Pandora’s Box
And we aren’t supposed to contact strangers we meet over the Internet. Everybody drums that into you. All the time. Especially if you’re kind of fragile, like me. At least he sounds…he sounds like he looks: young and kind and gentle.
‘I’ve missed you,’ he says it for me. His voice has gone real low. ‘There’s been so much going on. Granddad’s been ill. And then there’s been this game-show thing…’
‘I heard. Sorry about your granddad,’ I remember to say.
‘I got you those tickets,’ he tells me, ‘I didn’t forget you were after them. The next filming date is in a week or so. Or you could use them for the final.’
‘Did you?’ I can’t believe he did that. He really did it.
‘They’re screening the first episode tonight.’
‘Yeah, I know.’ My voice has gone kind of funny It’s because my mouth has gone all dry, speaking to him. ‘I’m going to watch it, for sure.’
‘I’m counting on it. You can tell me if I look like an ee-jut’. He says ee-jut for idiot. I can feel him grinning. He sounds pleased. If they’ve filmed several at once and he’s still going back then he must have done well and got through to the next round.
‘I hope this isn’t a bad time?’ I say after a bit. He’s gone quiet on the other end. I think maybe he’s just as shy as me? I can’t think of anything else to say. Why is this happening? When we talk online my fingers fly over the keys. He makes jokes and I laugh and laugh; he’s so witty and funny and fast. I can hear the front door opening now and I hope it’s just Daniel back from his bike ride, I don’t want it to be Mum back already. I hope if it’s Daniel he doesn’t come in here looking for me.
‘Not in the least. We’re never that busy in the morning,’ Kieran is saying. ‘But, Shelley, now that you’re here. I’ve got those tickets for you, like I said. Would you like me to bring them over to you sometime?’
‘No!’ My dad would kill me, and Mum, she would really kill me if she even knew I was talking to this man. ‘I mean, my parents…’ I trail off.
‘Of course. I understand completely. Never give out your address to someone from the Internet, right?’
Kieran doesn’t feel like a stranger, though. He’s got a nice voice; it’s everything I thought it would be. I think of Surinda, talking to Jallal for the first time, and I can’t help smiling. She’s right. You can fall in love over the phone. Just a little bit.
‘Perhaps we could meet somewhere public, though?’ I don’t want to put him off. This might be the one and only chance I get, and a great wave of bravery lifts me up.
‘There’s a fair up on Blackberry Common at the weekend. My mates are doing a mini-gig up there. Do you think you could make it?’
‘If I can get someone to help me with the wheelchair,’ I remind him. He hasn’t forgotten, has he? He does still remember that I’m in a wheelchair?
‘I’d help you myself but I know you don’t want to meet me alone. And you shouldn’t. You’re sensible to insist on that.’
‘How will you find me?’ I ask him. ‘Even if we agree a specific place…how will you know it’s me?’ My heart is hammering in my mouth. I’m actually arranging to meet Kieran! I still can’t believe I’m doing this.
‘Shell-ey!’ Daniel has just discovered that Mum is out. And he’s probably found that there aren’t any biscuits left. It’ll be something like that.
‘I’m here. Where would I be?’ I yell back.
My brother’s face is red and flushed as he pokes his head round my bedroom door.
‘We’re out of squash,’ he informs me.
‘I know.’ I wave the phone at him. ‘Drink water instead. I’m busy right now.’
‘Is that Mum?’ He eyes the phone suspiciously. I don’t talk to my friends all that often. I shake my head at him.
‘Who is it?’
‘It’s Kieran. A friend. Now scoot.’ My brother darts out the door again.
‘I’ll know it’s you because you are going to send me that photo of yourself that you keep promising me, right?’ Kieran’s voice is soft and coaxing. I get a crazy thought: maybe he thinks he’s falling for me too?
‘Right,’ my mouth says before my brain screams No! Too late.
‘Email me your mobile number, Pixie. We’ll firm up the times a little later. Okay?’
‘Okay.’
‘Thank you for your call,’ he says before he hangs up. Thank you for your call. As if I were a business associate. But he sounded as if he really meant it, though.
I’ve got a date. Ohmigod. Who shall I tell? Surinda, of course, because I’ve only got a date if she’ll take me to it.
And she will if she wants those Beat the Bank tickets.
When I phone her, my fingers still trembling and sweaty on the keypad, her mum tells me that she isn’t there. Surinda is at school, she says. I don’t know about that, but I’ll have to call back later. Her voice sounds a little arch, as if she’s wondering why I’m not in school, too.
Stuck on the back of my bedroom door there is an old, gilt-edged mirror. It used to be Mum’s. It came from the old house and she didn’t have anywhere else to put it. Maybe she didn’t want to be reminded, either, of the days when our whole world felt so much bigger—and so much more capable of expanding—than it is now. They were talking of moving to a bigger house in the countryside one time. That’s what Dad ended up with. We got Fetherby Road.
This used to be my ‘dressing-up’ mirror. I used to put on Mum’s scarves and her high heels and her lipstick. Oh yes I did! I can’t believe it now but I used to twirl around like a princess. What a twit.
I don’t think Mum even owns a pair of shoes any more that aren’t flats. She used to have some velvet-black stilettos that I loved, and a silver pashmina that she’d throw over her evening dresses (I loved that shawl, I think I’ve still got it stowed away in the back of a drawer somewhere, I saved it from the Oxfam bag). She used to wear a lot of emerald greens to show up the auburn in her hair, and dark russet-reds that showed up her real beauty. That’s a pity because she used to look so glam going out to Dad’s ‘corporate dinners’, as they called them. She told me they were very boring, really; it was only the chance to dress up that she liked!
Well, this mirror. I never look at myself in it. Why would I want to see what I’ve come to look like now? But once I put the phone down I suddenly get the urge to look at myself. I close the door and take a deep breath. Then I peer at what I can see in the half-light.
My arms are skinnier than I remember them. I look like a thin weed, struggling through a shady copse of bushes, all gangly and spindly and droopy in my chair. My face looks too pale. I could look a lot better than this if I took some trouble over it. I know this because everyone says I look so much like my Aunt Lily, and she was a beauty when she was my age. Naff fashion sense, admittedly, but you could see she had something when you look at her pictures. Perhaps I should send him a picture of her? Lol. Nah, not really; I just need to do myself up a bit.
I wonder what I would look like standing up? I’m so sick of sitting in this hunk of metal. I haven’t stood up by myself for such a very long time. They tell me I mustn’t put any pressure on the bones of my legs. That’s why they gave me Bessie so long ago, even when I was well capable of walking by myself. I could walk, but they didn’t want me fracturing the bones in my legs.
Now I’ve got this overwhelming urge to try standing up on my own two feet. I want to know what I would look like standing up, by myself, without anyone else there to hold me.
Grabbing hold of the knobs on the chest of drawers near the door I pull myself up. It’s damn hard. My arms are so much weaker than I thought. Inch by inch I do it, gritting my teeth, gingerly feeling the weight resting on my legs. The effort is huge. The effort is Mount Everest to a crawling baby. For a second, just a brief second, I see what I might look like if I were normal. I’m not as tall as I thought I was. It’s just the stick-thinness of me that gives the impression of height. Yuk. I have dark circles around my eyes that most girls of my age would not have. My mouth droops down a bit at the edges. My complexion is a bit grey. My hair is okay-ish. I’m going to get Surinda to cut out the black bit that I dyed into my blonde fringe. Or else she can dye it back to blonde. What will he think if he sees me, looking as I do?
Maybe he won’t notice anything but my eyes. My eyes are looking different today; talking to him has put a new light into them. He’s made me remember what it feels like to be alive.
My legs give way just then and I collapse back into Bessie again, feeling every limb trembling with a strange fear and excitement and pleasure at the same time. I shouldn’t have done that, but it feels good that I did. It makes me think that there are other, unthinkable things that I still might be able to do.
Just like Mum, really. She had to move beyond what was permissible or possible in order to get what she dreamed of.
27 October 1978
In the car on the way home tonight Dad said something that made me sit up. He’s heard that Gordon—that Ilkeley chap, he called him—is going to be needing a new partner soon. Amelie’s leaving, apparently. Dad said, perhaps we should ask his parents to take a look at what you two are capable of, eh? And he glanced at me in his rear-view mirror when he said it.
Could it be true that they would consider it? I knew about Amelie leaving, of course, from Gordon, but even though we’ve talked about it secretly, what it would be like if we could dance together, I never in a million years dreamed that it might possibly come true. Mum and Dad have always been so strict about me and Lily sticking together; they never would have even considered anything like this before.
Oh god, if it could happen, though, I would surely be the happiest girl in the whole wide world!
I like the thought of that: my mum being young and having dreams and being happy. Once upon a time, when I was still a princess, twirling in my mum’s high heels in front of this mirror, my dad caught me in his arms and told me: ‘One of these days I’m going to make all your dreams come true, princess, you just see if I don’t.’ That’s the kind of sugar-coated person my dad is, really. He might be a corporate hot-shot and all that, doing law for the stock exchange, dealing in ‘futures’ as Mum once told me, but one thing I do know is he can’t deal with ‘futures’ that look less rosy than he wants them to be.
Still, I remember him saying that now. Not because he stuck with us for long enough to ever find out what my dreams might be. Not because of that. But because, in some way I really can’t explain, him saying that made me believe that there were certain doors that one day might be opened. Even if it’s me who has to open them for myself, and not him that does it. And I’ve just got myself a date with Kieran O’Keefe, haven’t I? So something’s going right…
11 Shelley
Surinda is coming round after school, she said. She’s suddenly become interested in schoolwork whereas she never was before. ‘I’ve got to get my exams, haven’t I? I’ve got to do something with my life. Jallal will expect me to work.’ This coming on top of a year in which she’s spent the best part of each term off playing hooky.
I’m not even sure I want her around today. Not if she’s going to be as narky as she was to me on the phone last night. I told her I’d got the Beat the Bank tickets and that’s why she’s coming, but you’d think she’s the one doing me a favour and not the other way round. Ever since this Jallal business she’s become a very different person, I think.
It’s only 3.30 p.m. so it’ll be a little while before she shows; this afternoon is dragging on forever. I’ve tidied the place up a bit. This room is not huge so I had to. By the time you take into account the bed, the ward robe, the desk with the keyboard and Bessie, there isn’t enough room left to swing a cat. She’ll have to sit on the end of the mattress, that’s all.
I don’t suppose she’ll be staying that long. Just as long as she agrees to take me to Blackberry Common I don’t care how long she stays. My stomach’s all in a knot over it.
If she says no I don’t think I’ll ever speak to her again.
She’ll have to be prepared to help me get onto the bus. She won’t like that. Surinda isn’t known for her patience. She’s meeting Jallal the week after next, and she’s angry because they’ve had to put it off a few days. It seems he couldn’t get an earlier flight out from Jakarta. I pointed out that gives her a few extra days to drop those ten pounds she’s on about losing before she meets the bridegroom but that didn’t cheer her up any.
Anyway, the bus. I haven’t been on one for a very long time. Daniel gets on one sometimes and he says they’re often empty. I wanted to ask him this morning if he’s ever seen anyone get on it in a wheelchair but I don’t want to arouse his suspicions.
He’s back from school now, I heard him rooting around in the kitchen a minute ago, getting himself a drink.
‘Shell?’ Talk of the devil.
‘Yeah?’
‘Your room looks different.’ He’s standing at the door, looking puzzled. He’s probably wondering why there aren’t any papers or clothes on the floor.
‘I’ve tidied it, dunderhead. You should do yours more often too.’
‘Oh.’ My brother stands there for a moment, flummoxed. His face is red, his hair all sticky-up and sweaty because it’s hot outside and he’s just got back from school. ‘I’m going out on my bike,’ he says shortly. ‘Tell Mum.’
‘You’ve just come in’, I say. I return my attention to the nail varnish I was applying just a moment before. He’s just come in and now he’s going out again. And why? Because he can. My heart sinks a little. I remember the times when we used to go out on our bikes together. I was the one who used to encourage him to ride. He was so scared. He would never have done anything at all if it weren’t for me. I wonder if he’s still got those stabilisers on. In a minute I will hear him practising, round and round the drive up front.
Sometimes lately the sounds outside go quiet and I know he’s gone a little way up the road to his friend’s house. His world is expanding. That’s good; that’s the way it should be. I envy my brother that.
When I look at the light brown side-panel of my wardrobe and the jutting-out edge of my computer desk, my world feels as if it’s shrinking, even though I’ve just picked up all the crap off the floor.
I want to see something different. A different view; different faces. I want to be somewhere else.
I wheel myself over to the window and take a look at the view from there. We have a little garden. Just in front of my window there’s a tiny azalea bush just coming into pink bloom. It’s the same colour as my nail varnish, I realise now. The bird feeder that Daniel hung from the washing line is empty again. The garden is very green. It wasn’t a couple of weeks ago, but now we’ve entered May the whole earth seems to have woken up with a flourish.
I wish my room were a tiny bit bigger. I wish I could get in and out of it a bit more easily. I feel so stuck. Deep in the pit of my stomach there’s this feeling of stuckness. I’m like a rat in a cage. I’ve got to get out of this place, I’ve got to. I’m withering away.
And with a sinking feeling I realise that it’s already begun, the shrivelling that happened to Miriam; it’s happening to me! Not in my body, not yet, but it’s happening in my heart.
The knock on my bedroom door, when it comes, is so loud that it really startles me.
‘You in there?’ Surinda is standing in the doorway, her schoolbag placed primly in front of her. It doesn’t look very full.
‘Your front door was just…wide open, man.’ Her kohl-lined eyes take in my little bedroom in one quick sweep. She looks at me, smiling. I get the feeling my place is smaller than she imagined. ‘So, you got those tickets, Shell?’ Surinda doesn’t sit down. Does she think I’m going to hand over the precious tickets just like that so she can make her excuses and be gone? ‘Because I’ve got to get back,’ she’s saying, ‘me mam’s taking me shopping for Jallal-clothes.’
‘Great,’ I say. ‘Jallal-clothes. Look, Surinda, you’d better sit down because there’s something I’ve got to explain about the tickets.’
She perches obediently on the edge of my bed and I try to figure out what it is that is different about her. Something is. Her hair is slicked back and held in a pink rosette in the middle so you can see her dangly golden earrings. Her skin is dark, a little more greasy, with dark spots over her forehead. She has dark circles under her eyes. She used to look better than this, I think. But that isn’t what’s changed; it’s something else. She’s got a bit more confidence about her, that’s what it is. Like she’s been places and done some things. She’s had a little experience of the world. And me, stuck here, I’m feeling at a distinct disadvantage: I’ve had none.
‘Go on,’ she says. She’s picked up my nail-varnish bottle and is looking at the label.
‘Those tickets that we’re after, we’ve got to go down to Blackberry Common this Saturday and collect them.’
‘What?’ She’s frowning in annoyance now. ‘I’ve got things planned for this weekend, girl. My hair, for one.’
‘If you want the tickets…’ I say.
‘Why can’t they just be posted?’ She puts the nail-polish bottle down on my bed. ‘You ring them and tell them that you want those tickets posted.’
‘Ring who?’ Surinda is looking cross now. I thought she was desperate for those tickets. This whole Jallal business is ruining everything. ‘We can’t ring anyone. We’ve got to go in person.’
‘I don’t think I can help you.’ She’s shaking her head in a vague kind of way. ‘My time’s all taken up now. Things aren’t turning out exactly how we’d like them, either.’
‘What things?’ My heart is thumping again. If Surinda won’t take me to meet Kieran, then who will? Daniel is too young to be of any use. Solly would never approve of me meeting an Internet bloke—and he’d be sure to tell my mum. And she can’t know. She’d tell Dad and he’d never have any of it. They’ll ruin everything for me if they know. Surinda is the only one who I can trust with this; she has to do it.
‘Jallal’s dad, it turns out, doesn’t actually own the factory in Jakarta that we were told he did.’
‘What factory?’
‘The condom factory!’ She gives me a look that suggests I must be a total imbecile. ‘The one my family were told he owns. It turns out he’s just the manager.’
‘And this matters because…?’
‘Because it means they aren’t so rich, of course. Why else would it matter?’
‘Why indeed?’ I’m getting this incredibly strong urge to giggle but I have a feeling it might not do my case any good so I try my best to stifle it by coughing into my hand.
‘I’m still marrying him, though,’ she says decisively. ‘Mum and Dad still reckon he’s a good catch. He has a third cousin who’s very high up in the government, they say.’
Well, if he doesn’t make the condom-factory-owner grade there’s always the third cousin to fall back on, I think.
‘Always useful to have,’ I agree.
‘I don’t think you’re quite getting this, are you?’ She takes her chewing-gum in between her fingers and looks around for somewhere to deposit it. ‘This is serious,’ she tells me heatedly. ‘This is my life we’re talking about here. It matters very much.’
‘I’m sorry. I am taking it seriously. Look, can’t you think of something to put off the hair appointment? Have it done the day before you see him. It’ll keep better. Krok will be so disappointed if we don’t go to Blackberry Common.’ I don’t know if that last bit is true, but it sounds good. ‘And what if Jallal is the possessive type and he never lets you out of the house once you’re his wife? Won’t you regret it then?’
There is a stunned silence for a minute. Then, failing to find any bin in my room, she pops the stale chewing-gum back into her mouth.
‘Kieran…will be there? You mean we’re picking up the tickets from him, himself?’ Surinda sounds a little too enthusiastic for my liking, all of a sudden, and why does she call him Kieran? ‘Well why didn’t you say so before?’ She stands up and looks at herself in the mirror behind my bedroom door. ‘Oh god, Shell, you should have said. Of course I’ll come.’
‘We’ll have to take the bus,’ I warn her.
‘The bus. Right.’ Her eyes have gone a moist, glowing shade of black. She fancies him. I can’t believe it. She fancies my Kieran. ‘There was a lovely picture of him in this week’s Telly Stars magazine.’
Was there?
‘He’s only a contestant on a game show,’ I tell her shortly. ‘Are you sure it was Kieran? He isn’t actually a telly star, is he?’ Surinda’s uncle owns a corner shop so she gets to look at all the trashy magazines as soon as they come out.
‘He’s on the telly. He’s drop-dead gorgeous and people have noticed him,’ she asserts. ‘Someone from Corrie has offered to introduce him to her agent, apparently. I think it’s them blue eyes, myself.’
Blimey. At this rate the world and his wife will all know about my Kieran. Maybe this Beat the Bank show wasn’t such a good idea after all? All those beautiful girls out there will see him and then what chance have I got?
‘Well anyway, about the tickets, you can’t tell anyone,’ I warn her. ‘My mum must never find out. She’ll kill me.’
‘Not a soul,’ she breathes. ‘Not a soul.’
‘You can make it then?’ I watch anxiously as she smooths down her school skirt over ample hips.
‘I’ve lost weight, haven’t I?’ She turns to look at me and I nod rapidly in agreement. Who knows if she has or not? Who cares?
‘I’ve not been eating a thing,’ she glowers. ‘Apart from my food, of course. Ohmigod. Kieran O’Keefe! I’m going to meet Kieran O’Keefe.’
‘Well, I am, actually. You’re just coming along for the ride,’ I remind her sharply. ‘You’ve got Jallal to look forward to.’
‘Course I do,’ she laughs. ‘We’ll both be sorted then, won’t we?’
I wish I could trust her more, really I do. I don’t trust her. But then, what option have I got? There is no one else who I could ask to take me there so it’ll have to be her.
‘It’s going to be so hard not to mention it to all them other girls at school, innit?’ Her eyes are dark as blackcurrants. I wish I could see into them. If she tells anyone and word gets back to my mum—which it will, if Michelle gets wind of it—then I’m done for.
‘If anyone finds out and my mum stops me going then you won’t be going either.’
‘If anyone finds out what?’ Daniel is standing at the doorway, his skateboard under his arm, looking from Surinda to me and back again.
‘Don’t you knock on your big sister’s door?’ Surinda gives him a withering look.
‘Mum’s gone out,’ he says to me.
‘I know.’
‘Why has she gone? How long will she be?’
I shrug. ‘I don’t know.’ I’m going to leave it at that—I don’t want him in here interfering when I’m planning something as important as this. But on the other hand I don’t want to be mean to him either. Especially since I don’t know how much he’s heard.
‘She won’t be too long, I don’t think. She’s gone to Solly’s.’
‘I’m going to go to Mote Park,’ he says. ‘With Lloyd. His mum’s taking us. Is that all right?’ If he’s going with an adult that should be okay, I think. ‘They’ve got a skate-ramp now,’ he adds, his eyes gleaming. They didn’t when Danny and I used to go there, I think. ‘They’ve got a whole new host of things down there that they never had before. You’d love it, Shell.’
My eyes skim over the skateboard. He hasn’t got the best sense of balance, my brother. I hope he’s telling the truth about Lloyd’s mother. He’ll need to have someone there for him if he falls. It should be someone like me, really.