The Calling Read online

  ‘What does your father do?’ That’s what they asked her, straight up.

  My father’s a lawyer and it’s him that pays the fees for this piss-awful school. He never wants to see me, but he has to make sure I get a good education. Actually, that’s what Sharon didn’t say. What she did say was, ‘I dunno. I don’t have a father. Not that I’m acquainted with, anyhow.’

  Then a few months ago a couple of them saw her at the weekend, trailing down the High Street after the family. She got challenged first thing on Monday morning. ‘Thought you said you didn’t have a father. Who was that man carrying your baby brother?’

  ‘I don’t have a brother. It’s my half-sister Deborah, wearing dungarees. And just because she’s got a father, doesn’t mean I have. I’m too old to need a daddy, unlike some people.’

  When she turned sixteen last April, she decided she was going to move out as soon as the school year finished — which was just about now, seeing there weren’t going to be any more classes after the exams. Why am I sitting here? She stared at the words she’d written.

  There’d been plenty of times recently when she could have just walked out. Like last Monday night. She’d been smoking some pot in her bedroom, just to chill out a bit after the stress of sitting all day in the exam room, but Mike got wind of it and she ended up being dragged into the kitchen for a showdown. Mum had Debbie sitting on her hip and was trying to do the washing up with one hand. She started telling Sharon that if she messed up her O-levels she’d spend the rest of her life behind a counter somewhere. The lecture went on and on until Mum was actually crying about it and Debbie started squawking along with her and making her worse by trying to pull her hair. Then Mike thumped the table and shouted.

  ‘That’s it! I’m going to put my foot down.’

  ‘You go right ahead,’ Sharon said to him. ‘Flat-footed prats like you are always putting their feet down. It’s lifting them up that’s the problem. I can get lift-off whenever I like.’

  *

  When she woke up on Friday morning, Sharon’s first thought was that this was the end of the road, but what she couldn’t figure out was where she could go from here. She lay on her back for a while, then rolled over because the sun was shining in her eyes and there was Debbie, standing next to the bed, waiting to ambush her. That was Mum’s doing. She had a habit of bringing Debbie in there first thing in the morning, then going back to bed herself. Sharon knew exactly what it was about. They locked the bedroom door in the mornings, her and the prat.

  Debbie was making jerky knee bends, holding on to the side of the bed, and going ‘ah — ah — ah — ah’ with her mouth wide open. That meant she wanted to be lifted onto the bed. She liked to plant the top of her head in the quilt and upend herself, making buzzing noises through her lips. Sharon was supposed to catch hold of her feet. Debbie seemed to get an incredible thrill out of that, and as soon as she was let go she demanded a repeat performance.

  ‘Up I down. Up I down.’

  It occurred to Sharon that if Debbie was made to behave properly, she could turn into a reasonable sort of a sister. But as this thought was passing through her mind again, she noticed that an expression of intense concentration had come over Debbie’s face, which meant only one thing: dirty nappy. As the telltale sounds and smells exploded, Sharon swept her up under the armpits and took her back to her cot, calling to alert Mum to the emergency.

  Returning to her own room, she shut the door and put on her school uniform, then glared at herself in the wardrobe mirror. Who invented this ridiculous gear anyway? Pleated skirts and ties. The only people who really liked it were pinched-up schoolteachers and dirty old men.

  She was first down in the kitchen, hoping to catch her mother before Mike appeared, and touch her for a couple of quid.

  Mum put Debbie in the high chair and gave her a bowl of stewed apple, and Debbie began doing what she usually did, which was to scoop up a spoonful of it and throw it over her shoulder. So Mum took the spoon off her and tried to put the stuff in her mouth, but Debbie made a horrible grunting noise and twisted around so she nearly upset the chair.

  ‘Why don’t you give her something crunchy to eat?’ Sharon said. ‘She’s got teeth, hasn’t she?’

  ‘Don’t be rude, Sharon. Get yourself some toast, will you? And do a couple of pieces for Mike.’

  Sharon put the bread in the toaster.

  ‘Want choast,’ Debbie piped up. ‘Want choast.’ There was a lot of squealing and squirming then, till she was let out of the high chair with a finger of toast in her slimy fist.

  Sharon broached the question. ‘You know we’ve got that excursion up to London today? Can I have some extra money for expenses?’

  Mum gave a sort of a little huff, but it didn’t sound too unfriendly. ‘You’d better look in my purse.’

  That was just the moment Mike chose to come slouching in. By the expression on his face it was evident he was still smarting over the prat remark.

  ‘What are you doing?’ he demanded.

  Mum came over to take the purse. ‘She wants a bit of extra pocket money, that’s all. For expenses.’ She picked out three pound notes and was about to hand them over.

  ‘What expenses?’

  ‘She’s going to London. With the school.’

  ‘Then she can take a packed lunch like the rest of us.’ He turned on Sharon. ‘And you’re lucky to get that, the way you behave. You want to learn some respect. Some kids your age would be grateful to have a decent home, let alone all the fancy extras.’

  Sharon said she’d do without lunch and left.

  3

  It was a bloody hot day. Not the kind of day you want a school blazer stuck to your back, but when she got to the school Mrs Andrews was there watching them get on the coach and checking out their ‘appearance’.

  They were driven straight through the middle of London, with all the girls crowding up at the windows to look at the places they’d much rather go than the Tate Gallery — like Madame Tussauds and the Oxford Street shops. They started spotting Tab outfits’ on passers-by, but as they drove along the Embankment they saw two girls who provoked a general outburst of giggling. Their hair was dyed stark white and stood out around their heads in stiff little peaks. One of them wore a very short tartan skirt and army boots, and the other was dressed in black with chains all over her.

  When the coach finally stopped outside the Tate, everyone was complaining about the heat, but Mrs Andrews insisted they keep their blazers on, knotted their ties correctly and tucked their shirts in. Walking down the aisle of the coach with her chin tucked in against her neck and her glasses slipping down her nose, she did an inspection. Then she told them they had ten minutes for a snack and a drink on the grass before they went into the gallery.

  Most of the girls joined the queue for the ice-cream van, and seeing Sharon didn’t have any money she crossed the road to take a look at the river. The three people she’d noticed before were approaching along the pavement. They walked past her as if she didn’t exist. She watched them cross the road to the gallery and saw how the people sitting on the grass turned to stare at them.

  Terry had prepared a tour and that meant they had to go around in a cluster, while he got to stand out the front by the paintings and talk all the time. Some of the other visitors in the gallery stopped by to listen to him, and Mrs Andrews left him to it and went back to wait in the coach.

  ‘William Blake’s work is all about energy,’ Terry began.

  Sharon tried to ignore what he was saying, standing at the back so she could look at the pictures in her own way, but she couldn’t help hearing the lecture.

  ‘See how these bodies he draws are muscular and power-packed.’ There was a scattering of giggles as he pointed to the image of a naked man leaping out of a cloud of flame. ‘But then, see here. The ankle is shackled. Look at how many of the figures in these pictures are bound with chains. Blake was angry about the way the energies of life were locked up — energies
of the mind as well as the body. He said the worst chains are the ones in here.’ Terry pointed a finger at the centre of his own forehead. “‘Mind-forg’d manacles”, that was his term for them, and he blamed those chains of the mind for the fact other people didn’t see the visions he saw. Like this one.’

  The picture was of a weird monster with a giant man’s body and the face of a reptile. It was stalking across the ground with its neck bent forward from the shoulders as if it was about to pounce on something.

  ‘You wouldn’t think that was a flea now, would you?’ Terry asked. ‘But the painting is called Ghost of a Flea and it came out of one of Blake’s visions. He lived in a world full of supernatural forms.’

  As they came out of the Blake room they passed the toilets and Terry said if they had to go, he’d meet them upstairs in the first of the Turner galleries. Sharon didn’t feel like standing around in a queue in the ladies so she went back to take another look at the Blakes in peace. It’s true, she thought, they’re full of energy. There were figures leaping up and down, turning in the air, rising out of flames.

  An elderly man in a uniform came in and smiled at her. ‘These are my favourites too,’ he said. ‘I’d sit in here for hours, given the chance. Aren’t you going to join your friends? They’ll be thinking you’ve got yourself lost.’

  That’d be a stroke of luck, Sharon thought, but it didn’t look like that kind of luck was coming her way. There was always somebody keeping an eye out for you, making sure you kept the shackles on. Why didn’t people just mind their own business? Well, there was one place nobody could keep an eye on you, and that was the toilets.

  There were only a few girls left in there, fixing up their make-up, so Sharon locked herself in one of the cubicles for a while, just listening till the other doors stopped opening and closing. She waited another few minutes before she came out. But she found she didn’t exactly have the place to herself, because there was a girl leaning over the wash basin with her face right up to the mirror and a paintbrush in her hand.

  It was one of the girls she’d seen on the Embankment. She had a thick black line painted down her forehead and right through the middle of her eyebrow, across her eyelid and finishing in a curl at the top of her cheek. She was painting over the eyelid with dark purple, but the other eye wasn’t made up at all, and her lips were done almost white. Sharon was washing her hands, trying to look without exactly staring, but after a bit she just stood there and honestly gawped. There was so much to look at. Like the stark white hair with black roots, the safety pin through one ear where you’d normally put an earring, and the shiny low-cut black vest that she was busting out of. And the chains. She had them everywhere — wound round one wrist and up her arm, hanging in rows across her back, looped from the belt around her waist.

  The girl didn’t seem to mind being watched. She just went on painting, going over the black line down the right side of her face. When she’d done, she rinsed the brush and put it back in her bag — which looked like it was made from bits of old petticoats — then stared back. ‘Seen enough?’

  Sharon pointed to the chains on her wrist. ‘Where did you get them?’

  ‘Where do you think? It’s lavatory chain.’

  ‘Well there’s none of that in here. It’s all push-button.’

  ‘Of course. It’s no use looking in a place like this. There are public toilets down on the Embankment.’

  The girl started rummaging through the bag and pulled out a pair of scissors, which she used to trim off bits and pieces of her hair.

  ‘I saw you walking along there earlier on,’ said Sharon. ‘On the Embankment.’

  ‘What about it? I saw your little friends going up the stairs,’ said the girl. ‘Shouldn’t you be with them?’

  ‘No. I’m thinking I need a bit of a change. Give me a lend of those scissors, would you?’

  The girl turned around. That’s when Sharon noticed her black vest was made of rubber. It squeaked against the edge of the basin. She held out the scissors, snapping the blades a couple of times before she let Sharon take them.

  ‘Right — this is it!’ said a voice in Sharon’s head.

  Actually Sharon rather liked her hair. It was pale brown and quite thick and it came up smooth and glossy when she washed it, which she’d done only the night before. But looking at herself in the mirror next to the other girl, she just thought: it’s nice hair but it makes you look ordinary. So she made a jab at it, and took out a chunk, just above her ear, then another, and another, till she’d cut a trench all the way round.

  The girl lit a cigarette and watched. ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Sharon. What’s yours?’

  ‘Zig. How old are you?’

  ‘Seventeen.’ Sharon added a year but maybe Zig guessed that. ‘Why don’t you give me a hand?’

  ‘First I want to see what you come up with. Keep going.’ Sharon took off her blazer and looked at herself in the white school shirt with its little hard collar and the striped tie.

  ‘I’ll give you fifty pence for the tie,’ said Zig. ‘We collect them.’

  ‘Whos “we”?’

  ‘And if you cut the pocket off the blazer I’ll give you another 20p for that. I could use the badge. Tell you what, throw in the shirt and I’ll give you two quid for the lot.’

  An extra couple of pounds would come in handy, Sharon figured, but she had to wear something. She picked up the blazer and turned it inside out to expose the navy blue lining. It was worn pretty thin around the back, but it might do. She slit around the neck and the bottom of the sleeves and it came away in her hand. When she tried it on, it made a sort of a little shirt but the gap at the front showed an expanse of white bra, so she took off the bra and chucked it in the swing-top bin in the corner. Zig lodged the cigarette in the corner of her mouth and made a slow clapping gesture, then pulled something out of her bag.

  ‘Here. Present for you.’

  It was a string of safety pins, different sizes. Sharon started trying to pin the front of the lining together from the inside, but that made Zig laugh. She grabbed the pins back, picked a few of the bigger ones and fastened them across the outside so they showed up.

  ‘Getting there,’ Zig said. ‘But you need to get those sleeves off.’ She tossed the butt of her cigarette into one of the toilet bowls and started to cut around the top of the arm. That was when they heard the voices. They were coming right for the door so Sharon hardly had a split second to act.

  ‘Sharon! Sharon! She must be in there. Are you in there?’

  She grabbed the blazer and nipped into a cubicle. As she turned to close the door she saw Zig dump her bag in the basin to cover up all the hair clippings.

  ‘Oh sorry.’ The voice seemed unnecessarily loud and chirpy. ‘We’re looking for a girl called Sharon. Long hair, brown eyes, about my height, bit chubby around the knees.’ There was a burst of giggles. Hands started pummelling on the toilet door.

  ‘Do you mind,’ said Zig. ‘There’s a friend of mine in there. She’s not feeling well. Got the shits as a matter of fact. Give her a bit of peace and quiet, can’t you?’

  ‘Ooh! Sorry! But we do have to find Sharon. Sure you haven’t seen her anywhere? Long brown hair — ’

  ‘You already said. I haven’t seen anyone like that.’

  ‘If you do, would you report it to the front desk out there? We’re worried she’s got herself lost.’

  There was the sound of the outside door creaking as it opened again, then swung closed. ‘All clear,’ said Zig.

  Sharon came out, sensing that she had gone up a bit in Zig’s estimation, seeing there was an actual hunt on for her now. Both of them recognised the need to act fast.

  Zig finished ripping out the sleeves of the top, then wetted and soaped her hands and ran them through Sharon’s hair, so it stood out sharp and stiff. Sharon got to work on her school skirt, cutting off about six inches and making a slit down the side, then she used the rest of the safety pins to connect
the edges up again. While she was doing that, Zig was working on her left eye with the paintbrush and kept telling her to hold her head up.

  When Sharon got a chance to see in the mirror again, she could hardly recognise herself. There was a big black patch all around one eye, and the rest of her face was dead white, like chalk. Zig fished in her bag and pulled out a piece of red tartan, clipped the edge of it, then ripped off a strip about two inches wide. That made a sort of headband, tied around under Sharon’s hair and over the ears, finishing in a knot at the side.

  ‘Brilliant!’ Sharon said.

  But Zig was pointing at her legs and feet. ‘Dead giveaway.’

  She squatted down and pulled at the fabric of the black tights, twisting it around and then skewering it with the scissors. Great big ladders appeared and she pulled at them so they got wider. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘That’ll do.’

  She started throwing her stuff back in her bag while Sharon cleared the hair out of the basin and flushed it down the toilet. ‘All right,’ said Zig. ‘Let’s go.’

  4

  Things seemed quieter than usual at the station, Briony was thinking. The calm before the storm? For the last few months, Friday nights had seen more than their fair share of violent incidents — street fights, arson and vandalism — mostly down the lower end of the King’s Road. Repeated appeals for extra manpower (they still insisted on calling it that, she noted wryly) had finally paid off, with six extra constables, a DC and a DS being transferred in from other stations at the beginning of this month. Then Denis had been moved across to her team from a quieter part of the division. Whatever her reservations about him, she had him to thank for the fact that she’d been able to confirm her holiday arrangements for next week.

  She collected her mail and sorted through it rapidly. Routine stuff. Still no report from the Lambeth lab. She rang Pavan.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said in his most formal tone. ‘I’m afraid I’ve had a number of rather urgent cases claiming my attention.’