But then she spotted the Sports Block, and for the first time since she left the Yorkshire hotel she smiled. A sharp, vivid image of her and the girls popped into her head. Sitting up there with Steph, Kassy and Jo, customising their uniforms with tiny tweaks. Forming trends that would race across the school the next day. Of all those boys who kept wandering past them, gawping at their curves like preprogrammed lab mice. Mostly those boys were looking at Kassy West, of course, who was such a force in school that even the teachers kind of worshipped her. The way she glided into rooms, swooping her fingers through her blonde mane, like a frickin goddess. The way she’d answer the teachers back with such harshness, it was a wonder she was never expelled. The way she treated the boys like crap. Kassy would stand in a dinner queue, posing as if there was a TV camera somewhere. One that only she knew about. She’d have this patented tilt of the head that said Kassy West didn’t give a shit about anything. Which drew you to her, ironically. Like cats do. Who treat you like dirt yet have this twisted way of earning your admiration.
Whenever Kassy sat with Rachel and the rest of the girls, they all looked like the cover of a cool Blondie album. Whenever Kassy wasn’t there, they became Bewitched. But the point was Kassy was always there, because the girls were always together. Which made all of them strong. That was the part that Rachel missed. That she missed very much, actually.
Steph Ellis the neat freak with a blond afro, always on another planet, but piss-your-pants funny. Jo Finch, the flappy dumb one who couldn’t even spell the word ‘spell’ yet would sit up with you and stroke your hand for hours, listening to you cry about how crap your parents could be. And Rachel, the funky alternative one, the only one who ever had the guts to stand up to Kassy’s ranting.
She felt a weird sense of disorientation, regression, even. Driving past that school. Felt that familiar, deep desire to be with those girls again. To be in that collective at that particular time. To be what they all once were. Then the weird yet familiar switcheroo happened, where the thought of being back in that group wasn’t a fun prospect at all. It was frightening. Disgusting, even.
One of them was dead.
Poor old Steph.
Statistically speaking she always knew this day would come. It hits anyone who moves away from home. It’s almost cliché. Chris Rea could write a song about it. ‘Driving Home for Funerals’. The retreat we all do for the aftermath and funeral of old best friends. People who had barely been acquaintances for the latest third of your life, and yet are moulded into your neural pathways deeper than anybody you will ever meet again.
She swung her car into the Pay and Display at Menham Park, knowing her old house on Barley Street overlooked this entire area. But of course, she flat out refused to turn and actually look at her street. She’d have to process this entire Menham experience in chunks. The town and the girls first – that was intense enough. Then Mum and the house would come after.
She shivered. Was that the smell of her old dead cat Pob on the air? Were his dead ears twitching up in the dusty rooms of that old house behind her? Were dead eyes rolling left in dry skull sockets, delighted to see her car pull in? Was Pob purring and slinking through the trees and the soil, purring in his own way, saying, welcome Rachel … welcome back to the house of death?
Her hand was trembling.
She kept facing forward and power-walked toward the gazebo, for this insane picnic Jo had said they were having. With the Hodges of all people. Something she would never have attended under normal circumstance until a dead friend finally shook her out of her selfish fear. She was holding a packed lunch in her hand, which made her feel so pathetic and childlike that she felt like throwing it in the bin so she could just chew on her own heavy breath instead.
She passed the playground that still had the same old metal swings and roundabout. They hadn’t even replaced the hideous metal rocking horse that used to terrify her as a kid. The one with the flaring nostrils. The one that wanted to crush children’s hands and turn them into Eton Mess. The only thing they’d added was a set of warped mirrors, the type you’d get in an amusement park. She caught sight of herself in the most normal one, and flattened the sides of her green cord jacket down. She grabbed her floppy black fringe and slapped her hipster quiff back to its usual position. But as she logged that snapshot of herself in the mirror, she saw a stereotype. The artsy, creative girl, with the MacBook Pro and a frequently updated blog. And she could almost smell the pretentious vinyl scent on her fingertips from the album collection she’d been building back in her flat. Of David Bowie and the Beatles and other bands that she was really trying to get into. And the funky analogue watch with the Japanese anime character, that seemed to suddenly tick loudly like a social bomb on her wrist.
Seeing the reflection slowed her to a stop.
Her persona, her look, fitted into the jazz cafe orbit of the BBC Media Village in Manchester. The Clark Kent nerd glasses, which looked so great on her, seemed now like a sad attempt at transparency. Like this was an obvious declaration that she was a lesbian, since nobody in Menham would even know that she was. But she’d been in Menham for what, twelve minutes? And already her home town was denying her a chance to dress how she wanted
