Skulk (3 page)

My stomach grumbled, and I rolled over to glance at the clock. 5.27.

I could lie awake for an hour, buzzing with weirdness, waiting for my alarm to go off so I could get up and join my parents for our normal silent breakfast: a bowl of muesli with skimmed milk, and a cup of herbal tea without any sugar, while Dad circled things in the
Financial Times
and Mum scrawled notes in the margins of her Cabinet memos in violent red ink.

I could do that. Or... I could do something else.

A couple of minutes later, clothed and dry, I swung carefully over the creaky step at the top of the stairs and headed down the dark, perfumed staircase.

The lilies on Mum and Dad’s landing glowed like alien parasites in the faint dawn light from the staircase window. I held my breath as I passed their door, but nothing stirred.

The shock of the freezing tiles on my bare feet as I stepped into the entrance hall sent adrenaline pumping through me. I stopped by the hall table and leaned there for a second, my palms sticky on the polished oak and my legs suddenly unsteady. A wave of tiredness hit me and I thought about just going back to bed for an hour. Then my stomach rumbled again, sounding like a roll of thunder in the silent hallway, and I willed it quiet, pricking my ears for any sign of movement from upstairs. There was nothing.

The kitchen echoed to the soft slap of my feet on the tiles. Dim steely reflections of myself followed me across the room, like ghosts. The enormous main refrigerator loomed in one corner, next to the walk-in pantry. They were too large for a family of three with just two staff, and locked, of course. I eyed the gleaming padlock, but steered clear. That wasn’t my target for today – it was like the Everest of rebellion. If I broke into the Party Fridge I wanted to have plenty of time, equipment, and possibly a Sherpa and a rescue helicopter on standby.

I pulled open a cupboard and rooted around until I found an open, half-used bag of peanuts. Perfect. I poured about half the contents into my palm and put the rest back, then leaned on the central island, surrounded by low-hanging saucepans, chomping on my spoils.

They were gone pretty quickly and I lingered in the kitchen, wondering what else I might find in the cupboards. The brushed steel clock read 5.45. I still had a bit of time...

And that was how I came to be standing by an open cupboard when Hilde turned her key in the back door. She was early. I yelped guiltily at the sound and jumped back as she walked in, her chef’s whites slung over one arm, her enormous black handbag swinging beneath them.

“Meg!” Her face flushed and darkened in the dim slanting light coming through the blinds. “You know you are not supposed to be in here.”

My face went hot and my heartbeat hammered in my throat. A flash of memory – the fox and the jewel and the blood – did absolutely nothing except to make me selfishly one hundred per cent sure that this situation was worse.

“What are you doing?” Hilde demanded. She threw her whites down across the counter and her handbag thudded down on top of them. “How
dare
you steal like this?”

I didn’t bother to point out that this was my kitchen, my home, that they were therefore my nuts.

Nothing in this house is really mine. Except for my paints.

And the stone.

Hilde planted her hands on her hips.

“Sorry,” I said, my voice cracking. “I was just hungry.” I cringed even as I said it. Her sharply over-plucked eyebrows twitched, but she didn't comment.

I backed away, but she crossed the kitchen, her black heels clacking on the tiles with the precise inevitability of a ticking clock. “Stop,” I said. “Please.”

Hilde paused, by the door, one hand reaching for the handle. Then she shook her head and walked out of the kitchen.

I turned to stare out of the back door, across the lawn, as the sun rose over the roofs of Kensington, behind the sculpted cherry trees. I could have run away, charged out through the alley and not looked back. But the idea barely flitted through my mind before I brushed it away. I wasn’t going to give up everything I had over half a bag of peanuts.

I only wish my mother had such a keen sense of perspective.

She strode into the kitchen with her thin pink dressing gown pulled tight around her shoulders. She looked at me and sighed, her lips pursed.

“Oh, Margaret, how could you?” She looked tired, though her drooping eyelids were the only clue in her pale, smooth post-Botox face. She sighed deeply again and looked away – apparently she couldn’t even look at me, such was my
utter betrayal
. “Is this why you didn’t lose weight this week? Hilde is so good to you she goes out of her way to make sure your diet is appropriate...”

Oh yeah,
Saint Hilde
. I met her eyes over Mum's bony shoulder.
Sneak.

“This is how you repay her? And me? We do our best to help you deal with your problem!”

I drew in a deep breath. Breathe with the rage
,
I told myself. Just breathe, and look away, and in a few seconds you won't need to reach across the room and strangle the word “problem” out of her.

My mother turned red-rimmed, half-tearful eyes to me. “You ungrateful little
bitch
.”

...oh crap
. My eyes snapped back to her face and I fought against the urge to back away. Sudden, unwarranted swearing is like Mum’s poker tell. When she breaks out the B word, all bets on reasonable behaviour are off.

“I’m sorry,” I said. I felt it, too, under the blowtorch heat of her stare. My palms prickled with sweat. I cringed inside, my stomach squeezing painfully around the handful of peanuts. Bile rose in my throat. I could feel the ghosts of her hands tight on my shoulders, forcing my head down, hot vomit stinging my throat...

It only happened once. On the night of the last general election. I’d gained a few pounds and I couldn’t get the zip done up on the size twelve Versace she’d had made for me to wear to her re-election party. Maybe it was election night stress, but she just snapped. I could see it in her eyes, something mad looking out through her, in the seconds before she seized handfuls of my hair and held my head down over the sink until I threw up, retching over and over because her bony fingers were digging into my scalp and I was scared and I just wanted to get her off me...

When I was done she threw a flannel at me and walked out, and neither of us ever mentioned it again.

I never did fit in the stupid dress.

Standing in the kitchen, awaiting sentencing, I twitched my head around, shaking the hair over my face, so that I wouldn’t scream at her.

She drew in a big shaky breath, like she was surfacing from a long dive underwater.

“Ungrateful child,” she muttered.

Maybe she’d been remembering that night too. I could never tell.

“Go to the wardrobe till it’s time for school,” she said. “Whatever you took, let that be your breakfast.”

I didn’t try to argue. That lesson, at least, I’d learned early on.

The wardrobe was a big old oak thing in my mother’s study, and she’d been locking me in it as a punishment as long as I could remember.

When I was three, it was terrifying. A huge dark cavern full of witches and monsters and crawly things, and coat hangers that hung down like butchers’ hooks.

Then there was a wonderful period of grace when I was about six when I stopped being afraid. I simply imagined my way out. I knew, with perfect six year-old’s logic, that either Mum would let me out, or the door would swing open and I’d feel a pine-scented breeze on my face and I’d just walk into Narnia and leave this world behind forever.

Sadly, Mum always got there first.

I knew we probably looked faintly absurd now, as she marched me up the stairs with one bony hand digging into my soft fleshy upper arm. But the wardrobe was just as effective as it had ever been. Now I was sixteen, five foot six and a size sixteen despite her mad, megalomaniacal efforts to get me down to a size zero. I banged my elbows on the solid wood, the hangers tangled painfully in my hair and the shoes dug into my thighs if I tried to sit down.Mum locked me in and I hunkered there, in the close, shoe-smelling darkness, and lifted my fingers to trace graffiti patterns on the smooth wood.

CHAPTER THREE

A couple of hours later I turned into Kensington Square, running my fingers over and over the cabochon sapphire in my coat pocket. All around me, gangs of girls walked and chattered, laughed, fought, bullied and flirted their way into school. For a few more yards everything seemed normal, but the atmosphere changed as I drew closer to the front door. A murmur of excitement passed through the crowd. The chatter grew louder. My heart started to pound, and I felt sweat prickling behind my ears.

There was police tape across the side gate. It wound around Henry’s neck like a bright yellow scarf.

I dropped my gaze to the pavement and kept it there.

The stone was cool against my fingertips.

Miss Kilgarry and Miss Wolfcliff were pulling double duty on the big staircase in the entrance hall, doing their best to keep things moving, waving their arms like they were signalling a plane in to land.

I shuffled up the stairs with everyone else, hugging the banister – until a scuttling patch of blackness shot over the back of my hand. I snatched my hand away with a yelp. Heads turned, someone walked into my back, and the chorus of “What, oh my God what?” rolled over me like a wave. A glimpse of eight thick legs and a furry body streaked up the bannister and vanished.

“Banks?” Miss K demanded from the top landing.

“Spider, Miss,” I gasped.

Possibly a bad move. Several girls shrieked and tried to pull away from me, shaking out their arms – except there wasn't room, and I heard cries of “ow!” and “oh my God, watch yourself, yeah?” as I managed to ride the general upwards tide to the top of the stairs. A bony arm dripping with jangling bangles elbowed me in the ribs, and I tripped over a trailing backpack strap. At the top of the stairs I burst from the crowd almost at a run and escaped into the relative calm of our classroom with a relieved gasp.

Most of 10E were already there. They were crowded up to the windows, looking down at the garden.

I was about to join them when I stopped, looking over at our lockers in the corner behind the teacher’s desk. I slipped my hand into my pocket again and gripped the stone tight.

It wasn’t safe at home. Sure, if Gail found my paints I’d be in the deepest shit since that guy on YouTube with the elephant, but I could always get more paints. I was never going to see another stone like this one. I wanted it safe, and that meant not keeping it in my mother’s house.

I crossed to the lockers and slipped my key into number fourteen.

“Hey, Mags,” Ameera called over. I spun, my face probably shining with guilt. “Don’t you want to see?”

“Yeah, coming,” I said. “Just dumping some stuff.”

I opened the locker and slipped the stone in between my history homework and my secret sketchbook. I heard the soft
thonk
as stone hit metal, and swung the door shut and locked it.

As I stepped back, something scuttled across the top of the lockers, and I leapt back, flailing stupidly. Another spider.

Great. I bet the building’s infested.

I turned, quickly, and crossed to the window.

“So, what’s going on?” I asked Ameera.

“Some guy got stabbed or something,” she said. I tried to see over her shoulder, but nobody was making room. “Apparently he like, climbed over the wall and did a bunch of graffiti and got stabbed.”

“Gang stuff,” said Lauren, nodding wisely.

I sighed. Some imaginary ASBO-toting scum was always going to get the credit for my work. I suppose I’d rather it was the Fox Man. It could be like my gift – after all, I had nothing I could give him that would make up to the value of his last gift to me.

And then Ameera finally budged aside and let me get to the window and look down. There was the white tent and loitering policemen, familiar from a thousand episodes of
CSI
, but much less attractive – and there were men in overalls wielding long-handled paint rollers, scrubbing over the back wall with white.

I clenched my fists and tried not to swear out loud.

All that effort, for nothing. Nobody – except the police – even got to see it.

I backed away and sat down on a nearby desk with a huff of frustration. It was just my luck, just my shitty, stupid luck. I’d been planning this one for
months
. It was supposed to inspire people – to wind them up, to make them
think
. Even if they thought “that art is a bit crap” – I didn’t care. I’d have put
something
into their ringfenced, exam-panicked, automaton minds.

Outside the window, all my hard work was vanishing under a curtain of safe, empty white paint.

And,
and
, there was another bloody spider climbing over the edge of the desk, feeling for the surface with its thick black legs. I clenched my fists and then snatched up a piece of paper and took a swipe at it.

“Get
off
!” I hissed, not even caring if anyone noticed me sulking and talking to a bug.

Although I did care a bit, deep down, when nobody did.

“Oh my
Lord
, Mags,” Ameera said, as we headed for Classics together after registration. “Last night was epic. I am so hungover!”

She didn’t look all that hungover. She’d obviously had the time and energy to do her makeup that morning, and choose shoes that went with her handbag – blue and white, with a wedge heel – and do whatever it was she did to her hair that made it so glossy and bouncy.

She nudged me, amiably, in the ribs.

“You should come with! You know when you don’t come drinking with us, the terrorists win. Why do you hate freedom, Mags?”

That got a snigger out of me, and she grinned in triumph.

“Yeah, see? You can’t be good all the time.”

I don’t know why I never tried to explain to Jewel and Ameera that I wasn’t spending my evenings studying, or reading
War and Peace
, or whatever else they thought “being good” meant. I don’t think they would’ve thought less of me for creeping out at night and artistically vandalising stuff. I just never wanted to share that part of my life – except as
Thatch97
, on graffitilondon.com. I told myself I was quite happy living a bunch of totally separate lives.