You Against Me

‘Good. Wait there.’

He wasn’t gone long, came back with the hair clippers and planted them in her hand. ‘Cut it all off.’

She was stunned. ‘All of it?’

‘Short back and sides. I don’t want it long any more.’

‘I don’t know how to use them. I’ve never done it before.’

‘It’s easy, like cutting grass.’

He set up a chair in the corner of the room by the mirror, then spread newspaper on the floor.

‘Will you be angry if I get it wrong?’

Tom ripped off his T-shirt. ‘Promise I won’t. Anyway, I’ve got no choice. The nearest barber is in the high street, and my bail conditions don’t let me anywhere near it.’

He straddled the chair and Ellie stood behind him, wielding the clippers. Their eyes met in the mirror.

She said, ‘This is the most dangerous thing anyone’s ever asked me to do.’

He laughed. ‘Then you’ve led a very sheltered life.’

But it had taken Tom ages to grow his hair. It was what defined him, how people described him. Tom – you know, the boy with all that blond hair. That he wanted it gone was scary. That he’d chosen her to do it, that the bedroom door was shut, that it was private – these were the things that made it feel dangerous.

‘Honestly, Tom, I don’t think I can. What if I take off too much and you end up a skinhead?’

‘Please, Ellie, before I change my mind.’

She held up a long strand of hair, but hesitated with the clippers. ‘You might change your mind? What if you do?’

‘I’m kidding. Just do it.’

Handful after handful fell to the floor and onto her bare feet. It drifted beyond the newspaper, driven by the breeze from the window, and piled up in the corner like a nest. His face changed as the hair fell. His eyes looked bigger, his ears appeared, the back of his neck became vulnerable. It was as if she was exposing him.

‘You look younger,’ was all she said when he asked why she looked sad. And when he wanted to know what was sad about being young, she told him that actually she was glad to be cutting his hair because she’d always been jealous of how good he looked with it long…

‘I want your metabolism too,’ she said. ‘You get to eat whatever you want and look like a stick, but I eat one chocolate and I turn to pudge. How come you get all the luck?’

He shook his head. ‘You don’t even know, do you?’

‘Know what?’

‘How pretty you are. Everyone says so.’

‘Everyone?’

‘You know what my mate Freddie calls you?’

She shook her head, slightly afraid.

‘Mermaid, that’s what.’

‘That’s not even a compliment. Mermaids just sit about on rocks all day.’

He laughed. ‘They’re not easy, that’s the point. No one gets to shag a mermaid because they don’t let you.’

Ellie thought it was more to do with the fact that they had nothing below the waist but a tail, but maybe she was wrong about that, so she didn’t say anything. Instead, she turned the attention back to him, because despite everything, she loved him and he needed to know that. As she clipped the hair round his ears, she quietly recited a list of all the nice things he’d ever done for her.

It included everything, from drawing pictures for her to colour in (which was years ago), through starting school (when he let her hang out with him in the playground, even though she was two years younger and a girl). Right up to the holiday in Kenya when the dog tried to bite her a second time and he stood in the way (which was the most heroic thing anyone had ever done for her).

‘Before we moved house,’ she said, ‘whenever my friends came round, you’d always hang out for a bit and talk to us. If we ever saw you in town, you’d wave or come over and chat, like you were genuinely interested. No one else’s brother ever bothered. I’ve always been proud of you for that.’

He smiled up at her. ‘You say the sweetest things.’

‘Well, you do the sweetest things. You made that speech at my sixteenth birthday saying how I was the best sister in the world, remember? And when I did that stupid leaving concert at school, you clapped loudest even though I was total rubbish and forgot all my words.’

Tom laughed as she reminded him of these things. It was great. Everything pulled together. He told the story of the summer they’d gone camping in southern France and the site was dull, dull, dull. The swimming pool was shut and the entertainment was rubbish and the only good things were the patisserie and the kites they’d bought from the shop.

‘We found that hill,’ he said, ‘you know the one? We flew the kites from the top and when we got bored we rolled all the way down and ran back up again.’

Ellie was amazed he remembered. She could have cut his hair for hours then. She loved how cosy it was together in the spare room, how she could hear the vague sounds of people setting up the party, their voices low and far away. It gave her courage. ‘Can we talk about what happened that night?’

He swung round on the chair to look at her. ‘Really? Can’t I just have a break?’

Ellie lowered her eyes. ‘There are things I don’t understand.’

He frowned at her. ‘Have you been talking to anyone?’

‘Not really.’ Ellie had a drifting sensation, as if this conversation was surrounded by smoke. ‘I haven’t been back to school yet.’

There was silence as they looked at each other. ‘If I go down, Ellie, it’ll be the end of everything for me.’

‘I know.’

‘There are guys in there…’ His voice trailed off and he shook his head as if he’d seen the most unspeakable things. ‘It was the longest two weeks of my life.’

There was something in his eyes. Their dark shine reminded her of the autumn he broke his arm, how he sat on the football field and howled with fury, because he had to miss the whole season and he’d only just made the team. She looked away.

‘There,’ she said. ‘I’ve finished.’ She stroked her hands over his hair, smoothing flyaway strands. ‘It’s cute.’

‘Cute?’ He rubbed his own hand over his head. ‘That wasn’t quite what I had in mind.’

‘What did you want to look like?’

‘Innocent.’ He smiled at her in the mirror. ‘Inoffensive and above suspicion.’

She sat on his bed and watched him dust the hair from his shoulders with his T-shirt. He sprayed deodorant under his arms, splashed aftershave onto his hands, rubbed them together then smoothed his palms across his face.

‘Will I have to go to court and answer questions?’ she asked. ‘Or will they just read out my statement?’

He ignored her, pulled on his new stripy T-shirt. She’d chosen it for him with Mum last week and it still had the label on. He ripped it off and passed it to her. ‘Recycling,’ he said.

She put it in her pocket. ‘Did you hear me?’

He fiddled with his shirt, straightening it in the mirror. ‘You were the only other person here the whole time, which makes you the primary witness. You’ll definitely have to go to court.’

Her stomach gripped. ‘They can’t make me say anything.’

‘They can’t make you say anything if you didn’t see anything.’

She nodded. She felt a mixture of pity and fear as she looked at him, because the thought of what she should or shouldn’t say made her feel scared. She’d been worrying about it for two weeks. It had been so bad one day that she’d fantasized that a nuclear bomb had gone off and she was the only person left alive. In the fantasy, she’d wandered about opening and closing doors, stirring up dust, picking things up and putting them down. It had been so peaceful.

She gnawed at her lip again. ‘When the police interviewed me, I told them I went straight upstairs to bed when you brought everyone back.’