It Could Never Happen Here, page 3
Lorna Farrell said, ‘Is it terrible that Thursday is my favourite day because I get to have a Strand café flapjack?’ Fiona Murphy said, ‘That’s how I feel about Friday – aka Wineday.’ Lorna Farrell sent two cry-laughing emojis. Claire Keating said, ‘Wineyay!’ and sent a gif of a monkey drinking a bottle of Merlot.
Beverley went to put the phone away – they were meeting in forty minutes, for Christ’s sake, no wonder she was the only one who ever seemed to get anything done – when a new message came through from Lorna.
‘Today’s meeting is going to be extra special – get ready for BIG news, ladies!! Isn’t that right @BeverleyFranklin?’ This was followed by a wink emoji, and then a cry-laughing emoji. Lorna ended all her messages like this, even when it made no sense.
The top of the screen alternated between telling her Claire was typing and Fiona was typing. ‘What’s the news??’ said one. ‘Spill spill!’ said the other.
Beverley’s grip tightened.
She was director of this year’s Glass Lake Primary musical. She was the one who’d lobbied the national broadcaster. Everything Beverley had done, from selecting the highly visual Wonderful Wizard of Oz to thinking big on set designs and casting the leads early, had been to catch the TV station’s attention. She’d sent in headshots of Amelia and Woody Whitehead. (If anything proved Beverley’s commitment, it was her willingness to cast a Whitehead. They were a scourge on Cooney, but even she couldn’t deny the youngest son had a face, and name, for stardom.) And it had worked. Lorna Lick-Arse Farrell was not going to steal her thunder.
Beverley composed herself and fired off a response–
‘BIG news, ladies. HUGE. I’ve a hectic morning on here, but I’ll do my best to get to the Strand early. Á bientôt.’
– then she locked her screen and slid the phone back into her pocket. She shoved the bleach and gloves behind the cistern – Greta would tidy them away – and hurried out on to the landing.
On Thursdays, Beverley had Amelia at school for 8.40, dropped Malachy’s shirts to the dry-cleaner’s when they opened at 8.50, and was over at the Strand café on the other side of Cooney for 8.55. She would hang back in the car until she saw a few other mothers go in. Just because she no longer worked in the city didn’t mean she had time to be sitting around waiting on people. This morning, though, she’d be in there first. Amelia could be a few minutes early and the shirts could wait.
She walked purposefully along the landing – let’s see who was obsessed with what when Ella was late for college! – and headed for her younger daughter’s bedroom.
Had she thought about it, she would have knocked. They’d talked about privacy last summer and agreed Amelia was entitled to some.
But she was in a hurry.
Her mind was full of Lorna Lick-Arse Farrell and how the Yellow Brick Road still looked bronze and the way Malachy had watched himself in the mirror that morning.
She was distracted.
She wasn’t thinking.
She turned the handle to her daughter’s room without any warning.
‘Chérie,’ she was saying before she was fully through the door, ‘we’ve to leave early so maybe you can do—’
Amelia looked away from her phone. She was standing near the window, holding the too-large device aloft in her too-small hand as she angled it towards her body. Her entirely naked body.
‘Mum!’
Her daughter – her beautiful, ambitious, twelve-year-old daughter – was wearing a full-face of make-up and not a stitch more.
Her skinny arms pushed against her sides, causing her barely-there boobs to move ever-so-slightly closer together and the skin at her sternum to dent. Beverley had never seen her do anything remotely like that with her mouth, her cheeks, her eyes. She barely recognised the expression as belonging to Amelia. The prominent hip bones and faint wisps of pubic hair came as delayed shocks, and the sticky, cherry-coloured gloss bleeding up on to the skin above her puffed out lips made Beverley’s stomach lurch. But it was the pleading look on her daughter’s face that would haunt her. It said ‘like me’ and ‘love me’ and ‘reassure me’ but also, and this was too much for Beverley because she was sure her daughter didn’t even know what it meant and didn’t want to imagine where she’d seen it, it said ‘fuck me’.
This pushed Beverley over the edge.
Shock, upset and fury reverberated around her body, rattling against her ribcage and up her trachea, before launching themselves into the pale pink room in a high-pitched guttural scream.
No amount of chalky blusher could stop the colour disappearing from Amelia’s face; a blackbird fled from the window ledge behind her; and a teenage boy awoke in a room upstairs where he’d been sleeping, all night, entirely unbeknownst to Beverley.
4
••••••
Arlo Whitehead’s dream always went the same way. He and Leo and Mike were playing on stage at a massive stadium that was Madison Square Garden but also Cooney Parish Hall. Arlo had never been to New York (he’d never been further than Lanzarote) but he’d watched Tom Petty live at Madison Square enough times to know the venue. Sometimes Neil Young was watching from the wings, and sometimes it was the guy who’d driven their school bus. Whoever it was, he was always totally impressed. It was all going well – until the last song. Even though Arlo could never hear anything in his dreams (he wished he could; the crowd were totally into whatever they were playing), he knew they were falling out of time. When he looked over at Leo, ready to shout at him to sort it out, he noticed his best friend no longer had arms. Leo was just looking down at the guitar hanging around his neck, screaming. Leo screamed and screamed at the instrument until his face started to melt away.
Arlo had googled ‘How to stop having the same dream’. The most common suggestion was to write down the details so he could interpret their meaning. But this was the only dream he ever had, and it didn’t take Freud to work it out.
So, when he was roused by an almighty roar, he wasn’t overly alarmed. He assumed it was Leo screaming about his missing limbs and was relieved to have woken before his friend’s face started to run down his body.
But then he remembered where he was, and that there was never noise in his dreams.
He pushed himself up in the still unfamiliar four-poster bed and looked over at Ella. She was also awake, and though she wasn’t screaming, there was a look of mild alarm on her perfect face. (Ella’s perfection was beside the point, but it was difficult not to register, no matter the circumstances.)
‘That’s my mum,’ she said, and suddenly he was completely alert.
‘Your mom?’ He scrambled further up, grabbing his T-shirt and navy jumper from the floor before climbing out of the bed. ‘What time is it?’ His foot caught slightly on the under sheet, which had come untucked. ‘Shit, Ella! I knew I shouldn’t have come over last night!’
Ella’s parents did not know about Arlo. Well, they knew about him, in the way that everyone in Cooney knew about him: as Charlie Whitehead’s son, a subject of suspicion, and the only teenager to have walked away from the Reilly’s Pass crash intact. But they didn’t know about him in the way that mattered: as Ella’s boyfriend, as the love of their daughter’s life.
‘Where are my trousers? Why didn’t the alarm go off?’ he said, lying on his front on the floor so he could see under the bed. The Franklins’ carpet had to be felt to be believed; it was softer than his own bed at home. ‘Maybe someone saw me sneaking in last night? There are so many streetlights around here. I don’t think there’s more than three in our whole estate. I knew it was too risky.’
‘Arlo, breathe,’ said Ella, climbing out of the bed. She had a red mark on her left cheek from how she’d slept and was wearing the E&A necklace he’d bought for her birthday and his favourite Dylan T-shirt. They had cover stories ready for where both items had come from, but Ella’s parents never asked. Her hair was dark blond and cropped. She’d cut it short to piss off her mother, which Arlo didn’t condone, but it was sexy. Although it was sexy when she’d had it long, too. Her eyes were pale blue and hypnotic, like an ocean. He’d written that into a song, but he hadn’t shown it to Ella yet. Lyrics without music were cheesy. And with Leo gone and Mike gone-gone, he’d be waiting a while for someone to put it to music.
His trousers were not under the bed.
‘Maybe your sister told her. Would Amelia do that?’
He was back on his feet and Ella was coming towards him. Already he felt happier. The mark on her cheek was a perfect circle. Half of him marvelled at how that was possible, and the other half thought, ‘Ah, but of course’. Everything about Ella Belle Franklin was perfect.
He’d never been in love before and it was amazing. Sometimes he’d be working away, thinking about nothing but expanding pipes or shelf brackets, and then he’d be overcome by a giddy, nervous feeling, as if it was Christmas Eve or the day of some amazing gig, but it was actually just because Ella existed and she wanted to spend that existence with him. Wasn’t that incredible? Love was better than all the songs said, even Leonard Cohen’s. He wouldn’t go as far as to say it was better than sex, but it was definitely equally good.
‘Amelia wouldn’t do that,’ she said, standing in front of him. ‘My mum doesn’t know.’ Ella was the only person he knew who said ‘Mum’. He’d thought only English people said that. But then the Franklins were very wealthy, which was almost the same as being English. ‘Not that I’d care if she did find out.’
‘I know, but I care. I need more time.’
A couple more months of working hard and word would get around (as you could rely on it to do in Cooney) that he was a pretty decent lad and not, in fact, ‘just like his father’. Then Arlo could look his future parents-in-law in the eye and tell them how wonderful their daughter was. The plan involved turning up early to every job, putting in long hours, doing good work and never saying anything rude no matter what was said to him. The plan did not involve getting caught in Ella’s bedroom with no trousers on.
‘Relax. There’s no way she knows. Bev is too wrapped up in her own life to notice.’ Ella also called her mother ‘Bev’. She did it to annoy her, even when she wasn’t there.
‘She was yelling about something.’
‘She probably spotted a blackhead in the bathroom mirror. Or maybe Amelia wasn’t wearing the exact Glass Lake regulation knee socks. Who knows why Bev does anything? But there’s no way she’s coming near this room. I told you, we’re fighting.’
Arlo tried not to come to Ella’s house too often – getting caught sneaking up the Franklins’ stairs was also not part of the reputation rehabilitation plan – but whenever he did, Ella picked a fight with her mother. This was apparently a watertight guarantee that Beverley would not come near her bedroom. ‘Not until I apologise,’ Ella explained. ‘She wouldn’t give me the satisfaction.’ Arlo had grown up in a house where arguments were loud, instant affairs; Mom got annoyed at Dad, Dad charmed Mom, and then it was over. Ella’s logic was alien. And he felt bad for Beverley.
Do not feel bad for Beverley Franklin. She’s a head melt. Trust me. Who cares if she likes you or not?
It’s all right for you, Leo. Everyone in this town loves you. They cross the road when they see me. They think I’m cursed or a bad omen or something.
Really, Arly? You really think it’s all right for me?
Arlo pushed his best friend from his head – they could talk on the drive to work – just as Ella stepped forward and kissed him on the lips. She slipped her tongue into his mouth and he grinned. Then he remembered the current situation.
‘What time is it? My phone is in my – there they are!’ His trousers were hanging off the couch at the end of the bed, which Ella had informed him was actually a chaise longue. ‘Give anything a French name and Bev will pay three times more for it.’ He pulled on his jeans and found his phone in the back pocket.
8.28 a.m.
Not late, so. Not yet.
Good.
If there was one job he couldn’t afford to mess up, it was this morning’s.
..................
‘What are you doing?! Why would you do that?! What is wrong with you?!’
‘I wasn’t … I’m sorry!’ Amelia shouted back, whipping a blanket from the end of her bed. ‘Don’t freak out, Mum, please! I’m sorry!’
The reverberation in Beverley’s head continued. She looked at her daughter, face caked in make-up, then down at the phone lying on the bed. ‘Jesus Christ!’ she cried. ‘Jesus, Amelia! Jesus Christ!’
‘I’m sorry!’
Beverley took a moment and shut her eyes, only as soon as she did, she was assaulted by the image of her daughter pouting into the camera. Where had she seen such an expression? They flew open again.
‘Who was it for?’
Amelia’s doe eyes were smothered in blue shimmery eyeshadow. Beverley had not known she owned anything so cheap.
She repeated herself. ‘Who was the photo for, Amelia?’
‘I don’t … It wasn’t for anyone.’
Beverley needed to think. She closed her eyes, but there it was again. Was the goddam image tattooed on to her eyelids for all eternity now?
‘Don’t lie to me.’
‘Mum.’
‘Do not lie to me!’
‘I wasn’t sending the photo to anyone,’ she pleaded. ‘I wasn’t. I swear.’
Beverley took a deep breath but did not remove her gaze from her daughter.
‘It was just for me. I just … I wanted to see what it would look like.’
The girl cringed, but she didn’t look away. She was shivering, in spite of the blanket.
After what she’d found on Malachy’s phone in April, Beverley was bound to be sensitive. But not everyone was as perverted as her husband. Young girls experimented. She was only twelve, for God’s sake. Who would she be sending it to?
‘Amelia.’
‘I swear on your life, Mum.’
God help her, but the child appeared to be telling the truth.
‘You swear you weren’t sending it to anyone?’
‘I swear,’ said Amelia emphatically. ‘I wouldn’t. That’s gross.’
Beverley agreed. It was gross.
Amelia’s face was bright red, and Beverley struggled to tell where the excessive blusher ended and the embarrassment began.
‘All right,’ she said. ‘Well, thank God for that.’ She let out a loud sigh. Amelia looked equally relieved. ‘You know you shouldn’t be taking photos like that regardless? You don’t know who could hack into your phone, or if it got stolen, where they might end up. It’s a very stupid thing to do.’
‘I know. I’m sorry.’
Beverley threw back her head. ‘All right.’ She leaned forward so her hands rested on her thighs, then she straightened up again. ‘Okay. Get dressed, quick. And take off that make-up. We have to get going. I need to leave early.’
Amelia hurried back to her vanity table, where she’d thrown her camisole and school shirt.
‘No time for breakfast. I’ll grab some fruit,’ said Beverley, heading for the door. ‘And I’ll meet you out at the car.’
‘Sorry for giving you a fright, Mum.’
Beverley turned back to her daughter, who was attempting a smile. Of course she wasn’t sending erotic photographs of herself out into the world at twelve years of age. Had she that little faith in her own parenting skills? These were the kinds of tender moments she never had with Ella any more. She should cherish them.
‘And I’m sorry I thought the worst,’ she replied, instructing her own face to soften. ‘Forgive me?’
Amelia grinned. ‘Always.’
‘Good.’
Her hand was on the doorknob and she had one foot out in the landing when she heard it. A vibration.
Quick as a flash, she turned.
‘Mum—’
But Beverley was back in the room and over at the bed before Amelia had thought to move.
She looked down at the screen.
Her daughter had one new message.
Beverley did not recognise the App logo, but she knew the sender’s name. There was no need to unlock the phone. The reply was succinct.
Got it!!! Thanks!!!
For the second time that morning, Beverley emitted noises she had not known she was capable of making.
..................
‘Are you nervous?’ asked Ella, sitting beside him on the edge of the bed as he pulled on his boots.
‘About what?’
‘Arlo.’ She grinned.
‘Oh, about Glass Lake!’ he replied, bringing his hand to his forehead and generally making a joke of it even though he’d had an uneasy feeling in his stomach ever since he agreed to take on the job at the school. ‘It’ll be fine.’
‘Of course it will.’
‘I just have to be on time and do the best work I can.’
She kissed him on the cheek. ‘I love you.’
She never seemed to mind that he didn’t say it back. Probably because she knew he did love her – of course he did! – it was just that every time he tried to say it his tongue swelled in his mouth and his head got so hot that he thought it might actually go on fire.
‘It’s just part time, for a couple of weeks,’ he said. ‘I doubt I’ll even see Principal Patterson.’ His stomach flip-flopped. He hoped he wouldn’t see her.
More yelling from the floor below. The only words he could decipher came from Beverley.
‘Well, she’s lucky to have you working there. You’re so good with your hands.’
Arlo blushed, even though Ella hadn’t meant it that way. Although, he hoped she did mean it that way too. He definitely put in the effort.
‘This town, though. Some people can be real jerks.’
‘I know.’
‘They can be totally unfair and terrible …’ She was trying to make him feel better, but the flip-flopping in his stomach had turned to sloshing. ‘… and just tiny-minded gossip lickers.’
‘Gossip lickers?’
‘Or whatever,’ she said. ‘You know what I mean.’
People had only recently stopped sticking ‘For Sale’ signs in the Whiteheads’ front garden. And two weeks ago, while he was walking down Main Street, a man spat at him. He hadn’t told Ella that. He didn’t tell her any more than he had to, in case it sowed seeds of doubt. ‘Yeah. I know.’
