Fossils, page 16
She could feel Gina’s long stare on her cheeks even after she had switched her own gaze to Lester. It wasn’t going to be easy, that was for sure. She would have to play it cool, give her as little information as possible. She’d been lucky so far not to say anything that contradicted the facts that Gina knew.
*
She thought of the giant heart poster in the science room at school. She could almost see it in her memory’s eye, she’d looked at it so often. The cross-section with the different veins and arteries in red and blue. The big red one that looped over the top was called the aorta and a blue one that came out of the other side of the heart was called the superior vena cava. When she saw that one, she would always look for its partner in crime, which came out at the bottom of the heart. It was called the inferior vena cava. She liked the names. The implied hierarchy. The valves between the atriums and ventricles looked a bit like fallen cobwebs in the poster because they were painted a grey colour and stretched downwards. The aorta was the biggest artery; it took oxygenated blood from the heart to all the rest of the body. She sometimes studied the poster to work out what might be wrong with her own heart. She thought that maybe it was something to do with the aorta, maybe it was twisted or had a kink in it so that the heart had to work extra hard to pump all that blood out. It didn’t bother her thinking that she had only half a lifespan to live. People lived an average of about seventy-five years, so probably she had about thirty-seven which was ancient enough, she thought, and was more than enough years for anyone to endure.
23
Sherrie-Lee was listening to the conversation, crouched down outside the living room door. She knew that Gina was going to be trouble. Too much of a smart cookie for her own good. They kept their voices low, but she could hear fragments of what was said. Who is she? Something’s not right. She’s not your niece, is she? Then Lester’s voice, low and difficult for her to hear enough to make out what he was saying. Then Gina. What’s going on, Lester?
She should’ve set him up with Claire instead, when she had the chance. You can’t go wrong with a librarian. Especially one with blue hair. She would’ve been perfect for him. They would have got on together, all of them. And the two of them would have been grateful to her forever for helping them find each other. It would be like being in a Disney film. She leaned her head against the wall, and pictured the three of them walking off together. She stood up and tip-toed to the bathroom, where she flushed the toilet. She looked down and watched the water churn, then listened to the water refill the cistern until the last drop had poured in. In the mirror above the sink, she mimed being Gina. What’s going on, Lester? Something’s not adding up here! She put her hand on her hip, elbow sticking out, and shook her head and pulled unimpressed faces, the way she had seen Gina doing. A slight turn of the head, an exaggerated closing of the eyes. What’s going on, Lester? She’s not your niece, is she? No shit, Sherlock.
*
Gina came into the room and opened the side window, flaring her nostrils. It seemed nicer without the curtains drawn all the time. The fresh smell of outside came in.
It’s gonna be a warm day out there today, Sherrie-Lee said, breathing in the current of air from outside. Isn’t that nice? She smiled as wholesome a smile as she could muster.
Gina made that noise again, like a quick, low humph. She had started it yesterday, Sherrie-Lee had noticed. Making it towards the end of whatever Sherrie-Lee was saying. It was more than annoying. If you had any sense of manners, you could say it was rude.
Lester brought in three plates, each with a sandwich. He had piled the plates on top of each other to make carrying them easier. The top one, he gave to Gina.
Look at that, Sherrie-Lee pointed out. The pair of them followed her gaze to the stack of plates. Sandwiches, sandwiching the plates, she said. They looked back at her as though she had a screw loose.
Sherrie-Lee ate her sandwich in silence. At each bite, she tried to imagine which part of her body the food would be going to, coaxing it along, anxious to keep all parts of her body adequately nourished. Her heart. Her brain. Her legs. Perhaps she did have a screw loose somewhere.
What are you going to do today, then, Zadie? Lester said, leaning forward on the table when she had finished.
Do you play cards, Gina?
Gina shook her head. She ate with really small bites, keeping her mouth closed as she chewed, slowly and carefully. Even though they were small bites she took ages to chew them, wiping the corner of her mouth with a paper napkin after each bite. It was a weird way of eating, Sherrie-Lee thought.
She noticed that Lester was eating differently too, slower, with his mouth closed, which he didn’t always do. And it was the first time they had ever used paper napkins. She looked at her own untouched napkin on the table in front of her. She wasn’t sure about Gina. Ever since she had arrived, Bob seemed to have a worried expression on his face.
Zadie is really good at telling stories, Lester said, after he had finished his sandwiches. Aren’t you, Zadie?
Sherrie-Lee flared a patched red, thinking of all the fairy stories she knew about wicked step-mothers. I like fairy stories, she said, turning to Gina. Do you?
Gina was still eating and made them wait while she finished chewing. Dabbing at her mouth again with the paper napkin before replying. No. There’s enough fairy stories around here. Gina gave her a long look and placed her hands flat on the table, readjusting her position into the back of the chair. She gave Lester the same long look before she spoke. Life is too full of made-up stories. Politicians make enough up for everybody. Saying they will do one thing and then doing the opposite.
That’s not stories, Sherrie-Lee said. That’s just lies. There’s a difference.
Doesn’t seem like much of a difference to me. There are two ways of looking at something. Either something is true or it’s a lie, or it’s a half-truth, which is also a lie. What do you think, Lester? She turned towards him as he was just standing up to go to the kitchen.
Technically that was three things she had just pointed out, Sherrie-Lee thought, but kept it to herself. Instead, she just looked at her with something like pity on her face. Adults had a weird idea about what truth was. They saw truth as a fixed, unchanging thing. It was the wrong way to see it, she thought. Truth could be one thing and then another. Like people believed one thing one time and another the next. To her, stories were above all that. They were full of little truths just waiting to happen. Waiting to be seen. You could go back to them, remember parts of them, and find new things in them. New truths and meanings.
How old are you, anyway? Gina turned to face Sherrie-Lee.
Twelve.
Twelve? She made that humphing sound again. Isn’t twelve a bit old to be telling fairy stories and what-not?
She hated that phrase what-not. Above all, it just sounded thick. She would add it to the list she was making of all the words she didn’t like. The top three lately were retard, which really made her mad when she heard it, preggers, and then banter. But what-not might just go straight to the top of the list.
Gina had thick black hair, not long and not really short either. She wore big round glasses, that were kind of tinted a purple colour like sunglasses. Sherrie-Lee could see herself, miniaturised and doubled in the reflection of each lens. Gina was not a smart cookie, like she had thought in the beginning. Just difficult to charm. Impossible to charm, in fact. She had tried for a couple of days. The day before, she had put a ribbon on the eyeshadow trio she’d stolen. I don’t wear makeup, she’d told Sherrie-Lee. No thank yous. Nothing. Charmless as well as impossible to charm.
Sherrie-Lee stood up and gathered the plates. With an exaggerated effort she brushed the crumbs onto the top plate, even where Gina had been eating and there were no crumbs. Going to take these out to feed the birds. Thanks for making the sandwiches, Uncle Lester. She smiled as she turned away.
The rats will eat them, more like, she heard Gina quip.
Well, they need to eat too. And we should look after all of God’s creatures, don’t you think?
Sherrie-Lee went to the front steps and sat down on the bottom one, brushing the crumbs on the grass verge to the side of the step. She didn’t know why she’d said ‘God’s creatures’, she never said that kind of thing and didn’t even think of them as having anything to do with God. She had just said it, she supposed, to lord it over Gina, the way some people did when they referred to God and to let her know, at the same time, that she was nice and cared about all the animals. She didn’t even know if she believed in God. At school, people just said God things automatically, they didn’t even think about what they said. If someone were to ask Sherrie-Lee on the spot whether she believed in God, and she had to take one side or the other, she would go with her instinct and say no. She should try to be nicer to Gina, though, because Lester would like it and, after all, Gina was just an animal too. All people were.
Lester and Gina were sitting in silence when Sherrie-Lee returned to join them. She looked at Gina to smile at her, but she wasn’t looking. A blow fly buzzed over them, cutting across the room in repeated straight lines, visiting the table on each of its rounds until it was wafted on its way, first by Lester’s hand then by Gina’s.
I bet your mam is missing you. You being away and everything, Sherrie-Lee said.
Lester rubbed his hands flat over his face, emerging red from the rubbing.
My sister is there. I’ve only been here a few days, she said. Then, licking the back of her spoon before putting it back in her mug, she added, How long are you here for, Zadie?
That reminds me, Lester brightened up. I spoke to Steve this morning. He said you could go back tomorrow. Things are looking up at home. Isn’t that good news? Lester was smiling back at Sherrie-Lee.
I didn’t know you spoke to Steve? Gina said, leaning towards Lester. There was no pleasing some people. The fly buzzed by again, Gina swatted it with her hand but missed. The bang of her hand on the table made the mugs jolt.
Good news indeed! Sherrie-Lee responded. But you know Dad, he can change his mind in a heartbeat. She looked pointedly at Lester and then at Gina, who looked between the two of them, measuring, before resting her gaze meaningfully on Lester. Her mouth was twisted as though she was trying hard not to say anything. There was something a bit bitter about Gina, which made her seem older than she was. And all the sucking on her lips that she did made them look wrinkled. If she’d been more friendly towards her, Sherrie-Lee would’ve shared these useful pieces of advice, but as it stood, there was no helping her.
*
She walked along the wooded ridge at the back of the estates. The sunlight fell in lines and patches as it made its way through the trees. The ground was hard and dry from the lack of rain. At the edge of the path, it crumbled as small stones broke free from the cracks in the parched mud. She had tried everything she could think of with Gina. She had been kind. She had tried to be clever and funny. Nothing washed. Maybe it was true what people said and three really was a crowd. And there was nothing you could do about it. It was as simple as that. She’d always had a bit of envy for people who had someone to nag them. It always seemed to carry some suggestion of normal people about it. People caring for people. Caring enough to nag and give all that advice and instruction. Sherrie-Lee had always wished she’d had someone to properly nag her about stuff, so she too could be normal. Feel what it was like to be normal. She’d imagine then her mother snapping up to it, telling her to hold her shoulders back, or pick her feet up when she walked, or not eat with her mouth open. Things that she’d heard other mothers say to their own children. But now having had the experience of Gina, she wasn’t sure that she would like that at all.
She didn’t come to these woods as often as she would’ve liked to. There were never many people around and she’d heard stories from a few different people about a man in the woods, stalking people, getting his thing out. Today, she was fed up and didn’t much care. She quickened up her walk and at the top of an incline she had to stop because she was out of breath. As her breathing calmed, she could hear the sound of traffic from the main road below, rebounding from the trees. Like the sound of marching, the quick succession of sound rising and falling as it hit the trees and then fell, like the sound of some army – left, right, left, right – way off in the distance. She used to come here a lot when she was just getting into nature, years before she knew anything about the man in the woods. In the early days she liked being on her own looking and listening out for things, but had thought at the same time, how all that nature spotting was probably not for short girls with mousy hair and no special clothes or equipment. But then she had heard this loud call, a kind of bird call, like a demented blackbird, she had thought at first. Then she had seen it. It was just there, poking out from a hole high up in a tall dead tree. A little black and white bird with a patch of red above its beak. It hadn’t even tried to hide when she stood there looking at it, though she was sure that it could see her. It was a young greater spotted woodpecker calling to its mother for food. But it seemed like more than that to Sherrie-Lee, it was as though that call had been a message for her too. Telling her she should keep looking and listening, that nature was there for everyone. It didn’t care who it was that saw it. Maybe she should tell Gina about it, see if she wanted to come and look for woodpeckers, give her another chance too.
24
Sherrie-Lee made a list of all the things wrong with Gina. Her voice was harsh, like she smoked a lot, even though she didn’t smoke. Some people were just unfortunate. She wasn’t friendly. She never laughed. She made annoying noises and had annoying habits like sucking in her lips. She had ugly feet. Not just ugly, but fugly. Fucking ugly. She drew a line down the middle of the page, and wrote Claire at the top of the second half. There she listed all the good things about Claire. Top of the list was that she was a librarian. Next, she knew the value of stories. Third, very kind. Fourth, smiley, with blue hair. She also listed her nice feet, even though she’d never actually seen her feet.
What you doing? Lester said, as he came to sit on the sofa next to her.
Sherrie-Lee pulled her notepad towards her chest. Nothing. She shrugged when she saw that his expression was still asking what she was doing. It was kindly meant, though, the way he was raising one eyebrow, looking at her sideways. She would’ve laughed if it had still been just the two of them. But Gina’s presence spoiled all that. She couldn’t relax and be herself.
The front door clicked open.
Gina came into the room with a face on her. Look at this! she said, holding a newspaper up in front of her. The headline said, MISSING SCHOOLGIRL. There was an old photo of Sherrie-Lee underneath. It was grainy from being enlarged. Sherrie-Lee felt a buzz of excitement. So, it had worked. Her ransom note. They’d believed it. Then the excitement, as quickly as it had flared up, seemed to fall, hurtling downwards. Like falling in a dream, never hitting the bottom but expecting it the whole time. She recognised the photograph. It was an old school photo from a couple of years ago. When she looked up from the paper she noticed Gina giving her one of her scowls. She’d lowered one of her eyebrows so there were two lines between her eyebrows that looked like the number eleven.
Don’t you think this Sherrie-Lee Connors looks a bit like our Zadie? Gina said.
No shit, Sherlock, thought Sherrie-Lee.
Lester took the paper from her and began to read aloud.
Sherrie-Lee leaned across and looked at the photo. She noticed it was yesterday’s paper. There is some resemblance, Sherrie-Lee said. She’d have to admit that. The eyes are different though and the mouth. A lot of kids look similar round here. There’s a lot of inbreeding.
Lester read from it. The police suspect that she has been kidnapped. Though it is not clear exactly how long she has been missing. A ransom has been received asking for £50,000 in exchange for Sherrie-Lee’s safe return. Sherrie-Lee stole a glance at Gina, who was still staring at her, looking mad and something else too. A kind of what-did-I-tell-you-look.
Probably a hoax, Sherrie-Lee said.
Lester looked over at Sherrie-Lee. She couldn’t read his expression only that she knew she hadn’t seen an expression like that coming from him, ever. She’d never seen him looking anything like cross before. Even the skin on his face seemed to look darker. His whole face. It stopped her going on with the hoax thread, folding it into the falling feeling inside her.
Gina took the paper from him. It says here that her family didn’t realise she was missing at first. They said she often took off. That she was unruly and wilful and defiant. Gina stood there looking at Sherrie-Lee. Unruly, wilful, defiant, she repeated. A strange look on her face. A look that might have been simply a look of triumph. What’s going on? she asked.
Lester stood up, shaking his head. First, he walked towards the window, rubbing his chin. Then he turned round quickly and walked in the opposite direction. Fuck, he said, putting his hands up to his face. He kicked the edge of the sofa on which Sherrie-Lee still sat and walked out of the room. The whole place shook when the front door was slammed shut. Somewhere from the street a dog barked.
Through the window, Gina watched him leave. What the hell’s going on? she repeated.
Sherrie-Lee just sat there. If she had a room to go to, she would’ve slunk off too. She felt just about as bad as when she stole the fossil that Courtney McKinnley had brought to school. It was a small black stone with half an ammonite showing on one side. She said she found it in Whitby. When she took it she didn’t think it’d be such a big thing. It was just a stone, even if it did have a fossil in it. The headteacher had different ideas. She came in to speak to the whole class. She described it and then she did a little speech about how special it was to Courtney. At which point, Courtney burst out with heavy, impossibly loud, sobbing. Wailing like you’ve never heard. It made everyone look down at their shoes embarrassed. Even the kids that hadn’t taken it. Which had been a relief to Sherrie-Lee, that the other kids had somehow seemed guilty and sorry too. That way her own shame and regret didn’t stand out too much. That’s how she felt now. Full of regret for what she’d done. Full of shame. She wasn’t expecting things to get so out of hand. She got up to go to the toilet.
