But Ashlee’s words had stung a tender, infected place in Krystal’s psyche, so it had been balm to her when Fats had sought her out at school the next day and asked her, for the first time, to meet him over the weekend. She had told Nikki and Leanne immediately that she was going out with Fats Wall on Saturday, and had been gratified by their looks of surprise. And to cap it all, he had turned up when he had said he would (or within half an hour of it) right in front of all her mates, and walked away with her. It was like they were properly going out.
‘So what’ve you been up to?’ Fats asked, after they had walked fifty yards in silence, back past the internet café. He knew a conventional need to keep some form of communication going, even while he wondered whether they would find a private place before the rec, a half-hour’s walk away. He wanted to screw her while they were both stoned; he was curious to know what that was like.
‘I bin ter see my Nana in hospital this mornin’, she’s ’ad a stroke,’ said Krystal.
Nana Cath had not tried to speak this time, but Krystal thought she had known that she was there. As Krystal had expected, Terri was refusing to visit, so Krystal had sat beside the bed on her own for an hour until it was time to leave for the precinct.
Fats was curious about the minutiae of Krystal’s life; but only in so far as she was an entry point to the real life of the Fields. Particulars such as hospital visits were of no interest to him.
‘An’,’ Krystal added, with an irrepressible spurt of pride, ‘I’ve gave an interview to the paper.’
‘What?’ said Fats, startled. ‘Why?’
‘Jus’ about the Fields,’ said Krystal. ‘What it’s like growin’ up there.’
(The journalist had found her at home at last, and when Terri had given her grudging permission, taken her to a café to talk. She had kept asking her whether being at St Thomas’s had helped Krystal, whether it had changed her life in any way. She had seemed a little impatient and frustrated by Krystal’s answers.
‘How are your marks at school?’ she had said, and Krystal had been evasive and defensive.
‘Mr Fairbrother said that he thought it broadened your horizons.’
Krystal did not know what to say about horizons. When she thought of St Thomas’s, it was of her delight in the playing field with the big chestnut tree, which rained enormous glossy conkers on them every year; she had never seen conkers before she went to St Thomas’s. She had liked the uniform at first, liked looking the same as everybody else. She had been excited to see her great-grandfather’s name on the war memorial in the middle of the Square:
Krystal had loved the river, green and lush, where they had gone for nature walks. Best of all had been rounders and athletics. She was always first to be picked for any kind of sporting team, and she had delighted in the groan that went up from the other team whenever she was chosen. And she thought sometimes of the special teachers she had been given, especially Miss Jameson, who had been young and trendy, with long blonde hair. Krystal had always imagined Anne-Marie to be a little bit like Miss Jameson.
Then there were snippets of information that Krystal had retained in vivid, accurate detail. Volcanoes: they were made by plates shifting in the ground; they had made model ones and filled them with bicarbonate of soda and washing-up liquid, and they had erupted onto plastic trays. Krystal had loved that. She knew about Vikings too: they had longships and horned helmets, though she had forgotten when they arrived in Britain, or why.
But other memories of St Thomas’s included the muttered comments made about her by little girls in her class, one or two of whom she had slapped. When Social Services had allowed her to go back to her mother, her uniform became so tight, short and grubby that letters were sent from school, and Nana Cath and Terri had a big row. The other girls at school had not wanted her in their groups, except for their rounders teams. She could still remember Lexie Mollison handing everyone in the class a little pink envelope containing a party invitation, and walking past Krystal with — as Krystal remembered it — her nose in the air.
