Arctic Zoo, page 15
Georgia heard a woman say something behind her dad. Then the phone got snatched.
‘Georgia, it’s me,’ Auntie Michelle said. ‘Phil and your father just rolled up in a taxi. They’re roaring drunk. Did I hear him say you’re at the police station? Have you been attacked?’
‘I got arrested,’ Georgia said meekly.
‘They arrested him?’
‘No,’ Georgia said. Then broke the syllables down like she was speaking to a three-year-old, ‘I have been ar-res-ted. Dad must come to the po-lice sta-ti-on.’
‘Really?’ Michelle asked. ‘You?’
In the background, Georgia could hear her dad slur something to Uncle Phil. Phil roared something back about everyone being bastards, then her dad sounded tearful as he shouted, ‘Tell Cookie I love her. Tell her I’m sorry I’ve ruined everything …’
‘Shut up,’ Michelle snapped. ‘I can’t hear Georgia with you two idiots in my ear.’
Then there was a big crash as Georgia’s dad fell backwards from one of Auntie Michelle’s dining chairs.
TWENTY-FIVE
Orisa was always up by six to prepare breakfast. Julius listened by his bedroom door until he heard her footsteps on the stairs. Once he was certain Orisa had reached the kitchen, he stepped into the hallway and crossed to the locked door of his mother’s office.
It had a simple lever lock, good for stopping people bursting in while you were getting dressed, or kids from entering rooms they weren’t supposed to, but easily defeated with a nail file or sturdy paperclip. Julius had learned the knack years earlier, when Kehinde and Taiwo amused themselves by locking him in dark rooms and telling him there were ghosts inside.
The bolt snapped open after a little jiggling and he took a furtive glance up and down the hallway before slipping inside.
Bunmi was a night owl, often coming home after social functions and working for two or three hours, not rising until long after her boys had left for school. The ornate desk bore evidence of this, with empty Guinness bottles, a whisky tumbler and the desk lamp glowing.
Julius went straight behind the desk and opened the second drawer in a file cabinet. He thought his mother might have moved her stash of pre-paid SIM cards after discovering one in his old phone, but she hadn’t made that link and he slid two 10,000 SIM packs out of a stack held together with an elastic band.
He hoped to find an old phone and charger in the drawer, but had no luck. He looked in more drawers and opened a glass-fronted cabinet, yet still didn’t find anything. He wondered if he might be able to find an old phone in Gabe or the twins’ rooms, but before progressing with this thought he noticed a Shoprite carrier bag tucked between the office chair and the side panel of his mother’s desk.
It was the bag she’d been carrying when she came home from The Cross late on Sunday night. She’d have left the driver to deal with anything unimportant, but she’d carried this bag herself and taken time to stash it in her office before going to bed.
After wheeling back the chair, Julius was delighted as he saw that the bag was filled with banknotes. Bunmi kept jewellery and money in a floor safe in her bedroom, but the money in the bag was church donations. It hadn’t yet been moved to a safer place, because most of the notes had to be unravelled from the cigarette-sized tubes that people kept in their pockets for giving bribes.
Julius had already spent longer in the office than he’d meant. But money would enable him to buy a phone and other freedoms, especially if he was sent away to boarding school. He pushed his hand down the bag, and as his fingers sifted, he realised that the amounts were large. Most likely the contents of the collection box in The Cross’s VIP level.
Most of the rolls comprised bundles of 1,000 notes. These were the highest value notes issued by the Bank of Nigeria but would still struggle to buy a cup of coffee in a cafe at the mall. To avoid carrying bricks of cash to church, larger donations had been made in US dollars. Julius noted twenties, fifties and even a tightly wound roll of hundreds. It would be quick and easy to steal the lot, but he’d be prime suspect and had no obvious place to hide a large amount.
Reasoning that his mother was busy and distracted, Julius decided he could take a fifth of the money with little chance of being detected.
He found a large padded envelope in the waste bin and started filling it with money. He picked out the roll of hundreds, but thought his mother might know about it and put it back. After plumping the bag under the desk so that it looked fuller, he headed for the door, but paused when he heard footsteps.
Nerves made him fear his mother, but she moved with the back of her sandals slapping her heels. This was the muscular gait of one of the twins. Probably Kehinde, who’d start his day with a splash in the pool if he woke early enough.
It was still before seven when Julius got back to his room. He felt miserable and vengeful over what had happened to Duke. But it was the sense of powerlessness that had quashed his spirit. He felt stronger after standing up to his mother to a point where she’d almost seemed afraid, and for stealing the SIM cards and money.
Julius locked his bathroom door and sat on the lid of his toilet, unrolling notes and counting. It added up to three hundred thousand naira and nine hundred dollars. It would be tough to get away from bodyguards and buy a phone in a shop, but someone at school was sure to have an old phone to sell. And the rest was enough for Duke to get his teeth fixed by a proper dentist – if he could find a way to get him the money.
TWENTY-SIX
Remember that time when I was fourteen and got arrested in a riot at the town hall and Dad was so drunk he puked all over Auntie Michelle’s car on the way to pick me up at the police station?
They’d laugh some day, but judging by Michelle’s expression when she dropped John and Georgia home at a quarter past three in the morning, it was best not mentioned in front of her for a couple of decades …
When Georgia woke, her world seemed broken. Once it was Mum, Dad and Sophie. Uniform ironed, breakfast on the table, Mum honking if you weren’t buckled in the back seat of her Honda Jazz by eight forty. Now, Georgia was the only one awake. She checked her dad, face down on his duvet, long whistling snores and trousers bunched around the ankles.
It was already nine and it felt bizarre having nobody to make her go to school. Old Georgia wanted to scramble around and get to class in time for second lesson. New Georgia would have happily spent the day pottering about in Kermit the Frog pyjama bottoms, except she couldn’t face her dad.
She could hack a telling-off, loss of pocket money, getting grounded, or whatever. But seeing Dad all hungover and depressed about losing his company felt way worse.
Georgia didn’t get many messages and didn’t check her phone till she was at the kitchen table with a bowl of Crunchy Nut and News 24 showing scenes from budget demonstrations all over south-east England. There was one missed call and a voicemail. Georgia turned the TV down, so she could hear as the news ticker rolled at the bottom of the screen: Government ministers condemn trouble – Mayor of Haringey has minor burns after being caught by exploding petrol bomb – Thirty-two arrested after shops looted in Barnet – Woolwich budget meeting disbanded after distress flare fills meeting chamber with blue smoke – Tonbridge police officer hospitalised after being hit by missiles …
‘Georgia this is your mother,’ the phone crowed furiously. ‘Auntie Michelle called and told me what happened. Call me back immediately …’
Georgia swore under her breath. Auntie Michelle calling Mum felt like a betrayal. Though, since she was fourteen and her dad was barely conscious, Georgia knew most adults would have done the same.
Then there were written messages. The oldest was a WhatsApp from Maya, Just saw you bundled into police van. BAD GIRL! Hope you OK.
Zac had written, Kamila said you were arrested. SAG has good legal people. Call me when you get home.
Then there was a short, baffling message from Rolf, who wasn’t in Georgia’s contacts. It’s Rolf! Will you still talk to me now you’re famous?
This message had a link at the end and Georgia’s finger hesitated before she dabbed. It took her to the website for the London Met, a morning paper given out in London and at transport hubs in the commuter towns around it.
The headline was: BUDGET BATTLE – Town Halls Erupt in Night of Mayhem. Georgia was stunned to see herself in the photograph that took up the bottom two-thirds of the page. It had been taken as she jumped over the gallery rail in the wrecked council chamber, with two riot cops storming through a door behind.
She remembered feeling terrified of the drop, but the photographer had captured Georgia looking like a crazed revolutionary. She had one fist in the air, and a long lens had compressed perspective, making the riot cops look far closer than they were.
The newest message was sent by Maya minutes before school started. It said Call me when you get out of prison! and came with another photo.
Maya stood in the middle of the picture, holding London Met with the photo of Georgia’s leap on the front cover. Loads of kids grabbed free newspapers at the station before school. A couple of Maya’s girlfriends held copies on either side, as did Rolf’s year-twelve mates behind. Rolf must have taken the photo, and Maya’s little brother Kieran had got in, squatting by the girls’ feet with a copy in each hand.
Georgia’s appetite had been replaced by a gaping mouth and a cannonball in her gut.
In shock, she blinked and saw bright lights and floaters in her field of vision. She felt like she was going to fall off her chair and grasped the pine table as she imagined walking around school with everyone staring. She felt like burrowing under her duvet and never coming out, and might have done so if she hadn’t heard the toilet flush upstairs.
John was stirring and Georgia felt less like facing him than ever …
‘Cookie, are you home? Did you go to school?’ John queried from the top of the stairs.
Georgia needed a PE kit for Tuesday afternoon, but rather than go up to get it, she grabbed her bag, patted her blazer pocket for keys and bus pass, then crept out of the back door and round the side of the house.
It was twenty to ten when her bus arrived. Georgia was relieved to find she was the only person on the upper deck, then horrified to see the floor and seats littered with abandoned copies of London Met, with her fist-pumping leap on the cover.
At first, the thought of touching a newspaper made Georgia shudder. But when she did lean over and pick one off the seat in front, she saw it for the first time without the shock factor. It felt like another person, but at least it was a cool person. Nicely fitting jeans, green eyes, trails of flying hair and a distinctive button nose that gave an air of mischief.
Georgia decided the shot must have been taken by a photographer crouching in the rows of chairs on the opposite side of the gallery. They had probably snapped dozens of people jumping, but picked Georgia because she was beautiful and the timing with the riot cops had been perfect. She thought about all the creepy men in suits, looking at her face on the trains into London, but still walked around the bus, gathering three copies in good condition and dropping them inside her backpack.
‘No need to ask where you’ve been,’ Miss Stockwell said curtly when she arrived at school.
The main gate got locked when school started, and the deputy head stood behind a barred side gate. Dressed in a tweed skirt and a blouse with sausage dogs chasing beachballs, she wrote down Georgia’s name and form, then glanced up and down her uniform.
‘Are those canvas?’ Miss Stockwell asked.
Georgia sighed as she lifted a scruffy black pump. ‘Half the school wears these,’ she said.
‘You can wear those for gym, but school shoes must be waterproof,’ Miss Stockwell said. ‘Do you have a letter of excuse for your lateness?’
‘No.’ Georgia sighed again, wishing she’d stayed home as two year-eight girls arrived behind and started whispering.
‘Can we have your autograph?’ one asked sarcastically.
‘You two are in enough trouble!’ Miss Stockwell snapped at the year-eights. Then back at Georgia. ‘That’s a thirty-minute detention for lateness and a strike for uniform infraction. If you get a second strike before the end of the year, you’ll get another detention.’
Georgia’s phone started ringing as she headed into the school’s main lobby. It was supposed to be on silent, but luckily Miss Stockwell was out of earshot. She pulled the phone, fearing Mum or Dad. Seeing Zac made her smile. He was the one person who’d probably make her feel better.
‘I’m in school,’ Georgia whispered as she dashed for cover in an alcove between two banks of lockers.
‘I thought I’d be leaving a message,’ Zac said. ‘You met a kid called Sam last night?’
‘Sure,’ Georgia agreed. ‘He mentioned that he knew you.’
She heard footsteps and glanced around anxiously, but it was a year-seven boy holding a sick note.
‘One of Sam’s mums is a woman called Wendy Dewar,’ Zac explained. ‘She works as a publicist, she’s on the national committee of SAG and she runs the Red News Network. She loves the picture on the cover of today’s Times and she’s desperate to speak to you …’
Georgia interrupted. ‘You mean London Met?’
Zac laughed. ‘I haven’t seen London Met. But you’re on the cover of The Times and Mail. And it’s everywhere online.
‘My nan gets the Mail …’ Georgia moaned.
‘Sophie would be so proud of you!’ Zac gushed.
‘You think?’ Georgia said, not convinced her big sister would approve of a window-breaking rampage …
‘So, Sam’s mum, Wendy, got in touch with me and asked for your number. I said I’d have to ask you first.’
‘What does she want?’
‘That photo has made you the face of the budget-cuts campaign. I think she wants to interview you for RNN, and try to get you interviews elsewhere to promote SAG.’
‘Why interview me?’ Georgia asked. ‘I got carried away last night. I know dick-all about politics!’
‘Wendy’s really nice, but if you don’t want to help the cause …’ Zac sounded disappointed. ‘She won’t ask you to do anything you don’t feel comfortable with.’
Georgia twisted her black pump and bit a thumbnail. ‘What do you think I should do?’
‘Most of us live our lives without ever impacting on anything. The photo’s a fluke, but it gives you a chance to make a difference.’
‘People go through life blindly,’ Georgia said. ‘That’s what Sophie wrote in her suicide note …’
‘Sophie was messed up when she was depressed,’ Zac said, ‘but I do agree with that.’
Georgia heard more footsteps, but this time they were heavier. She had to speak fast.
‘All right, give this Wendy my number. Now I really have to go.’
Georgia dropped her phone into her blazer pocket as Mr Rothstein came into view. He was in his twenties. He’d taught Georgia art in years seven and eight, and while Georgia never saw the attraction, half the girls in her class crushed on him.
‘Didn’t see a thing,’ Mr Rothstein said with a slight whiff of cigarettes as he got close.
Georgia laughed awkwardly.
‘I smiled when I saw your picture on the train to work,’ Mr Rothstein continued. ‘I attended a protest in Golders Green last night, but it was tepid. Are you going to the big march to Parliament tomorrow?’
‘I’ve not heard about that,’ Georgia said. ‘I’m probably grounded till I’m eighteen.’
Mr Rothstein laughed and nodded. ‘Better not get yourself into trouble, eh? And switch that phone off.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Georgia said, using her obedient old-Georgia voice.
Mr Rothstein raised his right hand and they did a fist bump. And as if that wasn’t weird enough, when Georgia got to French, half the class jumped up and started cheering.
TWENTY-SEVEN
When Georgia checked her phone at lunch, she had twenty-eight messages, five missed calls and two hundred new Instagram followers. She was a superstar in every lesson. Every hallway slowed by high fives and selfies, and Georgia quickly realised it was quicker to autograph the newspapers shoved in her face than to argue that she didn’t want to. One cheeky year-seven even got his arm signed with a bronze Sharpie.
Georgia feared the germy contents of the spare PE kit box. Luckily, she found spare shorts in her locker and Rolf lent her one of the school’s shiny red gym shirts, freshly laundered, but gigantic.
The teachers split girls into teams of five and they did twenty-minute rotations of basketball, hockey and football. Georgia preferred solo sports like running, but threw herself into the games, hoping that a sweat would take her mind off things.
Ten minutes before the end, a hockey ball flipped up and whacked Georgia on the knuckles. It wasn’t bad, but she milked the injury to get an early walk to the changing room. As the rest of the girls filled the changing room with noise and BO, Georgia was already showered. And for the first time in her life, she had to screen her messages. Journalists had got her number from somewhere and she had two requests for newspaper interviews and a call from a researcher from BBC News.
There was a voice message from Georgia’s nan. She had an old-person’s knack for stretching a story, and as Georgia listened to a convoluted explanation of how her grandmother had seen the picture after her neighbour Joanie knocked on the kitchen door while she was upstairs doing her yoga, a fresh message from Zac popped up.
Georgia swiped down to read: Best not to talk to any journalists. Call Wendy Dewar as soon as you get this? She’s really nice and will guide you through.
Georgia was breaking school rules by using her phone, but there was steam and bodies between herself and any teacher who stepped into the room. When she saw Wendy’s number at the end of Zac’s message, Georgia realised it was one of the people she’d been ignoring all day.
As Georgia pressed call back, a message popped up from Instagram.
