Jane Is Trying by Isy Suttie

Author:Isy Suttie [Suttie, Isy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Orion Publishing Group
Published: 2021-06-08T13:15:32+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Two

‘Fuuuuuuuck,’ breathed Kelly, vape smoke curling lusciously out of her mouth.

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Yeah.’

‘I bet they didn’t expect you to just go,’ she said. ‘I bet they expected you to drop into their laps.’

‘Definitely,’ I said, thinking of the shock and sadness on Dad’s face as he’d returned from the toilet only to watch me run from the room like Jonathan had minutes earlier. I leant forwards and let my forehead fall into my hands, closing my eyelids and kneading them with my palms until I saw interlinked spirals in the blackness, wagon-wheeling into infinity, teenage LSD’s farewell kiss.

‘We need to work out your options,’ Kelly said. ‘Tonight. They’ll be planning their move as a unit, so we need to get there first. It’s a pity it’s come to this. If you’d told him back when we were in the bandstand, we wouldn’t be dealing with all of them.’

I brought my head up slowly and she shoved a chocolate toffee bar into my mouth. I bit into it, meaning to tear a bit off ferociously like a lion would, but the consistency made this impossible, and stalactites of brown toffee concertinaed between my mouth and my hand like limp puppet strings. ‘Can’t you get some, you know, people, to go round there and threaten them?’ I asked.

She laughed. ‘Who? My mum? My nan? Yvonne from the Post Office?’

‘Surely you know people,’ I said. ‘Don’t you? Someone who’d just – not do anything, but make them leave town?’

She laughed again. ‘We’re not in a western, babe. This is Foley. And his brother’s a lawyer. That’s why I’ve been on at you to sort this. The longer it goes on, the harder it gets.’

‘All right, Kelly,’ I sighed. ‘I know.’

She got up and went to the kitchen and I remained cross-legged on the floor, her boys on the two-seater sofa behind me, deep in the throes of a cartoon about fighting robots.

I looked at them, their complete absorption in the TV show, somehow in themselves. They took their trays of cheese on toast from Kelly wordlessly and settled back on the sofa. It looked like a good life. Warring robots, food, bed.

‘It’s me and you, babe,’ Kelly said to me. ‘We need to make a plan.’

‘Burn down the Folly?’ I said.

Elliott, the older one, flashed a quick look at me as if to say: I’m in.

‘Too obvious,’ said Kelly.

‘Oh, I was joking,’ I said hurriedly. Who knew who these kids would tell at school? And what if The Folly happened to burn down that evening, by coincidence? It was old and would probably burn down easily. Even if they couldn’t prove I’d done it based on statements from the kids – which I wouldn’t have! – it would be like I’d willed it somehow. Was there some way I could protect The Folly from burning down? I could go and keep watch over it all night, but I’d probably fall asleep. Call the fire brigade anonymously, just in case?

‘I don’t want Jonathan to come to any harm,’ I announced loudly, so the boys would note it, too.

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