Читать книгу Skin Deep - Laura Jarratt - Страница 8

The water in this stretch of the canal was a funny colour – looked like Mum’s carrot soup. I steered the boat along, hand resting on the tiller bar. From the time since we’d last passed a town, I reckoned we must be about ten miles from Whitmere. Time to start looking for a mooring. Didn’t want to get too close. Towns meant trouble. Too many people.

I could hear Mum inside the boat, clattering around and singing some tree-hugger shit to herself as she made dinner. Not tofu again, please. I swear they made that stuff to convert vegans to meat. Cole had agreed with me about that. Tasted like candle wax, he’d said. But then if someone asked Cole what a vegan was, he’d say, ‘It’s someone who farts a lot.’ Death by beans, he used to call Mum’s cooking. It’s not really true. We don’t fart more than everyone else, but when he met us, Cole’s stomach had some trouble readjusting after a life of eating dead cow.

I cruised on a bit further. Nowhere good to stop yet. Too far from any roads. I didn’t fancy hauling my bike over four muddy fields in the middle of winter before I got to the nearest lane.

The smell of bean stew wafted out of the door and I listened to the familiar sound of water lapping on the boat hull as I scanned ahead. There were some houses coming up in about a mile – looked like a village. I squinted for a better view. Only a couple of the houses seemed to be near the canal. The rest were set back. There was bound to be a road nearby so this was a possibility.

I yelled into the boat. ‘Might have found a spot.’

‘I’ll be there in a minute,’ Mum called back.

She always got a buzz when we came to a new place. Me, not so much. Maybe I used to; now it was just same old, same old. This place could be different though. I had a plan for this one. I’d not told Mum yet, but even thinking about it made my stomach churn, in a good way.

It’d be better if Cole was still around to help me break it to her. He’d have backed me up, but he’d been gone a year now. He got tired of travelling, he said – found another woman to hook up with, one with a house and a couple of kids. Mum said I should forget him and move on. Travellers moved on – that’s what we did. But moving on in your head’s harder. I remembered stuff all the time. Things he used to say or do. Times we had a laugh together. Like when I told him about Chavez, the guy Mum was shacked up with before him.

Cole had frowned. ‘Mexican?’

‘Nah, from Bishop’s Stortford. Real name’s Jeremy, but he changed it. Thought he was Che Guevara – if Che spent his life permanently stoned and bumming around on a narrowboat.’

‘Sounds like a tosser to me.’

‘They were all tossers before you.’

He’d winked at me, then raised his voice so Mum could hear. ‘Yeah, well, you gotta kiss a lot of frogs before you meet the handsome prince, eh, Karen?’

Mum, predictably, freaked at him, yelling about women’s emancipation and respect while we cracked up laughing. Then she threw cushions at us until Cole grabbed and tickled her, and made her laugh too.

I spotted a copse of willow trees on the bank ahead, and a bridge across the canal – a road. Were we too near the village? You couldn’t see the houses from here and the footpath was so overgrown that I doubted anyone walked along it often. Cars going over the bridge noticing us? A risk – but the wall was high and if I pulled in just where that alder tree was, I reckoned we’d be tucked away out of sight. This might be it.

Mum came up the steps, shielding her eyes from the sun, and I pointed to the clump of trees.

‘Perfect! My clever son!’

Her hands fluttered round my face, stroking it, touching my hair. She smiled and my stomach churned, in a bad way. That smile was too bright, too fixed. Not right.

‘It’ll be good here. I can sense it. There’s good energy. The ley lines meet here and they’re rising up to greet us.’ She turned that smile on me. ‘It’ll be different here.’

I looked at her, wanting to say, ‘Like you said the last place would be different, and the one before that,’ but I kept my mouth shut. Couldn’t risk unbalancing her mood. Besides, we needed to moor up somewhere and we needed money. Whitmere had a market where she could sell the jewellery she made. Maybe we’d make it through the winter before they moved us on.

I steered Liberty towards the bank. Mum sat on the roof, her bare feet dangling in the doorway. Silver rings on her toes, and in her nose and eyebrow. Hennaed hair glinting copper in the sun. The last of the New Age travellers, who never grew up.

‘Feel that energy, Ryan, feel that energy.’