Black Rabbit Summer

  Lottie lit a cigarette. ‘It was clear to me that they were both very troubled about concealing their love, but I think the brother was the more concerned of the two.’ She turned over a card: the Seven of Clubs. ‘Guilt,’ she said. ‘Embarrassment. Shame. The brother’s fears of revelation are based on shallowness, but I think he dreads the consequences much more than his friend.’

  I thought about that for a moment, wondering why Eric should be more concerned than Campbell. I mean, as far as I was aware, no one knew that Campbell was gay – and I guessed he didn’t want anyone to know – so I could understand why he’d want to keep things quiet. But Eric had been openly gay for ages, and I’d always got the impression that he genuinely didn’t care what other people thought of him…

  But maybe I was wrong about that.

  Maybe I’d always been wrong.

  I looked at Lottie. ‘Is this what you meant when you said that it’s all about love?’

  ‘Partly…’ She turned over two cards: the Two of Hearts, the Three of Hearts. ‘The sister,’ she said, looking up at me. ‘The one who was watching you…’

  ‘Nicole,’ I said.

  Lottie gazed down at the two cards. ‘The last love is always the best…’ She looked into my eyes. ‘She’s loved you for a long time.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Nicole.’

  ‘She’s loved me?’

  ‘For a long time.’

  I shook my head. ‘No…’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘No,’ I said firmly. ‘She used to like me… and maybe she still does a bit. But she doesn’t love me. Absolutely not.’

  Lottie shrugged, smiling. ‘Perhaps I was mistaken.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I just thought, from the way she was watching you –’

  ‘You made a mistake.’

  Lottie nodded. ‘If you say so.’

  ‘I do.’

  Lottie tapped ash into the ashtray. ‘She’s very much like her brother, isn’t she?’

  ‘They’re twins.’

  ‘They’re close then.’

  ‘Yeah, I suppose so. I mean, they’ve always spent a lot of time with each other, you know – hanging around together, doing stuff together, always sharing everything… clothes, make-up, jewellery, even boyfriends sometimes…’ I paused for a moment, looking down at the table, struck by a sudden thought.

  ‘What is it?’ Lottie asked me.

  Sharing, I thought to myself. They’re always sharing everything…

  ‘Peter?’

  I looked up at Lottie. ‘Did you see Nicole later that night?’

  ‘She was with Luke Kemp,’ she said solemnly. ‘Luke was working the waltzer.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘He took her back to his trailer.’

  ‘I know that too.’

  ‘She didn’t want to be with him. She was… well, I think at first she was just doing it to spite you, and I don’t think she meant it to go so far… but Luke always takes things too far.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Lottie shook her head. ‘He always makes sure he gets what he wants, and he doesn’t care how he does it.’

  ‘What are you trying to say?’

  ‘There’s no proof… it’s all just rumours. But it’s been suggested that some of the girls he takes back to his trailer don’t have a clue what they’re doing.’

  ‘You mean he drugs them or something?’

  ‘It’s possible, yes.’

  ‘Shit.’

  ‘Sometimes, of course, they’re just very drunk…’

  ‘Nicole was pretty out of it.’

  ‘Yes…’ Lottie stubbed out her cigarette. ‘I think that’s why your friend Raymond followed her to the trailer. I think he was worried about her. He cared for her.’

  ‘Without thinking of himself.’

  ‘Yes. He had great kindness.’

  I looked at her, wondering if she remembered saying that about Raymond before… and I could tell by the way she avoided my eyes that she did. ‘Did you see Kemp chasing him away from the trailer?’ I asked her.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did he catch him?’

  She shook her head. ‘Raymond was too quick. Luke never even got near him.’

  ‘Where did Raymond go?’

  ‘The fair was closed by then. The lights were out. I saw Raymond running through the fairground, down towards the exit, and then he just carried on running off into the darkness.’

  ‘Which way?’

  She pointed over my shoulder. ‘Towards the far end of the park, where the main gates are.’

  ‘Did you see him go through the gates?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Which way did he go?’

  ‘He turned right.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘I don’t know. That was the last I saw of him.’

  I looked down at the cards on the table again. They were all arranged in a circle around the first card she’d turned over, the Queen of Spades. Stella’s card. I studied them, gazing at the shapes, the colours, the faces… trying to remember who they were supposed to represent… trying to work out the connections… the non-connections… the black flies, the pops, the crackles in my head… the colours, the shapes, the faces…

  The cards meant nothing.

  I was trying to see the patterns beyond the cards.

  ‘Where am I in all this?’ I asked Lottie.

  ‘You’re here,’ she said, tapping the card on top of the pack.

  I looked at her.

  She said, ‘You know it doesn’t mean anything.’

  ‘Yeah…’

  ‘You can be whatever you want to be.’

  ‘Can I?’

  She smiled. ‘What do you want to be?’

  ‘I don’t know…’

  ‘What’s your card?’

  ‘What?’

  She tapped the pack of cards with her finger. ‘Your card – what do you think it is?’

  ‘I don’t know…’

  ‘Yes, you do. Tell me what you think it is.’ She smiled again. ‘What harm can it do?’

  I looked at the card under her finger, and I knew it meant nothing. I knew I couldn’t know what it was, or what I wanted it to be. And I knew I didn’t know what I wanted it to be. So I just said the first thing that came into my head. ‘The Seven of Spades.’

  She turned the card over, and of course it was the Seven of Spades. It was never going to be anything else.

  ‘What does it mean?’ I heard myself say.

  ‘Whatever you want it to mean – it could mean that you’re growing up, you’re beginning to think about yourself and the nature of the universe and your place within it. It could be a lucky omen. It could mean a lover’s quarrel. It could foretell a summer of madness.’

  ‘But it’s just a card.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  She placed my card on the table, outside the circle of other cards, and then she just sat there looking at them in thoughtful silence.

  It was late now. Early morning. The air was cold and still, the world outside was asleep.

  I was here.

  Now.

  I was here.

  I gazed at the cards on the table. I was there, I was here. Everyone else was there. Everyone else except…

  ‘Where’s Raymond?’ I said quietly to Lottie.

  She turned over the top card of the pack and placed it face up on the table.

  It was blank.

  Twenty-five

  The pre-dawn sky was silent and black as I walked the empty streets back home. The world was asleep. The houses, the parked cars, the walls, the gates, the hedges, the pavements, the air… everything was frozen in the eternal dawn of street lights.

  Nothing moved.

  Nothing made a sound.

  Apart from me.

  Tap tap tap tap… my steady footsteps echoing dully in the night.

  Tap tap tap tap… my unsteady mind trying to think.

  One
thought, another thought.

  One step, another step…

  One step at a time.

  One thought at a time.

  Eric and Wes Campbell are lovers.

  Stella liked to play cruel games.

  Pauly wants what he can’t have.

  What can’t he have?

  Eric? Wes Campbell?

  Stella?

  One step, another step…

  Nicole doesn’t love me.

  Stella despised those who adored her.

  It’s all about love.

  One thought at a time.

  It’s all about love.

  It’s not all deceit.

  The cards mean nothing.

  Gods and devils.

  Pauly adored Stella.

  One thought.

  Sharing… Nic and Eric… they’re always sharing everything.

  Clothes.

  Perfume.

  Jewellery.

  I paused then, my mind suddenly fixed on the image of a broken necklace. A shortish length of fine gold chain in a clear plastic envelope… it was found in the coin-pocket of Stella’s shorts. A string of gold chains hanging on a hook above Nicole’s dressing table. Chains, connections…

  Stella, Nicole.

  Nicole, Eric.

  They’re always sharing everything.

  The images skimmed through my mind like weightless pebbles skipping over a slurred black pond. The connections ticked – tick tick tick – barely touching the surface, like summer birds drinking on the wing. I saw arrows, darts, stars, hooks, flat black stones, too fast to see. I saw the rippled trace of movement in the still black waters of the night. Circles, trails, patterns… coming together, moving apart.

  I knew it all meant something, but I didn’t know what. I squeezed my eyes shut and opened them again. I was standing by the old factory gates in Recreation Road. I could see the lights of the town in the distance. I could smell the iron and the dust of the factory. Iron and dust, concrete and flesh. I could smell…

  Darkness.

  And heat.

  I could feel a presence.

  I heard a click then, a very faint click from across the road, and as I turned towards it, peering into the darkness, a pair of headlights suddenly snapped on, blinding me with their brightness. As I shielded my eyes against the glare, I heard a car starting up. The engine revved loudly a couple of times, tyres squealed, and before I knew what was happening, the car was roaring towards me in a blaze of dazzling lights.

  My body froze.

  My head emptied.

  All I could do was stand there, glued to the spot, watching dumbly as the car screamed towards me in nightmarish slow motion, and just for an instant I wondered stupidly why I wasn’t feeling anything, why I wasn’t doing anything, why I wasn’t trying to get out of the way, why my life wasn’t flashing before my eyes…

  At the very last moment, just as the car was about to hit me, it swung to the left, missing me by inches, and skidded to a sudden screeching halt. And all at once the rest of the world came back to life again. I could hear my heart beating. I could smell the burning rubber of the tyres. I could feel my hands shaking. And I could see Wes Campbell staring at me through the open window of a small black hatchback.

  ‘Get in,’ he said.

  I just looked at him.

  He leaned across the passenger seat and opened the door. ‘Get in.’

  I shook my head.

  He smiled at me. ‘I just want to talk, that’s all.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘Get in,’ he said, ‘and I’ll tell you.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  I stepped away from the window then and started edging my way round the back of the car. But before I’d got very far, Campbell slammed the car into reverse and lurched back across the pavement to block me off. I stared at him for a moment, then I started moving back the other way, back round the front of the car. Campbell hit the gears again and screeched forward, this time swinging the car towards me, and I had to jump back to get out of the way.

  ‘You’re not going anywhere,’ he said to me through the window. ‘You might as well get in.’

  ‘What do you want?’ I asked him, breathing hard.

  ‘I want you to get in the fucking car.’

  I stepped back a little more and glanced over my shoulder. The road was as empty as ever. There was no one around, no one to call out to. The world was still asleep. The houses, the parked cars, the walls, the gates, the hedges, the pavements, the air…

  ‘All right,’ Campbell said calmly. ‘Listen, just give me the phone, OK? Give me the phone and I’ll let you go home.’

  I turned to him. ‘What phone?’

  ‘Don’t fuck with me, Boland. I’m giving you a chance here. Just throw the phone through the window –’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  He stared coldly at me. ‘What do you think’s going to happen?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘If you make me get out of this car… what do you think’s going to happen?’

  I said nothing.

  He grinned at me. ‘You’re going to start running, that’s what’s going to happen. You’re going to start running, and I’m going to come after you, and I’m going to catch you. And I’m going to be really pissed off with you for making me get out of this car and chase you around these shitty little streets, and I’m already pretty pissed off with you anyway, so when I catch up with you, the very least I’m going to do is kick the living shit out of you, and then, one way or another, I’m going to get Eric’s phone off you.’ He smiled at me. ‘So it’d save us both a lot of bother if you just gave it to me right now.’

  ‘You’re Amo, aren’t you?’ I said to him.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Amo… amour. It’s French for love.’

  ‘What the fuck are you talking about?’

  ‘Eric’s mother is French.’ I stared at Campbell. ‘You’re Eric’s lover. You’re Amo.’

  The colour had drained from Campbell’s face now, and just for a moment he was a different person – frail, human, almost pitiable – but then, almost immediately, his rage kicked in, a cold and intense physical fury, and suddenly he was anything but human. He was a stone-cold killer, calmly opening the glove compartment and taking out his Stanley knife. He was opening the car door, getting out, moving towards me with the measured steps of a man who knows exactly what he’s doing and doesn’t care what it means…

  And I was already stepping back, starting to turn round, getting ready to run…

  When someone grabbed me from behind.

  ∗

  I couldn’t see who it was at first, all I could feel were two strong hands on my shoulders, holding me firmly in place, and the imposing presence of someone behind me. I squirmed and struggled for a moment, trying to break free, trying to see who it was, and then I heard Tom Noyce’s deep voice.

  ‘It’s all right,’ he said quietly. ‘Just stay where you are.’

  I twisted round and gazed up at him.

  ‘OK?’ he asked me.

  ‘Yeah…’

  He took his hands off my shoulders and looked slowly at Campbell. I looked at him too. He’d stopped about three metres away from us and was staring over my shoulder at Tom.

  ‘Who the fuck are you?’ he said.

  ‘Tom Noyce.’

  ‘Yeah? Well, listen to me, Tom fucking Noyce –’

  ‘Get back in the car,’ Tom said calmly.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Get in the car and go home.’

  Campbell glared at him. ‘And what are you going to do if I don’t?’

  Tom didn’t say anything, he just sighed quietly and started moving towards Campbell. Campbell hesitated for a moment, nervously blinking his eyes, then he held up his knife and waved it at Tom.

  ‘I’ll cut you,’ he warned him, backing away. ‘You come any closer, I’ll fucking cut you… don’t think I won’t…’

&
nbsp; Tom just carried on walking, his eyes fixed silently on Campbell, and I could see that Campbell was beginning to realize that Tom Noyce wasn’t just big – far too big for the suddenly very small knife in Campbell’s hand – but he was fearless too. Tom Noyce didn’t care what happened to him. And Campbell wasn’t prepared to face that.

  ‘Yeah, all right,’ he said to Tom, backing away to the car. ‘Look, I’m going, for Christ’s sake… OK? I’m going.’

  Tom stopped, watching him as he opened the car door.

  Campbell looked at me. ‘I’ll see you later, Boland.’ He glanced at Tom, then turned back to me and grinned. ‘And you won’t have your pet Yeti to look after you next time. I’ll make sure of that.’

  As Tom took another step towards him, Campbell laughed and quickly got in the car. The engine was still running, the exhaust fumes misting in the still night air, and even before the door slammed shut, Campbell had put the car into gear and hit the accelerator. The tyres spun for a moment, squealing loudly, and then the hatchback screeched away from the kerb, swung round to the right, and sped off down Recreation Road.

  I watched it until it was out of sight, then I turned to Tom Noyce. He was still just standing there, staring down the road.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said to him.

  He turned to me and nodded. ‘No problem.’

  ‘That was Wes Campbell,’ I explained. ‘He’s one of the guys your mother was telling me about.’

  ‘I know – I saw him earlier at the park. He was following you.’

  ‘Following me?’

  Tom nodded. ‘He was parked across the road when you were in the trailer. He drove off after you left.’

  ‘So you followed me?’

  He shrugged. ‘I thought you might need some help.’

  I didn’t know what to say. I mean, I wanted to ask him why – why had he bothered to help me when he hardly even knew me? – but it seemed such a shitty thing to say. So I just smiled at him and thanked him again. And he just nodded his dreadlocked head at me and told me it was no problem again.

  And it felt OK.

  ‘Well, anyway,’ I said, ‘I’d better be getting home now.’

  ‘Do your parents know you’re out?’ Tom asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Have you got far to go?’

  ‘Hythe Street.’

  He nodded. ‘I’ll come with you.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ I told him. ‘I’ll be OK.’