The Otherlife Read online

  So I gave it to Jason to read, and instead of fiddling with toys and surreptitiously checking Facebook or whatever I normally do to kill time during tutoring, I sat there and watched him read it.

  It took him forever.

  Eventually he laid it down on my desk and said, ‘This is terrific. Really, really good.’

  And I felt pleased.

  ‘I like the bit –’ he pointed to it with his pencil – ‘where you suddenly shift into this almost mythological landscape, and the rugby players metamorphose into warriors in war paint and you become a wolf. You really build the tension. And communicate this feeling of power that you had. I can see Ben’s influence too.’

  I could tell that Jason had never had a similar experience on a playing field. I mean, I doubt table tennis gives you the same sense of exhilaration, and I can’t imagine he plays anything else.

  ‘I don’t know about this bit though.’ He read aloud: ‘I felt like I could crush the skull of anyone that crossed my path.’

  ‘How come?’

  ‘Isn’t that a bit strong? I mean, you didn’t actually feel like that, did you?’

  ‘OK,’ I said. ‘Let’s change it.’

  But I did feel like that. I did.

  I asked Jason where he lived because I realised I didn’t know, and he said Bethnal Green, but I don’t know where that is.

  And then Mum, who thinks a colon is something you get irrigated at the spa, put her head round the door and asked Jason if he’d checked my sentence structure and punctuation, and Jason said he would.

  Wednesday 15th October

  I searched on Google Images until I found what I wanted, which was basically pretty close to Ben’s wolf but more sprawled-looking, more poised for attack. I didn’t want any of the ones with curly lines or silly clothes or wings. Some people have really idiotic ideas for tattoos. And I printed it out and hid it under the bed, and I felt really excited about it, which made me realise that I don’t often feel really excited about things. Even when we were on the yacht, which was quite cool with the butler bringing whatever you wanted and the jet-ski bike on the deck, I never woke up in the morning feeling like I couldn’t wait for the day to get going. This tattoo is definitely going to help me to see all this stuff that Ben can see. I know it is. All these Gods showing up like glow stars, or the hidden shapes in Zara’s NVR papers. It’s driving me literally crazy that I can’t see them.

  Ben had told me to wait for a full moon because full moons are more special and potent, and it turned out that last night, Tuesday the fourteenth, was one, and that was perfect because Mum and Dad were going to the opera. They went out at about half past six, looking like they were going to a première or something.

  Clothilde made pasta pesto with vile, slimy rice linguine, which is apparently better for you than normal pasta, and served it to me and Zara while we watched a box set of Friends. It was a Thanksgiving episode where Monica is shown in a flashback to have once been really fat and Joey gets a turkey stuck on his head.

  ‘They’re all so thin, aren’t they?’ said Zara, looking at Rachel and Phoebe and present-day-Monica on the screen.

  ‘Thinner than you, you mean?’ I said, yanking the cashmere throw over to my side of the sofa. ‘Though that’s not difficult. I mean, you could make a twelve-ton walrus look svelte.’

  ‘You children, you are not eating your dinner!’ said Clothilde. ‘Vous êtes malades, ou quoi?’

  So Zara ate a bit more of her pasta although she hid quite a lot of it under her napkin. And I (for once) just didn’t feel hungry. I wanted night to fall.

  ‘Hobie, can I play Xbox with you?’

  ‘May I.’

  ‘May I, please?’

  ‘No, you may not. I have stuff to do. Play with your horrible dolls instead. Or … I know. Go and find me 28 things beginning with c.’

  That got rid of her.

  I had a shower and put on my pyjamas and got into bed at about 9.30 p.m., and when Clothilde came in to try to kiss me goodnight I made a big show of being sleepy, and let her switch off my light. I listened to her clumping about, flushing the toilet, answering her phone a couple of times. And then the house went quiet and I knew it was time.

  I traced the wolf onto my ribcage on my right-hand side, pretty much where Ben’s got his. And yes, I knew that it was only a matter of time before Mum found out about it, but our next tropical beach holiday hadn’t even been booked yet, and I was sure I could argue my way out of laser removal or surgery or whatever if it came down to it. Anyway, it wasn’t really my problem.

  I got out the fat white candles that I’d found in one of the kitchen cupboards and lit them with my lighter. I dragged open my curtains. Everything took a bit longer because of my sling, but that didn’t matter. The moon was a bit obscured at first but gradually it came out and lit the room with this opally, milky-blue light that I thought would have been exactly the right kind of moonlight for the Berserks to fight beneath.

  I hunted around for the needle that I’d hidden in my sock drawer and unearthed Ben’s bottle of ink. I looked on Facebook for the instructions he’d sent me, but for some reason I couldn’t find his message in my inbox. And it made me really cross because I was totally geared up to tattoo myself at once so I thought, what the hell, and Skyped Ben. It was about elevenish by this time but I was sure he’d be up, reading his Norse books or playing one of those weird multiplayer online quest games he likes so much.

  The call blipped and beeped and eventually he answered it. I saw his fringe bobbing about in front of the camera.

  ‘Hobie. What are you …? It’s kind of late, you know.’

  ‘Yeah, sorry. I can’t find that message you sent about bandages and stuff.’

  There was a scuffle and the sound of his laptop being rearranged, and a loud sigh.

  ‘I’ve got my design and the ink and the needle and some kitchen roll, and I’ve lit some candles,’ I said.

  ‘Have you sterilised the needle in boiling water with a bit of salt?’

  ‘Um, no. Hold on. Don’t go anywhere, OK?’

  His face loomed and receded and I could see him crossing his legs as he sat over his computer.

  ‘Fine,’ he said.

  I raced off to the guest bedroom where there’s a kettle and all these different teabags laid out on a tray for when Grandma comes to visit, like our house is actually a hotel. As I boiled the kettle I hopped feverishly on one leg. There wasn’t any salt and I briefly wondered if sugar would do, then decided it really didn’t matter either way.

  ‘I’m back,’ I hissed, plonking myself in the middle of my carpet.

  ‘Did you sterilise the needle?’

  ‘Sort of.’

  ‘If you haven’t, just hold it in the candle,’ said Ben.

  So I did.

  ‘You also need some healing cream and some clingfilm to tape over it when—’

  ‘I’ll get it later.’

  ‘Can I go back to my game now?’ he said.

  ‘Can’t you stay online? I need moral support. Why don’t you do a sort of chant or something?’

  He sighed again. I swear, Ben should go on daytime TV as a really disapproving chat-show host.

  ‘I suppose,’ he said, ‘it would be a fitting part of the ritual.’

  ‘Great!’ I said, opening the bottle of ink with my teeth. ‘But you’d better keep it down, OK?’

  So he began this really low chant that sounded like his mouth was full of toffee. It had a slightly Lord of the Rings-y feel to it if you know what I mean. I like all that stuff, but there isn’t enough blood. And the elves and princes and whoever are all quite gay and always looking meaningfully into the middle distance for about twenty minutes before they speak, which is why those films are so bloody long.

  This (I found out after) is what Ben was saying:

  Skeggǫld, skálmǫld,

  skildir ro klofnir,

  vindǫld, vargǫld,

  áðr verǫld steypiz

  Which
apparently means:

  An axe-age, a sword-age,

  shields will be cloven,

  a wind-age, a wolf-age,

  before the world’s ruin.

  I put the mirror on the floor between the candles, unbuttoned my pyjama shirt again and began.

  As the point of the needle touched my skin I felt a rush of cold all along my side like just before you jump into a massive freezing lake and you shiver because you know how it’s going to feel. Ben kept chanting and I joined in a bit (making up gibberish) in an undertone.

  Skeggǫld, skálmǫld,

  skildir ro klofnir …

  The candles warped like they were doing their own strange dance in time to the words. I poked the ink into my skin, over and over, at the point of the wolf’s tail, blotting the blood with kitchen roll. It didn’t even hurt that much. When you’ve had a whole bunch of kids fall on you in a scrum and practically rip your arm out of its socket, a tattoo is honestly just child’s play, really.

  ‘This is easy!’ I said to Ben. ‘I could actually—’

  But I didn’t finish what I was going to say (which was that maybe I could do the moon as well as Hati and go for a much larger, more impressive tattoo), because just at that moment my door flew open and Mum and Dad came in.

  Now I know what people mean by the expression All Hell Broke Loose.

  I have to say, at first my parents couldn’t quite figure out what on earth I was doing. From the look of the candles and the mirror it must’ve seemed like I was trying to summon spirits or something. But then there was the biro on my ribcage and the needle and the ink and, well, a fair bit of blood and stained kitchen roll and the fact that I was half dressed. And Mum might not be the sharpest, but she worked it out and was screaming as loudly as she could in a whisper so as not to wake up Za, while Dad kept shaking his head and saying ‘Jesus Christ, Hobie!’ and ranting about septicaemia, which is blood poisoning. Luckily Ben had immediately signed out of Skype and my laptop was a bit to the side so they didn’t pick up that I’d been talking to someone online.

  They took away everything and mopped up the blood and put a dressing on the 1mm area that I’d managed to ink in, and Mum cried and said we would have to go and see the GP for a tetanus jab first thing in the morning, and why would I consider doing such a self-destructive thing and was I not happy and then she cried some more, sitting on my bed in her opera clothes.

  ‘Mum,’ I said eventually, ‘why did you guys come into my room?’

  She reached for the kitchen roll to absorb some of the mascara gunge from her face.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You couldn’t have seen a light. And I don’t think you heard me. So why did you come in?’

  She sighed and then pointed upwards to the shelf above my bed.

  ‘The NannyCam.’

  I followed her gaze, to where Jimmy my old yellow dinosaur reigned over a court of kangaroos, polar bears and Buzz Lightyears. And a rectangular digital clock, sort of boring-looking, that I’d always thought was just a clock. But apparently not.

  ‘Mum, you’ve got to be joking.’

  ‘We don’t use them much. It’s just nice to check on you and Zara sometimes. To make sure you’re safe. The cameras are linked to a monitor in the study.’

  The idea that my parents have been spying on me for the last however many years with a NannyCam, no doubt relayed to their laptops so they can make sure I’m not trying to look at porn and am spending an appropriate amount of time on my homework and sleeping soundly each night, revolted me.

  ‘I thought only celebrities did that kind of thing!’ I said to her.

  ‘Hobes, I’m not going to apologise to you after what you’ve just done. Don’t you know how dangerous it is? And how tacky tattoos are?’

  ‘I can’t believe there’s a NannyCam in my bedroom!’

  She got up. ‘We’ll talk more about it tomorrow.’

  On her way out she staggered a bit, wobbling onto the landing in her shiny, pointy shoes. Maybe it was because she was drunk, or maybe it was because she was upset. I didn’t especially care which.

  Thursday 16th October

  I ended up missing an entire day of school. We couldn’t get an appointment at the local GP so Mum rang the Harley Street people and then she decided that while we were in the area we should see this Educational Psychologist man as well who had an office nearby. Under other circumstances I would have really liked that sort of day, maybe with some shopping thrown in before lunch and a bacon cheeseburger at Black and Blue, but I could tell that Mum was Exceptionally Pissed Off and treats were unlikely to feature in the schedule. She was obsessed with the idea that I had somehow grazed my ribs with the needle and it was all Dad could do to stop her from calling an ambulance. Honestly, if Mum had taken air hostess exams, she wouldn’t have been clever enough to get in – not even to, like, Ryanair. No wonder Zara has so much trouble. I have one-sixteenth of a wolf’s tail on my skin and it looks like a stupid mole. I wish they’d just let me finish it.

  She kept looking over at me and trying to hold my hand and then abruptly withdrawing it, as if she couldn’t decide how she should be behaving. I got on with eating my stack of pancakes with maple syrup. I noticed she was wearing her Harley Street Outfit, a camel-coloured suit with a knee-length skirt and a silly collar. She wears it when we go to the dentist too. I wonder if she knows she has a uniform. It got me thinking anyway, and I endured the tetanus jab with the patronising private doctor (‘Oh dear, haven’t we been a silly little boy!’) and a forced amble around Regent’s Park to admire the last of the summer roses by keeping this pinned in my mind. Because I had to do something.

  Then we went to see a man called Dr Tibbert. I seem to remember I’d seen him before, years ago. He had sweets in a clay bowl on his desk. The whole thing took hours. It was just like Zara’s ghastly Assessment Papers: find the odd one out, which shape on the right does not belong with the group on the left, underline the two words closest in meaning, and then about twelve pages of codes with ‘the alphabet written out to help you’. It was all piss-easy, and although I was tempted to sabotage my scores by filling in the multiple-choice answer sheets at random, I just sat there drawing neat little pencil lozenges in the blanks and feeling pretty confident that, whatever happened, Dr Tibbert wasn’t going to say I was an idiot.

  We also had to talk about my feelings and things.

  ‘Do you feel that you are under any particular pressure at the moment?’ he asked me. He had very small hands. They unnerved me. Why were they so small? Were his feet also undersized? I kept trying to get a look at them, but they were hidden by his immensely imposing mahogany desk.

  I didn’t know how to answer him, so I said I didn’t know. It was sort of true. I don’t know what pressure is. It comes from Latin premo, premere, pressi, pressum. There is atmospheric pressure. Pressure = Force over Area. I feel pressure to knock people’s teeth out when I play Rugby. But I didn’t want to tell him that. And I didn’t want to tell him about Ben’s Otherlife, or Skǫll, or the wolf Hati that I really wanted a tattoo of so that I could be reminded of it every day.

  Dr Tibbert seemed to want to discuss it, though, probably at Mum’s insistence. He asked me if I’d wanted to feel pain when I did it. I thought of the Berserks flying into battle, smeared in dark paint, gone mad with the desire to win, fearless. I looked at Dr Tibbert’s neat round face with his neat round glasses, like Harry Potter’s, fixed with geometric precision above his nose. I imagined picking up the clay bowl and smashing it on the floor. Just by looking at it I felt like I knew exactly the sound it would make, exactly how many pieces it would break into.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said.

  ‘Do you feel frustrated that your arm is in a sling at the moment?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  And I answered I don’t know to every single thing he asked me after that.

  When I came out Mum was reading a brochure from a clinic called The Body Beautiful tha
t specialises in non-surgical liposuction. What she needs is a brainlift.

  I enjoyed the silence in the taxi on the way home.

  Friday 17th October

  ‘What happened?’ Ben asked. We were at lunch. Clothilde had made me a focaccia sandwich with Parma ham and goat’s cheese. There were also carrot sticks and a mini pot of hummus and a yogurt called Forbidden Fruits. I stared at it all, arranged on the red-and-white checked mat that my lunchbox artfully unrolls into. And I felt completely defeated by it. The small plastic spoon for my yogurt, the dark blue paper napkin folded into triangles, the perfection of Clothilde’s artistry. All for what was basically just a tray of fuel for my body to turn into glucose and thenceforth into energy.

  Maybe that’s why Zara doesn’t eat much any more. Because she just can’t be bothered.

  ‘Fail,’ I told him briefly.

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Why are you sorry?’

  ‘I’m not,’ he said. ‘I mean, I’m sorry you didn’t manage to do it. But you will eventually.’

  Then he told me my mother had rung his mother and invited him to stay with us at our country house for the second week of half term. She’s just so transparent. She knows Ben is likely to get a Scholarship, so she figures if she lures him down to our country house, bribing his mother with the prospect of free tuition, some of his precocious intelligence will rub off on me and my chances of getting one myself will magically treble. Well done, Mum.

  But actually it was a wicked idea.

  ‘So will you come?’

  ‘Will Jason be there?’

  ‘Yeah, and another tutor. A girl. She can do Latin and Greek and History and stuff. She’s quite pretty actually.’

  He half smiled. I don’t think I’ve ever really seen him smile. He doesn’t do it often.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’ll come.’

  I attacked my focaccia sandwich, in a much better mood all of a sudden.

  ‘Although,’ he went on, ‘it is my birthday that week. I suppose Mum forgot.’

  Bloody hell, that’s awful, I thought. But I said, ‘Don’t worry. My mother’s amazing at birthdays. And Zara and Cloth-head will probably bake you something.’