The noise was deafening. Kate lived two miles away from school and always took the number 698 bus home. She was sat near the top of the staircase reading Cosmos by Carl Sagan, oblivious to the chaos. An exercise book hit her on the head. Silence fell upon the upper deck.
Kate leaned over and picked up the book and examined the name on the cover. She walked to a quiet mousey second year girl and handed it back to her.
“If anyone grabs your book again, tell me. I'll shove one of their books somewhere so painful; they'll need a surgeon to remove it.”
Kate returned to her seat.
“What are you reading?”
Kate sighed. The question was from Susan, who always seemed to next to Kate these days.
“Well it's not Smash Hits,” Kate lifted the book to show her. “See, no Limahl on the cover.”
“I love Limahl. Do you?”
“I despise him.”
“Kate you're so funny. You're ace, whatever they say.”
“They? Who are they?”
“Do you fancy coming to the roller disco on Sunday?”
“I'm busy.”
"We could go next week. My boyfriend Kevin has a mate, Tony, I'm sure you'd like him. He's fit."
"Fit for what? This is my stop." Kate rushed down the stairs.
"I'll tell Kevin tonight on the phone," shouted Susan, miming a telephone, as if Kate might be unsure how to operate one.
"Bless me father for I have sinned. It has been," Pete paused to remember, "two days since my last confession."
Father Connelly sighed. "What is it this time? Murder? Larceny? Did you covet your neighbour’s ass?"
"A little of the last one. I've laid off the murdering recently and it's been quiet on the larceny front. Impure thoughts, some not honouring of my mother and father and a bit if drinking. There's this girl Father, she's so..."
"Details are not necessary, we had all those the three times you came to see me last week."
"Don't you need to know how often?"
"God knows all these things. You've confessed. Now go and say your prayers. Four Our Fathers and ten Hail Marys."
"Isn't that excessive?"
"You're a recidivist; it's for your own good. Also, you might want to roll up all these confessions into a single monthly visit."
"But I would forget something, it's hard to keep track."
"Get a notebook. Bring it along if you must."
They were both silent for a moment. I absolve you of your sins in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit."
Although Pete would have preferred to take the bus home, he always walked the two miles across town. He saved his bus fare to buy a copy of Warrior, a comic which included his favourite series, V for Vendetta.
His family home was in one of the more affluent leafy streets on the edge of the town centre. As far as Pete knew, they were the only Polish people in the town. His father, Leon Diabrowski, had brought the family from Warsaw five years ago. It had been a shock for both the young Piotr and his mother at the time but the boy had adapted well. He soon adjusted to his new environment. He cultivated a broad Wigan accent to fit in better, which annoyed his mother. She missed her home city, with its theatres and museums.
As a doctor, Pete's father earned a decent income. They had done well for themselves. Moving from a rented flat to this large comfortable semi-detached within two years.
Pete walked into their house to the familiar smell of his mum's cooking. She was always making soup, this one a delicious pork, ham and egg broth. The gruff but cheerful voice of his father came from the kitchen "Piotrek! How was school?"
Pete shrugged grabbed a piece of bread and dipped it in the pan. His mother's hand clipped the side of his head. "Can't you wait five minutes?"
He rubbed his ear and sat at the table next to his father. "School was okay," said Pete, "Off out later to do a bit of ghost hunting."
"Will o' the wisps is it? You had better watch out. The White Lady loves nothing more than a curious young man for her supper. Particularly in those tights of yours..." He chuckled to himself.
"Tights?" said Pete.
"You'd better not stay out too late Piotr Diabrowski," complained his mother. "There are all kinds of odd people out there these days. It's not safe. Last night someone tried the front door, I'm going to get some new locks for those windows. And it's school in the morning; I don't want Mr. O'Malley telling me you aren't paying attention in class again. You should not be staring out of the window when your teacher is talking. It was so embarrassing at parents evening. How will you ever get into medical school?"
His father nudged him. "No later than ten o'clock Piotrek."
“Dad will go mad again when he sees the phone bill,” shouted Sophie. She made scampi and chips, while Tom sat in the living room trying to connect his Commodore 64 to a modem. He had saved two months of paper round money to buy it. Every Saturday for months, he had walked to town and peered through the computer shop window. He had scanned the specifications of different models in the pages of Zap 64 magazine to get the best value. “What on earth are you doing anyway?”
“Logging onto Compunet. Dad will never know, I've been reading about phone phreaking. This won't cost a penny.”
“I don't understand a word you say. Leave it now, your dinner is ready.”
The lingering odour of fried scampi filled the house as they sat at the battered kitchen table. They chewed the tiny dry overcooked morsels of battered shrimp.
"Do they flush first years’ heads in the toilet at high school?" Sophie asked.
"No."
For Tom the transition to high school had been difficult. He often looked back on his time at the primary school Sophie was about to leave. He recalled running through the wide empty corridors, ringing the bell for playtime. Hr remembered whispered conversations through the joined hoods of parkas, and the the tuck-shop with its Sherbert Dib-Dabs and Panda Cola. Poking at daddy long-legs lurking in the crumbling playground walls. Digging with lolly sticks for Roman pottery, in the dirt beneath the playground fence. There was the school holiday at a seaside holiday camp in Devon. Tom had produced the best project, spending hours perfecting it. He included a diary of each day's activities, drawings of himself bouncing on trampolines, abseiling and weaving baskets. He won the first prize of one pound. Adrian Booth captain of the rugby team suggested he buy himself a pint of bitter. Tom had said he was below the legal age to buy alcohol. Everyone had laughed and Tom had joined in, though he was not sure what was funny. After school every day, his mum was at home waiting for him.
"O'Malley is the one to watch out for; he makes you write everything he says in class, page after page, every day. My hand feels about to drop off after an hour in his lesson. If he catches you breaking any of the school rules, he writes your name in a little book. Jimmy Gough came in with an earring last term, and O'Malley had a fit."
Tom and Sophie finished with a mint Vienetta for pudding, and they washed the dishes together.
Kate's stop was five minutes’ walk from the block of flats where she lived. As the bus pulled away, she froze.
A medieval knight rode a beautiful white horse across the grass next to her block. He was a short man in his twenties with shoulder length brown hair, thick bushy eyebrows and a large nose. The individual features of his face were unusual, but combined they were handsome. The knight stopped and looked at Kate. For a moment, it was as if the world around them had frozen, leaving the two of them alone. Then he turned and rode on up the hill in the direction of the shopping precinct.
She crossed the field and entered the stale smelling corridor of her block. Footsteps echoing against the grey tiled walls. She pressed the lift button.
Kate's parents adopted her when she was five. She remembered nothing of her genetic parents or her early life. Sometimes there were odd dreams. They could have been half-remembered events from before the adoption. Curiosity nagged at her from time to time. Kate always said she had only one real family.
Every day Kate stopped off at her gran’s flat on the fourth floor for a chat before going home. She sighed noticing some new graffiti scrawled on the lift door in white paint. It was a rushed and amateurish attempt at something involving snakes and wings. Probably copied off a heavy metal album cover. Someone would have a hard time scrubbing it off.
The lift door opened and Mr. Blackledge stepped out and grunted at Kate.
“Hello Mr. Blackledge,” said Kate.
He coughed in her face.
“Disgusting,” he muttered, pointing at the graffiti. “I ought to tell your gran.”
“I didn’t do it.”
“I know I am old but I'm not blind you know, or daft.”
He walked out of the front door, muttering to himself.
Kate got into the lift and pushed the button for the fifth floor. There were two lifts, one for odd and one for even numbered floors. At least one lift was usually broken, so you had to get the lift to the next floor and walk a floor back down the stairs.
Kate arrived at her gran’s flat and knocked at the door. There was shuffling from inside, the sliding of the peephole and the unhooking of the chain. The door opened to reveal a bent figure in a blue flowery dress and a cardigan. Kate’s gran had a face covered with wrinkles, eyes bright and intelligent. She grinned, put her arms around Kate, planted a wet kiss on her forehead and guided her into the flat.
The living room was chaotic. A 1950s cabinet displayed her Goss pottery collection, as did the mantelpiece above the gas fire. In the centre of the room was a sofa and matching armchairs with green polyester covers. Books overflowed from a 1960s-shelving unit onto the floor, and formed teetering towers. In places, there were heaps of books where the towers had collapsed. A grandfather clock ticked in the corner. Kate's favourite object as a young girl was a bright red water fountain, which sat on top of the sideboard. When plugged in a light came on inside and a pump drove water up the centre, trickling down the three layers. Her gran disappeared behind a home bar in the corner.
"I'd get rid of this ugly old thing but it reminds me of your granddad. The pop man has been. Do you want cherryade or cream soda?"
"Cream soda, thanks gran."
"There are still dozens of bottles of his whiskey here. I cannot stand the stuff myself. He'd still be here if it wasn't for the drink. It wasn't his fault though, losing his dad so young."
She handed Kate a glass.
"I’m frying myself some chips. Do you want a few?”
Kate nodded and threw herself onto the sofa. Her gran disappeared into the kitchen for a few minutes. She emerged with two plates filled with chips and buttered bread. She flicked on the TV and turned to the wrestling. Hanging from the front of the set was a huge square magnifying glass. It helped those with poor eyesight but only the centre of the screen remained clear. The edges of the picture grew blurred, lending a dreamlike quality. A middle-aged man in a lime green leotard sat another man's head and shouted abuse at the baying crowd.
"No Big Daddy today,” said the old lady, sighing. “How was school?”
“Oh, the usual. History was good. The teacher told us some stuff about the origins of the name Wigan. He reckons there was a person called Wyggan, a warrior queen who fought the Romans.”
“Sounds unlikely. We had a good history teacher when I was a girl. He was a character, one of them eccentrics. Bit of a weirdo, to be honest."
“Do you know anything about Mabel, the Mab’s Cross ghost?”
“The Mab’s Cross ghost? Oh dear, I’ve been on this planet for 72 years and I’ve never seen any ghosts. That doesn't mean they don't exist of course, but those who see them tend to be attention seeking. And by attention I mean of the psychiatric sort.”
“There was this lady in the paper who saw something strange by the Plantation gates.”
“It was Evie Fairclough wasn’t it? I know all about her. In the fifties, she claimed there was a Yeti living in the woods. I wouldn’t take any notice of her, she's not a full shilling. She went about telling everyone George Formby was still alive. Faked his own death because he couldn’t stand the limelight.”
Kate had suspected as much but still felt a pang of disappointment. She shoved chips into her mouth, half watching the TV.
"Are you not courting yet?"
"Gran!"
"Well you're always walking out with those two boys. You're going to have to choose soon love."
"Tom's not... Oh it doesn't matter."
“You should try the library.”
“What do you mean gran?”
“For the Mab's Cross ghost. Evie runs a newsletter, Weird Wigan. She writes the whole thing herself, the batty old cow. I've seen it in the library, they stock any rubbish as long as it has Wigan in the title.”
Kate finished her food and gave her gran a kiss. She went back to the lift and up to the 11th floor.
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