The Testament of Jessie Lamb (6 page)

‘It is. I would. But I don't know what else to do.'

‘Let me go. It's
my
life.'

‘Not to throw away it isn't.'

‘Hypocrite.'

‘Stop it Jess. D'you want a bath? The water's hot.'

‘Hypocrite! Hypocrite! Hypocrite!' I scream.

Mandy got more and more depressed, and Mum tried to get her into hospital. But they were closing wards because of nursing shortages. Then she found a daycare centre. The trouble was, it was run by the Noahs. The night Mum came home early and told us about it, Dad and I were going through my options for college. I was still dithering about whether to do biology AS, or start a new language. Dad said, ‘If ever we needed scientists it's now.' But I didn't fancy having to admit to Baz that I was taking Science. There was a grid thing so you could work out what subjects you could take with what, and we were sitting at the kitchen table trying to figure it out, with the radio burbling quietly in the background.

We got distracted with a perfect crime which would involve telling your victim he didn't look very well, and keeping a graph of his temperature morning and night. You'd check the thermometer with a worried look, then put an x on the graph one square higher than the previous day's. The graph would show the temperature going steadily up and up till it was at an incredibly dangerous level. Dad insisted that simply being told he was at death's door would be enough to finish someone off. ‘You know the Roman cure for fever? Cut the patient's nails and stick the parings with wax onto a neighbour's door. The fever passes from the patient to the neighbour. I'm cured and you're ill instead. The mind is a powerful instrument!'

I was asking Father of Wisdom about voodoo when Mum came in. There was one of those massive summer thunderstorms and the rain drumming against the kitchen window made us feel cosy. We didn't hear her until she came right into the kitchen, still in her mac, dripping everywhere.

‘Good grief,' said Dad, ‘Why didn't you ring for a lift?'

‘I felt like walking,' she said. ‘If that's alright with you.'

Dad shrugged. The cosy mood of the kitchen teetered on a knife edge.

‘Anyway, there was a road block.' She pulled a damp yellow leaflet out of her coat pocket. It said in big letters GOD'S SIGN TO HIS PEOPLE, then there were paragraphs of small print, and across the bottom, CHILDREN OF NOAH. ‘Take a look at this.'

My Dad rolled his eyes at me. ‘Religious loons!' It said God had tried to warn us through all the natural disasters but people are so hardened they take no notice. When the world was as depraved as this before, God sent a flood to drown it and only Noah and his ark were saved. Now the whole human race would die out unless we could prove to Him that we were turning away from evil.

My Mum came back in with dry clothes on. ‘What d'you make of it?' she asked Dad.

‘The usual fundamentalist nonsense.'

‘Mandy's really into it.'

‘You've been to Mandy's?'

‘Yes. She's going to this meeting on Sunday–she wants me to go with her.'

‘I wouldn't go near them,' said Dad.

‘More to the point, she's started to tidy her house. She says God likes cleanliness.'

Dad handed her a mug of tea. ‘If they want converts why not target healthy people? Why are they going for patients who are unstable? And frankly, open to abuse?'

‘You think they'll abuse her?'

‘Don't a lot of these sects abuse people? They take their money, or they expect the women to be sex slaves to the leader.'

‘She says there
isn't
a leader. They have to try and improve the world so that God will change his mind and
send
a leader.'

‘And what will they do if God ignores them? Commit mass suicide? Heard of Jim Jones' People's Temple? Or The Branch Davidians–the Waco bunch?'

‘For goodness sake–' Mum bent so her forehead touched the table, as if she was giving up, then she straightened herself and faced my Dad again. ‘Look Joe, Mandy's depressed. She only has a shower when I force her. And now–'

‘They've grabbed themselves a sick vulnerable woman–'

‘And now–' my Mum went on as if he hadn't spoken, ‘she says, at last there's something she can do.'

‘What does she have to do?'

‘Harmless stuff. Reject alcohol and sex outside marriage. Follow the commandments.'

‘Cath, she's brainwashed.'

‘You and I agreed she should be on antidepressants. The whole purpose of which is not to change your depressing life, but to make you think it's OK anyway. How can it be worse, to
actually
change her life?'

Mandy joined the Noahs. There was nothing they could do to stop her.

A few days later it was still raining and I borrowed Mum's mac to take the compost out. In her pocket with the old tissues I found a folded-up note. It was written in cramped handwriting I didn't recognise:

5.30 Tues, I can pick you up. Don't ring, I'm at home. Txt me early tomorrow. X

Why would you say
don't ring I'm at home
? Because someone else might answer the phone? Because you have a sick grandmother who mustn't be disturbed by the sound of a ringing phone? Or because you don't want to talk to Mum while anyone else is listening? I remembered the conversation between Mandy and Mum, where Mum said there were no angels. But Tuesday was her evening clinic, she was always late on Tuesday. I put it out of my head.

I guess the spitting was the next thing. It wasn't a big deal, I'm not trying to pretend it was, but it still makes me go hot and sweaty with shame. It's nowhere near as bad as what happened to Sal. The thing is, they're both part of the same pattern: the pattern that has led me here, to this dim room where I sit with my feet locked together, listening to my Dad pacing the floorboards in the room below.

I was walking back from YOFI with Nat. It had been one of those hot August days, when the roads get so warm that it's still radiating back out of the tarmac at ten o' clock at night, and the sky stays light and clear. It was lovely to be outside after the stuffiness of the community centre. The shops on the main road were closed with metal roll-down shutters covered in graffiti. There were empty houses with broken windows, and odd men about. I was glad I was with Nat. Then he told me he was leaving.

‘But why? The airport protest plan you guys did is really good.' Lots of people were supposed to buy tickets for consecutive flights and check in luggage, then fail to board. All the flights would be delayed, as they unloaded the unaccompanied luggage. It would clog things up for hours.

‘I don't like Iain telling us what to do.'

‘But nothing would happen if he didn't. People'd just argue all the time.'

‘Iain is on a power trip. He's got his own agenda.'

‘Like what?'

‘That crap about the vote.' Well we do live in a democracy. We had spent hours discussing it. Why shouldn't anyone over 10 should be able to elect representatives and have them stand up for us in parliament? How else could kids have power? But Nat and Lisa said why would you want to join their stupid system. And Lisa said why did Iain care, he already had the vote and it'd done a fat lot of good. I actually thought we
should
get the vote, like the suffragettes. But they made it seem tame. It turned into one of those endless arguments that made precisely nothing happen.

I was working out how to reply to Nat when we reached the main road, and had to wait for the pedestrian signal. A car full of lads came past and slowed right down when it was level with us. There was music blaring out and they were shouting something. Then one of them leaned right out and spat on me. A horrible big glob of white slime sliding down my bare arm. I screamed. I wasn't hurt, it was just the shock. Nat grabbed a handful of leaves from a dusty little garden behind us, and quickly scooped it off. I asked him what they were shouting.

‘Just crap.'

‘What?'

‘Rubbish. They're dickheads.'

I knew he'd heard something he didn't want to tell me. I felt like scrubbing my arm until the layer of skin they had polluted was scraped right off. I was furious but there was another feeling too, like a dog that slinks back towards you after you've yelled at it, looking up at you with his eyes ashamed and hopeful. I wanted them to come back so I could prove to them that I wasn't the sort of person you should spit at. I tried to pull myself together. ‘What are you going to do?' I asked Nat. ‘If you're leaving?'

‘Animal Liberation Front. I'm going underground!' He looked extremely pleased with himself.

I remembered what Lisa'd said at the first meeting. ‘You think what happens to animals is more important than what's happening to women.'

‘No, I think MDS came out of this kind of research, and scientists should be stopped before they invent something even worse. D'you really think it's OK to torture animals?'

I didn't but bashing scientists just wasn't the most important thing. It seemed childish, cloak and dagger stuff,
underground
, breaking the law in the name of the ALF. I thought we could achieve more inside YOFI.

Then the next day Sal said she wanted to start coming to meetings. I was surprised because she was usually busy with Damien. But she came and had tea with me and we walked down to the community centre together. I asked her what had happened to Damien.

‘Football.'

He worked at the leisure centre so that wasn't very surprising, but she said, ‘He's obsessed with it.'

‘What d'you mean?'

‘His football mates. They meet up every night.'

‘Every
night
?'

‘Well. About four times a week. For a practise and a drink, he says.'

‘You think he's seeing someone else?'

She shrugged. ‘He's an arse.' But she didn't say it as if she couldn't care less, in the usual Sal way.

‘Sal?'

‘Oh, he's just being weird.'

I knew it must be something embarrassing, because she used to tell me most things. Then she suddenly said, ‘I think he might be gay.' I couldn't help it, I just went ‘Ooh ducky!' and we both burst out laughing. I thought about the times I'd seen him, when he was all over her.

‘He's changed,' she insisted, ‘I can't explain it, but the way he is now, he's impatient, he's kind of contemptuous.'

‘Well sack him. Plenty more fish in the sea.' Sal'd been going out with lads since we were 11 and not one of them had ever dumped her. It was hard to see why she was making such a fuss over Damien.

‘He wants me to go out with them, him and his football mates.'

‘Well can't you?'

‘I can. But they drink themselves stupid and only listen to each other.'

‘Haven't
they
got girlfriends?'

‘On Friday I was the only girl. He changes when he's with them. It's like he's bored with me.'

With everything that was happening in the world, all Sal could do was obsess about a stupid man. ‘Forget him,' I said.

I wish she had. Or I wish I had taken her more seriously. But I took over organising the airport protest, and I was so busy co-ordinating that, and helping set up the Recycle Fashion shows, I didn't even stop to think. It's one of the things I regret most in my whole life.

There was only one ray of hope that whole autumn. Baby Johnson was delivered by Caesarean section. The first post-MDS baby! His picture was on the front of all the papers, shops put up flags, and people went round with huge grins on their faces. Even the suicide rate dropped. His grandmother's street was full of flowers, and the news showed her holding him, crying, thanking everyone. Baby Johnson's mother was 15 and they held her funeral in Westminster Abbey. She was called Ursula. Her mother told the story. Back when Ursula's pregnancy was confirmed women were still having abortions, in the hopes of saving their own lives. It was the first time in Ursula's life she ever had sex. She believed that because her baby had been conceived, he had the right to be born. Her parents tried to dissuade her but Ursula must have known how important her baby would be for the world, because she had this amazing faith in him.

Her doctor knew that researchers were working on putting women into a coma and helping the babies survive, and he told Ursula about them. She was one of the first to volunteer for the Sleeping Beauty experiment. Her mother described how they had stayed awake all night before they signed the consent forms, crying and praying for guidance. But Ursula had never wavered, and the last thing she had done before they gave her the injection, was to smile at her parents and thank them for her beautiful life.

‘And I believe in fairies,' said Mum.

Dad said, ‘Still–good for her!'