TAINTED LOVE Read online

  Dad said, ‘Just keep away.’

  ‘What was that all about?’ I said to Peter when we were up in my room. .

  ‘They were pretty freaked.’

  ‘Maybe she’s an evil witch who used to catch children and roast them in the oven.’

  ‘Or turn them into toads.’

  I turned the computer on.

  ‘I’ve got homework. Can you believe on the first day back they’ve given us homework?’

  ‘Maybe she’s your mother.’

  I laughed and typed in my password. ‘My mum’s called Cassie.’

  Peter sat behind me rubbing my back.

  ‘Peter.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Will you walk home from school with me tomorrow?’

  His hands stilled for a moment and I could hear him breathing. Then they started moving again, and he said, ‘Ok.’ His voice was light as though it was of little consequence. ‘I’ve got physics last thing, so let’s meet in the normal place.’

  The normal place was where we used to meet after school every day back when we were in Year Seven and Eight. Before Peter started getting embarrassed in front of other kids and sloping off on his own every afternoon. It was just down the lane from the sixth form college, where the path starts up through the woods over the hillside. I was there on time, but Peter wasn’t. On one side of the path there were trees and mossy boulders, and on the other, the sewage plant with its round concrete pits silently stinking in the sunshine. At the spot where Peter should have been waiting there was somebody else. He was wearing a black trenchcoat, despite the September warmth.

  He turned and I saw who he was – recognised the sunglasses he’d been wearing earlier.

  ‘Hi,’ I said when I got near enough.

  ‘Hello.’

  He stepped back to let me past, but I stopped and leaned against the tree.

  ‘I’m meeting somebody here,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, right.’

  Not being able to see his eyes, I couldn’t tell if he was put out by this. The glasses were very dark.

  ‘You were in the library,’ he said. His accent was odd. A bit posh, slightly foreign maybe, but I thought I could detect a hint of Yorkshire in there too.

  ‘I’m Lauren.’

  ‘Richard.’

  He held out his hand and I shook it, grinning. Was he for real? He was wearing black fingerless gloves.

  ‘Who are you meeting?’ he asked.

  ‘My boyfriend.’

  ‘Oh.’

  The sun was full on the path at this time of day and I leaned my head against the trunk of the tree, which was humming softly in the warmth. I half closed my eyes, and watched him. He shifted from foot to foot, looking about. I wondered if he was waiting for someone too.

  ‘Where does this lead to?’ he asked, nodding towards the path into the woods.

  ‘Up to the tops. If you walk across the fields up there you get to Heath. From there you can drop down into Hawden. It’s a nice walk.’

  ‘I’m just trying to get my bearings. It’s all changed since I was here.’

  ‘Did you live here before?’

  He frowned and half turned away. It was a moment before he answered. ‘When I was younger.’

  I waited, but he didn’t say any more. I’d already thought he might be the boy from Hough Dean, but now I was certain. His stance didn’t invite questions.

  ‘What’s with the shades?’

  He turned and looked at me. ‘What about them?’

  ‘You were wearing them in the library at college. How come Miss Watts didn’t tell you to take them off?’

  ‘It’s an eye condition.’ I couldn’t see his eyes through the dark glass, only my own reflection repeated in each lens, the trees behind me. ‘My eyes are sensitive to light. These glasses react to light conditions: they get darker as the light gets brighter.’

  ‘Right. So that’s why they’re so dark right now. Because of the sunshine.’

  ‘Yes.’

  He turned away again, stared into the woods.

  ‘Are you waiting for someone?’ I asked him.

  ‘No.’

  He shoved his hands into his pockets and walked a few steps up the path, hesitated, then came back again.

  ‘Are you going that way? When your boyfriend gets here.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Will you show me the way?’

  My phone went off just then. It was a text from Peter, saying he was staying behind to finish off a physics experiment and he’d catch up with me later. I stared at the message wondering what to say. I could make an excuse, say Peter had changed the plans and I was meeting him somewhere else. But what the hell? If Peter couldn’t make the effort… and Richard didn’t know anyone here. It couldn’t hurt to be friendly.

  ‘It looks like Peter’s not coming. I can show you the way if you like, though it’s not difficult. There’s only one path.’

  He smiled for the first time. I wished I could see his eyes.

  He was a fast walker. For some reason this surprised me. Something about his clothes, his voice, and also his nervousness about the path, had made him a city boy in my eyes. I didn’t imagine he was used to walking through woods, up hillsides. I thought I would have to slow my pace to his. But it was the other way round. By the time we reached the top of the tree line I was sweating and breathless.

  He stopped next to a big rock at the side of the path.

  ‘God, it’s the Milkmaid,’ he said. ‘She has a different view these days.’

  I looked at the stone then back at him.

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘This rock, the Milkmaid. Don’t you know the story?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘There was a milkmaid and her lover cheated on her, so she turned herself into stone. She stood here watching the valley, watching her lover and his new girl. He could never do a thing for the rest of his life without feeling her gaze upon him, her judgement. In the end he went mad and drowned himself in the mill pond. When he was gone, she turned her attention to other cheating lovers. If anyone in the village is ever unfaithful, they can expect to feel the eyes of the milkmaid watching their every move.’

  I wondered if he had made it up on the spot. I’d never heard that story before and I’d lived here all my life. I walked around the stone. I guess if you used your imagination, squinted a bit, you could just about make it into the shape of a girl carrying a pail in each hand. A solid, lumpen girl with no features.

  ‘Where did you get that from?’

  He shrugged and seemed to lose interest. ‘I dunno. Someone told it to me when I was a kid I expect.’

  He started off along the path again. The bracken whispered as we passed, but I didn’t listen. I was almost jogging to keep up. When we reached the place where the stream crosses, he didn’t bother with the stepping stones but leapt over in one jump. I thought he must be really fit. I tried to imagine him in shorts and a t-shirt, running shoes, but my imagination failed me.

  At the top of the hill he stopped again and took a packet of fags from his coat pocket. He offered me one but I shook my head.

  ‘Aren’t you hot in that coat?’

  ‘I’m used to it,’ was all he said. Which seemed like a ridiculous answer to me. Why be used to being uncomfortable?

  He lit his fag with a match and took a deep drag. The sky reflected in his sunglasses, made them blue.

  ‘The land doesn’t change,’ he said. ‘The shape of it. It’s been the same for hundreds of years.’

  ‘How old were you when you left?’ I asked.

  ‘I was very young.’

  Which is what he said before, but how young? Did he used to come up here on his own? If so, he can’t have been that tiny. But if he’d been old enough to go to school I
would surely have met him. I wondered if he was being deliberately enigmatic. I hadn’t really got the patience for that. If he wanted to impress some girl by being mysterious then he’d picked the wrong one.

  He finished his fag and crushed it out under his boot.

  ‘I’m going down the hill from here,’ I said. ‘The quickest way to Hough Dean is if you carry on along the top and drop down when you get to the other end of Heath.’

  He raised an eyebrow, and I realised he’d never said he was from Hough Dean.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘I remember the way from here. Sure you don’t want a fag?’

  It was his way of saying thank you, but I don’t smoke, so I shook my head again.

  ‘You’re alright. Thanks.’

  On the way down the hill I looked up a couple of times to see if I could spot him striding along the top, but I never did.

  2. Peter

  When they were kids, the woods, the moors and the sky were everything they wanted. If they found a crop of blackberries or St. George’s mushrooms or wild garlic, they felt like they’d struck gold. Now those things weren’t enough. Peter didn’t know what she wanted any more.

  He adjusted the polariser to nought degrees and took the first power reading.

  She was interested in books and history. When he looked at the block of words on the page he saw tiny black stitches fastening his soul to the earth. He wanted to rear and snort. Run like a goat. She talked to him about people who used to live and breathe but were now just names, stories, dust. Most of them got things wrong. All through history people had been making mistakes and hurting each other.

  He felt safe here in the lab. This made sense. He turned the dial to ten degrees, twenty, noting the power reading at each stage. At ninety degrees the light disappeared. He loved that. He could use Malus’s formula to predict the polarisation and then watch it happen. He’d shown her sunlight shining through a prism, dividing into the seven colours of the rainbow, told her how the spectrum continued beyond those things we can see.

  ‘Our eyes are only tuned to certain frequencies, but there’s more, much more in the world if only we knew how to look.’

  She smiled at him. The colours lay across her pale skin, her golden hair, turning her red, indigo and violet.

  ‘You’re such a geek, Peter,’ she said.

  3. Ali

  I couldn’t believe the bloody view out of the window. Stone bridge, river, ducks, a green hill rising behind the town, tended flower beds. There were cobbled streets for fuck’s sake. Even the people were bearded, be-hatted and grizzled in their wellies and flowered skirts. I shouldn’t have come here. I was a city girl and this picture-book England made me sick. There was probably even a shop called the Olde Worlde Something Shoppe. It’s the sort of place you’d want to come to with a machine gun. And so tiny. I’d only been there two hours and I’d probably walked every street. How could you get lost in a place like that? How could you hide?

  The coffee was all right though. Fuck, I needed it. I hadn’t slept for over thirty-two hours, and then it wasn’t for long. I’d gone to bed around midnight, and it was just after two when the police came banging on the door downstairs and I had to grab my stuff and get out the back window as quickly as I could. There’s a jump from the first floor window down to the old garage roof, which is none too steady, but it was that or a night in the cells. ‘Cos, even though it’s not me they want, they’d throw us all in the slammer for the night. They think we’re all addicts and it’s really cool to keep us away from our stuff, stress us out for a while. I’m not an addict. I’ve tried most stuff, and sometimes a white-out is what the doctor ordered. But I can take it or leave it. Not like some of the others.

  It was Smith they were after. Last night he and Jeannie were out the window and gone before I’d even worked out what the noise was. Some of the others were doped up and took a bit longer, but they were all away before the police decided to break the door down. The way it works, everyone lays low for a few days, then we start creeping back to the squat one by one. If the police have caught Smith by then, they leave us alone. But if he comes back so do they, every night until they catch him or give up. They never keep him for long.

  I went down to the arches. There were always a few people hanging around there. New kids who’d arrived in Leeds with a sleeping bag and couldn’t think of anywhere better to curl up than fifty yards from the station they’d come in at. And some nutters too, who no one would have living in a squat with them. Someone would have a bottle of vodka I could share, or something else to keep me awake through the night. The next morning I’d go up to the square and find someone who’d let me have a corner for a night or two until it was safe to go back to the squat.

  That was the plan. I was on my way down there, quite pleased with myself for getting out so quickly, carrying all my stuff in my back pack. I don’t own much – a spare pair of jeans and a couple of t-shirts, a toothbrush. Usually a book that I’ve picked up somewhere. And my gran’s ring which I wear on a piece of leather around my neck, under my clothes so no one can see. Walking down to the arches, I put my hand into the neck of my shirt and I realised it was gone. That’s when the shit kicked off.

  Now I was sitting in this cosy fucking café in Cutesville, West Yorkshire, with a cup of rocket-strength coffee and no idea what to do next. I couldn’t see the locals letting people sleep under bridges round here. Anyway, there was only fucking water under all the bridges I’d seen. I may have slept in some unsavoury places in my time, but I didn’t fancy a raging river.

  There wouldn’t be any squats. Probably no homeless people at all. Here everyone would be accounted for and wrapped up soundly in their beds by ten thirty. Maybe I could sleep in the park, in one of those flowerbeds covered with bark chippings; it might be quite cosy if it doesn’t rain.

  Two women were sitting by the window gossiping about people going by in the street. They knew all their names. It reminded me of when I was a kid. When we went out shopping my mum knew everyone she saw, stopped and chatted on street corners. That’s what I love about cities, no one knows you. Often as not, no one even sees you.

  These two were shameless.

  ‘Look, there’s Sally Lumb. I haven’t seen her in ages.’

  ‘That’s because you’re never out this early. I often see her when I drop the kids off at school.’

  ‘I don’t know how she manages, living up there on her own. It must be so lonely. I’d be scared stiff. There’s no streetlights or anything. It must be pitch black at night.’

  ‘I don’t think Sally is the nervous type. Not about things like that. She’d be much more bothered by neighbours dropping in. I think she just wants to be left alone.’

  ‘I walked past Old Barn a couple of weeks ago. We’d been for a walk up on the tops. All those outbuildings as well as the enormous house, just for her! It’s the sort of place a family should live in.’

  Nosy cows. I looked out of the window and saw a woman leaving the butchers. She stopped outside, took her pack off her back and opened it to put in the parcel she’d just bought. She was wearing denim dungarees, a dirty anorak and a red cap which looked like it came from a Dickens film.

  ‘I don’t know why she doesn’t get a bike. It’s a long slog up to Old Barn carrying your shopping.’

  ‘At least she doesn’t drive everywhere, like you.’

  The woman slung the pack onto her back and walked off down the street. My coffee was just about gone. I slipped out of my seat and down the stairs and when I got outside the woman was just turning right into the main street.

  She was easy to follow. I left a distance, but her red hat stood out. When she went into the health food shop I stopped and looked in the window of the bookshop. It was tiny. I couldn’t see it being very easy to nick books in there. I’d have to find the library and see if that was any better.

  The woman’s back
pack looked heavy when she came out. She’d finished shopping and she headed out of town, crossed at some lights and walked up a hill past a church. The road was steep and she walked fast. Even though I wasn’t carrying the weight she was, it was hard to keep up.

  At the top of the hill the road bent to the left and there was no sign of her. There were rows of stone terraces on both sides, with pots of flowers by the doors and no gardens. She could have gone into one of them, but I didn’t think so, not from what those women in the café said. There was a track on the right, potholed and full of puddles, leading off into some woods. I hurried up it. After a few minutes I could see her red hat up ahead, appearing every now and then through the branches of the trees.

  We kept going up. On the right there was a drop down to the river in the valley bottom, and it got steeper and steeper. I wondered what would happen if you slipped and fell down there, if the roots and shrubs would save you or if they would scratch and gouge at you as you fell to your death.

  We passed a couple of houses with 4x4s parked outside, and a dog rushed out barking. I like dogs, but I didn’t stop to talk to it as Sally Lumb was speeding ahead. The trees were thick further up and I couldn’t see her any more.

  Then the track split. One fork went down to the river, over a bridge where there were a couple more houses. The other went up through the trees. I thought I’d be able to see her if she’d gone down to the river, so I kept going up.

  After about ten minutes I came out above the woods onto open hillside. I could see her ahead. She’d left the track and was heading across a field towards a farmhouse. I sat down by the wall and waited. I was breathing hard. That was a steep fucking climb.

  The sun was shining and it was quite warm. I got my book out of my bag and read for a bit. Now I knew where the house was there was no rush. Best to wait ‘til dark and she was tucked up inside her house, then I’d go and have a good explore, find a cosy spot in a barn. If anyone came to Hawden looking for me, they weren’t going to find me up here.

  I’d read about ten pages when I looked up and she was standing there in front of me.