The New Neighbours (10 page)

“Interested? Interested in what?” Oliver laughed derisively “You? He's at least ten years older than you!”

“That's nothing these days,” remarked Chantal airily, downing the rest of her drink. “I always go for the older man.”

“You go for any man,” muttered Emma.

Chantal glanced at her. “And men seem to find me attractive too,” she said as if she hadn't heard Emma's remark. “They might go for you, too,” she added, “if only you did something with your hair and got rid of your zits.”

Emma went scarlet. The fact that she had bad acne mortified her, she already knew with a desperate certainty that no one could possibly find her attractive with spots on her face, and in a crowd, she often retreated into herself, rejecting herself before anyone else could reject her.

Seeing her flush, Oliver suddenly felt very protective of his sister. It was out of order for someone like Chantal to make remarks like that. He said stoutly, “Well, I think you look great, don't you, Peter?”

Peter Callow rose to the occasion. “Yes, I do,” he said. “I was, like, going to say let's go in the disco.” He took Emma's hand and pulled her towards the music which blasted up the stairs from the garage which had become a makeshift disco.

“Do you want to go down the disco?” Oliver asked Chantal.

“No,” Chantal replied shortly, “but you can get me another drink if you like.”

“OK,” Oliver said easily. “Same again?” He was soon back with another glass of wine, spiked as before, and a glass of beer for himself. “Here you go,” he said, meeting her eye.

At that moment, Peter and Emma reappeared. “Hopeless down there,” Peter said. “Can't move and the music's crap. Me and Em's going to grab a few beers and go up to my room and watch a video. I've got Vindicator. Coming?”

Oliver shrugged. “It's a good movie. Coming, Chantal?”

Chantal glanced round the room. Max Davies was talking to some woman she didn't know, and there was no one else to take her interest. For a moment, the room seemed to slip out of focus, but Chantal blinked and all was clear again.

Gripping her glass tightly she said, “May as well.” Vindicator was indeed a good film. Her mother hadn't let her see it at the cinema as it was an 18. She followed the others unsteadily to the stairs. As they passed the kitchen, Oliver picked up a six-pack of lagers and a newly-opened bottle of wine, and they scurried up to Peter's bedroom where the TV and video sets stood in the corner.

“You're lucky to have your own TV and video,” Emma said enviously.

“Christmas present,” answered Peter, “from Dad, to keep here. No chairs I'm afraid.” He pulled his duvet on to the floor, “Room for two on the bed and two here on the floor.” He sank on to the duvet and pulled one of the rings on the lager. “Beer, Em?”

The others made themselves comfortable while Peter put the cassette into the video.

Chantal sat on the bed and leaned back against the wall. Oliver could see her tits outlined against the white of her shirt. He wondered what it would be like to feel them, how they would feel in his hands, pressed under his fingers. He knew from guys at school, that feeling girls' tits was exciting, made you feel powerful. Suddenly Oliver wanted to try— to see if they were right. Chantal had her eyes shut. The title music of Vindicator blared out. Oliver looked at Chantal's legs, encased in skin-tight jeans, and wondered what the skin on her thighs would feel like. He felt himself grow hot and he grabbed at a can of lager, pulled the ring, took a long pull, almost choking.

Emma and Peter were leaning against the bed wrapped in the duvet, eyes glued to the TV screen. Chantal still leaned against the wall, her eyes closed, wishing the room wouldn't spin and that the music wasn't so loud.

“Drink?” suggested Oliver to Chantal, offering the wine bottle.

“Girls relax when they've had a drink or two,” Drew Elliott at school had told him. “Everything's much easier then.”

Downstairs Oliver had spiked her drink because he was angry; angry with her stuck-up bloody superior pose, the way she'd treated him, the way she spoke to Emma. He'd wanted to take her down a peg or two, to show her she wasn't so bloody clever, no better than him or Emma or Peter, that she was just a posy kid. Now it was different, she didn't look like a dressed up kid and he, Oliver, didn't feel like a kid either. He ached between the legs, he wanted to feel her tits and for her to take off her jeans. He looked down at his sister and Peter, staring at the screen, caught up in the terror of the Vindicator, Emma's hand already pressed against her teeth in horror, and he saw them both as kids—watching sex and violence, but having no feeling of it inside them, within their beings. Oliver felt both, and as he looked down at them gripped by the film, he saw them as children and knew that he was not. So, he offered Chantal more drink, not from anger any more, not to spite her, or to make a fool of her, but because he thought it might relax her and he wanted to take advantage of that relaxation.

Chantal opened her eyes and the world swung crazily past her. Oliver was holding out a bottle of wine towards the glass she still held clutched in her hand.

“I feel funny,” she slurred. “Peculiar. Perhaps I'm drunk. D'you think

I'm drunk, Oliver?”

“Nah,” Oliver shook his head. “You've only had a couple of glasses of wine. Have some more, it'll make you feel better.” He settled himself beside her, legs across the bed, back to the wall and filled her glass up before setting the bottle on the bedside table and taking a pull at his lager. He could feel the heat of her body against his, the heat of his own body burning from the heat of hers. He could feel himself grown hard and aching. He swallowed more beer.

“Drink up,” he said, and obediently Chantal emptied her glass.

“Hot,” she remarked vaguely. “Hot in here.”

It was the opening Oliver had needed, been waiting for, offered to him unasked.

“Yeah,” he agreed. “Take your shirt off.”

As a suggestion, it lacked finesse and subtlety, but Chantal was passed the subtle stage. She looked him blearily. “Take my shirt off?” she repeated. “Too difficult.” Her words ran into each other.

“I'll help.” Oliver reached over and began to unbutton the shirt.

She pushed him away angrily. “I can do it,” she said, enunciating her words carefully, “I can do it for myself.” With great deliberation she undid and removed her shirt, pulling it down over her shoulders and off her arms, one at a time, until she had it in her hands. With a giggle she draped it over Oliver's head, but not before he had seen the rounded curves of her breasts pushing up from the lace cup of her bra. He pulled the shirt off his head and looked again. Chantal has closed her eyes again and was leaning her back against the coolness of the wall. Oliver reached out with both hands and touched the skin below the bra. He saw it quiver and the feeling of power, promised by Drew Elliott, flooded through him. He drew his hands upward and grasped the rounded flesh, pushing the lace of the bra downwards and squeezing the emerging breasts between his fingers. For a moment, he stared at the taut nipples, like ripe raspberries, jutting and inviting. He needed now to do more than feel and press—he bent his head to taste… and then, as far as Oliver was concerned, it all went pear-shaped.

Behind him the door opened and Mike Callow had appeared. Chantal, who had ignored Oliver's fumblings and graspings in an effort to fight the rising waves of nausea, gave up the fight and was suddenly and violently sick, all over Oliver's head, all over her exposed tits, all over Peter's bed, all over Emma and Peter still unaware of anything except the Vindicator stalking the red light district of Chicago.

Mr Callow had been pretty good about it really. He'd pulled Oliver unceremoniously off the bed, grabbed a towel from the rail and wrapping it round Chantal, had half-carried her into the bathroom, ran a bath and told her to get into it. He went back into the bedroom and switched on the main lights.

“What the bloody hell do you think you're playing at, Oliver Hooper?” he demanded, as Oliver scrabbled with a pillowcase to get some of the vomit from out of his hair and the back of his neck. “Peter,” he bellowed at his own son. “Turn off that bloody video and go into my shower and get cleaned up. Emma, go into the bathroom with Chantal. See she's OK and get clean yourself. Oliver, go with Peter. You'll have to lend him a shirt, Peter. Then get back in here and clean this room up. Strip the bed and put all the dirty stuff in the bathroom for now.” He grabbed Oliver by one vomit-covered shoulder. “And if you don't want your parents to hear about this, you be back here tomorrow morning, eleven o'clock, to get this room properly cleaned. When you're washed and clean yourself, go home. I want no arguments or explanations tonight.” Mike Callow had been as good as his word. None of the various parents, Hoopers or Havens, heard a whisper of what had happened that night. Angela, in no mood for New Year celebrations, had gone home early. Steve and Annie had been to a different New Year's Eve party and when they finally awoke on New Year's Day, they were nursing their own hangovers, and expressed only a passing interest in Oliverand Emma's evening.

Oliver admitted to Emma that he had spiked Chantal's drinks because she had been spiteful to Emma, and Emma, grateful for her elder brother's championship had agreed that the incident should never be mentioned again. Indeed, she was a little hazy herself as to what had actually happened, as she had been consumed several cans of beer, which would have been forbidden at home.

The following morning Oliver had arrived at Mike's at eleven o'clock, and he and Peter had scrubbed the floor and the mattress of Peter's bed. They had put the sheets and the duvet cover into the washing machine, they had hung the duvet and the pillows out to air. They spent the rest of the morning helping to clear up the party. Of Chantal Haven there was no sign. She had not been summoned to clear up the mess. Emma told him that Chantal had gone home in one of Mike's shirts over a pair of his jogging pants. Her clothes went home in a plastic bag. “She was going to tell her mother someone spilled beer all over her and put them into the washer herself, so her mum wouldn't know it was sick and not beer.”

Since that day, Chantal had given no sign that she even knew Oliver existed. If they did chance to meet, she passed him with her head in the air, ignoring him with a haughty indifference that infuriated him. They didn't often meet of course, because Oliver didn't really live in the Circle, but now as he lay on his bed, he wondered what would happen if he bumped into her this time. As there had been no repercussions from any direction, Oliver assumed that Chantal, too, had kept her mouth shut about that evening, and he found it gave him a strange feeling of power to know something about her of which she was ashamed. When the guys at school were discussing women these days,

Oliver said nothing except to Drew Elliott; and to him he simply said,

“You were right, Drew, it's great to have power.”

When Annie had called him for the third time to get up and come up for breakfast, Oliver crawled off the bed and dragging on his T-shirt and jeans, went upstairs.

“Hurry up, Oliver, do,” Annie snapped as he walked into the kitchen.

“ I want to get the kitchen cleared before I go to work.”

Oliver pulled open a packet of Shreddies and piling them to overflowing in a bowl, slurped milk over them, splashing some on to the table. Annie's lips tightened, but she managed to bite back a retort and said instead, “There's a note for you from your dad. He had to leave early.” She passed across a piece of folded paper. With a mouthful of Shreddies, Oliver unfolded the paper and reading it threw down his spoon in disgust.

“That's not fair,” he muttered. “He promised.”

“He says to tell you he's very sorry,” Annie began. “He got a call from work this morning, some crisis or other. He said to tell you he'd take you on Saturday, instead.”

Oliver pushed his unfinished cereal away. “Doesn't matter,” he shrugged. “I didn't really want to go anyway.” He picked up the note and ripping it across threw the pieces back on to the table.

“Oliver,” began Annie, “He's very sorry…”

“Forget it,” snapped Oliver. “I'm going out!”

“Where are you going?”

“Out.”

“But you haven't finished your breakfast…” but Annie was speaking to an empty room, thudding feet on the stairs and a slamming front door.

“Bloody boy,” she expostulated through clenched teeth, and sweeping the unfinished Shreddies into the dog bowl, she rammed the bowl into the waiting dishwasher and set it off.

Annie had never found either of her husband, Steve's, children easy. Emma wasn't too bad; with Emma she had an uneasy truce, Emma didn't actually set out to be awkward, but Oliver made her life as difficult as he could. Annie knew that, encouraged by his mother, Oliver blamed her for the separation and divorce of his parents. He believed that Annie had entered an idyllic marriage, where all was sweetness and light, and had ensnared his father luring him away from his family. Annie knew it wasn't like that. Annie knew, because Steve had told her, that his life with Lynne had been hell on wheels. Unending rows and tears andrecrimination for imagined slights; all because he was working every hour God sent to establish his business.

“You've no time for me and the children!” Lynne cried. “You leave me to cope with everything.”

“No time for you and the children?” bellowed Stephen. “Why the hell do you think I'm working myself into an early grave if it's not for you?” The anger and the bitterness went both ways and ran deep.

Steve ran his own security firm, Hooper Security Consultancy, and like most men running their own businesses with all their financial eggs, plus many belonging to the bank, in one basket, he worked extremely long hours and took little time off. Business was steady rather than buoyant, but by working very hard he managed a comfortable living and was able to send his children to independent schools. Oliver was now in his first year at Chapmans, a large senior school outside Belcaster, and Emma had another year at Beechlands before she moved on to Belcaster High. The strain on his marriage, however, had become almost unbearable, Lynne wanted the lifestyle his dedication produced, but resented the dedication needed to achieve it. Thus it was when Steve met Annie, a store detective, at a meeting with Harper and Hill, the big department store in town whose account he was trying to win, he was instantly attracted by her calm, quiet manner, so different from Lynne's bitter moaning.