Thirteen Chairs (8 page)

There was something dark and wet on his fingertips. His face was a terrible picture of horrified remembrance. The cravat was nearly loose now. He hooked two dripping fingers behind it and began to pull.

Peter wanted to beg him to stop, but he could not speak. Nor move. He could only watch. He knew beyond all doubt exactly what the next moment held.

And he wished that he could look away.

I
t’s colder now. It’s later in the evening, so of course it’s colder, but that’s not why Jack shivers. His imagination is telling him the story beyond the ending, and he doesn’t like what his mind’s eye sees. His eyes have lost all focus for a moment but then he’s jolted out of his daze by a small sharp cry.

His eyes focus on the source of the shriek. Something is wrong with kindly, welcoming Frances Crane. Her arms are crossed tightly over her chest, her head has dropped forward, and she is rocking as she takes in short jabs of breath, each one accompanied by a high whistling sound. When she lifts her head, her handsome face is distorted by distress, her laughter lines full of tears. And then all of those tiny gasped-in breaths are released in one mighty, wailing sob. Her arms unfold and she drops her palms flat on the table, as if she’s bracing herself, and gentle Frances Crane cries out a raw animal sound that rings around the room.

Jack stares wide-eyed at her, scared and upset and confused. Katy Mulligan is staring at her too, her neatly painted lips parted in alarm.

‘Frances,’ she says. ‘Oh my God, what is it? What—’

Then Frances Crane lifts a hand to her head, clamping the palm to her temple, and as she does so her bangles and the wide sleeve of her blouse drop down away from her wrist to reveal an ugly scrawl of heavy, dark scars crisscrossing the skin. Jack gasps at the sight of it – he can’t help himself – and Frances’s reaction is
immediate. She drops her hand quickly out of sight, pulling her sleeve back into place, and tries to regain control of her breathing. But Katy Mulligan, at least, has seen the scars too. She looks horrified.

‘Oh God, Frances, I’m so sorry. I had no idea. If I’d known I would never—’

Frances pulls a fragile smile into place and, with great care, wipes tears away. ‘No, of course not, Katy. There’s no reason you should have known. Don’t mind me.’ She sniffs. ‘Don’t mind me, everybody.’ She beams around at those still seated in the light, and those back in the shadows too. ‘That just … got the better of me for a moment. So sorry. But it only goes to show what a fine story it was, Katy. You should be proud. Really you should.’ She aims her best and bravest reassuring smile over at Katy whose mouth has clamped shut tight now, her face a picture of tense sympathy. She seems about to say something more, but the pale man cuts in.

‘Thank you, Ms Mulligan,’ he says, and there is no drama in his voice, no emotion, no sympathy really, but somehow his blank tone is calming anyway. Katy, after one last glance at Frances, blows out her candle and lifts her chair back into the darkness without another word.

Jack is still in shock. He knows what those marks must mean, but he can’t quite believe it. Frances seems so happy, jolly, positive; surely she would never …

And they were livid scars too, from deep cuts made with force and effort and intent. It’s a wonder that she
survived. And now Jack is thinking things he doesn’t want to think again, and as he does so he is staring into space. Only he realizes he is staring into space in the direction of Frances Crane, which must look like he’s simply gawping at her. He turns his head away and finds himself now looking at Amelia, by his side, who is apparently entirely unworried by the sight of Frances’s savaged wrist. She is singing happily to herself under her breath and swaying in time with her own music.

‘Amelia,’ says Mr Osterley.

She looks up.

‘Is it my turn now?’

‘Yes, Amelia.’

‘Good. Because I have a story to tell that is a true story about me. It is from when I was at school. Before. And it is a good story and I think you will like it and I will tell it to you now.’

And she does.

‘D
id you see that?’

Charley is talking to me and pointing over to the green wire fence at the far end of the playground. This is strange. Charley doesn’t normally talk to me. Charley is loud and cheeky and funny and popular, and he normally mainly talks to Zack and Kazim, who are also loud and funny and popular, and to Callum, who is loud.

I am not loud or funny or cheeky or popular. I am quite clever and quiet and not cool, and the other children make fun of my glasses, which are held together by sellotape at the moment because Dad fixed them with not very good glue in a hurry after Ellie sat on them, and so they broke again really easily when Sam kicked a football in my face, which was an accident again. And Dad is going to get some better glue and fix them better and then maybe, maybe, we’ll see, get me some new glasses soon.

And because I am not popular or cool, Charley does not talk to me. Ever. But Charley is talking to me now and pointing over to the green wire fence at the far end of the playground, but all I can see over there is the fence and some fallen leaves and some rubbish. There aren’t many other children here yet, just me and
Charley and Callum and a girl in a red duffel coat. Dad drops me off early on the way to his work so I’m normally one of the first three earliest to arrive out of the whole school.

‘Do you mean the crisp packet?’ I say.

But when I look back Charley isn’t there any more. He is running off the other way behind Callum, and they are both laughing, and Callum is carrying something. And I look at the ground down to my left and my bag isn’t there, even though that is where I put it down, and I realize that the thing that Callum is carrying is my bag, and they’re running away with my bag with my lunch and my PE kit and my water bottle and my homework in it.

‘Hey!’

I run after them. I am quite good at running and I am not carrying any bags, and Charley is carrying a bag and Callum is carrying two bags (including mine), so I catch up with them.

‘Hey! Give it back!’

I am in front of Charley and behind Callum, and before I catch up to Callum he turns round and throws my bag over my head. Then Charley catches it and stops running and sort of shakes it about in front of him a bit as if he’s dancing with it. I have stopped running too and I turn to face Charley so now Callum is behind me.

‘Ha ha!’ says Callum. ‘Piggy in the middle!’

‘Give me back my bag, please, Charley,’ I say to
Charley – which is polite, even though Charley has not been polite to me, but I am setting him a Good Example – and I walk towards him with my arms out. And Charley holds the bag out straight towards my hands, but when I try to take it he pulls it back again and then throws it over my head to Callum again. And now I am really annoyed.

‘Piggy in the middle,’ says Callum. ‘Oink, oink!’

And I think this is a very silly thing to say. It is a horrible thing when Callum calls Neelam a pig, because Neelam is a bit fat and it makes her cry sometimes when Callum calls her a pig. But it is not a horrible thing to say to me because I am not fat at all. I am nine years old, but I am small and thin and wear clothes that I get Dad to cut the labels out of so that no one sees that they are meant to be for seven-year-olds.

If Callum wants to try to make me cry he should call me something to do with being little, like ‘titch’ or ‘stick insect’ or something, because that would make more sense (even though it still wouldn’t make me cry because I don’t care about that sort of thing because I have a Positive Self Image because Dad told me I should). So when I punch Callum hard in the tummy and he is sick onto his shoes (which are those silly trainers with the flashing lights, which you aren’t even meant to wear at school anyway), it’s not because he has called me a piggy in the middle; it’s just that Callum and Charley are taller than me and could carry on throwing my bag over me for ages and I want it
back before my sandwiches get all messed up because Dad made me ham and cheese and tomato ones this morning and the tomatoes get messy really easily if you’re not careful (and Callum and Charley were definitely NOT being careful) so I made them stop.

I walk over to Charley. His eyes are very wide and his mouth is open and he looks funny. I take my bag off him and he doesn’t say anything because I am quiet and clever and he didn’t expect that I might hit anybody in the tummy and make them cry and be sick over their shoes so he is surprised.

I am a bit surprised too, actually. And when I get called into Mrs Brock’s office (Mrs Brock is our head), she tells me that she is surprised too. She says she is ‘surprised and disappointed’. She tells me that it is not allowed to punch children in the tummy, even if they are Callum Yates, and even if it is to protect your sandwiches which have tomatoes in them. She says it in her stern voice that she uses in assembly for Serious Announcements, but she is smiling quite a lot too, so I think I am not in too much trouble.

I think it helps that none of the teachers like Callum, because he is probably the naughtiest child in our year and probably number three in the whole school, after Jenny Blake who was caught smoking and Luke Kelly who let off a firework in the boys’ toilets and everybody is scared of. I look at the floor and say, ‘Sorry, Mrs Brock,’ and she says, ‘Well, OK then,’ and sends me back to my classroom.

It is interesting walking along the corridors when lessons have already started and the corridors are all empty. Normally there is everybody else laughing and chatting and shouting, but now there is only the sound of my shoes going
click-clack click-clack
as I walk quickly because it is maths now and I am missing it, and I like maths because it is interesting and I am good at it.

My school shoes are probably my noisiest shoes, and because there is only me in the corridor they sound extra-noisy and they echo a bit and it sounds good. And because it is good I lift my knees up high as I walk and stomp along extra-loudly in the bits of corridor that aren’t too close to classrooms that have strict teachers in them. My teacher is Miss Khosla and she is nice because she is only three and a half out of ten strict, so I am quite loud in the last bit of corridor up to quite close to her door, then I walk along the last bit normally.

Now that I am outside the door I think that it is not a clever thing to punch the naughtiest boy in the year in the tummy because he will probably want to do revenge on me. Abby told me that Callum made her eat a spider once. And that was for NO REASON, not because he was doing revenge on her. So I am a bit worried now and I just stand still outside the door for a little bit.

And then I hear somebody else’s noisy shoes somewhere, and so I know that somebody else must be out
of class too, and I wonder if they have been sent to be told off too. I look back along the corridor to where I think I can hear it coming from and I think I see the girl in the red duffel coat disappearing past the corner. I wonder if she is new at the school because I don’t think I have seen her before today. And now I can’t hear her noisy shoes any more, but I’ve forgotten about thinking about Callum and revenge so I turn the door handle and go into the classroom.

When I go in all the other children go ‘Wooooo!’ like they always do when somebody has been to see Mrs Brock, only Callum doesn’t join in, and Miss Khosla says, ‘Settle down, class,’ and tells me to sit down and I sit down in my usual place between Nadia and Imran, and Nadia is trying really hard not to giggle and Imran puts his hands in front of his face like he’s going ‘don’t hit me!’ and does pretending to be really scared of me and I think about kicking him under the table, just a little bit, but I decide not to.

And then we’re doing maths, which I like because I’m good at it, but today I pretend not to be quite so good at it because everybody thinks I’m strange and too clever. I help Nadia when she gets stuck, but I don’t put my hand up too much when Miss Khosla asks the class questions, and I don’t look over at Callum’s table hardly at all, so if he is looking at me all scary I don’t see it, and so it’s OK.

At morning break it is raining, which means we stay inside. Nadia and Kirsten play Single Mums and they
ask if I would like to play and I can be Kirsten’s baby, Tyrone, if I want, but I say no thank you because I want to read the rainy-day comics. I get one from the box and I go and sit with my back to the window quite near to Miss Khosla’s desk where she is doing some marking and drinking tea from a thermos flask, because then if Callum tries to do revenge he can’t sneak up behind me and Miss Khosla will see.

I like to play hopscotch or skipping in normal breaks because of the counting and songs, or I like to be alone and pretend things, but on rainy-day breaks I like to read comics.

There is a big box of them and they are very old, which means they have more words and pictures on the pages and hardly any colours. But the one I’m reading is a little bit annoying. I think the comics must have been given to the summer fête by somebody’s grandma or something and then the ones that didn’t get sold ended up here. And all the stories are in lots of episodes but most times the comic with the next episode in isn’t there, so I just have to read the next one I can find and try to guess what happened in between.

I don’t mind too much normally, but this time I realize this comic comes between two that I’ve read before and now all the things that are happening in the story about the girls in the spooky school are different to everything I made up and it’s making me a bit annoyed, partly because some of it isn’t as good as what I made up and partly because I’m angry that the comics were
in the box in the wrong order even though I spent ages last week sorting them out.

I put down the comic and scowl at Charley, because I decide it might be his fault and he looks at me a bit funny, only he’s not quite looking at me, he’s sort of looking over my shoulder, so I look round and there’s someone outside the window.

It’s a girl, but she’s facing away from me, and the window is quite high, so I can only see the back of her head. Her hair is straight and shiny and ginger. I wonder why she’s outside in the rain, but then a ball of screwed-up paper bounces off my head (and Miss Khosla doesn’t even notice because she’s looking at her mobile phone) and I turn to pull a face at Charley for throwing it, and then when I turn back around the girl is gone.

Then Miss Khosla puts her phone away and blows her nose and says break is over and it’s time for the spelling test and I get nine out of ten (because I deliberately get ‘population’ wrong).

Normally I look forward to lunch time, but today I don’t look forward to lunch time. I don’t look forward to it because the rain has stopped now and so we have to go outside and I think that Callum will try to do revenge on me. It’s only Mrs Fleet on duty in the playground today and it’s easy to get away with things when it’s Mrs Fleet because she is only one out of ten strict, and I think my sandwiches might be soggy.

When the bell goes I go and get my lunchbox and
open it and look inside and I can see that my sandwiches
are
soggy. And because I was right about that I think I am probably right about Callum too, so I go and stand near to Mrs Fleet to eat my lunch, but she keeps moving about and it’s hard to eat my lunch with only one hand (because I’m holding my lunchbox with the other), and all the sandwiches are wrapped in cellophane because that’s the way I like them so that even when they get squished I don’t get squishy tomato-ness on everything else.

I really need both hands to unwrap the cellophane, so I stop trying to follow Mrs Fleet around and sit on the bench by the office and just try to eat my lunch as fast as I can while Callum and Charley are busy telling jokes from off the telly to Fahreed from the next year up.

I try to keep an eye on them, but I drop some tomato on my biscuits (Dad gave me biscuits today because it is a Wednesday and Wednesdays are biscuit days, and Mondays and Fridays are too, and Tuesdays and Thursdays are Healthy Choice days), and so I have to pay attention to that and get the seeds and juice off the top biscuit as fast as possible to stop it from being too tomatoey to eat (the bottom one is absolutely fine). I’m just deciding that the top biscuit is not OK to eat because it will be too tomatoey but that from now on I’ll ask Dad to wrap the biscuits in cellophane as well for extra safety, when I realize that I can’t see Mrs Fleet at all any more. But I can see Fahreed from the next
year up and he is not talking to Callum and Charley any more. Where have they gone?

And what’s that smell?

I look down at the ground to my right and see Callum’s trainers with the stupid twinkly lights in.

‘Your shoes smell of sick,’ I say.

‘Shut up!’ says Callum, and because his mouth is all twisted up a little bit of spit comes out when he says it and lands on the sick stain on his shoe. Maybe it will wash it off a bit. He gives me a shove on the shoulder which makes me drop the biscuit, the non-tomatoey one, onto the ground, and now it is broken and dirty and I don’t have a good biscuit left.

‘Hey!’ I say, but it doesn’t sound as brave as I want it to.

Callum hunches up his shoulders, and screws up his fists and his face. ‘I’m going to get you!’ he says.

‘No, you’re not,’ says somebody else.

I look up and it’s a girl I don’t recognize. At least, I think I haven’t seen her at school before but she does look a bit familiar. She’s wearing the old school uniform that they used to have here ages ago but that they made ‘optional’. (‘Optional’ means you only wear it if you have mad parents who want you to be bullied. At least, this is what Dad told me when I asked if I could have one.) She is also wearing a red duffel coat, so I realize that this is the girl who was here early.

Her haircut is funny. She has quite long, straight, shiny ginger hair and it flops down over one side of
her face, covering it up completely so you can only see one of her eyes. She is not as tall as Callum and she is quite skinny-looking, but there is something odd about her and her head is tilted down so that the one eye that you can see is looking up through her eyebrow and her body is all sort of stiff and tense and that makes her look a bit scary even though she is only little.