The Power(36)

She felt it again, the glitter under her palm, the way his face grew warm and then cold. She sniffed. Looked at her own hand as if it could tell her the answer.

‘It felt good,’ she said. ‘He killed my mum.’

Darrell said, ‘I wish I could do it.’

Roxanne Monke and Mother Eve talk a lot in the next few days. They find the things they have in common and hold them out at arm’s length to admire the details. The missing mother, the place they’re both used to holding, half in and half out of families.

‘I like how you all say “sister” here. I never had a sister.’

‘I didn’t either,’ says Allie.

‘Always wanted one,’ says Roxy.

And they leave that there for a bit.

Some of the girls in the convent want to spar with Roxy, practise their skills. She’s up for it. They use the big lawn at the back of the building, leading down to the ocean. She takes them two or three at once, sidesteps them, hits them hard, confuses them till they jolt each other. They come in for supper bruised and laughing, sometimes with a tiny spider-web scar on the wrist or ankle; they wear it proudly. There are girls as young as eleven or twelve here; they follow Roxy about like she’s a pop star. She tells them to get off, go and find something else to do. But she likes it. She teaches them a special fighting trick she’s worked out – splosh a bottle of water in someone’s face, stick your finger in the water as it spurts out of the bottle, electrify the whole thing. They practise it on each other on the lawn, giggling and hurling water about.

Roxy sits with Allie on the porch late one afternoon, when the sun’s setting red-gold behind them. They’re watching the kids larking about on the lawn.

Allie says, ‘Reminds me of me, when I was ten.’

‘Oh yeah? Big family?’

There’s a longish pause. Roxy wonders if she’s asked something she shouldn’t have asked, but fuck it. She can wait.

Allie says, ‘Children’s home.’

‘Right,’ says Roxy. ‘I know kids who come from that. It’s rough. Hard to get on your feet. You’re doing all right now, though.’

‘I look after myself,’ says Allie. ‘I learned how to take care of myself.’

‘Yeah. I can see that.’

The voice in Allie’s head has been quiet these past few days. Quieter than she remembers it being in years. Something about being here, these summer days, knowing that Roxy’s here and she could kill anyone stone dead; something about that has made it all go quiet.

Allie says, ‘I was passed around a lot when I was a child. Never knew my dad, and my mom’s just a little scrap of memory.’ Just a hat, is what Allie remembers. A pale pink Sunday church hat at a daring angle and a face underneath grinning at her, sticking her tongue out. It seems like a happy memory, from sometime between long bouts of sadness or illness or both. She doesn’t remember ever going to church, but there’s that hat in her memory.

Allie says, ‘I think I’ve had twelve homes before this one. Maybe thirteen.’ She passes a hand across her face, digs her fingertips into her forehead. ‘They put me in a place once with a lady who collected china dolls. Hundreds, everywhere, staring at me from the walls in the room I slept in. She dressed me up nice, I remember that. Little pastel dresses with ribbon threaded through the hems. But she went to jail for stealing – that’s how she paid for all those dolls – so I was sent on.’

One of the girls on the lawn pours water on another, setting it sparkling with a faint jolt. The other girl giggles. It tickles.

‘People make what they need for themselves,’ says Roxy. ‘My dad says that. If there’s something you need, something you really have to have – not just want to but have to, you’ll find a way to get it.’ She laughs. ‘He was talking about junkies, wasn’t he? But it’s more than that.’ Roxy looks at the girls on the lawn, at this house which is a home, more than a home.

Allie smiles. ‘If you make it, you’ve got to protect it.’

‘Yeah, well. I’m here now.’

‘You have more power than anyone we’ve ever seen, you know.’

Roxy looks at her hands like she’s a bit impressed, a bit afraid.

‘I dunno,’ she says. ‘There’s probably other people like me.’

Allie has a sudden intuition then. Like a fairground machine with gears working and chains clanking. Someone had taken her to one when she was a little girl. Put in two quarters, pull the lever, clunk, grind, thunk; there’s a fortune, printed on a small rectangle of thick, pink-edged cardboard. Allie’s intuition is just like that: sudden and complete, as if there were machinery working behind her eyes that even she has no access to. Clank, thunk.

The voice says: Here. This is something you know now. Use it.

Allie speaks quite softly. ‘Did you kill someone?’

Roxy sticks her hands in her pockets and frowns at her. ‘Who told you?’

And because she does not say, ‘Who told you that?’, Allie knows that she is right.

The voice says: Say nothing.

Allie says, ‘Sometimes I just know things. Like there’s a voice in my head.’

Roxy says, ‘Bloody hell, you are spooky. Who’s going to win the Grand National, then?’