Free The Betrayal by Laura Elliot

Darkness settled slowly during those summer evenings and Joan grew increasingly edgier when the lights were switched on. I avoided looking at the locked press where she kept an unopened bottle of vodka. Would she break the seal on it and pour a measure? Karin sulked in her room and played her music too loudly.
    ‘Get lost, Moby,’ she shrieked and flung a book at me when I entered without knocking. The warning signs were obvious. Karin and her father, when he finally arrived, would side against Joan, who would drink too much, laugh, talk and cry too much. I’d be invisible to them all, except when Karin reminded me that I’d the attributes of a whale.
    Afraid of being overheard if I used the cottage phone I left the house without telling them. I rang Jenny from the phone kiosk on the harbour. Our ways had parted months previously and I hadn’t told her I was going on holidays with Karin.
    ‘Are you having a good time?’ she asked, her life too busy for grudges.
    ‘It’s okay,’ I said. ‘I wish you were here with us.’
    ‘It wouldn’t work,’ she said. ‘Two’s company, three’s a crowd. Karin doesn’t like me.’
    ‘Oh, that’s not true.’ I wasn’t sure who I was trying to convince. ‘She just finds it hard to make new friends.’
    ‘I know that. When are you coming back?’
    ‘Not for another fortnight, more’s the pity. Have you ever heard of a band called Shard?’
    ‘Don’t think so. Why?’
    ‘They’re here on holiday. We both fancy the singer.’
    ‘Is that why you’re fighting with Karin?’
    ‘I didn’t say we were fighting.’
    ‘One boy. Two girls. Of course you’re fighting.’
    ‘Very funny.’
    ‘Who’s winning?’
    ‘Neither of us…so far. She calls me Moby Dick.’
    ‘If she can’t treat her best friend with respect that’s her problem, not yours. Don’t let her get to you.’
    ‘What are you doing?’
    ‘There’s disgusting raw sewage flowing into the sea at Dollymount. I’m making a video.’
    ‘ Jenny !’
    ‘Stinky work but someone has to do it. Dad bought me this brilliant handicam for my birthday.’
    ‘If I was home I’d go with you.’
    ‘Would you?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Good luck with the singer.’
    As if her words had materialised him from the ether Jake suddenly appeared outside the phone kiosk. It was the first time I’d seen him without the others from the band. He grinned when he noticed me and pressed his face against the glass, flattening his features and clawing at the kiosk with his nails.
    ‘Oh, my God, he’s outside.’ I whispered. ‘I’d better go. I’ll call into see you as soon as I get home.’
    ‘Best of luck until then.’
    I pushed against the door of the phone kiosk and Jake pushed back.
    ‘Back off, Godzilla,’ I yelled in mock terror and he staggered backwards in an equally exaggerated stumble.
    We sat on the harbour wall, our legs dangling over the water. I smoked my first cigarette. He told me the band had taken the summer house to write songs and firm up their act in preparation for the international fame that awaited them. Their manager Mik Abel believed they were Ireland’s answer to Guns n’ Roses. So far, they’d only played a few venues and Barney, the owner of the harbour pub where Joan had danced with the fisherman, had offered them a gig in a fortnight’s time.
    I wondered if he would kiss me. Our heads were so close together. Would our breath be heavy with smoke? Should I allow him to put his tongue into my mouth? Would his lips be hard like the rim of a jam jar which was how Dean Redmond kissed? Dean was the only boy I’d ever kissed and the experience had fallen far short of the swooning sensation I’d anticipated. Jake lit another cigarette and talked some more about Shard.
    ‘Will you and Karin still be here when we play Barney’s?’ he asked.
    ‘I guess.’ I stood up and tugged at the end of my shorts. I always seemed to be tugging at my clothes, as if, somehow, this would shrink my size.