Laura Jarratt - Skin Deep

My stomach steadied when I saw the tattoos up his arms and the ring through his eyebrow. He was around Cole’s age, with a big build like him.

‘I’m looking for work. I wondered if you needed any help.’

He looked around. ‘I don’t see any sign up advertising a vacancy, do you?’

‘No.’ I shrugged and tried a smile. ‘Thought I’d ask though, just in case.’

He snorted. ‘How old are you?’

‘Sixteen.’

‘Ever worked in a boatyard before?’

‘No, but –’

‘Ever worked before?’

I hung my head. ‘No.’

In the pause that followed I got ready to apologise and get out of there. There were other yards I could try, but this was the closest. He broke the silence in the end with another laugh.

‘Guess you won’t have picked up any bad habits then.’ I looked up quickly and he winked. ‘Come on, convince me.’

I took a deep breath. ‘Um . . . er . . . I’m looking for work with boats because they’re what I know about. This is the first place I’ve tried and it’s a big site so I thought there was a chance you might have some jobs that needed doing. I’m good with narrowboats. We’ve had one all my life and I’ve been brought up around them and I do all the work on ours and I’m not scared of hard work or getting my hands dirty and –’

‘Woah! Slow down!’ He held up a hand to silence me, but he smiled. ‘Are you a local kid?’

‘Ah . . . no . . .’ This would be the difficult bit.

He frowned. ‘Moved here recently?’

‘Yeah.’

‘So where did you come from?’

I heaved a sigh. Might as well leave now. ‘Nowhere. We move around. We’re here for the winter.’

He rubbed his chin. ‘You’re a traveller?’

I nodded.

‘You got a police record?’

‘No.’

‘Cautions?’

‘No, nothing like that.’

‘So you said you had a boat. You mean you live on it?’

‘Yes, me and my mum. She makes jewellery. Good stuff, not rubbish.’

His lips pursed together in thought. ‘You were honest about it. You could’ve lied,’ he said finally.

‘I don’t lie.’

‘I wasn’t looking for any help, but now it’s sitting here offering itself up, I could do with another pair of hands around the place. Tourist season’s nearly done and I’ll have boats coming in for full maintenance soon. I can take more if I’ve got someone who knows what they’re doing.’ He nodded slowly. ‘You don’t look like you’d faint at pumping waste out or fall over with a bit of heavy lifting.’

I shook my head, and then wondered if I’d got that the wrong way round. Maybe I was supposed to nod.

He got the message though. ‘Can’t give you a contract. You’ll be casual labour, but I’ll send you on your way with a good reference when you leave, if you’ve proved yourself.’

‘That’s fine with me.’

‘You’re polite enough too. I could use you in the shop on Saturdays. We get a good bit of passing trade in at the weekend. Can I trust you with the till?’

I set my teeth together. ‘Yes, you can.’

He laughed. ‘I see you can keep your temper too. That’s important with customers, especially some of the stuck-up sods you get round here. Peace, lad, I’m not stupid. I can spot trouble when I see it and I don’t see it in you. I’ll give you a go if you want. It’s good to see someone your age getting off his arse and looking for work.’ He held his hand out. ‘I’m Pete, and that’s Bill over there.’

A grin broke over my face as I shook hands with him. ‘Ryan. And thank you!’

My first job! Yes!

On Monday morning, Charlie and I waited for the school bus at the crossroads on the edge of the village.He nudged me with his elbow as the bus came into view.

‘What?’

‘Will you look after my case for me on the bus?’

His trumpet case – he had a lesson today. Mum and Dad wanted him to learn an instrument so, of course, he’d picked the noisiest one he could. ‘What do I get in return?’

He grinned at me, the blond curls he hated plastered down with gel because Mum wouldn’t let him cut his hair short enough to get rid of them. ‘I’ll wait until you go to feed the ponies to practise tonight.’

‘You’re on.’ Charlie was not a natural musician. When he practised, we all suffered.

The bus drew up and Charlie abandoned me to sit with his friends. I made for a window seat at the front, putting my bag and Charlie’s case beside me so no one could sit there, and I took out a book. Now I didn’t have Lindz to talk to, I always read on the bus. The journey from Strenton to school took forty-five minutes, the bus winding down narrow country lanes to pick up in Whitmere and all the villages. I looked out of the window occasionally to see where we were, but otherwise I kept my head down.

Charlie paid me no more attention as he got off the bus than he had when we were on it, except to grab his trumpet as he went past. Big sisters were fine to play with at home, but were to be ignored at school in front of mates. The Prep department was in a different building to the Upper School and he and his crew ran off to play football in their yard before the bell went. I headed round the side of the building to the girls’ locker rooms. The noise hit me as soon as I went in, all the post-weekend chatter about who’d done what, with who and when. I hung my coat up and collected some textbooks I needed for the morning. This area was only for Year 10 so everyone here knew me; it was safe.

Walking out into the corridor was different. A bunch of younger girls stopped at the sight of me, their mouths screwing up before they turned away. And then the whispers . . .

When would it stop? We’d only been back a couple of weeks and I was still a novelty – Shrek Goes to High School. But would they ever get used to me?

A couple of Year 8 boys pushed into me, not looking where they were going, and I shoved them out of the way before they knocked me over. ‘Eww, that’s disgusting,’ the geeky spotty one muttered to his friend. ‘She should put a bag over her head or something.’ Even a minger like him found me repulsive.

The second boy sniggered and I couldn’t stand the idea of them following me down the corridor so I veered into the girls’ toilets and locked myself in a cubicle.

I leaned on the door for support as I waited for my pulse to slow and the usual choke of anger and humiliation to die away. Walking down that corridor was the hardest part of the day and every time I did it, I had to fight back the memory of the first day back at school after the accident.

The locker room had been bad enough as girls from my year rushed over to say, ‘Hi! We missed you . . .’ before their voices tailed off. Their eyes widened in shock, even though they all knew what had happened to me. But knowing it isn’t the same as seeing it. I saw the thoughts flash through their heads: if that happened to me . . . oh God, I’d die . . . it’s . . . it’s . . . They tried to pretend they weren’t horrified, but they couldn’t hide it. I didn’t know what to say to them. I wanted to run out of the building and phone Mum, then sit in the field and cry until she came to get me.

But she’d talked me through this so many times and I didn’t think she’d come for me anyway. She’d call the school and they’d send a teacher to find me. They’d already offered to get my form tutor to meet me from the bus, but I didn’t want that. To be escorted down the corridors would only make people stare even more – Exhibit One, Fugly Scarface with Mrs Barker as bodyguard. Instead Beth had met me at the lockers and linked her arm through mine to march me to the form room.