Noughts & Crosses, Page 3

  I shook my head, telling myself not to be so silly. Nothing would ever come between me and Callum. I wouldn’t let it. Neither would Callum. He needed our friendship just as much as I did.

  Needed . . . That was a strange way to put it. Why had I thought of it that way? As a friendship both of us needed? That didn’t make any sense at all. I had friends at school. And a huge, extended family with cousins and aunts and uncles, and plenty of great whatevers and great-great whatevers to send Christmas and birthday cards to. But it wasn’t the same as Callum and me. Callum glanced up impatiently. I smiled at him. After a brief puzzled look, he smiled back.

  ‘It works like this,’ I began and we both looked down at the book as I began to explain.

  ’We’d better be getting back – before your mum has every police officer in the country searching for you,’ Callum said at last.

  ‘Suppose so.’ I picked up my sandals and rose to my feet. Then I had a brilliant idea. ‘Why don’t we go back to yours? I haven’t been to your house in ages and I could always phone up Mother once I’m there and . . .’

  ‘Better not,’ Callum said, shaking his head. He’d started shaking his head the moment the suggestion had left my mouth. He picked up my bag and slung it over his shoulder.

  I frowned at Callum. ‘We used to be in and out of each other’s houses all the time . . .’

  ‘Used to be. Let’s leave it for a while – OK?’

  ‘How come I never go to your house any more? Aren’t I welcome?’

  ‘’Course you are. But the beach is better,’ Callum shrugged and set off.

  ‘Is it because of Lynette? ’Cause if it is, I really don’t mind about your sister being . . . being . . .’ My voice trailed off at Callum’s furious expression.

  ‘Being what?’ Callum prompted, fiercely.

  ‘Nothing,’ I shrugged. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘This has nothing to do with Lynette,’ Callum snapped.

  I immediately shut up. I seemed to have an acute case of foot-in-mouth disease today. We walked back in silence. Up the stone steps, worn to satin smoothness by the procession of centuries of feet and along the cliff side, heading further and further inland, away from the sea. I looked across the open grassland towards the house which dominated the view for kilometres around. My parents’ country house. Seven bedrooms and five reception rooms for four people. What a waste. Four people in such a vast house – four lonely peas rolling about in a can. We were still some distance from it but it rose like an all-seeing giant above us. I pretended I didn’t see Callum flinch at the sight of it. Is it any wonder I preferred the laughter of his house to the dignified silence of my own? We walked on for wordless minutes until Callum’s steps slowed and stopped altogether.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s just . . .’ Callum turned to face me. ‘It doesn’t matter. Give me a hug?’

  Why was Callum in such a touchy-feely mood this afternoon? After a moment’s hesitation, I decided not to ask. Callum looked different. What I’d thought of as a permanent teasing sparkle in his eyes when he looked at me was gone without a trace. His eyes were storm-grey and just as troubled. He ran his fingers over his short-cut, chestnut brown hair in a gesture that seemed almost nervous. I opened my arms and stepped towards Callum. I wrapped my arms around him, my head on his shoulder. He was holding me, squeezing me too tightly but I didn’t say a word. I held my breath so it wouldn’t hurt so much. Just when I thought I’d have to gasp or protest, Callum suddenly let me go.

  ‘I can’t go any further,’ Callum said.

  ‘Just up to the rose garden.’

  ‘Not today.’ Callum shook his head. ‘I have to go.’ He handed back my bag.

  ‘I am going to see you tomorrow after school, aren’t I? In our usual place?’

  Callum shrugged. He was already walking away.

  ‘Callum, wait! What’s the ma . .?’

  But Callum was running now – faster and faster. I watched my best friend tear away from me, his hands over his ears. What was going on? I carried on walking up to the house, my head bent as I tried to figure it out.

  ‘PERSEPHONE! INSIDE! NOW!’

  My head snapped up at the sound of my mother’s voice. Mother came hurtling down the steps, her expression dour and fierce – as always. She’d obviously not had as many glasses of wine today as she normally did, otherwise she wouldn’t be in such a bad mood. I turned back to where Callum had been, but he was already out of sight – which was just as well. Mother grabbed my arm with bony fingers that bit like pincers.

  ‘I have been calling you for the last half an hour.’

  ‘You should’ve called louder then. I was down on the beach.’

  ‘Don’t be cheeky. I told you not to wander off today.’ Mother started dragging me up the stairs behind her.

  ‘Ouch!’ I banged my shin against one of the stone steps where I’d been too slow to pick up my feet. I tried to bend to rub my bruised skin but Mother was still dragging me.

  ‘Let go. Stop pulling me. I’m not luggage.’ I pulled my arm out of Mother’s grasp.

  ‘Get in the house now.’

  ‘Where’s the fire?’ I glared at Mother as I rubbed my arm.

  ‘You’re not to leave the house for the rest of the day.’ Mother entered the house. I had no choice but to follow.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘’Cause I said so.’

  ‘What’s the . .?’

  ‘And stop asking so many questions.’

  I scowled at Mother but she was oblivious – as always. To her, my dirty looks were water off a duck’s feathers. The warm, wonderful afternoon was excluded from our house with the closing of the front door. Mother was one of those ‘refined’ women who could make the quiet closing of a door as forceful as a slam. Every time Mother looked at me, I could feel her wishing that I was more ladylike, like my scabby big sister, Minerva. I called her Minnie for short when I wanted to annoy her, because she hated it so much. I called her Minnie all the time. She loved our house as much as I hated it. She called it ‘grand’. To me it was like a bad museum – all cold floors and marble pillars and carved stonework which glossy magazines loved to photograph but which no-one with half a gram of sense would ever want to live in.

  Thank God for Callum. I hugged the knowledge of how I’d spent my day to myself with a secret smile. Callum had kissed me. Wow!

  Callum had actually kissed me!

  Wowee! Zowee!

  My smile slowly faded as a unbidden thought crept into my head. There was just one thing that stopped my day from being entirely perfect. If only Callum and I didn’t have to sneak and creep around.

  If only Callum wasn’t a nought.

  two. Callum

  ‘I live in a palace with golden walls and silver turrets and marble floors . . .’ I opened my eyes and looked at my house. My heart sank. I closed my eyes again. ‘I live in a mansion with mullion windows and leaded light casements and a swimming pool and stables in the acres and acres of grounds.’ I opened one eye. It still hadn’t worked. ‘I live in a three up, two down house with a lock on the front door and a little garden where we grow veggies.’ I opened both eyes. It never worked. I hesitated outside my house – if you could call it that. Every time I came back from Sephy’s, I flinched at the sight of the shack that was meant to be my home. Why couldn’t my family live in a house like Sephy’s? Why didn’t any nought I knew of live in a house like Sephy’s? Looking at our rundown hovel, I could feel the usual burning, churning sensation begin to rise up inside me. My stomach tightened, my eyes began to narrow . . . So I forced myself to look away. Forced myself to look around at the oak and beech and chestnut trees that lined our street, lifting their branches up to the sky. I watched a solitary cloud slowdance above me, watched a swallow dart and soar without a care in the world.

  ‘Come on . . . you can do this . . . do this . . . do this . . .’ I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. Steeling myself, I pushed open the front door and
walked inside.

  ‘Where’ve you been, Callum? I was worried sick.’

  Mum launched in before I’d even closed the door behind me. There was no hall or passageway with rooms leading off it like in Sephy’s house. As soon as you opened our front door, there was our living room with its fifth-hand threadbare nylon carpet and its seventh-hand cloth sofa. The only thing in the room that was worth a damn was the oaken table. Years before, Dad had cut it and shaped it and carved the dragon’s leaf pattern into it, put it together and polished it himself. A lot of love and work had gone into that table. Sephy’s mother had once tried to buy it but Mum and Dad wouldn’t part with it.

  ‘Well? I’m waiting, Callum. Where were you?’ Mum repeated.

  I sat down at my place around the table and looked away from Mum. Dad wasn’t bothered about me – or anything else, for that matter. He was totally focused on his food. Jude, my seventeen-year-old brother, grinned knowingly at me. He’s a really irritating toad. I looked away from him as well.

  ‘He was with his dagger friend.’ Jude smirked.

  I scowled at him. ‘What dagger friend? If you don’t know what you’re talking about you should shut your mouth.’ Don’t you call my best friend that . . . Say that again and I’ll knock you flat . . .

  Jude could see what I was thinking because his smirk broadened. ‘What should I call her then? Your dagger what?’

  He never called them Crosses. They were always daggers.

  ‘Why don’t you go and get stuffed?!’

  ‘Callum, son, don’t talk to your brother like . . .’ Dad didn’t get any further.

  ‘Callum, were you with her again?’ Mum’s eyes took on a fierce, bitter gleam.

  ‘No, Mum. I went for a walk, that’s all.’

  ‘That had better be all.’ Mum banged down the dinner pan. Pasta sloshed over the sides and onto the table. Seconds later, Jude had whipped up the overspill and it was in his mouth!

  Astounded seconds ticked past as everyone at the table stared at Jude. He even had Lynette’s attention – and that was saying something. Not much brought my sister out of her mysterious world.

  ‘How come the only time you move faster than greased lightning is when food is involved?’ Mum said, her lips twitching somewhere between disgust and amusement.

  ‘It’s called incentive, Mum,’ Jude grinned.

  Amusement won. Mum started to laugh. ‘I’ll give you incentive, my lad!’

  And for once I was grateful to Jude for drawing attention away from what I’d been doing all afternoon. I glanced around the table. Already Lynette was turning away, her head bowed as always, her attention on her lap – as always.

  ‘Hi, Lynny . . .’ I spoke softly to my big sister. She looked up and gave me the briefest of smiles before returning her gaze to her lap.

  My sister looks like me – the same brown hair, eyes the same shade of grey. Jude’s got black hair and brown eyes and looks like Mum. Lynny and I don’t look like Mum or Dad particularly. Maybe that’s part of the reason why we’ve always been close. Closer than Jude and I. She was the one who looked after me when Mum had to work and couldn’t take me with her. But now she can’t even look after herself. She’s a bit simple. She looks her age, twenty, but her mind is outside time. She’s away with the fairies as my grandma used to say. She wasn’t always that way. Three years ago something happened which changed her. An accident. And just like that the sister I knew was gone. Now she doesn’t go out, doesn’t talk much, doesn’t think much as far as I can tell. She just is. She stays lost in the middle of her own world somewhere. We can’t get in and she doesn’t come out. Not often anyway, and certainly not for any length of time. But her mind takes her to somewhere kind, I think, to judge by the peaceful, serene look on her face most of the time. Sometimes I wondered if it was worth losing your marbles to find that kind of peace. Sometimes I envied her.

  ‘So where have you been all this time?’ Mum resumed her previous conversation.

  And I’d thought I’d got away with it. I should’ve guessed that Mum wouldn’t let the matter rest. Once she gets a bee in her knickers . . .

  ‘Just walking, I told you.’

  ‘Hhmmm . . .’ Mum’s eyes narrowed but she turned around and headed back to the cooker for the mince. I breathed an outward sigh of relief. Mum was obviously tired because for once she’d chosen to believe me.

  Lynette gave me one of her secret smiles. She turned to spoon pasta onto her plate as Mum returned with the pan of mince.

  ‘Ready for school tomorrow, Callum?’ Dad said warmly, seemingly oblivious to the instant tension rising up around the table like razor wire.

  ‘Ready as I’ll ever be, Dad,’ I muttered, pouring myself a glass of milk from the dinner jug so that I wouldn’t have to look at anyone.

  ‘It’ll be tough, son, but at least it’s a start. My son is going to Heathcroft High School. Imagine that!’ Dad took a deep breath, his chest actually puffing up with pride as he smiled at me.

  ‘I still think he’s making a big mistake . . .’ Mum sniffed.

  ‘Well, I don’t.’ Dad’s smile vanished as he turned to Mum.

  ‘He doesn’t need to go to their schools. We noughts should have our own schools with the same opportunities that the Crosses enjoy,’ Mum retorted. ‘We don’t need to mix with them.’

  ‘What’s wrong with mixing?’ I asked, surprised.

  ‘It doesn’t work,’ Mum replied at once. ‘As long as the schools are run by Crosses, we’ll always be treated as second-class, second-best nothings. We should look after and educate our own, not wait for the Crosses to do it for us.’

  ‘You never used to believe that,’ said Dad.

  ‘I’m not as naïve as I used to be – if that’s what you mean,’ Mum replied.

  I opened my mouth to speak but the words wouldn’t come. They were just a jumble in my head. If a Cross had said that to me, I’d be accusing them of all sorts. It seemed to me we’d practised segregation for centuries now and that hadn’t worked either. What would satisfy all the noughts and the Crosses who felt the same as Mum? Separate countries? Separate planets? How far away was far enough? What was it about the differences in others that scared some people so much?

  ‘Meggie, if our boy is going to get anywhere in this life, he has to go to their schools and learn to play the game by their rules. He just has to be better at it, that’s all.’

  ‘That’s all?’

  ‘Don’t you want something more for your son than we ever had?’ Dad asked, annoyed.

  ‘How can you ask me that? If you think . . .’

  ‘I’m sure everything will be fine, Mum. Don’t worry,’ I interrupted.

  Mum clamped her lips together, her expression thunderous. She stood up and went over to the fridge. I could tell from the way she took out the water bottle and slammed the fridge door shut that she wasn’t happy. My going to school was the only thing I’d ever heard my parents argue about. Mum twisted the top off the bottle and tipped it so that it was directly over the yellow painted pottery jug she’d made a few weeks back. Water gushed out, rising up in the jug to slosh over the sides and down onto the work surface, but she didn’t alter the angle of the bottle.

  ‘You’ll soon think you’re too good for us.’ Jude punched me on the arm for good measure. ‘Just don’t go getting too big for your boots!’

  ‘Of course he won’t. And you’ll be on your best behaviour at Heathcroft, won’t you?’ Dad beamed. ‘You’ll be representing all of us noughts at the school.’

  Why did I have to represent all noughts? Why couldn’t I just represent myself?

  ‘You must show them they’re wrong about us. Show them we’re just as good as they are,’ Dad continued.

  ‘He doesn’t need to go to their stuck-up school to show them that.’ Mum came back to the table, slamming the water jug down on the plastic tablecloth.

  Milk and water, water and milk – that was all we ever had with our dinner. Unless we were extra short o
f money, in which case it was just water. I lifted my glass of milk to my mouth and closed my eyes. I could almost smell the orange juice Sephy’s family nearly always had at their dinner table. Chardonnay for her mother and a claret for her dad and a choice of fizzy water, fruit juice – usually orange – and/or fizzy ginger beer for Sephy and her sister, Minerva. No bottled tap water for them. I remembered years ago when Sephy had snuck me my first taste of orange juice. It was icy-cold and oh, so sweet and I held each sip in my mouth until it became warm because I was so loath to swallow. I wanted the orange juice to last – but of course it hadn’t. Sephy snuck me orange juice as often as she could after that. She couldn’t understand why I loved it so much. I think she still can’t.

  I took a sip of my drink. My juice had too obviously passed through a cow first! I guess I didn’t have enough imagination to turn milk into orange juice.

  ‘He’ll soon be as stuck-up as them.’ Jude prodded me in the same place where he’d just punched me, turning his finger this way and that to make sure that it really hurt.

  I put down my glass and glared at Jude.

  ‘Come on then . . .’ Jude whispered for my ears only.

  I carefully placed my hands on my lap, my fingers interlocked.

  ‘What’s the matter? Am I embarrassing you?’ Jude teased maliciously.

  Beneath the table, my fingertips were beginning to go numb, I was pressing them together so hard. Ever since I’d passed the exam and got into Heathcroft, Jude had become totally unbearable. He spent every waking moment trying to goad me into hitting out at him. So far I’d managed to resist the intense temptation – but only just. I had sense enough to know that if Jude and I got into a fight, he’d wipe the floor with me. I hated it here so much. Oh, to get away. Far away. Even if I couldn’t get up and physically leave the table, I had to get out of here before . . . before I exploded.

  Sephy . . . Sephy and the beach . . . and Maths . . . and our kiss. I smiled as I remembered her insisting that I wipe my mouth before our first kiss. She did make me laugh.