What They Do in the Dark - By Amanda Coe Page 0,82

properly and goggle at the outrageous sight. They got stopped before they could get too close, headed off by a mardy-looking bloke in a T-shirt.

‘We’re busy here, girls, if you don’t mind not interrupting.’

He hadn’t been around the school the day Pauline had joined in the filming, but he sounded like a southerner, like all the rest of them. Beyond him, the back of Lallie’s head blew an insolent, perfect smoke-ring as she laughed with another couple of blokes in T-shirts. One of them, one of the shirts that is, looked familiar to Pauline. She remembered then, its block of striped green and white, like a spearmint chew, seeing it as she ran towards town the day she’d bought her mam the guitar charm, thinking she’d get in trouble for disturbing the filming. The stripes had flashed out at her, along with his white bum poking out of his slackened trousers and the motion of the girl’s little hand on his cock, through the trees as she ran.

‘I saw her with him before, wanking him off.’

She could see Gemma, scandalized by the smoking, didn’t have a clue what she meant. Pauline pumped her hand.

‘Down his kecks.’

Gemma stared as what’s-her-name toed her cigarette end into the grass. Pauline thought Gemma was going to cry. Her face had that disintegrating look, and she’d turned a bit red.

‘Liar.’

‘I did! Down Hexthorpe Flats. They was in the trees.’

Gemma set her mouth. ‘D’you think her mum knows she’s smoking?’

Why did that matter? Pauline shoved her. ‘I’m not lying!’

‘You’re a liar, you!’

Unusually, Gemma pushed her back, taking her by surprise. And then they were grabbing at each other, hitting, clawing, tumbled to the ground. Pauline was stronger, but Gemma was heavier and using her advantage. Pauline knew she was bound to win, because unlike Gemma she didn’t care if she got hit. But Gemma wasn’t hitting, she scratched, which hurt in a different way.

‘You lie! You’re that mucky, you! Say you lie!’

‘I’m not lying, you fat cow!’

The shock of being clawed in the face made Pauline lose her grip, allowing Gemma to roll partly on top of her, pinning her down. She squirmed astride her, legs near her neck.

‘Say you’re lying.’

‘I saw it!’

All Gemma’s weight was on her chest, making it hard to breathe. She tried to snake out from beneath her, but Gemma just bore down harder. And now she gouged her nails into Pauline’s cheeks, threatening.

‘Say it.’

‘It’s true, I saw it, you can ask her.’

Gemma dug her nails in, but Pauline was determined now. She could kill her if she liked, she didn’t care. Truly. So it was weird that the tears were coming to her eyes and spilling, that her chest was trying to force them out despite Gemma pressing down on her.

‘I can’t breathe.’

‘Just say you’re a liar.’

Pauline sobbed. ‘I’m not.’

Gemma roared, and scratched. Pauline screamed, thrashed a leg enough to knock Gemma off balance for a moment and writhed free. When she held her cheek, blood came off on her hand.

‘You’ve hurt me, you fucking cow!’

Gemma looked shocked by what she’d done.

‘I’m bleeding!’

Gemma offered her something from her dress pocket, as though that was going to help. It was a folded pad of white cloth, yellow-edged. At one corner there was a matching yellow flower embroidered on it, with a sky-blue middle.

‘What the fuck’s that?’

Gemma shook it out so Pauline could see it was a handkerchief, offered for the bleeding. She took it and clamped it to her stinging cheek, spotting the white with her uncopious blood. There was only one deepish scratch where the nails had pierced her skin. Holding the handkerchief so close to her face suffused her with Gemma’s washing-powder smell. The material had creases in it from where someone had ironed it. Her mum, of course. Pauline balled up the cloth and chucked it back at Gemma. She picked the hanky up from the grass as Pauline wiped her full nose on her arm.

‘I’ve got nearly a pound,’ Gemma cajoled. It wasn’t what Pauline was expecting. ‘We can get lollies. Or chips.’

Pauline was so hungry that even the word, chips, had salt and vinegar on it.

‘Aren’t you going to talk to her?’

But what’s-her-name, Lallie, had gone off to the bus parked up at the ridge on the main road. The people and their camera had moved up as well, where they seemed to be concentrating on the lady with the headscarf they’d asked about Lallie in the first place. So the lady wasn’t a real person at