Something Wicked Page 7

  “Quite,” said my mum. “Never throw yourself at a man. Well, who would have believed it? Your first boyfriend! Do you know, you’re making me feel a whole lot better!”

  Which just goes to show, doesn’t it? What me and Ritch were up to was even making my mum better! So I said I’d get on with my homework and I went to my room. I looked over some of my science for a test we were having but I couldn’t concentrate. All the stuff we’d said and done was whizzing through my mind. So I left my work for later when I couldn’t sleep and went to the bathroom. I realised I still hadn’t opened the present my brother Neil had sent last Christmas – a set of soaps and lotions and that. It showed how little he knew me – thinking I was into all that girlie stuff. But now, I felt like using them. I carefully removed the Cellophane from the soap – it was called Bathing Beauty. I sniffed it. Kind of lemony and ginger. Not bad. I turned on the hot water tap and, when the temperature was just right, I held the soap under it, and then rubbed it in my hands. It lathered nicely. I put the soap on the side of the basin and washed my hands, enjoying the sensation of the thin film of soap between my fingers, making the skin soft and clean. I stayed there for quite a while.

  I didn’t see Ritchie for a few days. I was careful not to text him too much because I didn’t want to spoil the balance of our relationship. And also I wanted to give it a little break so I could get on with the rest of my life. It seemed important to me to build a kind of alibi, to go to school, work hard, not to let anyone know that I’d changed. That I had a secret. Well, secrets, really.

  So I learnt stuff for tests, finished my coursework, all the time acting the perfect student and daughter. I could afford to. Because whenever something went a little too wrong – one of the girls ignored me at lunch and chose someone else to sit with, or if my mum had a low patch, or if the bus was late – I would think, if only you knew. If only you knew who I really was and what I really did. So I was waiting, waiting for the next time me and Ritch went taxing.

  I wouldn’t have imagined that the next episode would start because of my mum, but it did. She wanted to go to visit her friends at the practice she managed, or used to manage. She’d been feeling a bit better lately and was even talking of going back to work. She asked me if I’d come with her because she was scared she might have a panic attack. I agreed – why not? My reward, I decided, would be to allow myself to text Ritchie later. Just the thought of that buoyed my mood and meant I was prepared to put up with anything.

  So there we were in the waiting room of her surgery – well, not her surgery, but you know what I mean. Although the practice was about to close for the evening it had been a busy day and there were still a few patients waiting to see the doctors. Mum looked a bit nervous, and I knew she felt odd being in front of the reception desk when she should have been behind it. I gave her hand a friendly squeeze, and she squeezed it back.

  Luckily there was a distraction at that moment. A woman came in with three kids, one in a buggy and two more holding on to the sides. She recognised Mum and a conversation started. It was funny how being thrust back into her professional role brought my mum out of herself. This woman and my mum had a private, urgent conversation from which I was excluded. So I watched her kids, which was fine by me. I like kids.

  The baby in the buggy looked like she was teething. Her cheeks were red and she was chewing on a trainer mug. Her eyes were dull and she didn’t react to my grins. She only looked mildly interested when I stuck out my tongue at her. I reckoned she was probably the ill one. Her older brother and sister had gone straight over to the toys. In the waiting room there’s this big red box full of battered toys, plastic garages, dented spinning tops, big wooden jigsaws with half the pieces missing. But these kids didn’t seem to mind. They were in there, seeing what they could find. The boy brought out a sad-looking teddy bear with a bandage round its ear. He stared at it, then threw it to one side. He picked up a plastic tractor and examined it. Then found an old Action Man. He sat himself down on the floor with it and was soon involved in some imaginary game. It was cool watching him. Meanwhile his sister had bonded with a scrappy old doll whose plastic eyelids kept falling over her baby blue eyes. She was talking to it and holding it. It was brilliant watching those kids play, to see how they lost themselves in those toys. When the receptionist called the woman for her appointment the children refused to be separated from their finds, and I could see a nasty situation beginning to take shape.

  “If you want to leave them here I’ll keep an eye on them,” I offered.

  Mum explained who I was and the woman looked at me with gratitude, then wheeled the baby off to the doctors’ rooms. Mum popped into the office to see her old friends, and I was quite content, watching the kids. The little girl started singing something to the doll, then sat her on the floor and began putting all the other toys around her. The boy had picked up a book and was looking at the pictures. I would have gone over to help them play but it was clear they didn’t need me.

  Time passed quickly. Mum and this woman came out pretty much at the same time. When the kids were separated from the toys they’d chosen they predictably set up a wail. The mum looked seriously harassed. She ended up smacking both of them. That made them wail even louder.

  I asked Mum, “Who are they?”

  She explained on our way home. The woman lived in one of those B&Bs for the homeless. But that was an improvement on where she’d been before, which was a refuge for battered wives. Now they were living in one room until she could get fixed up with a council flat. She was offered one but it was too high up, on the twelfth floor of a tower block and she turned it down, because of the kids. What would she do if the lift broke down? That seemed fair enough to me. The kids were so young she couldn’t go out to work and they lived on benefits.

  When she was explaining this to me Mum began to sound like her old self. I was pleased about that, but also saddened and sickened by what she told me. You’d think the government or the council or somebody would help that woman. Because her situation wasn’t her fault, and it certainly wasn’t the kids’ fault. But she seemed to be getting the barest minimum. And it was a treat for her kids to go to the doctor’s surgery, for heaven’s sake! That tatty old toy box was a treasure chest for them.

  And then I had our next idea – well, it was my idea, but I couldn’t have carried it out without Ritchie, as you’ll see.

  I texted him and we met at the parade of shops near my part of town. I was there before him and waited anxiously. When you really like someone you’re always scared they won’t turn up when they say they will. But Ritch was only five minutes late. He wore a navy tracksuit I hadn’t seen him in before. I wondered for a moment if it was new and he’d put it on for me. Because the truth was, I’d taken a little bit more care than usual with my appearance. My hair was down and I wore my new black denims.

  “What’s up?” he said, grinning, looking pleased to see me.

  I grinned back at him. I wanted to keep this cool, and get that same buzz we always had when we were plotting things.

  “I had this idea,” I said.

  He took out one of his ciggies. I kind of took a mental snapshot of him at that moment – that’s how I always see Ritchie. Lighting up a ciggie, dressed in his navy tracksuit with a white stripe down the side, lounging in the doorway of the shuttered chemist’s, the flame of the match flickering and suddenly illuminating his features.

  “Like, last time we helped that old lady. Why don’t we do something for kids this time?”

  “Kids?” He frowned at me.

  “Yeah. Poor kids. Kids whose parents can’t afford to buy them toys. Listen – this is what we could do. I could print out an official-looking letter on my computer asking for donations of toys, and we could go into all the toy shops with it. If we dress up right and act dead grateful they’ll never guess.”

  Ritchie stood there thinking for a while, then began to smile. “You’re mad, you. What’s the point of that? That’s just chari
ty – that’s not what we’re up to. We tax, remember?”

  I was instantly deflated because of course he was right. I’d wanted to go out on the streets with him so much I hadn’t been thinking straight. There was no thrill in just being charity collectors. But I felt honour bound to defend myself. I didn’t like coming off worse in an argument.

  “Yeah, but we’d be the ones who decided where the toys are going to.”

  Ritchie shook his head. I was getting desperate. I started ranting at him. “We’d still have the power. And then people might give us money too, instead. Because, when you come to think of it, all the charities you read about, they don’t give all their money to the people they say they’re helping – they keep some of it for themselves – their wages, and that. Overheads, that kind of stuff. And the people who give to charity are big hypocrites – they give to Oxfam then go round the supermarket overloading their trolleys. Or give to the NSPCC and hit their own kids. And that reminds me – the woman I saw – the mum. She was having such a hard time. And it wasn’t her fault – she’d come from a battered wive’s refuge. And her baby was ill – you could tell just looking at it.”

  Something I’d said had caught Ritchie’s attention. He wasn’t laughing at me any more. “So what’s your idea again?” he asked.

  It might have been simple, my idea, but, boy, was it effective!

  We started in Robinson’s, the toy shop in my part of town. You should have seen me. I put on my suede skirt, brown, just below the knee, with a dusky pink sweater. Ritchie had on a pair of plain black trousers and a navy sweater. We debated about his baseball cap and he argued that if he didn’t wear it we’d be in danger of looking like two Jehovah’s Witnesses and it would alienate people. So I said he could go with it.

  This was the letter I’d written and printed off. I made up a sort of headed notepaper as if it came from a youth group – I called it St Margaret’s, as I thought it would be good to have a saint in it. I made up an address in Redvale, another part of town. Then it went like this.

  Dear Shopkeeper,

  The St Margaret’s Youth Action Team are collecting for our Toy Appeal. We are asking you for donations of toys, which will be given to local children’s hospitals and hospices to brighten the lives of our young people who are suffering.

  Here is a plea from Emily, who is five, and has kidney failure:

  “I hate being ill, but playing with toys makes me feel a lot better. But all the toys in our ward are old and the nurses can’t buy any more.”

  Make a child like Emily’s face light up with your donation …

  I was pretty pleased with that. All those English lessons on how to write letters and how to argue, persuade and advise had paid off. I’d signed it as the youth group leader and it all looked pretty official. But I reckoned – rightly, as it turned out – that people are too embarrassed to check all your credentials if you say it’s for charity. I’d even printed out little cards for me and Ritch with false identities – his read Ross Angus, and mine, Jaime Somers. Because I liked that name.

  So we walked into Robinson’s and I explained to the woman behind the counter about the appeal. I said I wasn’t expecting them to give us new toys, but maybe damaged stock or something. I was quite loud so two or three of the customers in the shop started listening, and they all had those goofy expressions on their faces, as if to say, “Aaah! Isn’t that sweet?”

  So naturally the woman behind the counter, who turned out to be the manager, had to give us something. While she went into the back room, the people in the shop asked if we would accept money as donations and Ritch said that would be no problem.

  The manageress came back with a couple of dolls and some plastic gladiator figures with an arena for fighting in, as well as a collection of jigsaws. Ritchie put them all in the sports bag he was carrying. I gushed a bit to make it all authentic.

  “It’s so kind of you,” I said. “Could you sign this form with a list of what you’ve given and the shop’s address, please. You’ve been so generous, I can hardly believe it! This is so much more than I expected.” The more fuss I made, the more attention I attracted. The more attention I attracted, the more people who came over, had a look at what we were up to, and forked out.

  Ritch and I were over the moon when we came out.

  “It’s so bloody easy!” he said.

  “Let’s try Play and Learn.”

  It was the same story there. I did get a bit nervous when the girl in charge rang head office to authorise the store’s gifts, but there didn’t seem to be a problem. She even apologised that they were only giving us discontinued items. We amassed shape sorters, a slightly torn playmat and pretend kitchen equipment. Ritchie had now got into the swing of it and actually made an announcement to all the customers about our collection. They were falling over themselves to give something. One mum gave her little girl a fiver and told her to give it to us for all the poorly children. This little girl waddled over to me and shyly proffered the note. I thanked her very much.

  At Bromley and Bromley’s, the posh toy shop – that had designer clothes for kids, would you believe! As if a toddler would know he was wearing Nike or Timberland! – as the assistants were giving us stuff, the manager began to ask us questions.

  “I’ve not heard of St Margaret’s Youth Action Team, and I live in Redvale.”

  My stomach flipped. Luckily Ritchie answered.

  “Because we’ve only been going a few weeks. My dad started the group. He’s a local vicar.”

  I thought that was risking it – maybe this manager was a churchgoer. But he seemed reasonably satisfied. Then he asked another question.

  “Which hospitals are you giving the toys to?”

  That was OK. I knew my hospitals because of Mum and rattled off a list. Then I tried to stop the questioning by blabbing on a bit. “We’re going to go round the hospitals after school tomorrow. One of our leaders is going to take us in her van. Everyone’s been so generous.”

  “I don’t remember reading about this in the papers,” the manager persisted.

  I could feel myself getting hot; beads of sweat were forming on my temples. Yet the strange thing was, the more scared I got, the more inventive I became.

  “The papers! You’re so right! We should have let them know what we were doing and then we could have got extra publicity. And asked the readers for donations.”

  “Tell you what,” the manager said. “I can ring the Echo now and get a photographer round. Then they can run the story next week and appeal for toys from the readers.”

  It was then I was more scared than I ever had been. I’d never believed my mum when she said she was having a panic attack, but now I knew exactly what one felt like. How on earth could we explain that the last thing we wanted was publicity?

  “Jaime!” Ritchie said condescendingly. “You’re such an airhead. Sorry about this.” That last comment was to the manager. “There is a story going in next week. A reporter came round, but you forgot, Jaime.”

  Ritchie had thrown me a lifeline. I grabbed it eagerly. “Because I wasn’t there! I had a dental appointment, you idiot!”

  “Thanks, mister,” Ritchie said. “We have to go now. Sheila said she’d meet us in the van.”

  And as quickly as we could, we got out. I thought I was going to throw up, but the feeling gradually subsided. As my terror diminished, it was replaced by the realisation we’d got away with it – again. My ruse had worked – we’d ended up with more toys than Father bloody Christmas. It was amazing – completely amazing. Correction: I was amazing, Ritchie was amazing. Nothing could stop us now. I was overwhelmed with euphoria, like I’d taken a drug. I offered to take one handle of the overstuffed sports bag that Ritchie was holding.

  “Where shall we go with these now?” I asked him.

  “That’s all been taken care of,” he said.

  “Don’t be mysterious.” Because we did have a bit of a problem here. My house was out of the frame as my mum would s
tart asking questions. I presumed the same would apply to Ritchie’s place. We needed to stash the toys somewhere before we distributed them.

  “I had a word with Loz,” Ritchie said. “He gave me the key to his brother’s old office.”

  “What office?”

  “A minicab office. They rented it for a while but they couldn’t make it pay. But he had one of the keys copied. It’s empty – you’ll see.”

  We came out on to the main road, the one that leads out of town. It was getting dark now but the stream of traffic was still fairly constant. You know the road I mean. It just exists for cars – most of the shops are permanently closed and the ones that still trade have their graffiti-splattered shutters down at night. I remember seeing a garage – lights blazing – in the distance, a late-night grocer’s shop and a takeaway advertising kebabs, curries, pizzas and fish and chips.

  Ritchie scanned the street. We finally came to a halt by a pale-blue door by the side of a boarded-up shop front. He put the bag down, got a key out of his pocket and opened the door to darkness. He fumbled for the light switch, there was a tiny blue flash from a loose connection, and then I saw in front of me a dirty corridor with a single, bare electric bulb hanging from the ceiling. A door to the right obviously led to the office, but Ritchie took the bag and ran up the stairs facing us. I followed him.

  At the top of the stairs was a toilet – the door was open. It looked pretty vile. There was a room on either side, and more, narrower stairs leading to the top storey. Ritchie opened the door on the right and we went in.

  The room looked as if no one had been in there for ages, the sort of room that had forgotten what people were like. A white, Venetian blind covered the large window that looked out over the main road. You could hear the rush of traffic from where we were. I saw a wooden table with a couple of mugs on it, permanently stained with coffee rings, two kitchen-table-type chairs and an old easy chair with one of those grotty floral loose covers. There were some wooden packing crates. The floor was linoleum, pitted with little holes where people had stubbed out cigarettes. It smelt damp and musty, but I could also detect the stink of old alcohol and the unmistakable aroma of weed. Ritch closed the door and we were alone.