Chocolate Box Girls: Coco Caramel (17 page)

‘I loved it,’ I tell her.
‘Sorry if I was a bit grumpy earlier – I get a bit obsessed sometimes. It’s
just that I have a lot on my mind right now.’

‘The horses?’ she checks.
‘I am so proud of you for rescuing them, Coco, I hope you know that. It’s
like you are actually doing things, changing things, when the rest of us just think
about it – you’re so brave!’

‘I don’t know about
that …’

Any chance of a heart-to-heart evaporates as
Jayde and Amy appear, herding us off towards the funfair. Open all season for tourists
and holidaymakers, the fair traditionally closes down for the winter after the bonfire
night display, so it’s a last chance to celebrate, a perfect way to make the
bonfire night fun stretch a little further.

We follow the crowds along the seafront
towards the bright flashing lights and the smell of hot doughnuts and toffee apples, the
loud music of the fair. It’s ages since I’ve
been, but
I’m still a sucker for the thrill of it, the squash of people, the sense that
something special is happening. I remember coming here when I was little with Mum and
Dad, throwing ping-pong balls into glass bowls to win a teddy bear, getting candyfloss
stuck to my face, flying round and round on the carousel horses and wishing they were
real. More recently I’ve been with Mum and Paddy, or with Sarah’s parents,
but I have never been without a watchful adult hovering in the background.

An extra prickle of excitement slides down
my spine.

‘Let’s go on the
waltzers,’ Amy is saying, tugging us forward. ‘You should see the boys that
work on it – they are so fit!’

‘I think I just saw Aaron Jones from
the high school,’ Jayde chips in. ‘Didn’t he go out with Summer for a
while? Maybe we should say hello?’

‘Don’t bother,’ I say.
‘He was a loser. A creep.’

‘Good-looking, though,’ Amy
comments. ‘Just wait till you see this lad at the waltzers! If he still works
there … there are two of them, and the one I like is just soooo cool. Wait
till you see!’

I roll my eyes and allow myself to be led
through the
knots of people to the waltzers, just in time to join the
end of the queue as the ride comes to an end. One of the fairground workers is taking
the money, another working on the ride itself, swinging back the safety bars and helping
people out.

‘That’s him!’ she
whispers, breathless and pink-cheeked. ‘Isn’t he A-mazing?’

The legendary fairground boy is skinny and
tanned with laughing eyes and darkly inked tattoos peeking out from the cuffs of his
leather jacket. He’s much older than us, and there’s a rough edge to him
that has my friends swooning.

He spots us waiting and waves us over to an
empty waltzer, settles us in and pulls down the safety bar. ‘Ready for the time of
your life, girls?’ he asks, confident and flirty. ‘I’ll make sure you
have a good time!’

‘He is SO good-looking!’ Jayde
whispers as soon as he moves on to the next waltzer. ‘Like someone from a
movie …’

‘Way too old for us,’ I point
out. ‘He must be at least seventeen or eighteen.’

‘So what?’ Amy shrugs.
‘I’m not going to marry him, am I?’

‘Did you see his tattoos?’ Sarah
giggles.

‘I saw him without his leather jacket,
in the summer,’ Amy says. ‘The tattoos go right up his arms. Just imagine
those arms round you!’

‘Fairground boys are bad boys,’
Jayde chips in. ‘They smoke, they drink, they swear …’

‘Who cares?’ Amy giggles.
‘They
flirt
as well!’

The music begins to build up again and the
floor sways beneath us, the brightly painted waltzer car swaying with it. Squashed in
between my friends, I hang on to the safety bar as we whirl round, slowly at first, then
faster, faster. I am deafened by the music, the crash of the waltzers as they plunge and
thunder round and round, clattering across the undulating floor, screams of laughter
from all around us.

‘All right, girls?’ Tattoo Boy
asks, stepping on to the back of our waltzer. ‘Fast enough for you? Or would you
like to see some real action?’

Laughing, he spins the waltzer round and all
four of us yell like crazy, loving it, hating it, high as the moon. And then before we
know it the ride is slowing, the music fading, the waltzers lurching to a halt.

‘There you go, sweethearts,’
Tattoo Boy says, releasing the safety bar and setting us free. ‘Come back again if
you’re after more thrills, OK?’

‘We will!’ Amy promises.

‘Everything’s spinning,’ I
complain, getting to my feet and flopping right back down again. ‘Whoa!’

‘I’m all dizzy,’ Jayde
yelps. ‘I don’t know if it was the ride or the flirting …’

‘Fairground boys are mad, bad and
dangerous to know,’ Sarah proclaims as we cling together, making our way slowly
across the undulating wooden floor. ‘This has been the best birthday
ever!’

We’re staggering down the steps, still
a little seasick from the ride, when Jayde tugs my sleeve. ‘Hey, Coco,’ she
says. ‘Isn’t that your sister?’

I follow her gaze to where Tattoo Boy is
leaning on the painted railings that edge the ride, talking to a pretty girl with
jaw-length blonde waves, a green crochet hat, a wool jacket and the shortest skirt I
have seen in quite some time.

My heart thumps.

‘Honey?’ I frown, shaking off my
friends and running forward. ‘Honey? What are you doing here?’

She looks at me, her gaze registering
annoyance, then resignation, while Tattoo Boy watches, amused.

‘I could ask you the same
thing,’ she snaps.

‘It’s Sarah’s birthday,
remember?’ I say. ‘We went to the firework display, then on here. Mum knows
all about it.’

‘Good for her,’ Honey says,
without missing a beat. ‘Well, I’m at history club, remember? I am with the
girls …’

She gestures towards a couple of hard-faced
teenage girls in tight jeans and spike-heeled boots, leaning against the railing sharing
a cigarette. They don’t look like schoolgirls, or history geeks for that
matter.

Tattoo Boy gives me an appraising look, then
turns back to Honey. ‘See you later,’ he says, and goes back to the
waltzers.

‘What does he mean, “see you
later”?’ I demand. ‘Don’t tell me he’s in your history
club too? I may only be twelve years old, Honey, but I am not stupid!’

Honey rolls her eyes. ‘OK, OK,
I’ll come clean,’ she says. ‘But you have to stay quiet about it,
Coco, yeah? Because I am supposed to be grounded, as you know,
and Mum
and Paddy would go nuts if they knew I was here. But it’s not what you think. I am
working on a project for school …’

I blink. ‘What project?’

Honey pulls a little camera from her pocket,
pressing the buttons to display past photographs.

‘It’s for my art
portfolio,’ she explains. ‘I’ve been studying the fairground. I
didn’t think Mum would understand, but art is actually the only subject I really
care about and I want my portfolio to be as good as I can make it.’

She flicks through some of the images; there
are grainy shots of Tattoo Boy leaning up against the painted fairground backboards, of
the hard-faced girls, the man taking the money, of little kids laughing as they queue at
the hot dog stand. They are good, as far as I can tell, and relief floods through
me.

‘You see?’ Honey says.
‘It’s an art project – I’m researching for a painting. Nothing to
worry about, and no need to say anything to Mum and Paddy, right? They might not
understand, but you will, Coco, I know. I may be grounded, but I don’t want my art
project to suffer.’

‘I guess not …’

Honey hugs me, tousling my hair beneath the
panda hat, and I run off to rejoin Sarah and the others.

I believe Honey – we all know how much she
loves art – but I can’t help feeling uneasy, all the same.

I take a leaf out of Lawrie’s book and
start bringing my school work up to the cottage; now we curl up with our homework most
afternoons. Lawrie turns out to be smarter than he thinks; he helps me with maths and
CDT and I help him with English and French. It works both ways and it makes the homework
fun.

I wonder if that’s why Honey likes
studying with Anthony? If she actually does study, that is. She can pick his brain and
pull her grades up, and he can hang out with the girl he’s had a crush on since
forever. There is no crushing going on between Lawrie and me, obviously, although
sometimes I catch him watching me in a way that makes my cheeks burn. It’s
probably just my own stupid imagination; as far as I can tell, Lawrie finds me
every bit as exasperating as he always did. He is just getting better
at hiding it.

Sometimes, anyway.

‘This is just about the only time I
get for homework lately,’ I say, writing out maths problems by lantern light.
‘I’m always up here, and things are kind of crazy at home just now because
of the big chocolate order. How do you manage, with this and your job at the
stables?’

‘I don’t,’ Lawrie says,
glancing up from an English essay. ‘Not usually. I haven’t handed in a piece
of homework on time for ages – Mr Wolfe almost fainted yesterday when I handed in that
history assignment.’

‘How come you got the stables job,
anyway?’ I press. ‘I wanted to try out for it and they said I was too young,
but you’re twelve too, right?’

‘I told them I was fourteen,’ he
shrugs. ‘I needed the money.’

‘How come?’

‘Never mind,’ he says.

‘So … how come you
don’t study at home?’ I ask.

‘I just don’t,’ he says.
‘You don’t know what it’s like at home for me. I’m too busy to
study. Other things to do.’

Lawrie is sending me back-off messages, loud
and clear, but right now I don’t want to take the hint.

‘Like what?’ I ask.

‘Like looking out for my mum and my
sister, helping around the place, that sort of stuff,’ he growls.
‘You’re very nosy, aren’t you?’

‘You’re very secretive,’ I
counter. ‘What are you, some kind of pre-teen spy? You don’t make it easy
for anyone to get to know you.’

‘Good,’ Lawrie says.
‘I’m not looking for friends. I had them once and I had to leave them all
behind, so what’s the point in making more? I hate it here. Move to the country,
start over, Mum said – it’s been a disaster from start to finish.’

I watch him in the half-light, leaning back
against the broken-down armchair, his face unreadable. It’s like he has forgotten
I’m here.

‘The only good thing about the
countryside is the animals,’ he goes on, gruffly. ‘The people are rotten.
They pretend to care, but they just gossip and gawp and never actually do anything at
all, and the bullies get to call all the shots. How come some people think they can do
whatever they want, treat everyone around them like dirt?
There’s no way out, and you can’t even help the people you care about. I
hate it!’

I blink. I have no idea what Lawrie is
talking about, but it seems like more than just Darren Holmes nicking crispy cakes
outside the school.

‘Lawrie?’ I whisper. ‘I
don’t know what’s going on, but if you ever want to talk –’

‘I don’t,’ he snaps,
jumping up, moving away into the shadows. ‘I don’t want to talk, not to you,
not to anyone. Back off, Coco, OK? I am not one of your charity projects. Like I said,
you can’t fix everything that’s broken – let go of it and leave me
alone!’

Lawrie shoves his way out of the kitchen,
but not before I see the glint of tears on his cheeks in the flickering lamplight. That
shocks me more than anything because boys like Lawrie just don’t cry.

It takes him half an hour to calm down, half
an hour of clattering about in the dark, filling buckets with fresh water from the
stream, chopping back overgrown branches with a pair of secateurs. Well, at least he
doesn’t storm off down to the road without me.

I stay put, ploughing through my maths
homework, hoping that if I am patient he will cool off and bluff his way forward as
though the outburst never happened. ‘Least said, soonest mended,’ Grandma
Kate used to say, and it’s good advice. I have learnt the hard way that with a boy
like Lawrie, patience heals a whole lot faster than panic ever can.