Fragments Read online

  Once I’m dressed I know I can’t put it off any longer. I’m going to have to see what sort of state my face is in . . .

  I wipe the steam clear from the big mirror over the sink and peer at it.

  Looking back at me is a girl with raccoon shadows under too-big eyes. And the hair . . . I’m not even going there. Wincing, I turn my head this way and that to look at my cheek. A big circle of skin has been rubbed off and it looks about as sore as it feels. In fact, looking at it has made it hurt worse, like my brain has caught up with my eyes.

  Charlotte told me to look in the cabinet so I open it up. There are the usual things people have. Tampons, cotton buds, some medicines. Quite a lot of medicines . . . Most of them seemed to be prescribed for Charlotte. She must rattle when she walks, judging by this lot. I don’t bother trying to decode the labels. There are sterile wipes and antibiotic cream too, which I grab eagerly before smoothing some into the raw flesh. Behind a pack of normal plasters there’s a small white box labelled SkinSavers. I open it up and peer inside. They look a bit like normal plasters but when I touch one, it’s slithery and strange under my fingers. I look closer at the box and make a face when I realise these are synthetic skin. I’ve heard about these. You slap them on and they grow into your own. Older women are starting to use them to cover up wrinkles and I saw someone in a magazine who’d done it so much, her body had reacted and it looked like she had a patchwork face. Yuck. They might have improved since then but a) I’m not taking the risk, b) they cost a bomb and I don’t want Laughing Girl Charlotte to have any more reasons to kick me out and c) ‘skin-coloured’ is a laugh anyway, because they sure as hell don’t match my skin. There’s another pot of the magic cream there too, thankfully, so I dab some on, wincing at the pain.

  I have one last glance around the bathroom to make sure I haven’t left it in a state. Living with a bunch of blokes for ages might have made my standards slip. I try to look at it through Mum’s eyes. I hang up my towel over the towel rail, which is on even though it’s summer. Like I say, rich people are weird.

  Then I hitch my top up one more time and open the door to the corridor.

  I’m walking back towards the top of the stairs when I see a man coming up. I wait. He has his head down, reading something on his phone. He has thin gingery-yellow hair that’s all sort of swept up at the front and his bulbous nose and cheeks are the colour of uncooked bacon. He’s fat but not that tall and I hear him wheezing as he reaches the top.

  I stand still, not sure what to do with myself. He looks up sharply in surprise then draws his head back as he regards me. His eyes seem to scuttle up and down the entire length of my body like bugs. His tongue runs over his bottom lip, leaving it glistening, and a slow smile creeps across his face. I find myself pulling self-consciously at the top again.

  ‘So you’re our runaway then,’ he says in a flat, nasally voice. ‘Kylie, isn’t it?’

  ‘Kyla,’ I say. I know I should do something to make myself seem friendly but I can’t do it. He’s obviously a total creep. If I was a cat, I’d be arching my back and hissing right now. Maybe it’s obvious how I’m feeling, because his eyes stay cold and flat. This makes me think of sharks.

  ‘Well, make sure you keep your nose clean,’ he says. ‘The last one was a light-fingered little cow.’

  The last one? Mystery owner of the clingy clothes, I presume.

  But I try to smile in a reassuring way. ‘I promise I’ll do my job well. And, um, thanks for letting me stay.’

  The eyes go wandering again and I blush, but it’s more to do with anger than embarrassment. He nods distractedly and looks down at his phone again. We have to pass each other. The corridor is wide enough for both of us but he manages to brush close enough for me to smell sweat and cigar smoke.

  I make a mental note to stay out of his way.

  CHAPTER 5

  question marks

  Ariella is chattering away about something as I load the dishwasher. I’ve got a system now for doing it so Miss Picky-Pants Charlotte doesn’t complain.

  Mum never had one so this is one of the many things I’ve had to learn to do in the last few weeks, along with making tea and coffee for Charlotte, boiling eggs and making Marmite toast for Ariella, who doesn’t appear to eat anything else, and cleaning this massive house.

  I can’t really believe I’m still here.

  A few days after I agreed to stay, I woke in the middle of the night, heart thumping, covered in sweat and shaking all over. A bad dream? I’d already forgotten it but the lingering fear still clung to me. I started to make sense of where I was but it was so dark I felt like I’d suffocate from it. I began to panic then as a million unwanted thoughts started to batter me.

  What was I even doing here? I’m no au pair. All I knew how to do was thieve. So why didn’t I just take what I could and . . . leave? I even got out of bed and started to get dressed.

  It was as I was pulling on the second sock that I slowed down and began to think properly about what I was doing. I had nowhere to go. And much as I like to think I’m tough, I’ve never been alone on the streets before. I always had Jax, even if I was taking care of him as much as he took care of me. Let’s face it, I had a bed here. I had food. I had shelter.

  Ariella’s face came into my mind then. I thought about the way she’d sometimes sidle up and lean against me with her hot, solid little body. Completely trusting. I moved away when she did that. I don’t want to get too attached. Even if I wasn’t going to disappear in the middle of this night, I reserved the right to do it on another.

  I glance over at her now. Half-listening to her stream-of-consciousness rabbiting is another skill I’ve had to work on. I learned my lesson about mindlessly saying, ‘Mmm, yeah, mmm . . .’ when I realised she’d asked me if I could kill someone with my bare hands. The constant questions (‘What’s your favourite sort of crisp?’ ‘Do cats like cherries?’ and ‘If the world is spinning all the time, how come we don’t fall off?’ being a few examples) nearly drove me nuts in the first couple of days. I sort of got an inkling why her mum looks so shell-shocked, especially as she doesn’t appear to sleep, like, ever.

  I have only seen creepy Mick two or three times. He’s away a lot and doesn’t seem much like a farmer to me. There’s a secretive air about him when he’s here and he always closes doors before speaking on the phone. He hasn’t crossed any lines with me anyway, despite my initial impressions. Apart from when he took a glass from me and deliberately let his hand linger on mine, he has mainly just given me sleazy looks. I can handle him, I think. As long as it’s just his eyes that stray.

  I don’t want to know what happened to the last au pair. I have to get through one day at a time at the moment and hope for the best. I’ve told them I’m seventeen and they seem to believe me. I passed my fifteenth birthday huddled in the corner of the small box room I’m staying in, arms around my knees, grieving for Mum, for Jax and for Cal. But it’s getting easier every day. When I find myself being a bit soft about Ariella, I make myself think about something else. Like the fact that she has no real connection to me. She’s not my family. I have no family. There’s only me now. And it’s going to stay that way.

  My attention drifts back to her as I put away the last plate.

  ‘. . . and Brutus got mud all over Maddie’s dress and she shouted!’ says Ariella at the kitchen table.

  ‘Oh, really?’ I say and idly go over to switch on the radio. Then I look at her.

  ‘Who’s Maddie?’ I say, trying to look interested. Ariella can get in a strop if I forget the names of any of her many school friends, although I’ve noticed she doesn’t ever seem to get invited to anyone’s house, despite it being the school holidays. I’ve been told all about her older half-brothers that live in London and how ‘Daddy’ used to be married to someone else. Anyway, I don’t recognise this name.

  Ariella flashes me that sly look of hers.

  ‘Maddie was my friend,’ she says, lashes lowered. ‘She hel
ped us, like you do. But Mummy said she had to go away and there was lots of shouting.’

  A chill creeps along my bare arms. I’m in a sort of halter-top dress today. It’s light blue, covered in brown spots. I know it suits me but it’s far too posh to be wearing to clean a house. Everything I’ve been given is too posh for that but I don’t feel like I can say anything. Charlotte seems to want me to be dressed like this. Mad.

  I rub my arms. Ariella watches me. ‘You look pretty in her dress but not as pretty as Maddie did.’

  I let out a loud laugh. She cracks me up sometimes with her blunt, kiddy honesty. But I want to know what happened with this Maddie person. I’m guessing she is the ‘thieving little cow’ Mick referred to before.

  Charlotte appears quite suddenly then at the doorway. Kit is in the sling, quiet for once. I’ve been dreading that she will ask me to change him or do anything at all baby-related. But she keeps him close to her all the time. She has never once smiled at me in the entire time I’ve been here.

  ‘Why don’t you go and watch telly, Ariella,’ she says flatly. Ariella obediently gets up and, shooting me a look I can’t read, trots off to the entertainment room at the back of the house. It’s like a small cinema. They all spend a lot of time in there. Going outside isn’t an option at the moment because the rains have come back.

  All the lights are on but the grey gloom seeps into the kitchen. The rains started again a week ago and since then there hasn’t been a let-up. I heard on the radio that they’re running out of places for flood refugees and am glad we’re nowhere near a river here. I arrange my face into something friendly and look up to see that Charlotte is staring at me. Her eyes are puffy and her skin is a sort of pale yellow in this light. She looks awful.

  I smile weakly and she turns her attention to the baby, who has started to grizzle.

  She says, ‘Can you make me some tea.’ It’s like her sentences are too knackered to bother with question marks. She unhooks the sling and then starts grappling with one of her enormous veiny footballs. I busy myself with the kettle.

  ‘My husband’s coming home today,’ she says. I can’t explain it but this seems to hang in the air, waiting for someone to catch it. I put the filled kettle on the base and clear my throat.

  ‘Is there anything you want doing, then?’ I say. I get out her favourite mug and place a teabag in it before turning to look at her. Her head is down, her eyes on the baby sucking noisily away.

  ‘No,’ she says quietly. ‘But he has an old friend staying tomorrow. You should keep Ariella out of the way.’

  ‘OK,’ I say quietly, placing the mug of tea in front of her. On a mat, of course. Even though the place was a total tip when I got here, she’s gone overboard now on tidiness. I’ve learned my lesson about stuff like using a mat for hot drinks, or leaving anything lying about. She had a right go at me about ‘standards’ not long after I got here.

  ‘I’ll go and see what Ariella’s up to,’ I say and leave the room, grateful to get away from Charlotte’s pinched old face. She doesn’t respond. It’s possible she’s fallen asleep. I once came in when her head was lolling and a thread of dribble was hanging from her lip. Her eyes almost shrivelled me up when she came to and saw me standing there.

  Walking down the hallway towards the entertainment room, I stop, noticing a picture on a table there for the first time. The photos in the house are mostly of Ariella or Mick surfing, horse riding or holding a gun and some sort of dead animal by the tail. This one is in a plain, brown frame, unlike the others, which are framed in heavy-looking gold or silver.

  I peer down at it. It’s Charlotte. She doesn’t look that much older than me here. She’s sitting on a rock, wearing a bikini top and a pair of shorts, smiling into the camera. Her shining hair hangs around her shoulders in a way I’d kill for and she’s much slimmer than now. She’s so much prettier too but it’s not just that which is so different. It’s like she’s properly alive.

  She looks like a person who has lots of question marks in her sentences.

  Looking at the picture makes me even more determined not to have kids, if that’s what it does to you.

  I’m making Ariella’s tea later when I hear her shout, ‘Dadeeeeee!’ I reflexively yank the neckline of the dress up and start buttering her toast soldiers.

  He comes into the kitchen carrying Ariella upside down. She giggles hysterically as he turns her over onto her feet. His face glows red from the exertion, and his small, pale eyes immediately run up and down the length of my body. Creep. I briefly picture kneeing him in the groin.

  ‘Ah, it’s the delightful Kylie,’ he says. I’ve told him my name twice now. I think he does it to wind me up, so I don’t give him the satisfaction of correcting him. I fail to crank my lips into any kind of smile.

  ‘Ariella, your tea’s ready,’ I say, putting her Gomez plate down on her Gomez mat. She’s obsessed with that damn rat.

  No one ever told me how I should address Charlotte and Mick so I avoid using their names. ‘Can I get you something to drink?’ I say to him.

  ‘I can get myself a beer,’ he says, smiling and showing his small white teeth. He reminds me of a fat rodent. ‘Would you like one too?’ he says.

  ‘Um, no thank you.’ I can only imagine how that would go down with Charlotte.

  ‘Ariella, your tea,’ I remind her. She’s looking adoringly at her dad, who moves to the fridge and pulls out a bottle of the posh beer he likes. He looks me square in the eye as he removes the top with his hand. I think I’m meant to be impressed by this and have to stop myself from laughing at the idiot man.

  ‘I don’t want that smelly egg,’ says Ariella. ‘I want pizza for my tea instead.’ Two days ago she told me that she would never eat pizza because the ‘cheese is all shiny’. Now her gaze shuttles between me and her dad and I sense a weird play for attention going on here.

  I’m about to take her on because I know Charlotte would never stand for this. Then I see the smile on Mick’s face. ‘My baby knows what she likes, just like her dad,’ he says. Ariella beams. ‘Better get cracking, hadn’t you? You can do one for me an’ all.’

  Ariella sits at the table and dramatically pushes away the plate. The egg topples sadly from the egg cup and rolls on the table, leaving a trail of yellow yolk, like innards.

  Without speaking, I clean it up, keeping my eyes lowered so neither of them can see the treachery in my eyes. I’m picturing throwing the whole plate at the wall and walking out.

  I’m at the sink when I feel Mick move behind me. He reaches past to fill a cup of water, close enough for me to feel his hot breath on my cheek. When the cup is full he slides his hand along my waist and down my hip. I freeze. Now I’m picturing turning round and bringing my elbow into his face. Hard.

  ‘Hurry up with that pizza, eh, darling? I don’t like to be kept waiting,’ he whispers. I somehow manage not to do anything violent. He goes back to the table. That’s when I see Charlotte in the doorway, as still and shadowy as a ghost. I don’t know how long she’s been there. I catch my breath, ready to launch into my defence, but she quickly looks away and comes over to kiss Mick on the cheek before sliding into a chair opposite him.

  I open the freezer and take out a pizza, my hands shaking hard so that I fumble and almost drop it. I’m wondering just what kind of weird house I’m living in as I open the packaging. I rip it a bit more than necessary to open it.

  CHAPTER 6

  dangerous beasts

  As soon as Ariella is in bed I go to my room and watch the telly in there all evening, although I can’t even tell you which programmes I watch. I’m too worried about how I’m going to cope with old octopus hands without punching him in the face. I’d never have stood for that kind of crap before. One of Zander’s brothers stayed once and tried it on with me. He lost two teeth. Luckily, Zander thought it was the funniest thing ever.

  It’s the element of surprise, you see. No one expects a skinny girl to hit them so I get in there first. It’s
something Jax taught me, learned over many years of dealing with bullies.

  Oh, mate. I miss you so much.

  In the middle of the night I wake up, heart pounding. For a second I think someone is in the room. Pearly moonlight slices through the gap in the curtains. There’s just enough light for me to see that I’m alone.

  I swing my legs out of bed and run across to the door to check it’s still locked.

  I knew I wouldn’t have forgotten to do it. A bad dream, then? My heart’s still banging as I cross the floor and get back into bed. Shivering, I pull the duvet around my shoulders.

  About a second later, the door handle wiggles. Someone is turning it from the outside. I’m sitting bolt upright, clutching the duvet up to my chin.

  I’m out of bed and across the room, ready to let fly at the sleazy creep behind the door. I’m mentally packing my stuff as I unlock it and fling it open.

  Ariella is standing there in her pink PJs, shivering all over. In her arm she’s holding her fluffy rat toy.

  ‘What is it?’ Relief makes me hiss like a popped balloon.

  Her big eyes shine in the dim glow of the night-light outside my door.

  ‘I can’t sleep,’ she says, too loud for this hour of the night. ‘Mummy and Daddy were fighting and then Mummy cried. Can I sleep with you?’

  I hesitate for a second and then sigh, resigned.

  ‘Come on, then,’ I say. ‘But no hogging the duvet. Or talking. Or putting cold feet on me.’

  She pushes past me to get to the bed. I poke my head out of the door and listen but can’t hear anything. Shivering, I lock the door before climbing into bed. Ariella curls around me and something hurts inside, like pressure on a bruise. A tender feeling presses on my chest as her breathing slows into sleepiness. After a few moments, I roll away into a chilled corner of the bed, alone. I can’t get too close. Anyone I’ve ever cared about has been taken from me. That’s just the way it is. If I’m going to survive then it has to be on my terms. And there can be no passengers.