Chapter 5 #2
Beckett
Do you mean, would I fancy giving you a lift?
Mary
Excuse me, I’ll pay you the standard fare. Not even ‘friend’ rates. Just thought you might like to say hi, too!
Beckett
So, you’d be the one doing ME a favour? Paying me to take you to the church so I could say hello?
Mary
Well, if you put it like that…
Beckett
For future reference, saying hello to people is my least favourite thing to do.
However, I’m exceedingly grateful that a horse vet was prepared to take on the business end of things.
Of course we’ll go together.
Mary
‘The business end of things?’ Am I a horse, or what?
Beckett
Sorry. I’m woefully out of practice at making conversation with people of sound mind. I’ll try again.
I’m grateful Yara was there to tackle what was going on in your nether regions.
Or is this any better…?
I’m relived an equine expert was prepared to assist you in your personal matter.
Mary
STOP NOW
Beckett
If you refuse to use basic punctuation it’s impossible for me to tell whether you’re disgusted or amused by my ex-medic sense of humour.
Mary
STOP NOW!!!!!!
Beckett
I’m going to go with impressed.
I sent him a row of alternating cry-laughing and eye-rolling emojis, because while under any other circumstances a man I barely knew making flippant comments about what had actually happened regarding my nether regions (nakedness for a start…) would have resulted in me instantly blocking him, he had been my saviour on that terrifying, unimaginable, beautiful and what ended up as most tender of nights.
After sharing a moment so raw, this fundamental of human experiences, when nothing can be toned down, filtered or politely ignored, joking about the state I’d been in, how people I’d never met before had seen things that would otherwise have horrified me, was the best possible way to deal with it.
Besides, it was probably the first time I’d heard anyone use the term nether regions in real life, and I was laughing hard enough to make my pelvic floor beg for mercy.
Although, my mental haze did briefly wonder what he meant about not speaking to people of ‘sound mind’.
Was he making a nasty remark about Tanya, or Sonali?
Given the complete lack of disrespect in anything he’d said so far, I decided to let that thought float back into the haze and sent another message.
Mary
Are you free tomorrow?
It might have been too short notice, but the truth was, I felt so lonely and lost that even tomorrow wasn’t soon enough.
Beckett
The church is more likely to be open on Sunday. I could pick you up at about twelve?
Mary
Perfect, see you then x
The kiss might have been a step too far, but slouched on the sofa, breasts swollen, nether regions still faintly sore, eyelids rough as sandpaper, listening to my son gruntle awake again, meeting Beckett suddenly felt like the most perfect thing to have happened to me in a very long time.
* * *
I’d noticed Shay and Kieran from my first day at the new secondary school.
Honestly, everyone had, they were impossible to ignore.
However, due to their being the kind of kids who existed in an alternate universe to shy, deeply uncool and slightly posh girls, I never for one second dreamed they’d notice me.
That was until they plonked themselves down either side of me on the isolated bench I’d specifically selected to ensure the minimum number of people would see that I had no one to eat lunch with.
‘That science teacher was bang out of order.’ Shay Obasi rolled her eyes, lids heavy with purple fake lashes, and crossed her dark brown legs in a brisk motion that made me flinch. ‘You should complain to the head.’
‘I’m used to it,’ I said meekly. The teacher had made a joke during our physics lesson, comparing my politician dad to gamma radiation.
It wasn’t the first time someone had made a derogatory remark about one of my parents.
It certainly wouldn’t be the last – or the worst. ‘It didn’t even make sense. ’
‘Still though. You shouldn’t tolerate your family being disrespected,’ Kieran said in his thick South Yorkshire accent. ‘If other kids sense weakness, they’ll chew you up and spit you out, just so they can chew you up again tomorrow.’
His ice-blue eyes met mine, and for a horrible moment I thought I was going to get chewed up , whatever that meant, there on that bench, on only my fourth day.
‘This is the crucial time,’ Shay added, turning to face me with a look of concern that made me dare to hope they were here to help, not hurt me.
She folded her arms before uncrossing them to adjust an earring, pat one of her thick bunches, and fiddle with the cuff of her non-regulation blazer.
In the years to come, Shay always made me think of a fish, her body in constant motion.
Fluid and confident, like everything she did.
‘New school year, packs are reforming. It’s kill or be killed. Hunt or be hunted. Especially for the new girl.’
‘I don’t want to be in a pack,’ I stuttered.
‘Lone wolves won’t last ’til half-term,’ Shay said, as solemnly as a thirteen-year-old girl with Mis-Teeq nail stickers could.
If I’d worn anything on my nails, let alone the lashes, lip gloss and skirt several inches above knee-length, I’d get a detention.
In a school where teachers were resigned to choosing their battles, Shay was one of those girls who won far more than most.
‘You need us,’ Kieran said, raising white-blond eyebrows ominously. His appearance was equally rebellious for the first week of year nine. Hair bordering on a mohawk, stud in one earlobe, a red belt with silver studs holding up his skin-tight trousers.
‘And, luckily, we like the look of you,’ Shay added, staring me straight in the eye. ‘Forgetting that weird salad you’re eating, you seem like one of us. Plus, the joke you made in maths was so good Kieran almost wet himself. So, want to join our pack?’
‘Okay,’ I said, face flushing. I’d mumbled the joke, not intending anyone to hear, but it had been funny, and knowing that these mavericks liked the look of me was both bewildering and unbelievably awesome.
So from then on, we were a pack of three. While being the newest member of the group, and one with a very different homelife from the others, meant that I would often feel slightly on the edge, I could live with it.
My smug parents assumed that exposing these new friends to our enlightened lifestyle would provide the route out of their downtrodden, ignorant existence.
Kieran and Shay gave this notion the contempt it deserved.
They didn’t need anyone to tell them how to overcome the disadvantages of where they’d started from. By the time I joined their shambolic secondary school, life had already taken plenty from them. They were determined to take it back.