Another Life Altogether: A Novel - By Elaine Beale Page 0,32

occupied a ridiculous shambles that would never be repaired.

“You looking for something?”

I almost bumped into the girl before I noticed her. She stood, arms crossed over her chest, bony hip stuck out at an angle, eyebrows raised in truculent expectation of an answer.

“I, er, I just moved here. I’m just looking around.”

“Hmmph,” she snorted, eyebrows still raised. Her long dark hair was pulled back into a ponytail. She had big cheeks, a small mouth, a perky little nose, and long-lashed brown eyes—a combination of features that left her in the uncertain territory between plain and pretty. “I was exploring.”

“What, like Christopher Columbus?” Her tone was sharp.

“No.” I shook my head. “I was just trying to get the lay of the land.”

“Lay of the land?”

“I meant—”

“I know what you meant. I’m not stupid, you know.”

“I know. I didn’t mean to—”

“You moved into Johnson’s house, didn’t you?”

“Johnson’s house?”

“Yeah, Johnson’s house—the one that’s falling down, on the main road out of the village. Geoffrey Johnson used to live there.”

“He did?” My curiosity about the previous occupant of our house overcame my nervousness. “Did he die there?” I asked, imagining him an old man expiring in one of our bedrooms, leaving behind the disheveled chaos.

“No. He used to own the fish-and-chip shop in Reatton. But then he bought a villa in Marbella. Been living there the last five years.”

“Oh.” Somehow the idea that the previous owner of our house had escaped to the heat and sunshine of Spain seemed particularly unfair.

“That place has been empty since he left. Nobody wanted to buy it. Until you moved in, that is.”

“Oh,” I said again. It was no wonder the house was in such disrepair. And if no one else wanted it, everyone in the village must have thought my father was a fool for buying it. We’d been here just a month and already we were probably a local laughingstock. So much for making a new start.

“Want a piece of chewy?” she asked after digging about in one of the appliquéd pockets of her wide-flared trousers and pulling out a packet of Wrigley’s spearmint gum.

“Thanks,” I said. I watched her take a piece, rip open the foil and paper packaging, toss it onto the ground, and pop the sliver of gum into her mouth. I did the same.

“So, what’s your name?” she asked, chewing open-mouthed so that I could see the gum rolling over her teeth as she spoke.

“Jesse. Jesse Bennett.”

“My name’s Tracey Grasby. But my friends call me Trace.” She said this in a tone that conveyed that I was definitely not to consider myself in this category. She snapped her gum a couple of times, then walked a few steps over to the fence in front of the nearest house and perched herself there. “Where did you move from, anyway?” she asked, resting her feet, in shiny black sandals with thick platform soles, on the lowest rail of the fence. Her feet were bare under the sandals, and her toenails were painted pink. I looked down at my own feet, housed in a pair of ragged white plimsolls, my ankle socks sagging listlessly, as if wilted by the sudden summer heat.

“We moved from Hull,” I said.

“Really? We lived in Goole before we moved here. I didn’t like it there much. But it’s worse here. It’s really boring.” She gave me a derisive look that suggested that, despite the fact that I was new to the village, I should still be considered part of its unrelenting tedium. “We moved here three years ago, when my dad got a job in Bleakwick. Want to watch out for my dad. Says we’ve got to keep up the area, don’t want strangers lurking about. He’s liable to call the coppers on you. Either that or he’ll knock you for six.”

“I wasn’t lurking about, I was—”

“Getting the lay of the land. I heard you the first time.”

I felt myself blush again. As soon as I could reasonably extract myself from this conversation, I decided, I would go straight back home. I didn’t care if I had to spend every day of the summer with my mother; it would certainly be preferable to being under the scrutiny of this girl.

“Anyway, how old are you?” she asked.

“Thirteen.”

“Big for thirteen, aren’t you?”

“I’m tall for my age,” I said. Everyone commented on it. My mother, especially, was always complaining about how I just kept on growing. “Got the same big bones as our Mabel,” she’d say as she searched fruitlessly in the sale