Every Woman Knows a Secret. Rosie Thomas

them. She sat on the edge of the bed and wearily reached down to undo her shoes.

      Cat’s place was a rented room in a rambling mouldy-smelling house near the railway line. While Rob and Danny were waiting on the step for her to rummage for her keys they heard the muffled rumble of a goods train passing. Rob thought of heavy flasks of nuclear waste being transported from somewhere to somewhere in the midnight dark, and shivered as if a cold hand had been laid on him.

      ‘There isn’t much to drink. Some vodka I think, if you want that. Someone left it here.’

      Cat produced a half-empty bottle from a partitioned sink cupboard.

      ‘I’ll have some,’ Rob said. They had begun laughing again. The two boys stumbling in the cluttered room seemed incongruous, comically out of scale. Zoe peered at her pale reflection in her handbag mirror and stretched her mouth ready to coat it with lipstick. Her hand slipped with the cylinder and slashed scarlet across her teeth instead. Her helpless giggle turned into a hiccup.

      Cat gave each of them a green glass with an inch of vodka in it. Danny took his and immediately put it aside, losing it. Cat slid a tape into a cassette player and music blurted out, much too loud. She laughed and prodded at the controls, then collapsed backwards on the bed beside her friend.

      Danny mumbled, ‘I’ll roll a spliff.’ He sat sideways at a tiny table and produced the pouch from his pocket, humming as he spread the papers.

      Then they sat on the bed, one on either side of the girls, passing the clumsy roll-up between them. Cat’s black legs sprawled impartially. Danny touched the curve of her thigh with the tips of his fingers and began to stroke, lightly, then more insistently.

      He drew in a breath and held it. Then, abruptly, he lurched to his feet.

      The room was spinning around him but he didn’t care. There was a wash of light inside his head, golden light filled with stars that prickled within his brain in the way that not very long ago a certain type of sweets had been made to fizz on his tongue. It was impossible to contain this feeling of power, which was what the light was; he had to let it burst out. He could feel the wild breadth of his own smile. He was dry-mouthed and his gums squeaked against his teeth. He looked down at Cat to see her staring up at him, amazed. Zoe’s eyes were closed, her head lolling on Rob’s shoulder.

      Danny flung out his arm. To his surprise, his fingers were still nipped on the roll-up. Tiny sparks smouldered for an instant in the air. He had been going to say something important but he had already forgotten it. No matter. He knelt down at Cat’s feet instead. She leaned forward slowly until their foreheads were touching. Then she lightly kissed his mouth, but her fingers locked warningly in his black hair.

      Danny breathed, ‘I love you.’

      Cat made a little bubble of a laugh. ‘I know what that means; I’ve heard it all before.’

      ‘No, no, it isn’t that. I do. I really do.’

      ‘Yeah, course you do.’

      Her flippancy irritated him. He took her chin in his hand, twisting her head a little. The golden light in his head faded to dull, pounding redness.

      ‘C’mon. Be nice.’

      ‘You’re hurting me.’

      ‘You like it.’

      ‘I don’t. Stop.’

      He pushed her backwards, reaching his hand up her skirt.

      ‘Don’t cocktease. Isn’t this why we’re here? Look, I love you. I mean it.’

      ‘I mean it.’ Cat was suddenly breathless. The changed note in her voice made Zoe’s eyes snap open.

      Rob was afraid of violence. The sight and most of all the sounds of it set waves of panic and terror washing through him. The way that it could erupt out of nowhere as it did now, sudden and hideously defined from the muzzy bonhomie of drink, froze the breath in his lungs and stiffened his limbs into immobility. In the minutes that followed he wanted to shrink and hide, but he made himself act. He felt small and clumsy, but his reactions were quick, as he had learned to make them.

      *

      The cold air outside hit Rob in the face. He couldn’t quite remember where he had left the van. Danny leaned dazedly against some railings next to the dustbins, rubbing his mouth.

      Rob yelled at him. ‘You fucking loser. Bloody come on, will you?’

      Rob began to run and after a second Danny thumped in his wake. Far worse demons chased after Rob; images of violence gathered force behind him and loomed out of the blackness so that he ran faster, head bent and arms pumping like a little boy’s, his breath coming in tearing gasps and the fear of a descending blow stiffening his shoulders in anticipation.

      They reached the parked van by some stroke of good fortune and flung themselves into it. Rob started the clapped-out engine and reversed with a squeal of tyres, then accelerated hard away from Cat’s street and the railway embankment. Rob tried to remember where he had been and where he should be going. The streets formed an intricate triangle, alternately dark and patched with lurid light. Danny sat slumped sideways in the passenger seat.

      Rob muttered, ‘Where the fuck are we?’ The side roads all looked the same. He jerked his head round furiously to Danny.

      ‘I’m sorry,’ Danny whined. ‘I dunno what happened. I just lost it.’

      Rob was afraid of the eruption of violence within himself, as well as in other people. As if he could smell his disgusted fear, Danny wheedled, ‘You’ll stick up for me? Our word against theirs, isn’t it? If they catch us, that is.’

      Rob only whispered on an exhaled breath, ‘You little …’ But he didn’t finish. Words that were too similar had been directed at him.

      At last they reached the bypass, the open road that Rob had gunned the van down earlier on the way to the club. There was a bump and the tools in the back rattled a warning. He pulled the wheel and the van straightened again, then he blinked into the rear-view mirror and saw it. There was a flashing blue light behind them. He swore and Danny peered at him before looking behind.

      ‘Shit. Drive,’ Danny howled. ‘Drive, will you?’

      Instinctively Rob stamped his boot down hard. There was too much play in the accelerator. The van shuddered and whined and picked up speed. At half past one in the morning there was almost no traffic on the road. They hurtled forward, deafened by the racing engine, and for a minute or two it seemed that the police car was falling back.

      ‘Yeah. Go, man!’ Danny shouted, with sudden wild elation.

      But the police siren was closing on them, audible even over the engine roar. The van juddered as if it would fall apart.

      Rob stared ahead. There was a bridge. Concrete pillars daubed with graffiti.

      Lights coming the other way. Fast, a dazzle in his eyes. The road vanishing.

      Brakes, the brakes. A long squeal, shrieking in his head, echo of an echo. And then a smash. Explosion of glass and metal and pain.

      Rob moved his head. There was cold air, and a bright light in his eyes. The light was his own headlamps shining on grass and concrete slewed at a terrible angle. He turned with cold precision and saw that the seat next to him was empty and the passenger door open. Had Danny undone his seat-belt? Or in their hurry to get away from Cat’s had he never fastened it?

      To undo his own caused him a breathtaking stab of pain. He swallowed it and pushed the driver’s door open with his shoulder. He crawled out on to the grass and saw a car stopped behind him, someone running. Before anyone reached him he pulled himself around the back of the van because the front was all smashed in against the bridge.

      Danny was lying on his side on the verge. Rob knelt down beside him. He saw that there was blood coming out of his ear and nose.

      ‘Come on, mate.’ He leaned over him. ‘Get up now.