The Visitors(6)

Those girls had been able to believe their own hype so completely because they’d been shielded from reality. They hadn’t known yet just how shitty life could be.

Holly had never seen any of them hanging around the small park across from the school. This was the place where she’d usually sit at the end of each day, after the library closed. Sometimes she’d stay there for hours, until it was impossible to delay going home.

But on that last day, the library had been closing early to mark the end of the summer term, and the park was flooded with rampaging, drunken students trying to prolong their student days.

She decided she’d just have to keep out of Uncle Keith’s way until her aunt got back from her cleaning job.

Nobody had asked Holly to sign their shirt or blouse as she shuffled slowly towards the exit, making her way alone through the excited throng of people. If they’d asked, she’d have refused anyway. It was all so two-faced. Half of the hugging girls she’d walked past had done nothing but bicker behind each other’s backs over the past year.

They thought they were sad to be leaving their friends and teachers, but Holly had known that really they were grieving the end of their little empires. They had been secretly gutted that they’d no longer be in a place where they were empowered to bully those they perceived to be different to them. Where they’d been able to make people’s lives – people like Holly – an utter misery.

She’d smiled to herself as she reached the gates and allowed herself a moment or two to look back at the building and the other leavers.

Good luck to them in their mind-numbing jobs, which were the only option they’d be able to secure without any qualifications. Hopefully they would find themselves at the other end of the scale. They’d be the ones who didn’t fit in and were at the mercy of the people in control.

Karma was a marvellous thing, Holly had thought.

‘Hey! Wait up.’

She’d turned at the sound of a voice calling behind her.

It had been Markus, of course. There was no one else.

‘You don’t want to wait for me? That is OK,’ he grinned as he pushed through the crowd towards her. ‘I will catch up with you anyway.’

Markus spoke excellent English but had still retained a discernible trace of his native German accent. He knew what it meant to be an outsider here too.

They had been in the same maths and history groups during the last two years of school and had gravitated to sitting together against the never-ending spit balls thrown from the back of the classroom.

Holly had suffered because she wasn’t with the in-crowd and Markus because he was German, gay and fostered. ‘I am what is commonly known as a triple threat,’ he’d joke.

Now he looked around the school yard.

‘You and I, we are the only ones alone here, it seems.’ He indicated the thick rope of celebrating students that snaked around the quadrangle without ever seeming to near the exit gates.

‘Oh, I’m used to it now.’ Holly shrugged.

‘Ah, but you see, now we are not so alone. We are together. Which is better, yes?’

She nodded and smiled at him. ‘Suppose so, yeah.’

‘What exciting life awaits you, Holly, when you walk through these iron gates of hell one last time?’

‘Oh, you know,’ she said airily. ‘Film star, supermodel, brain surgeon… haven’t really decided yet.’

He nudged her. ‘Come on!’

‘I’ve honestly got no idea.’ She grinned. ‘I just want to get as far away from this place as I possibly can, and soon. But I have to find somewhere to go first. A new home, new start. Easier said than done, isn’t it? In the meantime, I’m going to college to get some secretarial skills under my belt.’

‘Well, I am going to make some money,’ he said, all at once serious. ‘Lots of money.’

‘Oh yeah, doing what?’

‘Hmm, this is just one small detail I’ve yet to decide.’ He shrugged. ‘See you around then, I guess?’

She’d left his question unanswered as together they walked out of the gates, finally leaving behind the all-consuming misery that had been secondary school.

Although Holly hadn’t known it then, far from escaping the torture of the classroom, she had just taken her first step on a journey that would lead her to a far worse fate.





Chapter Five





Holly





Holly was to sleep in the second bedroom of Mrs Barrett’s three-bedroomed house, but it was still a good size. There was a double divan bed in there, and a rather dated mahogany wardrobe and cumbersome chest of drawers, but still, there was plenty of room for one person. Mrs Barrett said that in all the years she and her late husband had lived in the house, the second bedroom had barely been slept in.

Upon her arrival, Holly had lugged up a couple of medium-sized packing boxes, a rucksack and a small, scuffed case containing all her worldly goods, but she hadn’t got round to unpacking any of it yet.

It wasn’t much to show for the ten years she’d been away, supposedly making a bright, sparkly future for herself. The mere thought of some of the stuff she’d had to face made her want to drown her sorrows in the litre bottle of wine currently buried under her meagre collection of mismatched underwear.