Chapter 21
Kane drives too quickly. The old minibus weaves and undulates worryingly as he slews round corners as though he thinks he is Lewis Hamilton, the chassis screeching and the suspension groaning as we bounce up and down over speed bumps that Kane doesn’t appear to notice.
It does indeed move like a tractor, but like a souped-up tractor on speed.
‘Easy, babe,’ Jodie says. She’s sitting up at the front next to him, her hand on his knee.
He shoves her hand away. ‘You wanna get there quick, don’t you?’
‘Well, yeah, but—’
‘Well then.’ He changes down a gear as he moves out to overtake a pootling red Micra, the gearbox crunching and the bus hopping forward as he releases the clutch too quickly.
‘Stupid pile of garbage,’ he mutters, sticking his middle finger up at the window as he passes the Micra, then growling when the Micra driver gives him the same back.
‘I’ve got a quicker route,’ he says, turning around to face us and grinning. ‘Better than that piece of crap.’ He motions to an ancient SatNav, stuck to the windscreen with its mount peeling away at the edges, worn wire trailing down to the cigarette lighter. ‘I’ll get you gals there in no time.’
‘Thanks, babe,’ Jodie says.
‘Thanks, babe,’ Kat mouths at me, rolling her eyes.
He stamps on the brake as we swing sharply into a bend and see an actual tractor dead ahead of us, trundling along at a snail’s pace. We jerk forwards into our seatbelts.
‘Wheee!’ Barbara says, patting her hands up and down on her lap. ‘Faster!’
‘She’s like a kid on a fairground ride,’ Kat says.
She’s all wide-eyed with wonder and smiling with glee. ‘We’re going to the seaside.’
‘We are,’ Kat says.
‘We’re going to see the sea!’
‘We are.’
Barbara starts humming Oh I Do Like To Be Beside The Seaside in a quavering croon, and one by one we join in. Amina’s voice, it turns out, is both rich and powerful, like liquid gold, like an ocean I want to plunge into.
‘You should go on X Factor,’ Jodie says.
‘You sound nice,’ Violet says.
Amina glances shyly up at her, eyes sparkling, then looks quickly away out of the window, twisting her hands together in her lap. I gape at Kat, raising my eyebrows in Violet’s direction. Did she actually just compliment Amina?
‘You lot are bloody noisy,’ Kane says.
We sing louder.
‘Will the lot of you shut up?’
Jodie turns to us, shaking her head slightly. I, too, have caught the edge in his voice, and gaze around at the others, motioning at Kane and pressing my lips together. But Barbara is away with the fairies, warbling away in a strangled soprano, hands waving round in the air.
Kane tightens his hands on the wheel.
Jodie strokes his thigh. ‘She’s okay, babe, isn’t she? I haven’t seen her so happy before. Let her be?’ Her voice is a wheedling whine as she leans into him and whispers something else into his ear. The edges of his thin lips turn up in the ghost of a smile, and he shrugs.
The tractor plods on ahead of us, spewing black smoke from its exhaust. ‘Stupid great tank,’ Kane shouts, winding his window down. ‘Get out of my way!’
The tractor driver does not take any notice and does not get out of Kane’s way.
At the next slight widening of the road Kane manhandles the bus around the tractor, missing its huge tires by an inch and drawing a cloud of colourful language from the irate driver.
He floors the accelerator and a few seconds later slews off down yet another unsigned country lane, boxed in by hedges flying by in blurs of evergreen and winter-starved trees bowing in the sharp November wind.
Jodie shivers.
‘Please put your jumper on,’ Kat says, plucking the discarded wolf fleece from one of the empty seats and passing it to her. ‘You’ll catch your death.’
Jodie turns her head slightly, studying Kane’s disapproving profile. ‘I’ll be okay.’
Kat touches her arm. ‘Put it on.’
Jodie shakes her head.
Barbara gets more excited by the minute, bouncing up and down in her seat, cackling away with a loud wheeze. ‘Step on it, boy!’
‘Yes, ma’am,’ Kane says, veering round another bend in the road too quickly.
‘Are we nearly there yet?’ Barbara says.
‘Have some patience, woman! I’m doing my best.’
‘Are you sure this is a quicker way?’ Jodie’s face is creased with doubt as she peers out of the dusty windscreen at the narrow road ahead. It constricts into little more than a farm track in the distance, heading towards a copse of trees and what looks like a gate and a cattlegrid.
Kane turns to her and gives her a look that reminds me uncomfortably of how Marcus used to look at me when I said the wrong thing, which was most of the time.
It was a look that would freeze my insides, that would stop up my mouth and keep the words from spilling over further.
I would swallow them back down and then say I’m so useless, sorry.
And he would say yes, you are, aren’t you, and I should think more before I speak.
And I would nod firmly, up and down, and then stroke his arm and tell him that I loved him and loved that he wanted the best for me and I would keep on trying, and please forgive me Marcus and give me another chance.
Jodie looks down and shakes her head slightly, saying no more as Kane pulls up to the track, stops, scratches his chin and fiddles with the crap SatNav that wasn’t as good as him.
Says nothing as he reverses too quickly all the way back up the unsigned country lane to the junction where he passed the stupid great tank and joins the country lane we were on originally.
Still says nothing as we catch up with the stupid great tank and sit right up its rear end for the next few minutes, until it chugs off down another track, the driver waving out of the window and then flipping the bird in a final farewell.
It seems to be taking too long to get there, but I don’t seem to be able to worry about it, because time is different out here, it’s languid and silent, without the stress and strain of the ward. I gaze at the sky rushing by and long for more of its great open wildness.
We’re on a narrow road running parallel to the sea.
There’s hardly any traffic on the road, just the odd car approaching behind us, hovering at our rear in juddering impatience and then overtaking as soon as they get the chance, Kane muttering obscenities at each driver who dares to pass.
The grey sea peeps out from beyond scrubby grassland and scraggy bushes and broken-down drystone walls to our right.
There’s just the hint of a sparkle off the water, a pale reminder of long summer days in the warmth of the sunshine, where the sea shines turquoise under a cloudless sky.
I close my eyes for a moment, imagining the heat, the enticing invitation of the water.
‘There!’ Jodie shouts, a moment too late as we pass the entrance to a barely visible track, a crooked sign at its mouth flashing by. ‘You’ve gone past it.’
Kane jerks the bus to a halt. ‘You weren’t looking hard enough. I’m the driver, you’re supposed to tell me when we’re there.’
‘Sorry.’
Kane grunts and throws the minibus into reverse.
There’s a car coming up behind, a silver Yaris, but he ignores it and starts backtracking quickly towards the entrance to the track, the tyres squealing in protest. The car behind toots its horn but Kane takes no notice, backtracking until he’s almost touching its bumper.
I turn in my seat to see the driver sitting there with her brow crinkled up, her palms raised in a question, an older woman refusing to be intimidated by this idiot.
She sits there and she does not move, and Kane sits there and he does not move.
‘Just keep going and turn round somewhere else, for heaven’s sake,’ Kat says, shattering the taut heaviness. ‘It won’t take a minute.’
‘No,’ Kane says.
‘Why does she put up with that great big bully?’ Violet whispers to Amina, except her whisper is more of a loud hiss, and Kane hears it too.
He turns around and narrows his eyes at Violet, a vein pulsing in his neck. ‘You wanna drive? Is that it? You want me to go and leave you to it?’
Violet rolls her eyes.
‘No, she don’t mean that,’ Jodie says. ‘She just means, just… we should turn around.’
‘Why don’t you stand up for yourself?’ Violet says.
Kat gives her a sideways glance, an imperceptible shake of her head, a softly whispered ‘Not now.’
Kane sits with arms folded tightly, staring straight at the driver in his rear-view mirror.
I can just see his eyes reflected; pale, cold as ice, holding in place with stubborn arrogance.
We hang there in tense silence for what seems like minutes until the woman buckles and then breaks, shifting her gaze away and her car into reverse.
She limps back down the road, past the track, all without so much as a last glance at Kane.
He laughs out loud and revs the bus noisily as he reverses the rest of the way, grinding the gears then fishtailing into the track, slamming the horn as a final flourish. ‘Ha,’ he says.
The writing on the wonky sign to the beach is almost obliterated by weather and time.
All I can see is the word ‘bay’. The beach is only a little way down the track, and Jodie was right, you can drive right onto it.
The sand is dark and packed-in, that gritty kind of sand, not the light golden sand you can dig into and stream between your fingers.
More like a mud-flat, really. But it’s still sand.
It’s still a beach. It stretches off both ways into a wilderness of nothingness, sky meeting ocean in shimmering grey desolation.
‘Godforsaken place, this, isn’t it?’ Violet says.
‘What did you want, the bloody Seychelles?’ Kane brings the bus to a juddering halt, halfway between the entrance and the creeping tide.
‘No, it’s great,’ Kat says. ‘It’s the sea and it’s a beautiful crisp November day, and we’re here. What d’you think, Barbara?’