I just didn’t have Zoe’s imagination, I reckoned, because I couldn’t see anything but misery in the place. The damp and cold of the staircases gave us all goosebumps. We couldn’t wait to get out into the fresh air.
4
Birthday
In early June, it was coming up for Zoe’s birthday. It was the first time I realised she was older than me. Kerry confided Zoe had been kept back a year, because she’d had so much time off. Zoe spotted a flyer for a gig with three different local goth bands. She was desperate to go.
‘That’s all I want to do for my birthday,’ she said, waving the leaflet at me as we sat on our coats on the damp low wall at school during morning break. ‘I wouldn’t want presents or anything if I could just go to that gig.’
I squeezed her lightly on the shoulder. I’d guessed there was no way Zoe’s mum would allow it. From the way Zoe described things, her mum’s mission in life was to make Zoe miserable. Mine probably would’ve agreed, as long as my dad could pick me up at the end of it. But Zoe’s mum had said a flat no. The tickets were £20 each. I could have eked it out of my dad, if I’d worked on him for a bit, but Zoe never had any cash at all.
Kerry frowned at the flyer. ‘I’ve never heard of any of these bands,’ she said. ‘How do you know they’re not rubbish, anyway?’
Zoe made a low growling noise in her throat.
‘Why don’t we do something else?’ Kerry said, trying to get Zoe to cheer up and going exactly the wrong way about it.
‘Such as?’ Zoe turned to Kerry and her eyes were icy diamonds. ‘What would you like to do? Play Scrabble with big brother? Go to church and sing some hymns?’
Kerry went pink. She did go to church, every weekend and even sometimes during the week. Zoe teased her about it, when she was bored enough to pay Kerry any attention.
‘I thought maybe we could all go out and have a pizza or something,’ Kerry said, in a sort of a mumble, because I think she already knew Zoe was going to shoot her down.
‘Why the hell would I want to do that? Why would I want to spend my birthday listening to you? It’s bad enough every other day.’
‘Zoe,’ I said, shifting my legs. The cold from the brick wall was starting to make me feel numb. ‘Don’t.’
Kerry looked like she’d been slapped. ‘I just wanted to –’
‘Just shut up!’ Zoe shouted. Really shouted. Both Kerry and I jumped.
Kerry got up and said something about going to the toilet.
‘I know you’re going to cry, stupid baby,’ Zoe called after her. Kerry didn’t turn around.
I looked at Zoe. She blinked and screwed up her eyes. ‘What’s up?’ I asked, giving her a gentle nudge with my elbow.
Zoe shook her head and said nothing. She was staring down at the ground, so hard that I looked to see what was there.
‘Is it your mum?’
Zoe shrugged. ‘No more than usual.’ Her hair was drooping down at either side of her face, hiding her expression.
‘I wish I could get you to that gig,’ I said. ‘I’d love to go too.’
Zoe sniffed and looked up. ‘Yeah?’
I nodded.
‘I was thinking,’ Zoe said. ‘If I said I was staying with you – and you said you were, I don’t know, staying with someone else, maybe we could go to the gig.’
I thought about this. ‘How, though?’
‘Suppose I got the money for the tickets.’
‘But how would you -?’
‘Never mind that for now. Just suppose I did. Would you be up for it?’
I felt something like pins and needles creeping through my body. ‘If we went to the gig, and you were meant to be staying with me, where would we go for the rest of the night?’
Zoe looked at me. ‘We could ask Jodie. I bet she’d let us crash on her floor.’
‘What about that Dave, though? He gives me the creeps.’
‘Me too. But it’d just be for one night. We could stick together. We’d be fine.’
‘I could ask my dad if he’d pick us up and take us back to mine?’
Zoe wrinkled her nose. ‘Too embarrassing. We’d look like little kids.’
‘How would you get the ticket money then?’
Zoe looked away from me. ‘I’ve got a birthday coming up, remember? I’m bound to get some cash from somewhere. That’s just a detail, anyway. Are you in?’
I didn’t dare hesitate. ‘I’m in.’
Zoe grabbed my hand and squeezed it. ‘We haven’t got to mention this to Pizza Face,’ she said.
‘Kerry? No. Sure. But, Zoe –’
The lesson bell made us both groan. Zoe got up from the wall and pulled me up after her. ‘Finally,’ she said. ‘Something’s going to happen. I have a reason for living after all.’
I laughed as we ran back to the class, brushing damp and grit from my coat.
I’d already bought Zoe a birthday present. It was a little pewter box lined with red velvet. Inside, wrapped in black tissue paper, was a phial of a scent called Poisoned Wine, which was her favourite of the ones we always sampled in the shop every weekend. It came with a little scroll of paper listing its ingredients: things like amber, patchouli and something called dragon’s blood. She was going to love it.
Kerry told me she’d bought Zoe a postcard of the Shieldsgate skyline at night and that she’d put it in a frame. ‘It looks really like the view from Jodie’s window,’ she said. ‘Do you think Zoe will be pleased?’
‘’Course she will,’ I said. I was a bit jealous of this idea myself, though you couldn’t really guess how Zoe would react to anything Kerry gave her.
‘What is she going to do on her birthday?’ Kerry was good at forgetting, or seeming to forget, most of the times
