The Good Listener Read online

  The Good Listener

  Naomi Jessica Rose

  Copyright © 2014 Naomi Jessica Rose

  All rights reserved.

  Table of Contents

  The Good Listener

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 1

  “I hope you don’t mind about Kitten. She was supposed to go to her dad’s for the week, but… She doesn’t seem to mind really.”

  “It’s no problem! Why would it be? She's old enough to look after herself isn't she?”

  “She's fifteen. Well, she’ll be fifteen on Saturday, anyway. I was kind of hoping that maybe…”

  “Has she been to a festival before? She’ll have a great time running wild. That’s what my kids do. Don't worry about it!”

  “Because it’s her birthday on Saturday, I was kind of wondering if I could…”

  “That’s a shame isn’t it? What was the creep’s excuse?”

  “Her dad you mean? He just had a baby and I think he forgot what that's like...”

  “And your Kitten isn't so cute any more?”

  “It’s not really like that…”

  “You're not asking for time off are you? Oh God. I'm really sorry but that's impossible! There's too much to do for the three of us as it is!”

  Tents being what they are, Kitten sat and blinked. She felt fat and stupid and hot. The air was thick inside the little blue dome-world and the coloured walls made everything look strange. She listened to her mother and the woman, Jude, walk away and wondered what she would look like if she seemed to mind.

  She continued to sit like Buddha and a bead of sweat rolled down her nose. She should get up. She willed herself to, but it didn’t work. Perhaps she could sit there for the whole festival, however long that was supposed to be. It hadn't even started yet.

  Something hit the tent and made Kitten jump and squeak.

  “You can’t camp here, fat girl.” The voice was young and male and kind of mean.

  Kitten sat still. No longer like Buddha but in an uncomfortable crouch. She didn’t know what to do. She didn’t move.

  “Come out,” the voice said. “You're not allowed to camp here, it's traders only.” It was a dry, sneering kind of voice and it pronounced each word slowly and nastily, as if talking to an imbecile.

  And the tent moved some more, as if someone were pulling on the guy ropes, or pulling the pegs out of the ground even. Kitten pushed her head out of the tent flap, blinking in the sudden light. The boy was medium-sized-skinny with longish tatty brown hair. He was scruffy, but it might have been on purpose. Lots of people were scruffy on purpose. Kitten liked to be neat.

  The boy laughed. He had a wide mouth and white teeth. “It squeaks like a pig and it looks like a pig. A ginger pig. Man, I bet your mother is sad.”

  Kitten stood up.

  “You can’t camp here,” the boy repeated. “You'd better pack up your stuff and trot off to the punters' site like a good little piggy.”

  Kitten knew she could camp there. Jude had showed them where to put up the little tent in the camping enclosure for people working on stalls and vans at that part of the festival. They had chosen to pitch the tent behind a carved wooden bench by the main festival road. Kitten’s mum had a special trader’s pass hanging round her neck, but Kitten just had an ordinary wrist band. At least, Jude said it was ordinary. It seemed very strange to Kitten. The boy had one too. It said CHILD in large letters. He’s a child, Kitten thought. She couldn’t think of anything to say. She knew she was pink and stupid looking. She stood there and the boy crouched down and scrambled into her tent.

  Kitten felt her eyes go hot. She hadn’t cried. She'd found a way to not mind when dad said she couldn’t come and see them after all, carefully wrapping up the things she had made for the baby in tissue paper and posting them instead. Perhaps it’s better, she had thought. After all, she had no idea what to do with a baby! She didn’t want to be in the way. It was such a long time since she’d seen her dad; she’d kind of forgotten how he felt. And even coming to the festival, something she would never have chosen to do, well it had all happened so fast she hadn't had time to decide what she thought about it.

  The boy had disappeared, leaving his voice behind. “What a load of crap!” he said, laughing.

  Kitten could hardly see because of the tears but she could still hear. She could hear her things being rummaged through. The boy started throwing them out behind him, all anyhow. Kitten saw her clothes go flying, and her washing things, books and sewing stuff, so it all lay around in a great mess on the dry grass outside the tent where she stood too, in just as much of a mess, completely lost.

  “There's nothing here!” the boy exclaimed. “Where's all your twenty-first century stuff?”

  And suddenly another person appeared in Kitten's blur of vision. This one went into her tent too, in a great rush, and came out again just as fast, dragging the boy by his leg. She wiped her face so she could see better. The new person was also a boy, but a much bigger one; an almost grown-up one. Kitten watched the first boy as he was pulled upright roughly, laughing the whole time. He snatched his arm away and ran off at ridiculous speed. The new one swore angrily, then reassembled his features and looked carefully at Kitten. “Are you OK?” he asked.

  And he was unbelievably beautiful, in a way that was like an electric shock. He had blonde hair and wide blue eyes, and he was tall and tanned, wearing an old brown biker jacket, even in the heat. Kitten felt hopeless. She had stopped crying and tried to pretend she hadn’t been. She nodded.

  “You’re Kitten, right?” the boy asked.

  Kitten managed not to gasp because he knew her name. How could he? She nodded again.

  “I’m Gabriel. I just met your mum, Mary, right? She said you might want someone to show you around.”

  Kitten couldn’t think of anything to say. She never could.

  “Anyway, that was my brother, unfortunately, Jasper. He’s a complete bastard.” He looked around at the mess of Kitten's things and rubbed his hand over his wonderful face. “I'm sorry,” he said. “I'll pick it up for you.”

  “It's all right,” Kitten found herself saying, surprised her voice even worked. She knelt down to begin picking up her things hurriedly. She found she was shaking.

  “Are you sure you're OK?” the boy asked, stooping to pick up some of her things despite what she had said. Kitten didn't reply so he went on, “Don't worry about Jasper. I'll make sure he doesn't do anything. Just keep away from him and if you do see him around your stuff, tell me.” He smiled and handed Kitten his bundle of her things.

  And Kitten stared at the things because Gabriel was too unbelievable looking to actually look at.

  “I have to go and help mum now, but I can come back later. Would you like to get some tea or something?” he asked.

  “OK,” Kitten said, amazed.

&n
bsp; “I’ll see you here around six then.” He walked away between the tents towards the van.

  Kitten crawled awkwardly into her tent and began organising everything how it had been before, trying not to think about anything else.

  Chapter 2

  “Are you actually in love Sunshine?”

  “Of course not!”

  “Why not?”

  “We're friends.”

  “No you're not! That's not what friends do!”

  “Sometimes it is.”

  “What did Sunshine do?” a new voice joined in.

  “Kissed Gabriel.”

  “Harmony!”

  “Well you did. And it wasn't a being friends kiss Hap, it was gross.”

  “Gabriel is my friend. He's friends with all of us!”

  “I'm not sure he is any more, not with little girls like me and Harm anyway.”

  “You’re not a little girl! Fifteen on Saturday. That's the beginning of being grown up.”

  The third voice sighed. “Sunsh, that boy only wants one thing.”

  “No he doesn't! And even if he does, he won't get it.”

  “But doesn't that make the whole thing a waste of time?”

  “Not at all! Hap, you don’t know too much about this kind of thing, and anyway, you're not listening. We're friends! Gabriel Hoban is a messed up kid, and being nice to messed up people is the best way to get them unmessed. Maybe in a few years I’ll go out with him.”

  “When you’re a doctor and he’s a bum?” The girls laughed all three.

  “Hey you girls! Lots to do over here!” a man’s voice called.

  Kitten crept out of her tent to see the three tall girls wander off toward the big brown tent across the road where lots of setting up was going on. Kitten watched the middle one the most carefully. The one that was exactly the same age as her: fifteen on Saturday. She was slim, that girl, with bright brown skin and braided hair. The three of them were all like that, except the biggest one had hips and long hair and the smallest was little kid lanky, all elbows and knees.

  Kitten had walked around the festival all afternoon. She had seen the mostly empty camping fields and the rows and rows of stalls setting up. There was a fair unloading from massive lorries and there were enormous tents with stages and lights inside them and lots and lots of people, all busy doing things. No-one was idly wandering about like Kitten. Kitten realised she had no idea what anyone would really come here for. She supposed she was going to find out. She was tired of being so hot and felt horrible in her crumpled, dusty dress. Kitten almost always wore a dress. She made them herself.

  She had sat that afternoon thinking about the boy called Gabriel in a dreamlike trance kind of way, wondering if he was actually real, until she noticed she was furiously hungry. She went to see her mum at the van, which reputedly sold food.

  “Hi honey! Do you want to try a nutburger?”

  The van was mostly white. It looked like the kebab van that sat outside the local shops on the day the chippy was closed, except it was completely covered with hand painted signs listing all the different horribly wholesome vegetarian burgers and salads you could buy from it. Her mum was standing there looking strange with her hair tied up and a blue apron wrapped round her. Jude was there too, in a cheesecloth shirt. She smiled over her shoulder and turned back to chopping a huge bunch of green leaves.

  Kitten was horrified. “Don’t you have any normal food?” she whispered, hoping that Jude wouldn’t hear. She suddenly saw Gabriel too, round the back of the van bringing a box of something. He grinned at her and she went red. He was real.

  Kitten’s mum smiled down at her from the serving window in the side of the van. “Sorry! You’ll have to go elsewhere if you want normal food. They are delicious though, you should try one!”

  Kitten had shaken her head and wandered away.

  There were more food vans and stalls around anyway than you could easily count, though most of them sold things Kitten had never heard of and was glad she hadn’t. Falafels, dhosa, goulash… Eventually she found another white kebab-type van which seemed to be selling ordinary food. She settled for an ordinary cheeseburger and chips and sat on the dusty grass to wolf them down.

  Her stomach had started to churn sometime after that. She had ignored it, wandering around, following the signpost signs that were at every crossroads, learning where everywhere was. The toilets, she found, were much like the ones at school, except up on stilts, certainly not the holes in the ground she had vaguely expected. There were rows and rows of them around almost every corner, which was lucky for her when she found she had to run to one to be sick.

  She had thrown up everything that was in her stomach right down to the yellow bile and felt dizzy and desperately thirsty, but unable to contemplate buying something to drink. She made it back to the tent, found water in a bottle left there earlier that was almost hot from the sun, but better than nothing and lay listening to those girls talking, amazed how a tent was so little like a house. Incredulous that her mum wasn’t there looking after her, somehow drawn to her by instinct. But Kitten was too old for that kind of thing now, she told herself. She changed into a clean dress, a black one that had a long skirt and long sleeves. Most of Kitten’s dresses were black.

  She was sat on the bench, running her fingers over the strange carving on it of all kinds of animals twisting into each other, looking at the brown tent where those girls had gone, feeling sick and hot and numb when Gabriel came. She hadn’t thought he would in real life, so she was surprised. She scrambled up feeling like a useless ungraceful lump.

  “Hello!” he said. “Let’s go for a look round and have tea.” He looked tired and hot and not at all like someone who wanted a cup of tea. The leather jacket was gone and his arms were brown, with a tattoo of a diving hawk coming down one shoulder.

  Kitten could hardly breathe. “OK,” she gulped. She didn’t want tea, but would have it anyway. And she would make herself talk, she decided.

  “Do you know the people who own that tent?” she asked, pointing.

  “That’s the Sunshine Café. Teno and Sarah run it, with their girls. The food is awesome, but they’re not open till tomorrow.”

  “What kind of food?”

  “Stuff like stews and couscous, all vegetarian, and they do amazing cakes and loads of different kinds of tea. You’ll meet them, the girls are gorgeous. Well Sunshine is gorgeous. The other two are kids. They’re nice kids though. They play with Seth, he’s my other brother.”

  Kitten felt stupid again. “Sunshine is a pretty weird name,” she said.

  “Kitten is a pretty weird name too.” He was smiling, teasing her. “Anyway, the middle one is called Happiness. Imagine being called Happiness. I’d be in a bad mood all the time if it was me!”

  Kitten was embarrassed. She never really thought about her name being strange. It was just her name. And she hadn’t meant to say anything unkind about anyone else’s name either, it had just slipped out.

  “Gabriel is a pretty stupid name too, so we're all in the same boat,” he said and he smiled a smile that tipped all other thoughts out of her head.

  Gabriel showed Kitten around the festival site as if it belonged to him, and she never said that she knew her way around already. They stopped at a place for tea. Gabriel called it a café. It was actually a caravan at the back of a big canopy filled with low tables and logs to sit on. There were real flowers in jam jars on all the tables and fairly lights twirled round the poles that held the canopy up. The tea smelled nice. Kitten’s stomach cramped painfully as she sat on a log with her arms round her knees.

  “Do you want some cake? I do. We don’t sell any sweet stuff on our van!”

  Kitten shook her head. She knew she was going to be sick again. “I have to go…” she said, as she went.

  She closed the door on herself just in time. What a ridiculous day; to be having tea with a real angel and to have to run off to be sick in a strange white box on stilts. The toilets smelled
weird and smell made her sick again. She felt she must have been in there for hours, but when she got back Gabriel hadn’t even started his tea.

  “Are you OK?” Gabriel asked, looking up at her with unbearable, heart-melting concern.

  Kitten could smell the sick, so she supposed he could too. “I’m fine.” She did feel better.

  Gabriel ate his cake slowly and Kitten looked at her tea.

  “So I know why you came, to the festival I mean, that’s not an interesting conversation. How about, what would you be doing now if you weren’t here?” It was a simple enough question.

  “Sewing probably,” Kitten mumbled. It was the wrong thing to say, but it was true and she couldn’t begin to think of any kind of lie to tell him. “I was supposed to go to my dad’s house. I’ve never been there before, so I don’t know what I would be doing if I’d gone. But if I was at home, sewing, or walking around looking for horses. Or reading.” She finished everything she could think of to say, then sat saying nothing, looking around at all the strangeness and not at him. There were other people sitting under the canopy talking, asking each other questions, answering them, laughing.

  “I didn't really want to come here either,” Gabriel said. “This festival is OK, but it’s not my kind of music really. I only came because I have to work and look after Seth and… I would much rather be playing guitar.”

  “You play the guitar?” she asked, stupidly. He’d already said he did hadn’t he? Kitten knew nothing whatsoever about music.

  Gabriel nodded. “Electric guitar in a band,” he said. “Two bands actually. I was at college, but it took up too much time so I dropped out to do music.”

  Kitten began to feel she was in a dream. She simply could not believe in the fact that she was really having a conversation with someone like Gabriel. It was easier to talk in dreams. “So why do you have to work here? Can’t you just do what you want?”

  “I have to look after my mum. Make sure she’s all right. She hasn’t got anyone else. And anyway, I need the money! It’s only in the summer, and I can get away if I need to for a day or two. Especially now your mum is around.” He went quiet then, staring out at the few people passing, drumming his fingers on his knee.