Life_ An Exploded Diagram - Mal Peet [103]
A circle of white-robed figures surrounded the cross and the fire engine. They were so extraordinary, so utterly unfamiliar, that for a dizzy moment he thought they might have descended from space or — less likely — heaven. Clearly, some were male and some female, yet the females had hair like men, and the males had no hair at all. And they were barefoot. A single voice persisted when silence descended: a stout bald man reciting from the book of Revelation. It took Underwood a full half minute to realize that it was Enoch Hoseason. Then he started to recognize the others. There were twelve, in all. The mad messiah and his disciples. There was heresy in the very number. Underwood formed his face into a stern mask and advanced.
Frankie dismounted and let her bike fall onto his, her pedals barging into his spokes.
“Hiya,” she said, and the awkwardness of it, the fact that she’d never said it before, melted him.
He embarked on a number of sentences that he couldn’t complete.
“Are you . . . ? Do you still . . . ? Did you, was it, I mean . . .”
She busied herself with herself, ignoring him. She fussed with her garter belt through her skirt, tugged her sweater back into order, shrugged her coat into shape. Tossed her hair back. Then she looked up at him. Her face was almost expressionless.
“Shut up,” she said, then planted her mouth on his and forced her tongue in, pressing herself against him. He was shocked; they’d never snogged openly in a public place before.
“So,” Frankie said, pulling away, “here we are. Still alive, just as I said we’d be. Where are we going?”
“This way,” he said.
He didn’t dare take her hand until they were some way along the beach, out of sight of the cliff-top huddle of fishermen’s cottages and gabled bungalows. Despite the enormity of what they were about to do, Frankie seemed to be without a care. She lifted her face to the bright pallor of the sky. She inhaled the sea air like a tourist. The silence between them didn’t appear to bother her; in fact, she seemed to want it. His own anxiety was so strong that he thought it might be audible, plangent as cracking ice. At least there was no one else around, he thought. He had no faith in his luck. It would not have surprised him if they’d come face-to-face, at this momentous moment, in this remote spot, with someone who knew him, someone who would report his assignation and bring the world down in a heap.
The gorsy jumble of fallen cliff forced them closer to the low surf. They walked across a springy mat of seaweed, bladder wrack. Its brown blisters popped beneath their feet, which delighted her. She let go of his hand and jumped on them, bursting them childishly, laughing, little squirts of water staining her shoes. He stood watching her, smiling like a parent.
Beyond the landslip, there was a sign on a pole: a pocked and dented skull and crossbones.
Frankie said, “What’s that mean?”
“Beware of pirates, ” Clem said. “Come on.”
He took hold of her hand again and led her toward the cliff, where a great slab of concrete, a wartime ruin, angled into the sand. He reckoned that in the lee of it they would see anyone approaching before anyone approaching would see them.
“Will this do?”
Frankie looked around as if she were considering buying it.
She leaned her back against the slab and smiled and opened her arms, which parted her coat, and said, “Come here, Clem Ackroyd.”
So he went to her and kissed her and put his hands up inside her clothes, up her back where he could feel the bra strap and the silky shiftings of her shoulder blades. She parted her legs, and although he almost didn’t want to, he shoved his shameful hardness up against her. Miraculously, it excited her. She placed her hands at the top of his hips and tugged him tighter in, lifting herself, mumbling his name into their