Crow Stone

‘Get on with it,’ muttered Poppy, through clenched teeth. Then, a moment later, she breathed, ‘Yes …’ Trish and I, huddled on the floor below the level of the window waiting our turn, wriggled in anticipation.

‘He’s in the room,’ reported Poppy. ‘I can see … he’s taking his T-shirt off.’ Silence. ‘Aaahh …’

‘What can you see?’ asked Trish.

‘His glorious chest,’ said Poppy. ‘His lovely, lovely chest. Oh!’

‘Yes?’ we said in unison.

‘He’s got a little hairy triangle just at the top,’ said Poppy, sounding disappointed. ‘I’ve never noticed that before.’ We didn’t rate chest hair. ‘He’s gone now to get washed.’

‘Give someone else a chance,’ said Trish. ‘You’ve had your turn.’

‘Katie next,’ said Poppy. ‘My binoculars, her house.’

I slithered into place. Being shorter, I had to get up on the window-seat instead of kneeling, and then the angle of the binoculars seemed wrong. I was just moving them to get a better view when Gary returned to the window, towelling under his arms. Something seemed to catch his eye, and he opened the window wider. I focused the binoculars on his chest as best I could–it wasn’t very hairy–and then realized as I lifted them that he seemed to be staring straight at me. I gave a little squeak, and fell off the window-seat.

‘What? What did you see?’ hissed Trish.

‘His Y-fronts?’ speculated Poppy, dreamily.

But I didn’t have time to reply, because suddenly I could hear feet on the stairs. The bedroom door swung open, and there was my father.

I saw him take in the scene–three teenage girls, giggling and sprawled on the floor, in the bedroom he had once shared with his wife. There was a terrible silence that seemed to go on and on.

‘What are you doing in here?’ he said eventually, in a mild, calm voice. ‘Katie, you know I don’t like you coming in here.’

Trish and Poppy heard nothing in my father’s voice except quiet disappointment, but I heard something far more dangerous. They didn’t know my father as I did.

‘I’m sorry, Mr Carter,’ said Trish. ‘We … we were just messing about.’

My father appeared to take this in peacefully, as if resigned to the whims of teenage girls.

‘Well, you’d better let me run you home,’ he said. ‘And, Katie, you’d better go to your room and start your homework.’ So softly, so reasonably, that no one but I would have understood.

‘He whistled while he was driving us home,’ Trish told me, the following day. ‘He seemed … well, a bit remote, he didn’t speak to us or anything. But he didn’t seem angry.’ She didn’t know that whistling, through clenched teeth, was how my father signalled extreme fury. ‘I can’t believe … well, he didn’t act cross at all.’

When my father returned, he came straight upstairs to my room. I was sitting on the bed, trying to take in a chapter of my history textbook on the Corn Laws, though all the time I could think only of what my father’s feet would sound like on the stairs.

He was even faster than usual; I had no chance. He crossed to the bed, and dealt me one hard heavy blow to the side of my head. I was knocked backwards, shooting an arm out to save myself and making the briefest of contacts with his merciless right hand. I crashed against the framed photo of my mother on the bedside table. It fell to the floor, and the frame and glass shattered.

All my father said was ‘Pick that up.’ He was trembling. Then he left the room.

My head sang with pain. I lay back on the bed, breathing hard, feeling no surprise, only the usual hollowness. I waited till I felt less dizzy, then picked up the photo of my mother, shaking the smashed glass into the waste-paper bin and reminding myself not to walk barefoot until I had had a chance to Hoover properly. I placed the broken frame and the photo back on the bedside table, propping it against the lamp.

Some of the hollowness was hunger, but I didn’t dare go downstairs. My heart was still thudding, but I made myself finish the chapter of history and trace a map of the Somerset coalfield for geography homework before I got into bed. It was still light outside, and for a while I lay awake, listening to the sound of the hi-fi downstairs playing Bobby Darin and Roy Orbison. It was my fault, of course. I shouldn’t have let Trish and Poppy come back.

But I also kept remembering Gary Bennett’s face. I thought his eyes had met mine, through the binoculars. I was sure he had winked.

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