Whitehart

Extract from long abandoned draft of a story that I will get around to writing one day….

‘Aww eh, Mam! I’d love to have her for a couple of weeks, but when I’m not working. She’ll only get bored and turn stroppy,’ John said.

Even from the traditional Morgan family listening post on the second stair down Jo could hear the old familiar whine in her brother’s voice. Mum was trying to dump her on him for the holiday – charming! Well she could get stuffed, there was no way Jo was spending the summer in the middle of nowhere.

The salty smell of boiled over potatoes wafted up the stairs. They’d be having a roast tonight because John was home. Everything went five-star when golden boy decided to put in an appearance.

‘Didn’t you see the news about what happened?’ Mum asked.

‘Yeah. About Michael Connor? Poor kid.’

‘It’s getting worse round here. Everyday there’s something else. I’m worried if our Josephine doesn’t get out she’s going to end up involved in something terrible.’

Jo snorted. She wondered what would rate as terrible in Mum’s world. Probably under-aged drinking or smoking or, heavens forbid, sex. Fat chance of that. Walking miracles didn’t have sex.

The front door slammed with such force that the vibrations echoed through the wooden floorboards. Dad was home and probably drunk – it was Friday. That meant John would soon be upstairs, looking for somewhere to hide. Jo crept back to her room.

She flopped onto the bed and grabbed her mobile. No messages. It was odd to think Mikey would never text her again. He wouldn’t do anything again. He’d been swallowed by nothingness, eaten alive by the black hole the bullet left. Jo wondered what it felt like to be nothing. She wondered if he had thought about her as the blood drained from his body. She wondered about a lot of things these days. Jo shoved the phone in her blazer pocket, turned onto her side and stared into the shining eyes of Our Lady of Lourdes.

‘What’ve you got to look so bloody miserable about?’ Jo whispered to the Madonna. She reached out and took hold of the prayer card Mum had left on her bed the night before exams had started. I have prayed for you at the feet of Our Lady of Lourdes, it read. Jo wondered if Our Lady ever got sick of the sound of Mum’s voice.

There was a knock at the door.

‘Yeah?’ Jo called without moving. John was so damned predictable. He might be fourteen years older than her, but he could no more cope with Dad drunk than she could.

‘All right if I come in?’ he asked.

‘I suppose so.’

John closed the bedroom door and wandered around the room, stopping to pick up odd knick-knacks that were scattered across the shelves, mostly cheap ornaments Nan had won on the bingo.

‘Mum thinks you’re going to hell,’ he said eventually. He parked his bum on the windowsill amidst her cuddly toy collection and folded his arms.

Jo smiled at him and returned the prayer card to the bedside cabinet. ‘Would that hell be located in Yorkshire?’

John snorted. ‘Oh, she’s tried that one. I mean that she thinks you’re gonna start on the drink and hard drugs, either before or after having several illegitimate children. I couldn’t quite work out which way round it was gonna happen.’

‘What’s she like?’ Jo muttered.

‘You’re all right though?’

‘Yeah, fine.’ Jo sat up and began plaiting her unrelentingly straight mud-brown hair. It had been as curly as John’s before the miracle, and almost as blonde.

‘It was sad about that lad getting shot. Mum says he was in your year at primary school.’

Jo continued plaiting. She couldn’t look at him. ‘Yeah.’  If she looked at him, John would know – he always did.

‘You weren’t mates or anything though?’

‘Nahh. I knew him, but we weren’t mates.’ She told herself she wasn’t lying. They hadn’t been friends. Back then Jo was never in school enough to make proper mates. And now he was dead so she’d never know if they could’ve been anything.

‘Sure you’re all right? You’re not normally this quiet.’ John perched on the edge of the bed.

Jo could feel him staring at her with those serious brown eyes that all the girls loved. It wasn’t fair. John hadn’t just got her share of the family brains, but also the body, the charm and the long curling eyelashes that he just had no right to.

She just wished he wouldn’t look at her like that.  She’d end up telling him and then all hell would break loose.

‘God! Don’t you start.’

‘All right! I only asked.’ John brushed a hand though his sandy hair. He was wearing it shorter than he used to. It was all part of the new look. He’d gone through university and his first job looking like a complete scruff. Then one day he showed up for Sunday dinner with a suit and a personality transplant. He hadn’t been the same since.

‘What’s that?’ John asked.

Jo followed his eyes to the angry red scar on her thigh. She quickly tugged down her school skirt. ‘It’s nothing. Fell over.’ Jo’s heart beat so hard it hurt. She scooted around him and got to her feet. ‘Did I hear Dad come in?’ she asked, rearranging the soft toys that John’s backside had knocked over.

‘Yeah. He seems his usual cheery self.’

Jo snorted. ‘You know Dad.’

‘If you wanted to come to mine for a couple of weeks you could, y’know. Might get Mum off your back.’

Jo shook her head and stared out of the window. Three of the local scallies were eyeing up John’s ego-mobile. ‘No offence, John, but I’d rather spend two weeks in Walton Prison than Yorkshire. They all talk funny. And I’ve heard about what they get up to with sheep.’

‘It’s not really Yorkshire. It’s on the border with Lancashire.’

‘And you think that makes it more appealing?’

‘Don’t you want to get out of here?’ John sighed. ‘There’s more to life than this place. Have you started thinking about what you’re going to do at college?’

‘I’m not going to college.’ The baseball-capped lads had stopped circling and were examining one wheel in particular. Jo wondered what they found so fascinating. It was only a flipping car.

‘Of course you’re going to college. What are you going to do otherwise? Go and work in some supermarket for the rest of your life?’

‘We’re not all like you, Dr Brainy. I hate school.’

‘So you’re going to turn into some waster and hang around on street corners drinking cheap cider?’

‘You mean like the wasters that are trying to let down your tyres?’

John leapt off the bed and leaned over Jo’s shoulder. ‘Little bastards!’ And then he was gone.

Jo slumped onto the bed and hitched up her skirt. It hadn’t really healed. A little way from the end the wound glistened like strawberry jelly. She could hear John chasing the lads down the street, shouting threats all the way. He should know better. He’d been away from Liverpool too long, that was his problem. Survival rule number one: don’t make threats you don’t want visited back on you. That’s what Mikey had taught her.

She picked at the edge of the scab. She wanted to rip it off. She wanted to see a river of blood snake across her skin.

The door burst open. Jo pushed down her skirt and turned to see Dad standing with his hands on his hips.

‘Did you not hear your mam calling you?’ His face was red and full of Guinness, and half his shirttail had fallen loose of his blue work trousers. His eyebrows shot up when she didn’t reply.

‘No, Dad. Sorry.’

‘She needs your help putting the tea out, when you’re quite finished hiding in your room.’

‘I wasn’t hiding,’ Jo muttered as she eased past him

‘Sometimes I wonder what you get up to up here,’ he shouted.

Jo started down the stairs. ‘Fat chance of getting up to anything in this house,’ she called back. ‘Privacy isn’t something the Morgans understand.’

A floorboard cracked as Dad started down the stairs. Jo made a run for it.

***

©Sharon Jones, 2007.