White Crow (10 page)

F
erelith and Rebecca sit on the floor of Ferelith’s bedroom, on a big Turkish rug that’s seen better days. Ferelith has turned the music down but it still chunters on quietly from some unseen speakers.

‘Your room is amazing,’ Rebecca says, quite honestly. She’s not jealous of it, because it’s not how she would ever like her room to be, but amazing it is.

It’s full of stuff. Every square inch of floor, wall, and in some places ceiling has something on it. Every bookcase, and there are many, is crammed to overflowing, not just with books, piled in sideways where there’s no room, but with all manner of things: interesting stones from the beach, bone-dry sticks, bleached by sun and saltwater, smooth green sea glass. There’s a bunch of dried mistletoe, rusty scissors that will cut nothing again. A jar of feathers, all of them black, save one that is white.

There are two big wardrobes, and the door of one of them is open, showing a mirror and a rail full of what Rebecca can only think of as ‘Ferelith clothes’, mostly black, some muted colours, all very simple, all quite sexy in an unusual way.

‘You want a drink or something?’ Ferelith asks, but she doesn’t really seem to be offering, so Rebecca shakes her head.

‘So, you’re kind of famous, then,’ Ferelith says, changing the subject.

Rebecca bristles.

‘Don’t be stupid.’

‘Do the press know your dad is here? I bet they do. They know everything. I guess there’s just something else to write about for now. I remember it though. It was last year, wasn’t it?’

Rebecca is about to correct her, but decides she doesn’t want to talk about it.

‘I came here so I wouldn’t have to think about it, all right?’ she snaps angrily.

Ferelith sits back. She doesn’t say anything for a very long time, waiting for Rebecca’s anger to pass.

‘God. You are so beautiful,’ Ferelith says eventually.

‘Shut up,’ says Rebecca, but she’s speaking gently. She frowns. ‘Do you like me?’ Her nose wrinkles. ‘Or something?’

‘You mean, like I . . . Why? Would you like me to?’

‘Of course not.’

‘Then why do you ask?’

‘Because of the things you say.’

‘But you are beautiful.’

‘I told you to shut up.’

‘Fair enough. Do you like me, though?’ She turns away, hiding her eyes behind a curtain of hair. Then adds in a small voice, ‘Would it kill you to tell me I’m not ugly?’

Rebecca considers this. Ferelith is not beautiful. She is not pretty. Nor can she apply the words gorgeous, or stunning, or even handsome to her. But she’s certainly not ugly. And there’s something powerful about her, something powerfully attractive.

‘Do you think you are?’

Ferelith shrugs, still turned away.

‘They all said I was at school.’

‘Kids say anything if they think it will hurt.’

Ferelith nods.

‘Yeah. Why is that? Why do kids say things far worse than adults?’

‘Trust me, adults can say bad stuff too.’

‘Like what was on your car?’ Ferelith asks, looking back at Rebecca now. She holds up her hand. ‘Sorry. We don’t have to talk about it, even if everyone else in the village is. It must be really hard.’

Rebecca says nothing. Then her face crumples and she folds into a small ball on the rug, and cries her heart out.

Ferelith watches her, thinking, waiting, thinking some more. Then she crawls over to Rebecca and puts a hand on her shoulder, then strokes her hair with her other one.

Rebecca whimpers like a wounded dog, and Ferelith pulls her into her arms and holds her tightly.

‘Poor Becky,’ she says, but Rebecca just rocks back and forth, sobbing quietly.

Eventually, the tears stop, and Ferelith finds a box of tissues for her. She blows her nose and wipes her face, and then Rebecca speaks again.

‘You want to know the worst thing?’

Ferelith nods, not daring to speak, in case she breaks the spell.

‘The worst thing. Worse than all the things kids said to me at school, worse than the newspaper people on our doorstep, worse than the things they said on the TV. The worst thing is that I look at my dad, and I don’t know.

‘I don’t know what I think. I don’t know whether he did something he shouldn’t have. I don’t know whether he’s responsible for that girl dying. Or not. That’s the worst thing.’

I spent a long time with Rebecca that day. In fact, it was late by the time she went home, back down Long Lane in the dark.

She seemed better after she’d cried, but that’s often the way. Something to do with endorphins. Or serotonin, or some other chemical the body releases to make you feel better. Seems a shame that the stupid body can’t release some of the same bloody chemicals and stop you from crying in the first place.

That’s what I would have done if I was designing the body. But I didn’t, God did. And if he didn’t, then it was Charles Darwin who did. If you see what I mean.

But even then, some things don’t make sense. Like, why do we cry? I mean, I can understand the physical need to cry if you get some grit in your eye. It washes it out, stops the grit from damaging your precious organs of sight.

But apart from that, why do we cry?

When we see a sad film, when Kevin says that he doesn’t love you any more because Julie’s not as fat as you are, when your hamster dies. Or when your mum goes crazy and your dad leaves you, why do we cry?

What’s the point?

From evolution’s point of view, I mean?

 

So anyway, we talked for a long time that afternoon, and I found some pizzas in the freezer that were mine and that no one else in the house had stolen, and we ate them, and I found a bottle of wine in Matthew’s room that he won’t miss because he’s too stoned most of the time to know what’s going on.

Rebecca said she didn’t want to drink, but I told her it was medicinal, and that was all it took for her to slug back half a bottle in half an hour.

Then we dozed in the sun coming in from the big window over the garden, until we watched it set behind the firs at the end of the garden and the room grew dark, and as it grew dark, all Rebecca’s pain and all my pain grew darker and softer too, and a gentle tired ease entered my body and my mind.

I felt really happy, but just as I was thinking that, Rebecca spoke, for the first time in hours.

‘Christ,’ she said. ‘I feel so bloody, bloody, bloody lonely.’

I sat up.

‘But you’ve got me, now,’ I said.

And then she sat up too.

She looked deeply at me.

‘Have I?’ she said, like it was a surprise.

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘of course you have. For better or worse.’

And she smiled.

R
ebecca becomes a regular visitor to the Rectory, as the two girls spend more and more time with each other.

One day, Rebecca suddenly realises that life has got easier, despite everything. She’s stopped looking at her mobile every ten minutes, hoping there’ll be a text, a missed call.

Despite her father’s problems, nothing more has happened since the business with the car, and although it’s unspoken, they both wonder whether whoever did it, person, or persons unknown, realises they’ve overstepped the mark and have backed off.

John Case has noticed that his daughter is wearing that heart pendant again, and it helps him, though he knows better than to mention the fact.

Maybe they can settle down for the rest of the summer until it’s time for her to go back to London, time for her father’s appeal. And she’ll have to face Adam, too, when school starts again. Suddenly Winterfold seems like an attractive option.

The weather burns fiercely, day after day. There’s been no rain for almost two months, and the land is scorched and dry. Everyone moves slowly, drags themselves about in the heat, and the days are long and light, making it seem as if time itself has slowed.

But it’s always cool in the darkness of the Rectory.

On Saturday the seventh of August, Rebecca and Ferelith are in the room with the black door, listening to music, talking when one of them feels like it, saying nothing when they don’t.

They have one earphone each, and so close, Rebecca watches Ferelith mouthing the words to the song.

‘. . . If you fall, I will catch you. I’ll be waiting. Time after time.’

Rebecca wonders what it is she’s seeing on Ferelith’s face, and then places it. It’s happiness.

Ferelith sits up suddenly.

‘I never showed you, did I?’ she says.

‘Showed me what?’ Rebecca asks.

‘My collection. It’s in the trunk. Do you want to see? Say you do!’

‘Your collection of what?’

‘Of stuff I’ve found on the beach. From graves.’

Rebecca wrinkles her nose.

‘Are you scared or something?’ Ferelith asks.

‘No,’ Rebecca says, automatically, but actually, she’s not scared. It’s something else she can’t put her finger on.

‘So do you want to see, or not?’ Ferelith asks, but she’s already clearing all the mess off the top of the old pine blanket box by the window, and is lifting the lid.

‘Go on then,’ Rebecca says, aware she’s not being given a choice.

‘Look!’ Ferelith says, her eyes gleaming, ‘Treasure!’

She pulls out an old pocket watch, battered and broken. The face is missing, but it’s obviously silver.

‘You found that on the beach?’ Rebecca asks.

‘The night after a storm. About three years ago, when St James’s churchyard was going over. A whole lot of graves went in the course of the winter. I got some great things.’

‘But that’s stealing.’

‘Only if you get caught,’ Ferelith says, grinning. ‘But who am I stealing from anyway? Someone would have to own this stuff for it to be stealing, wouldn’t they?’