Margaret Mahy - Twenty-Four Hours

Together, Jackie and Ellis made their way to the table by the barbecue. Plates of steak and sausages sat beside huge wooden bowls of salad, the meat drying a little, the lettuce leaves starting to wilt around the edges. Jackie piled a plate with salad and sliced tomatoes, as well as a fillet of salmon, glittering in a wrap of tin foil.

“Have some steak,” said Ellis. It seemed the least they could do was eat the food most likely to be left over.

“I’m vegetarian – all but,” said Jackie.

“You?” cried Ellis incredulously.

“I said, ‘All but’!” Jackie replied, snapping a piece of garlic bread from its parent loaf. “I’m not above stocking up when it’s free, and probably going to be thrown out, anyway. That’s another of my virtues … I don’t waste anything. Let’s move before the Killers close in again and begin telling you about the civilised way they’re managing their separation.”

“Kilmers!” Ellis corrected him, not quite wanting to expose old friends to alien derision, and slightly irritated because Jackie seemed more at home with the gossip than he was. “Are they really separating?” He could not imagine Meg and Alan apart from one another.

“They say they are,” said Jackie. “And they’re pretending it’s all good, clean fun. But my sources, of which I have one, say they really want to kill each other, and they’re waiting till after Christmas to fight about who gets how much. New Year’s the traditional time for murder, isn’t it?”

“Do you know the Kilmers?” asked Ellis.

“Never met them until five minutes ago,” said Jackie.

Ellis came to a sudden stop. “Just level with me – what are we doing here?” he asked. “Why have we crashed this particular party?”

“Well, to tell you the truth I want to make trouble,” said Jackie. “I didn’t mention it before in case you got all shy, but …” He tilted his head back and drank the whole glass of beer at what seemed to be a single swallow. “Don’t you do that!” he added. “Remember, you’re driving.”

“What sort of trouble?” asked Ellis dubiously.

“I’m still choosing,” said Jackie in a pious voice. Then his gaze sharpened and he stared past Ellis with an expression of such deep appreciation that Ellis turned too. And there he saw his childhood nemesis, the Kilmer boy, Christo, talking to a lanky young woman wearing jeans, a sleeveless blue top and round, wire-rimmed glasses.

Ellis and Christo had never got on together, though both sets of parents had tried hard to encourage them into some sort of friendship. In normal circumstances Ellis would have gone a long way to avoid talking to Christo. But Jackie was drifting so casually in his and the girl’s direction that nobody watching him would have guessed how purposeful that drifting was. Only Ellis knew – and suddenly knew for certain – that Jackie had forced his way into this party with the single intention of breaking in on that particular conversation. Ellis had no choice but to follow him, though with increasing alarm.

The couple had been chatting together cheerfully enough, or so it seemed to Ellis. Now, Christo, looking across the girl’s shoulder, met Ellis’s eyes and then, almost instantaneously, saw Jackie. Though Jackie was still pretending he had not yet seen Christo, Ellis felt the impact of Christo’s furious glance as if a dagger had been thrust towards them. Even from where he stood he could see Christo’s fair skin turn red as a wild blush of fury spread across it. A small mole, rather like an eighteenth-century beauty-spot, stood out darkly on Christo’s cheekbone as he grasped the girl’s upper arm.

Christo’s grasp must have been severe, for she started, glanced at him, then turned in order to see what he was looking at. For a moment she was as amazed as Jackie could ever have wished her to be. Behind her wire-rimmed spectacles, under the shadow of her lashes, her eyes were a light, startling blue. Her first surprise gave way to instant anger.

“What are you doing here?” she shouted.

Jackie looked directly at her for the first time. His expression showed nothing but startled innocence.

“Oh, wow!” he exclaimed. “You! What a coincidence! Hey, it’s a small world, isn’t it? Stunted really.”

“What are you doing here?” she repeated so forcefully that Ellis stepped back in alarm.

“Weird, eh?” Jackie went on. “Must be the morphic field! Or what’s that other thing? Chaos theory or something. See, I met up with Ellis – my old friend Ellis – you know, I’m always talking about Ellis – and he suggested …”

“You’re such a liar!” exclaimed the girl.

Jackie laughed. “Ellis,” he said. “This is Ursa Hammond. And you know Chris, don’t you?”

“Christo!” Christo corrected him. He had always hated it when people called him ‘Chris’.

“Oh! Sorry!” said Jackie, returning the hostility with his wide, innocent smile. “Hey, your parents know how to celebrate failure in style. Great party.”

People always said how handsome Christo was. Even though Ellis had detested him for a long time, and so much so that he thought of him as essentially disfigured, he was fair-minded enough to admit they were right.

“What are you doing here?” Christo was demanding, suddenly as furious as his companion, though Ellis understood there was a great difference between their two angers.

“Doing here?” repeated Jackie, frowning. “Big question. But what are any of us doing here, if it comes to that? I reckon it’s pretty random myself. What’s that word you were going on about the other day?” he asked, turning to Ursa. “Not telepathy, but like telepathy. It was to do with design or something … that things keep happening because of what’s meant to happen.”

“Teleology,” said Ursa. Ellis thought he could hear her first anger laced with some other mood as Jackie ran on and on, shaking his head in wonder. She was recognising something in Jackie and was unwillingly entertained by it. “Leave it alone, Jackie! Bug off!” she muttered.

“Nobody wants you here,” said Christo, provoked exactly as Jackie intended him to be provoked. He turned to Ellis. “Why the hell are you hanging out with this shit?”

Ellis looked directly at Christo for the first time.

Many years ago, before Ellis could swim properly, Christo and his sister, Sophie, had pushed him into a deep pool down among the willows, and had watched him gasping and choking, struggling and sinking, with chilly interest, pushing him under again and again with their bare feet, only pulling him out at what might have been his very last minute. They had then threatened him with terrible pain if he told either his parents or theirs. They also told him that they had drowned kittens and puppies in that very pool. Ellis found that he still hated Christo, with hatred as fresh and tender as if it had just been born in him. Watching Jackie dance around Christo, as he himself had never been able to do, filled him with hot pleasure.

“I just dropped in to say ‘Hi’” he said, his voice as innocent as Jackie’s. “And then your mum invited us to stay.” He sensed Jackie turn to him as if they were practised crosstalk comedians putting on a show they had rehearsed over and over again.

“Your mum clapped eyes on us and knew we were the right stuff,” Jackie said to Christo, but then he began filling his beer glass from the bottle of red wine. Ellis watched the level rise with incredulity. “She invited us to eat and drink all we could.”

“Well, I’m inviting you to get out,” said Christo. “I suppose Ellis can stay if he wants to,” he said, emphasising Ellis’s name with casual contempt. “But not you! Get out before I sling you out.”