wild hair fell across her face, so she pushed it back with one hand. First thing in the morning it was just like her: a mess. When she'd brushed it, it would hang thick and straight, a blunt wedge of hair that could swing forward
to screen her eyes. Together with her sulky mouth, her angular brows and massive dark eyes, it made Allie look like a manga heroine, brave and adorable and jaggedly beautiful. She didn't look anything like me. I had shaved brown hair and straight jutting brows and a narrow mouth. And a hard jawline, and a nose that was slightly too big and once got broken. Rugged, Mum would say kindly. Thuggish, said almost everyone else.

Allie was staring at the opposite wall, wide-eyed and haunted. ‘Today's the day.'

‘Yes,' I told her gently.

She turned and gazed at Aidan.

No, no,
no.
She had me at it now. What I mean is, she turned and gazed at the place she imagined Aidan was.

‘How d'you think he feels?' she snapped.

‘Well, don't have a go at me,' I said. ‘It's not my fault.'

‘I know. OK. But how could
Mum
?'

‘Yeah, yeah.' I agreed entirely. ‘Bad timing.'

‘Doesn't she even think?'

‘Allie, I don't think it really occurs to her.'

‘God.' She scowled. ‘She must have changed the radio yesterday, it drives me mad when she does that. Came on ten minutes ago and there she was. I could've died.' Her almost-black eyes widened and she nipped her lip and glanced aside. ‘Sorry.'

I sighed and rubbed her shoulder. ‘I'll go and wake up Lola Nan.'

‘She's awake,' said Allie. ‘She's been awake for hours.
She was hoovering downstairs. She woke me up at four o'clock and I've hardly slept since.'

‘Liar,' I told her. ‘Get up. And you,' I added in Aidan's direction.

Just to humour her, of course.

Allie didn't learn to speak till she was nearly two, at which point she found Nan Lola an inconvenient arrangement of consonants. So she took a unilateral decision to turn it round, and Nan Lola was Lola Nan ever after.

Yawning, I shambled downstairs. I thought Lola Nan had stopped hoovering, but when I pushed open the lounge door she was still at it, only the Hoover wasn't switched on. Her head jerked up and she stared wildly at me, shoving the vacuum cleaner back and forth. Her bone-white hair stuck out all over, as if she'd plugged herself into the socket by mistake.

‘Want a cup of tea, Lola Nan?' I said.

‘I can't hear you!' she shouted.

‘Cup of tea?' I shouted back. God, I'd make someone a great husband one day. I was that used to humouring crazy women.

‘WHAT?' she yelled.

I caught the flailing plug and stuck it back in its socket. The Hoover roared and Lola Nan went back to her pointless work. Pointless, because she kept going over the same two square feet, ignoring the rest of the gritty carpet.

In the kitchen, Dad had his hands over his ears. His eyes were tight shut: against what, I don't know. Maybe just the light. He ran from everything: shadows, light, reality. I was not going to grow up like Dad, that was my big ambition. I wasn't going to spend my life running.

‘She's off again,' moaned Dad. ‘She's been at it since four!'

‘Morning,' I said, switching on the kettle. Really? Four o'clock? That would explain the nightmare, which was something to do with trains. ‘Heard you just now, Mum.'

She turned away from the sink and gave me a bashful look. Mum was still pretty, with her wide-spaced hazel eyes and her tumble of auburn hair that sometimes showed tell-tale grey at the roots. It was pulled back into a rough ponytail as usual. At her age I thought she should really get it cut, but short hair wouldn't go so well with the loose hippy chick blouses and the glittery swishing skirts.

Besides, her ponytail was an improvement on Dad's, which was that shade of ashy-blond that looks as if it's always verged on grey. I think ponytails look great on a twenty-year-old, or a girl. Not on a rather drawn, worn-looking guy with mystical tattoos on his wrists that I'm sure he regretted. He regretted a lot, my dad.

‘Words of Wisdom? You listened to me?' Mum's cheekbones pinked as a smile twitched her mouth. ‘Oh, did you like it, Nick?'

‘Yeah,' I lied. ‘You were great, Mum.'

‘Oh, thanks, love!' The smile broke open and made huge dimples in her cheeks.

Well. She's my mother. I'm not a bad person. At least, I'm not as bad as I used to be, but I'm still a great liar.

I'm never sure if Mum believes in God or Buddha or the fairies, but I suspect it's a peach-fuzz combination of everything. Her favourite song is ‘Imagine', so she has a pan-pipes version to introduce the Words of Wisdom slot. Mum just wants everyone to be nice to each other. I'm not sure if she knows herself what she believes in, but neither does her target audience, and they don't care. She's very popular. She writes poems for the local paper and short syndicated articles for magazines, down-to-earth homilies that make you wince. I can't bear to read her stuff and when she asks for my opinion, I bluff. Just grunt on a positive-sounding note. You can get away with that when you're seventeen. Monosyllabic grunting is expected of you. It's especially expected of me.

The hoovering had stopped at last so I took Lola Nan her tea, but I didn't linger. She was sitting in her threadbare wing-back chair, smiling at the corner of the room and nodding. Her right hand was patting the chair arm as usual – well, not quite patting it, but stopping about an inch above it, as if bouncing off an invisible cushion. Lola Nan's mannerisms mostly didn't bother me, but this one was really irritating, and I was tempted to take her hand and shove it aside to put the cup down on the chair arm. She must have sensed it, because she focused on me and
growled like a bear.

Sighing, I squeezed round to the other side and put the cup on the chair's left arm. She probably wouldn't spill it so I left her to it.

Back in the kitchen Dad was glancing nervously at the ceiling, roughly where Allie's room might be if it was ten feet further south. For a bloke, Dad didn't have a lot of spatial awareness. ‘Where's Allie?' His spoon hovered in mid-air.

‘She's just coming,' I said.

‘She's a bit late.' His spoonful of home-made organic muesli vibrated slightly, and milk dribbled on to his beaded placemat.

‘It's the anniversary,' I said.

Mum's shoulders stiffened and she gave a little gasp, but she didn't turn round.

‘Oh. Is it?' Dad blinked. He was trying his best to focus.

My dad has only one problem with alcohol: he doesn't find it a problem. He tolerates it just fine and he's never drunk but he always goes to bed looking vaguely dazed, and wakes up much the same way. When the shadows in his mind close in, though, and he flounders in self-pity and black misery, the only thing to do is leave the house.

Mum says he finds it hard to cope with Lola Nan, but I know he finds it hard to cope with life: he doesn't have the resources. He's underfunded in the defence department. Dad is a right one for getting into squabbles he can't win, then having to capitulate because he can't see
it through. He always leaves it just too late to salvage his self-respect, too, just when the contempt of some traffic warden or neighbour or council bureaucrat becomes palpable. I'd seen my dad buckle and retreat and back off so many times, his pride pulled from under him like a rug, I could hardly bear to watch any more.

‘The anniversary,' he said dully. ‘Oh.'

Mum rubbed her temples with her thumb and finger. ‘Oh Lord,' she said to the kitchen window. ‘I hadn't … that hadn't…'

Occurred to you, I thought. Yeah. Quite.

‘You've seen Allie this morning?' You wouldn't believe the aggression Dad put into that. ‘Is she all right?'

I didn't answer, just poured milk on to my Frosties and pretended I couldn't feel his glare. I was the one person Dad could stand up to. Go ahead, I thought, if it makes you feel tougher. The best thing was to ignore him, since I knew he'd like to hit me but he'd never dare. Not after that first time.

Feeling the hostility, Mum sat down, over-brisk and bright, and clasped her hands. For a hideous moment I thought she'd ask us to say grace, but she unclasped them again and folded them round her mug of nettle-flavoured swamp water instead. ‘A year,' she said, in her steady, professionally compassionate voice. ‘A whole year. Perhaps we need to move on with our lives.'

‘Some of us won't,' I muttered.

‘Oh, Nick! Kevin Naughton was very young. And he
must have been very unhappy.'

Sometimes my mother's so generous and understanding I could slap her. Kev Naughton wasn't any younger than me, I thought, and I didn't do anything like that.

But I might have. That's the thing.

Mum was pouring herbal pee into Dad's mug and the flow juddered a bit. That's how I knew her hand was shaking. She said, ‘Shh. Allie's going to be down in a minute.'

Adults are funny that way. Thinking a thing can't hurt you, just so long as they make a huge effort not to mention it.

It was like every other morning. I took Lola Nan some toast and Marmite, and made an effort to talk for a bit, and she yelled at me. Nothing specific, just a yell, but I left, and she ate the toast. Allie appeared, stopped dead and stared accusingly at the table, then ostentatiously pulled up a chair for Aidan. When Mum put on her happy face and offered to set him a place, Allie reminded her, in a tone of extreme patience, that Aidan Didn't Do Food. Dad looked troubled, Mum looked brisk and positive, and I ate my breakfast as fast as I could and got out of there.

Sometimes I liked Lola Nan's company best.

Before school I had my little ritual, same as ever. Pulling out the drawer at the bottom of my wardrobe, I pushed aside winter clothes and tugged out the narrow package wrapped in newspaper. I kept it sharp, for old time's sake, and even through several layers of
Daily
Record
I could feel the edge of it. If I pressed the tip, it could almost prick blood from my finger.

A blade is a beautiful thing. I'm not saying that to sound macho, it just is. It doesn't sparkle like sequins on a flouncy skirt. It doesn't have the glitterball dazzle of one of Mum's crystals against a sunny window. The gleam of a blade is smooth and flat and unbroken, shining steel, an understated glow. This knife felt light and flexible and true, and there was something reassuring about it.

So I was reassured. I did not want to unwrap it and take it with me. I never wanted to do that again but I always needed to know it was there. It was my totem, my charm. Pushing it gently to the back of the drawer, I laid the jumpers over it and shoved the drawer shut. Then I yelled for Allie, but she yelled back that she didn't need my company, she had Aidan.

And so I walked to school alone.

Allie was a cunning little witch. Aidan indeed. The reason she didn't need my company was that she really wasn't going to school. Unfortunately I'd sat through double English, a free period, the mid-morning break, several half-heard taunts about my mother's radio slot and double Biology before I realised.

Allie's Chemistry coincided with my Biology … (No, that's Orla Mahon …)

What I mean is, Allie's classes in the science block coincided with mine, so as usual I kept a sharp eye out for her as the corridors swelled with lunch-break crowds. Dodging the trouble spots and avoiding eye contact with the baby-faced dealers – I swear, they get younger every year – I hovered in the corridor that smelt of sweat and polish, sweltering in the sun that glared through the floor-to-ceiling glass. Somebody should have shot that
architect and I wish it could have been me. My armpits were damp, my mood darkening; the skin of my face was corrugating into a scowl. Every one of Allie's class passed me, most of them giving me a wide berth, but Allie wasn't among them.

Allie, I thought, I'll kill you if you've …

And then I spotted Orla Mahon, lounging in the L-shaped bit of the corridor beside a half-dead pot plant, her loyal posse around her.

I glowered at a spot in the middle distance, as if I was still looking for my sister, but my gaze slewed helplessly to the left. Orla, Orla, Orla. Beautiful, big-breasted Orla, Clyde-built, made for wallowing, made for a long leisurely voyage. Her straight dark hair fell over one of her smudged eyes, the foremost hank of it dyed an improbable platinum blonde. I wondered if the nose ring had hurt going in, and I wondered if I could use that as a conversational starting gambit. I wanted to eat her sullen glossy lips. I wanted to eat her.

She felt me watching and glanced up, contemptuous. She said not a word, but by some kind of osmosis the posse too realised I was there, and they turned as one.