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It was him.
It was Jamie Cannon. I was sure of it.
Nobody else could dance like that - or would have dared to - like a
demented chimp, waving his arms and elbows around and making silly faces.
Was he making them at me?
He was even wearing the same old baggy jeans and long-sleeved ghastly-
taste tee-shirt - I couldn't make out the colours but probably pink, purple
and vomit - a little acid-house ravy, a lot early Neanderthal bonkers.
His hairstyle had changed though. He now had one of those pudding-basin
haircuts with hair flopping all over his eyes. What was he dancing to -
heavy metal, indie or techno? Or was it still Madonna and Michael Jackson
like in the old days?
Maybe he'd got stuck in a time warp.
I hadn't seen him for seven years and here we were back on opposite
sides of the road again, me staring at him out of my old bedroom window,
he (waving?) out of his.
He was still grinning that silly baby-faced grin just like the last
time we saw each other when we were both nine. That's when my family -
Mum, Dad, me and Sophie - who's three years my junior and Very Probably
the Most Irritating Girl in the Universe - had moved with our two mangy
cats from London to Swanleigh which is in the Midlands. Jamie's family
had gone off to Germany a few months later.
My name, by the way, is Abigail Edwards, which may not mean much to
you, but I think I can say without false modesty that I am the only
significant cultural icon in a village boasting thirty-odd houses, a pub
and a single shop that doesn't even sell foaming beauty wash - which at
my age, sixteen, becomes a vital weapon in warding off the effects of
acne, oncoming menopausal wrinkles and senilitude.
I suppose I ought to describe what I look like which I hate doing
as most of the time I think I look completely boring and then when I go
out to a party or something I get into a terrible state and spend ages
in the bathroom staring at my reflection to no purpose and Sophie says
I might as well pay Mum rent to live in there, which is all very well
for her to say as she's pretty in a cute-little-round-face, dimpled-
cheeked, button-eyed, Irritating-Kid-Sister sort of way, whereas I'm
just average.
I've got green eyes which are my best feature and darkish, mousy hair
which I never know what to do with and most of the time it just sits around
on my shoulders doing nothing in particular. If I make a special effort
with the old eyeliner and make-up and I've had a decent amount of sleep I
can look about six or seven on the attractive scale.
I used to be slightly small for my age until I was thirteen or
fourteen when I suddenly shot up a few inches so now I'm taller than
average, which I'm pleased about, except that it makes me look even
skinnier than I used to, but when I get in a state about it Mum says
look at all those supermodels, they're slim, and I have to remind her
I am not Naomi Campbell and never will be.
"But you've got lovely eyes," Mum will say, but somehow
when she says it it doesn't count.
Jamie used to say he could read my eyes.
The first time he said it was a few days after he came to my primary
school when he was seven.
"This is Jamie Canon," said Mrs Wyndham, our teacher.
She was a large, florid, enthusiastic woman with a posh, plummy accent,
who breathed heavily all the time and wore huge flowery dresses in thick
fabrics summer and winter and smelt of lilac and coal tar soap. I still
remember the swishing sound her dresses made as she walked around the
classroom.
"He'll be joining our class from today. Jamie's father is a
famous conductor so I'm sure Jamie will have lots of things he can tell us
about conducting in our music lessons, won't you, Jamie?"
He looked like a tiny little monkey in baggy short trousers that hung
over his knees.
He didn't say anything but then he yawned, I now think with
embarrassment, but at the time I thought, he thinks we're all boring just
because his dad's a bus conductor.
"There's an empty chair next to Abigail, so go and sit next to
her, Jamie."
Chrissie Somers was away that day, and she used to sit next to me.
He gave me a funny stare when he sat down, as if to say, I know you don't
like me but you're lumbered with me, so you'll have to put up with it and
anyway it's not my fault, I didn't ask to sit next to you, did I?
We didn't talk to each other for the rest of the day, nor the next,
and then it was the weekend and the following Monday Chrissie came back -
she'd had the 'flu - but then she sat next to Emily Woolford and I felt
very hard done by, because by then I was convinced he didn't like me and
I certainly didn't like him.
The following afternoon we had art and handwork and Mrs Wyndham handed
out brand new colourful packets of Play-Do for us to model each other's
faces.
I was quite pleased with mine. I'd made Jamie's look like a monkey's
head.
"You've made me look like a monkey," he said.
I think it was the first time he'd spoken to me.
"That's 'cos you do look like a monkey."
"No, I don't."
"Yes, you do."
"No, I don't, and anyway you look like a mouse."
I stared at him, offended to the core.
"That's a horrible thing to say."
"No more horrible than saying I look like a monkey. Look,
there's your eyes."
He showed me the plasticine head he'd made of me and it was true.
There were two round little green eyes on a blue mouse's head.
And it looked like me.
"I know what your eyes are saying," he said.
"What do you mean?"
"I can read your eyes."
"No, you can't ... So what are they saying then?"
"They're saying, you wish you could sit next to Chrissie and you
wish you didn't have to sit next to me."
"That's true," I said, "but then that's obvious, isn't it?"
"Hang on, I'm not finished yet, am I? And you're thinking..."
He gazed at me again in that funny way and I started to feel
uncomfortable.
"I know!" he said suddenly. "You're thinking about ballet, aren't you?"
I stared at him.
"How did you - "
"I told you, I can read your eyes. I can even see your ballet
class. You enjoy doing the exercises you've learnt, but you don't like
having to learn new steps. You're going to think up some excuse for not
going this evening."
"But how - "
"I'm going to be a dancer when I grow up," he said.
"I love dancing but not stupid old ballet. I like dancing to pop
music ... Do you like Michael Jackson?"
"He's good, but I really like Madonna."
"She's OK. I can make myself look like a werewolf, like Michael
Jackson does in the Thriller video. Mum tells me off though, 'cos
I scare my brother. He's only four. My mum puts a blanket over the telly
when Thriller comes on, so Mark won't be scared, but I wait till
she goes out and take the blanket off the telly and then he starts crying,
the stupid twit."
"How did you know all that about the ballet?"
"It's simple. I get these pictures in my head. No, they're not
pictures, they're more like thoughts that I know don't belong to me, and I
get them sometimes if I look at people's eyes. Mark can do it too. He's
dead good, but he's only four so he can't describe them much ... Well,
actually he can't describe them at all, but I know he does 'cos ... well,
I just know he can. Can you do the Moonwalk? I can!"
Before I could reply, Mrs Wyndham clapped her hands to announce that
we all had to place our plasticine heads on a long table at the side of
the classtoom and then we would have a guessing game to see if we could
identify them.
Jamie of course won.
At home that evening I couldn't stop talking about Jamie Canon who
sat next to me in class and who could read people's eyes and do the
Moonwalk.
I hadn't actually seen him do the Moonwalk but I just knew he would
be brilliant.
A few days later Jamie came into school looking really excited.
"Guess who's moving into the house across the road from where
you live?" he said.
"I give up. Who?"
"I am ... we are. Mum and Dad have just bought
the house. So you can come round and play and listen to my tapes and
I'll show you the Moonwalk."
I was so thrilled I didn't know what to say. So I said something
very stupid.
"Will your dad have his bus there?"
"Bus ... what bus?"
"I thought Mrs Wyndham said your dad was a conductor."
He rolled his eyes and smirked. "Not a bus conductor.
An orchestra conductor. Classical music and all that."
I felt a complete idiot, but decided to salvage some dignity out of
my faux pas.
"So what does he do, just stand around waving a big stick and
bowing?"
"It's better than sitting around doodling away on a drawing
board, like your dad does"
My dad's a graphic designer but I hadn't told Jamie.
"How did you know that?"
"Read it in your eyes. No, actually my mum was talking to the
people who live downstairs from you. I even know which is you bedroom.
It'll be opposite mine."
And it was. And Jamie did do the Moonwalk for me, which wasn't as
good as Michael Jackson but nearly as good.
"Why wouldn't you do it at school?" I asked as he slid
his feet up and down his bedroom floor.
He stopped and looked embarrassed.
"You'll probably think I'm stupid but I'm too shy to do it when
I think anyone's watching me. It's just that when I start dancing ...
when I really get into it, I forget where I am and everything. My parents
say I go off into a dreamworld."
"My sister's like that all the time," I said. "It's
infuriating."
I told Chrissie Somers that Jamie could read my eyes. She told Emma
Douglas who told Kevin Burrows and soon it was all round the class.
I didn't know about this until a few days later when someone passed
me a note in class. It was torn and dog-eared and had obviously done the
rounds. It read:
"wotchit girls jamy canons cycic
HE CAN TELL WAT COLOUR NICKERS YOUR WEARING"
Before I could stop him Jamie had leaned across to read the note. His
face went bright red and he didn't say anything for the rest of the
afternoon.
I don't think he minded being teased. I often teased him and he took
it in good part, it was just that he'd told me something about him that
was special and important, and it had become public property. I remember
feeling that I had betrayed him, but he never once referred to it.
And he never talked about reading eyes ever egain.
I still teased him about the buses though and that went on until we were
nine years old.
"How's the buses?" I'd say.
"Prokofiev's well, thanks, Shostakovitch is a bit under the
weather."
"Who are they, ticket inspectors?"
"Anyone with half a brain would know they're composers, which
rules you out."
"So what does your dad do, sing 'Any more tickets please' in E flat?"
"No he conducts - in a tuxedo."
"Why, are tuxedos lightning-resistant?"
"No, but I am." He mimicked lightning striking his head
and then contorted his body as the electricity shot through it, rolling
his eyes and then shot off down the road like a galvanised rabbit.
Jamie would always end an argument by running off - but then he'd
always trip over and you knew he was joking. He was very good-natured -
and actually very clever. Much cleverer than me.
Anyway, Jamie's father had been appointed conductor of an orchestra
in Stuttgart which is in Germany. We'd written to each other every month
for the first three or four months and then a couple of more times and then
I'd got wrapped up in my life in Swanleigh which is near Stratford-on-Avon
where you can buy foaming beauty wash and see Shakespeare's plays
and go to the Phoenix Pop Festival about which more anon - and then when
I was eleven I started secondary school and things got even busier and I
just never got round to replying to his last letter.
I felt vaguely guilty. I remember in that letter he'd said something
about his dad not being well, and something being wrong but it was all a
bit of a blur.
It was hard to see from my window, but even his funny upturned nose
and freckles seemed to be the same. Chrissie Somers (who used to be my
best friend and then wasn't and then was again and then wasn't and so on
until I left London) used to say he was like one of those Victorian
urchins you saw in postcards, pressing their noses against the windowpanes
of rich people. In Jamie's case, Chrissie said, his nose just got stuck.
I was dying to go over the road and see him, but what would we say to
each other? It was strange enough being back where we used to live - which
was actually half of the second floor of a big Victorian house that had
been divided into eight flats. The house itself looked really grand,
like a hotel, but in a seedy sort of way.
My parents had kept the flat on for four yours, "as our London
base", they used to say (actually it was because it took that long
to sell it) so we often used to come back and stay.
Mum and Dad were still friends with Duncan and Nettie who'd bought
the flat and Soph had been back with them a couple of times but I'd always
found some excuse not to go.
I often dreamt about the flat. In my dreams it was still my home and
I was afraid it would have changed out of recognition.
It had of course.
"We've stripped most of the floors," Duncan said as we sat
sipping pre-prandial cocktails in what used to be our living room but now
looked more like a trendy wine bar. "It's a dirty job - "
"And the someone who has to do it is me," Nettie
shouted from the kitchen.
It was gone half past nine and we were about to eat a late supper
with Duncan and Nettie but in the meantime we were just sitting around
talking about art, music, politics, the cosmos and who was living in the
other flats now and how much it had cost to buy the freehold. As usual
Sophie didn't even bother to look interested and was listening to her
Walkman.
"Oh, come on, Nettie, that's not fair. I'm either shuttling on
and off the Eurostar or sitting around in some godforsaken Eastern European
airport. When do I have the time?"
Duncan had something to do with imports and exports, but I couldn't
make out what.
"Well, you'd better find the time to get started on the baby's
room," Nettie said pointedly as she came in with the hors d'oeuvres
and patted the swelling beneath her pretty, flowered smock.
"Which room will that be?" Mum asked hesitantly - I could
tell she was feeling un peu wistful, like me, even though she'd
had time to absorb the changes.
"The little front room - " Duncan started to say.
"My bedroom," I blurted out, and then blushed.
"I'm sorry, I mean - "
"It's all right, Abi," Nettie said gently. "I know you
felt a bit nervous about coming back here, but you know you're always
welcome to come and stay, any time - you could even come on your own if
you want, if that's all right with you, Paul and Fiona?"
My parents nodded happily (which I thought was a bit two-faced of
them 'cos they're always moaning on at me about not wanting to do things
with them as a family any more, but they'll grow out of it). Fortunately
Soph was plugged into her headphones, otherwise she would have been bound
to say "What about me?"
"Anyway," Nettie went on, "for the time being,
the room's more or less as you left it, fortunately for you. Actually,
there are still quite a few loose floorboards - we'll have to
replace them." She glared at Duncan.
"Maybe I can get a start-up loan from the EC," he said, and
then began wittering on about the single European currency.
I was getting extremely bored extremely quickly. I muttered an excuse
and left Sophie to her groany old compilation of last year's chart hits and
went for a wander around the flat.
Everything had changed: instead of the old threadbare Indian carpets
there were stripped varnished floorboards with tasteful rugs, huge Mexican
cheese plants, Japanese screens, Italian prints on the walls which had been
repainted in muted colours with names like Mellow Seahaze and Autumn
Dreamscape.
It looked much more elegant than when we lived there. I liked what
they'd done but it somehow seemed wrong, as if you'd gone to a party with
all your friends and your parents had turned up looking all young and
trendy.
I felt sad and a bit shocked. Another bit of my childhood had
slipped away.
I had reached the end of the corridor that led back to the front door.
My bedroom was on the right.
Nervously I pushed the door open, very slightly.
There was a gentle creaking sound which I knew like an old friend.
Slightly relieved I closed my eyes tightly, pushed the door open, held my
breath and switched the light on. Then I opened my eyes.
The room was in near darkness. I squeezed myself through two aisles of
cardboard boxes and as my eyes began to adjust I could see the empty
lightbulb holder hanging forlornly from the ceiling. Nettie was nearly
right - the room was "more or less" as I'd left it. There were
boxes everywhere, rolls of wallpaper and stacks of framed paintings,
towers of hifi, chairs and a table.
They had done nothing radical at all apart from turn it into a
junkroom.
"Heigh-ho," I sighed to myself, and then, looking more
closely, I started to recognise a few familiar landmarks: my old bed and
some bits of furniture I'd left behind, like the wooden trolley I kept
my books and games on. We used to call it the "Benny Binder"
after an old friend of my great-aunt who'd been given it as a wedding
present. It was falling to pieces when my parents put it in my room.
Dad was always meaning to fix it, but never got round to it. A bit like
Benny Binder himself probably. I was glad it was still there.
In the corner, wedged between the fireplace and the wardrobe, I
found some abandoned toys: a few dried-up felt-tip pens, a notice board
studded with badges, a jar of beads, a red plastic castle, a couple of
Sindy dolls, some combs and a hairbrush. I picked up the hairbrush and
absently started to brush Sindy's hair, and then remembered I was sixteen.
Outside, in the main road that led into the South Circular Road, the
street lamps had come on. I peered out of the window at the continuous
flow of traffic, so different from Swanleigh with its thirty-odd houses,
pub and single shop etc. etc. I remembered that the traffic was always
so bad that Mum and Dad would make Sophie hold my hand just to cross the
road to Jamie's house. Sometimes Mum or Dad or Fran, Jamie's mother,
would drive us all - me, Sophie, Jamie and his brother Mark - up the hill
to school, but more often we walked.
I gazed at the rambling Edwardian house on the corner opposite where
Jamie used to live. There was something different about that house too,
but it wasn't anything obvious, no yuppie facelifts there. If anything it
seemed not so much unlived in as
dead ... or in a trance ...
I shivered and hugged myself even though the evening was warm
and humid. The windows looked black and vacant
like the man with no eyes ...
The thought made me shudder. A few months before, I'd spent the day
with my friend Lizzie Hubble in Oxford. (Lizzie has sickeningly perfect
skin and blonde hair and everything else that boys go for, but she's a
really good friend with a wicked sense of humour.)
Anyway we found ourselves wandering the back streets, not really sure
where we were. We'd turned a corner and come face to face with a man
whose eyes were missing from their sockets. I'd hardly had time to
register the fact when he smiled at me.
I felt awful, guilty that I was so shocked: yet upset as though
he'd deliberately set out to shock me. I know that sounds mad. I've
often seen blind people, with or without dark glasses, yet this was
different. I still thought of that man, those eyeless sockets, and
tried hard to remember that he was still a human being.
It was getting darker. I turned and looked around the room,
wondering whether my bedroom window had the same vacant uninhabited
look.
It was when I turned back that I saw Jamie, dancing in the window.
They were talking about Third World famine and civil war when I got
back to the living room.
"Where've you been?" said Sophie indignantly.
"We've been waiting for ages to eat and I'm dying of starvation
thanks to you."
The nearest Sophie ever got to dying of famine and starvation was
when she ran out of chocolate but the smell of Nettie's lasagne and talk
of starving millions had obviously got the better of Forty Totally Boring
Smash Hits.
I gave her one of my withering looks. "I'll come and visit you
in the Anorexia Ward. Mum, do you mind if I just pop over the road - I
think I've just seen Jamie Canon."
"But Abi, we're about to eat."
"I won't be long, I promise."
"Can I go too?" Sophie piped in predictably.
"No!" Mum and I said together.
"If she can go, why can't I?"
"We didn't say either of you could go," Mum said and
looked across at Dad for moral support.
"But Mum - "
"Fi, let her go," Dad said. "I'm sure Duncan and
Nettie won't mind, will you?"
They shook their heads vehemently and I smiled gratefully at Dad.
"Well, OK, then, but don't be long," Mum smiled.
"What about me? I want to see Mark," said Sophie, glowering.
"Hard luck, he's not at home. Anyway, you don't even remember him."
"Of course I do. We started school together. He was my first
boy - " She stopped and blushed.
I couldn't resist it.
"At last Sophie Edwards reveals all in tomorrow's tabloids.
'Mark Canon was my first and only love - '"
"Oh shut up, you cow."
"Come on, you two," said Dad. "Look, Abi, you can go
and see Jamie on condition you take Soph with you."
Sophie looked revoltingly smug.
For a moment I considered decapitating her but decided it would be too
messy.
"Come on, then," I said, making for the door, "but for
God's sake don't embarrass me."
"Me embarrass you!" she said, following me out noisily.
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