Nicola Barker - Behindlings

Dewi began to laugh. Hollowly. She glanced over at him.

‘See how neat her house is on the outside?’ he asked, his face contorting with a curious energy. Jo turned her focus towards the house. It wasn’t looking especially neat any more, but still, she nodded. ‘Well when you get inside, ’ he continued, ‘it gets really dirty. Full of all kinds of crap. Full of shit… ’

Jo’s mouth tightened at its corners.

‘But then when you go into her own room, her bedroom, it’s absolutely spotless, and full of flowers and doll’s houses and a ton of other stupid, girlish…’

‘And what does that mean?’ Jo interrupted, harshly.

He paused, then shrugged, his victorious expression suddenly disintegrating. ‘I don’t know,’ he said, his eyes filling, ‘and I don’t… I can’t care any more. I’ve given up. I’ve quit. She’s won. You’ve won. Why not just be happy about it?’

Josephine cocked her head, frowning, ‘Is this all my fault, then?’

Dewi almost laughed, ‘He was right about her, you know. Everything he said. Everything he thought…’

Jo struggled to follow his reasoning.

‘Because she wrote it…’ Dewi almost choked as he spoke, ‘she wrote it herself. The graffiti. She wrote it. And she…’

‘No,’ Jo said; almost a knee-jerk reaction, ‘she didn’t.’

‘… and when I painted it out, she maintained it. It was her. ’

‘No.’ Jo was shaking her head. ‘No.’

He turned, his eyes burning.

‘She just admitted it to me.’

‘No,’ Jo remained emphatic, even in the face of his considerable anguish, ‘she didn’t. And I know she didn’t, for a fact.’

‘ How do you know?’ His tone was insolent.

‘Because…’ the words exploded out of her, in a jumble, ‘because of… it… it was me.’ He stared at her, barely grasping what she was saying.

‘It was me, ’ she pointed to her own chest, tapped on her own breast-plate, repeatedly. ‘It was me. I wrote it, Dewi. I wrote it. It was me.’

No answer at the door so she tied the dog to the gatepost, put her gloves back on, removed the worst shards of glass from the window-frame and then climbed inside through the gaping hole. The entire house was in chaos. Everything smelled acrid; a mixture of Marlboro’s, old booze and cheap, pine-flavoured household detergent.

Josephine slowly plotted herself a route down the passageway, clambering unsteadily over piles of black refuse sacks, peeking timorously into an old study, a bathroom, and then finally locating Katherine in her bedroom — as neat and clean as Dewi had described it — where she was sitting — crosslegged — on her bed, sipping what looked like crème de menthe from an old-fashioned brandy balloon.

‘I really should kill you,’ Katherine glanced up from the book she was reading, patently unfazed at seeing Josephine standing there, ‘for spreading that evil lie about me.’

She stared at her — po-faced — for three straight seconds, then burst out laughing.

Josephine drew a deep breath. She looked down at her feet. She was shaking. ‘Go to hell,’ she muttered.

‘Well that was certainly… uh… ’ Katherine leaned over and scrabbled around on the floor by her bed for a piece of paper, picked it up, straightened it out, inspected it, ‘that was certainly very… uh… altruistic of you, Josephine,’ she said, ‘and very…’ she inspected the letter again, ‘very sisterly. To take the blame like that,’ she smiled with a kind of vicious joy, ‘after all this time.’

Jo shook her head, refusing to be intimidated. ‘That’s the last time I’m going to lie,’ she said, ‘for you, your dad, for me, for anybody. I came here to tell you that I don’t want to lie any more. I won’t. I don’t care what the consequences are. I can’t and I shan’t. ’

Katherine looked mildly surprised by this outburst. ‘Whyever not?’

‘Because it’s cruel. It’s gone too far. It was bad enough already before Wesley took it to another level with the book…’

‘ Good, ’ Katherine snorted, ‘you know how I thrive on the notoriety…’

‘Do you?’ Josephine gave her a searching look.

Katherine maintained her gaze for a few seconds, but couldn’t hold it, turned her eyes away, furtively.

‘You saved your dad’s career. You protected me. You tested yourself, and Dewi. I don’t care why you did what you did back then, and I don’t give a damn about what you’ve since become. I’ll always… I’ll always admire you for it.’

Katherine shrugged, ‘Too little. Too late.’ She sipped on her drink, pulled a face at the harsh taste, ‘And Dewi won’t swallow it,’ she gasped, ‘the truth always has a particular kind of…’ she ruminated, frowning, ‘of immediacy, don’t you think? A glow. He’ll recognise it, eventually. You’re just prolonging his agony this way.’

Jo shook her head, ‘The truth is just another fact — you of all people should know that.’ Katherine merely smiled and turned down the corner on the page of her book.

‘I honestly thought my brothers wrote that graffiti,’ Josephine continued, watching her dispassionately, ‘I haven’t exchanged a word with my family in over fourteen years because of it. I never dared show my face in Canvey again, I was so fucking ashamed and disgusted by what had happened.’

‘God knows,’ Katherine rolled her eyes, dramatically, ‘I’m almost dying with remorse here.’ She burst out laughing again. She seemed slightly hysterical. Drunk, maybe.

‘Dewi’s leaving,’ Jo said coldly, ‘he’s packing up his pick-up and he’s going.’

‘Good,’ Katherine smacked her lips.

‘You don’t mean that.’

‘Yes I do. Screw the fool. I don’t care. I hope I never see him again. He was always such a fucking drag. Unlike…’ she continued smartly, flapping the letter at her again, ‘our dear friend Mr Arthur Young, who turned out to be quite the most charming creature. And a remarkable fuck. And a fantastic liar.’

Jo frowned, ‘I don’t understand. Why should that matter?’

Katherine’s pale eyebrows rose slightly. ‘Because you sent me this letter. Southend postmark. Warning me off. You’re mixed up to your silly neck in all this unsavoury Wesley mess. Probably felt a tweak of conscience over the graffiti stuff in the book, and it developed from there. You were always such a trainspotter, Bean. I think that’s why my dad took pity on you. He had an MA in Industrial Engineering, after all.’

Josephine scowled and put out her hand for the letter. Katherine sipped on her drink and then passed it over. Jo rapidly read through it. When she’d finished, she looked up, ‘Why on earth would I have sent you this?’

Katherine shrugged, ‘Therein lies the mystery, Bean. The rest I can just about get my head around…’

‘The rest of what?’

‘ Gumble. ’ Katherine held up her book, smiling like a cat.

Josephine blinked, focussed, drew closer. ‘What is it?’

‘Kid’s book. I dug it out of Wesley’s rucksack. Gumbles are these silly, squidgy little creatures who get shoved into tin cans and bullied and manipulated…’

‘This is Wesley’s book?’ Josephine looked astonished, reached out her hand. But Katherine refused to let her have it.

‘I also found…’ Katherine opened the book and removed a marker from inside it — a photo. This she did pass over. Josephine stared at the picture of the brown-haired girl, turned it, read the back.