The Girl Below(59)

I pulled off the headphones and spun round to see Caleb standing in the doorway, arms folded, all smirk.

“Don’t stop your funky moves,” he said, mocking me.

“How long have you been standing there?”

“A while.” He paused just long enough for me to blush. “I’ve never been in here before—only looked through the window. It’s kind of cool.”

I felt I ought not to tell him I had broken in. “The door was open.”

“I bet it wasn’t,” he said, grinning. “Dad’s really psycho about this place. He won’t let anyone in because he thinks we’ll scratch one of his precious records. For ages, I thought he was up here surfing porn but when I told Mum, she laughed and said he didn’t even know how to switch on a computer. But I still thought that’s what he was doing—lots of my friends’ dads do it and they’re techno retards. Anyway, Mum was right, but Dad still won’t let me in the door.”

Caleb had never been so talkative, or so friendly, and the sudden change in him put me on edge. “We should go downstairs,” I said, lifting the needle off the record.

“What were you listening to?”

“The Rolling Stones.”

“Dad’s always trying to get me to listen to them. He says they’re the best band on the planet, but when you see them on TV, they’re like a bunch of granddads in try-hard clothes.” He reached past me and grabbed the record cover, sending out a wave of such strong heat that I moved away from him. He didn’t notice, had already thrown the Stones to one side and was pulling records off the shelf three at a time, oblivious to his dad’s filing system.

“What about this?” he said, holding up an album with two topless women in see-through knickers on the front.

“Don’t you think we should go?”

He chucked the record on the turntable and unplugged the headphones, filling the shed with a raucous late seventies disco riff.

“All right!” he hollered. “These chicks are awesome.”

“I don’t think that’s the band on the cover,” I said. “I think they’re just models.”

Caleb hadn’t heard me. He was hunting through cupboards and looking behind things, but some miracle had prevented him from rooting out the seventies bush porn. “I’m sure Dad’s got a fridge in here, somewhere,” he said. “He’s not allowed to drink, but I’ve seen him sneaking up here with dodgy brown paper bags.” He swung back one of the shelves to reveal a tiny, ingenious fridge stocked with beer, from which he took out two cold bottles of ale, then pulled a key ring with an attached bottle opener from his pocket.

“Do your parents know you drink?” I said when he handed me a bottle.

“Doubt it. Mum’s too busy having fits about what Dad drinks, and he’s too busy hiding from her that he’s an old soak. Mostly I stick to spirits—vodka and stuff—but beer’s okay if you haven’t had much to eat.”

“You drink vodka?”

He nodded. I didn’t know why I was surprised. I had too at his age. We’d bought cans of Coke and tipped them half out then filled the rest up with vodka so we could drink on the tube without getting caught. One time I had polished off the remains of the vodka bottle straight and had spewed all the way home on the night bus. “Do you still have to get girls to buy your booze?”

“Girls?” he said, as if they were an alien species. “Why would you do that?”

“Because girls look older.”

“Nah, the guys I hang out with are older than me, so they buy all our shit.”

“And they give it to you for free?”

“No, they make us pay.” Caleb was on to his second beer, having guzzled the first in little more than a gulp, and his face had begun to bloom. “That chili sauce went everywhere this morning,” he said, miming an explosion.

“I’m glad you think it was funny.”

“It was, rather.” He flicked open another beer and handed it to me. “Sorry about buggering off. I couldn’t be arsed cleaning up, but I was going to later on.”

“Sure you were.” I took a sip of the beer and wondered how we were going to replace all the missing bottles. Caleb had turned up the volume on the stereo and suddenly took hold of my wrist.

“Let’s pretend we’re at a party,” he said, pulling me to my feet. “And we’re not the only ones dancing.”

He spun me around in a clumsy twirl and I tried to follow his lead but my knees tensed up.

“Don’t be such a square,” he barked. “I saw you dancing before, so I know you like it.” But something about his youthful swagger, his proximity, made me lose my nerve even more, and Caleb gave up and dropped my hand. For a moment or two, I did an old-person’s shuffle, while he bounced around in a wild pogo, ricocheting off the record shelves and walls until he stumbled and landed heavily on the turntable case. The lid made a hideous cracking sound and the needle scorched across the record before skidding clean off.