by Amy Beashel
‘Don’t be ridiculous, Iz. Of course I wasn’t.’ Grace’s mock sheepishness gives way to a smile. ‘It was at least six thirty before I looked. Anyway,’ she says, ‘I was merely looking out for you, like I’ve always done. You know, like how I’d call you most mornings? Run through your timetable to be sure you had the right books? You didn’t complain then, did you? Saved you from thousands of detentions, I reckon. I’m just grateful I don’t have to save you from thousands of fishing hooks now.’
‘Or lampreys.’
‘You what?’
‘Lampreys. One of the kids in the refuge warned me about them. Bloodsucking eels that live in the river Severn.’
‘Jesus, Izzy.’ Grace clutches her chest as the rest of her wobbles with a shiver. ‘Though I guess the eels weren’t the only things looking to suck someone’s face off in Shrewsbury, were they?!’
‘Ha ha.’ Thing is, Grace has a point, and she knows it too.
‘Oooooh, look at you, Iz – you’ve gone totally candyfloss. How sweet,’ she says, winking. ‘Come on then, tell all.’
And I will, I promise, but priorities, right, cos Mum insisted on this pre-pick-up meeting at seven, which only gives me an hour to explain to Harry why I ran off this morning, why I’ve lied about being on holiday with my mum and why I’m now in Whitstable over two hundred miles away, and would he mind, you know, despite me being a total freak and all, driving to come get me? Oh, and yes, obviously I’m still that independent girl he fell for, but Mum doesn’t want me getting the train because it’s too expensive, too much hassle and she just wants to know I’m not on my own and with someone who cares. And he is someone who cares, isn’t he?
‘Izzy.’ And be still, my acrobatic heart, cos Harry’s voice doesn’t sound like a blockade when he answers the phone. ‘I didn’t know whether to call you,’ he says, like he’s the one who’s done something wrong here.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say, and I wish that would cover it, that he could get it – everything, I mean – from those two words, and that I’d be saved from the details, from all of that nasty truth. I run my foot over the stain on Grace’s rug, but like my own bruisy spots, it doesn’t budge. They’re part of me now. For good, I reckon. ‘We need to talk,’ I say.
I can hear the nerves in his ‘Sure’, and he must think I’m going to end it, whatever ‘it’ is, and so I rush into it, the story of my life, while Harry like Styles listens quietly on the other end of the line.
And it’s surprisingly easy, when I can look at the rug and not at his face – it’s not too hard telling him about Daniel and the reasons why Mum and I were on the run. But the flow’s dammed when it comes to explaining why I said I couldn’t be with him and scarpered.
‘It’s kind of complicated,’ I tell him. ‘It’s just that there’ve been some boys and maybe I feel like I don’t —’ Grace shoots me this look, like, don’t you dare. Don’t you dare say you don’t deserve him. ‘What I’m saying is: it’s not you, Harry.’
‘It’s not you. It’s me?’ And his voice is a joke in a cliché.
‘Exactly. It’s not you. It’s me. It’s definitely me, and I’m definitely sorry, and I’ll understand, you know,’ I tell him, wondering if the reason he’s now so silent is because he’s drowning in all that heart I’ve just poured out down the phone, ‘if you’d rather not see me any more.’ I wish that maybe I had taken up fishing because then I’d stand a chance of reeling it all back in. ‘Maybe Grace’s mum can give me a lift back. I realise it’s a lot to ask and I —’
‘How will I know it’s your mum?’
‘Or maybe she’d be OK with me getting the train to London and meeting her there.’
‘Will she be wearing a rose? Or holding a sign with my name on it like a taxi driver at the airport?’ Harry’s voice is like music when I’m focused on something else. I hear the noise of it, but the words don’t register. Not fully.
‘There’s this woman, Kate, at the refuge – she’s got a car, I think. Perhaps she could come.’
‘Izzy!’ Harry is louder this time. ‘I’ll be there for seven!’
‘You’ll what?’
‘I’ll be there for seven.’
And how I hear it is: ‘I’ll be there for you.’ And it’s a good job the call is only audio cos my eyes burst into a million happy tears.
‘You OK?’ Harry says.
And I tell him yes a thousand times because, for so many reasons, I feel like I actually might be.
‘So, I’m looking for a short woman with a shaved head?’ Harry clarifies when I’ve calmed myself enough to give him the low-down on Mum.
‘And a ton of questions,’ I warn him, cos Mum didn’t sound like she was gonna go easy.
‘I’ll take my ton of answers then,’ Harry says, and not for the first time, I wish he was here so I could suck his Shropshire face off !
‘Thank you.’ The words seem so insufficient but I say them over and over until he tells me to stop.
‘This is for my benefit as much as yours, Izzy.’
‘How’s that?’
‘Five hours in a car with you. Your mum’s not the only one with questions.’
‘Surely I’ve just told you enough of my secrets to allow me a bit of silence on the way back.’
‘Nah, ah, ah. You’ve told me about Daniel. I want to know about it’s not you, it’s me, Izzy.’
And that poured-out heart puts a cork in it then when I think about exactly what kind of info he’s after. Jacob Mansfield? But before I can tell him I’ve changed my mind – that Mum can come get me after all – Harry’s telling me to wish him good luck, and he’s gone.
FORTY-FOUR
‘You heard what happened with Jacob? Harry’s going to hate me if he finds out. He’ll think I’m a —’
‘A what?’ Grace cuts in, and I know what she’s thinking, because in those few hours she wasn’t off making sweet love with Nell, we’d had this discussion over and over, after that first photo when the boys – and some of the girls! – didn’t just stick it to me with Fingers but branched out into other insults too.
‘He’s going to think you’re a what, Izzy?’ she says again, obviously not letting it slide. ‘Listen –’ Grace’s eyebrows lift into arches that could rival Ronald McDonald’s – ‘from what Max told me this morning about the deal Jacob made with you, it didn’t sound like you did anything. It sounds like it was done to you. That’s why I had to call your mum. There was no consent there. He raped you.’
And I totally cramp at that.
‘It’s a word, Izzy. The action was worse,’ she says, wiping my tears before she wipes her own. ‘Dumbledore?’ She sees my confusion through the wet. ‘He said to call something what it is, remember? Voldemort. Rape.’ And maybe I wince a little cos Grace takes my hands and kisses them, a reminder of the kindness another body can bring. ‘Being scared of the word makes you more scared of the thing it represents, less able to face it down. Jacob might call it all fair play or banter or some other kind of shit as disguise, but it was rape.’
And she seems so sure as she gives me her hot chocolate. There’s no doubt as she holds me while I drink it. Not a slither of a maybe I played my part in it as she tells me over and over how sorry she is for not working out exactly what Jacob was up to.
‘What he did is not who you are, Izzy. It doesn’t define you. No more than what happened with Daniel defines your mum. I’m not saying they’re not huge shitty things that went on, and that they won’t shape you in some way, but if Harry likes you, he’ll listen, and he’ll get what you’ve been through and he’ll be kind and understanding and loving and everything else you deserve.’
‘That was quite a speech.’ It comes out a little mean, but all Grace does is hold me tighter. ‘You really think he won’t mind?’
‘It’s not his to mind, is it? I’m serious. You deserve someone who’s not just going to accept you for who you are and everything that’s happened but someone who will love you all the more for it.’
<
br /> ‘Like Nell does with you?’
‘Like you do with me, Izzy.’ Grace looks at me like, duh! ‘Who do you think gave me the confidence to be myself all these years?’
‘What?’ I don’t get it.
‘You’ve always had so much faith in me, this ginormous, unshakeable faith that I’m amazing, that I can do whatever I set my mind to, that I’ll face down anyone who questions who I am or who I love. You’ve been there for all of it, Izzy, and you never had any doubt that I’m the best.’
‘That’s because you are,’ I tell her.
‘In your eyes, yes. Not everyone has so much confidence. But that doesn’t really matter, because you always do. And you’re always telling me, never letting me forget how awesome I am.’ She strikes her fiercest Beyoncé pose then blows me a kiss. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever even thanked you,’ she says, more serious now as she sits me down on the bed. ‘Not properly. So, thank you, Izzy Grace Chambers for being the most wonderful friend a girl could ever ask for. My life would have been totally shit without you.’
And in this moment, I’d one hundred percent swear Grace’s sixth-sense thing is as real as her arms, which she squeezes around me with such force I can barely catch my breath. But I’ve never been so happy to gasp for air.
‘I love you, Grace Izzy Ashdown,’ I tell her when the hug eases and my body’s still buzzing with the mass of love she’s somehow pressed into my skin. I mean, it’s probably pins and needles, but the moment’s so magical I’m half expecting a unicorn to turn up and offer me a lift so I don’t have to risk that conversation with Harry.
‘I love you too,’ she says, with no extra emphasis because every word is important. ‘More than anything.’
I’m so tempted to ask, ‘More than Nell?’, but I sit in our loosened hug instead, wondering how I can capture these last few minutes and stick them in a bottle to sit, rainbowcoloured and proud, with the Jar of Sunshine I’m going to rescue in the morning.
FORTY-FIVE
‘Harry like Styles is coming to get you!’ Mum called to tell me last night after her meeting with Harry, and I’m still verging on nervous gaga this morning when Grace bumps open the door into her room with her hip, bearing a tray with a two-course breakfast she presents like she’s the winner of Bake Off. ‘Ta-da!’
‘Pot Noodle and toast? Really?’ Even by Grace’s standards, this is unconventional.
‘The breakfast of queens! ’ she says, balancing the tray on my legs sprawled across the bed before budging me over so we can share. ‘Actually, it’s the breakfast of a daughter whose dad forgot to order his Tesco delivery. But it’ll do.’
There’s no doubting it’s kind of weird, but it fits, because I’m feeling kind of weird too, like these two different parts of me are about to collide and the reaction will be either dazzling or totally catastrophic.
‘And how far has fair Harry progressed on his journey?’ Grace asks, the sound of his name sparkling like a Christmas bauble as she kitten-licks Nutella from the toast.
‘I’m surprised you’re not tracking his every movement on Find My Friend by now!’
‘I only do that with very special people,’ she says with this joke-psycho voice and these joke-psycho eyes, which she drops before saying for the millionth time how sorry she is, you know, that she hadn’t figured out Daniel for the total a-hole that he is.
‘It’s not your fault,’ I say, nerves curbing my hunger but picking at the noodles anyway cos, like Grace keeps telling me, I need to keep my strength up.
‘For all that kissing you’re going to be doing!’ she says, because that and the drive to Shropshire are all she thinks are on the agenda today.
I haven’t told her about the Jar of Sunshine, that the beads are the main reason I’m here. That my reunion with her may have been the best, but it wasn’t planned, whereas sneaking into Daniel’s was.
And for all the same reasons – ‘You can’t do it, Izzy! Don’t you dare, Izzy! It’s too dangerous, Izzy!’ – I haven’t mentioned that I’ve had another message from him this morning, a photo of my jar in the garden next to the forget-me-nots we planted when his mother died three years ago, the same morning we first tried to leave. When he’d cried pretty much non-stop for five days, wishing, he said, that he’d seen his mother more, helped his mother more, loved his mother more.
‘It’s too late now,’ he’d whispered, and I remember thinking how it may have been too late for his mother, but it wasn’t too late for us. How maybe all this regret was what he needed to make his promises to Mum and me come true.
‘I thought after Dad…He was so…She never stood a…’ Daniel started but then stopped when he got home from the funeral he’d insisted on going to alone, bending himself like a little boy into Mum’s lap on the sofa, the smear of his tears on her shirt and his hands clinging on to her hips. ‘You’re all I have now,’ he said. ‘You’re everything I’ve got.’ And the sobbing turned his voice into a stuck record. ‘Never leave me. Never leave me. Never leave.’
We’d only met his mother the once, when she came to the wedding, looking, as she arrived, nothing like the ‘mean and mousy’ woman Daniel had described. When she left only an hour into the reception, I watched Daniel follow her across the road and on to the slopes leading down to the sea, saw how he grabbed at her elbow when she reached for her car door, pushed his face down into hers like he might spit in it and then, catching my stare, kissed her cheek instead. And maybe she sensed the switch in him too because she also cast a glance in my direction, but I was too far away, too much of a stranger to understand the way she looked at me. I wonder now if it was sympathy.
In this most recent picture, the Jar of Sunshine stands yellow amid the purplish blue of the flowers, with a small sign laid on the soil: I’ll never forget you, Isabel.
If it was anyone but Daniel this might be a goodbye, an I-know-you’re-not-coming-home-but-I’ll-remember-whatwe-had kind of farewell. But every word of Daniel’s feels like it’s been dipped in acid, like he corrodes the meaning of things so you can’t rely on your gut to understand.
‘Izzy!’ Noodles slither from the tray to the duvet like tiny frantic snakes as Grace leaps from the bed to the window. ‘A car’s just pulled up outside.’ The squeaking of her fingers rubbing at the cloud of her breath on the glass is sort of comedy, but I’m suddenly too breathless to laugh. ‘Ooooh, Izzy Grace Chambers, isn’t Harry like Styles a dream!’ And she’s waving at him then, giving him the best of her smiles, as she signals we’re on our way down.
‘Hey,’ he says at the front door.
I can feel Grace’s eyes on me, watching how I handle Harry’s obvious pleasure in seeing me, how my body yields to his hand on my back, how I don’t wait for him to make the next move but tilt my head and ask him, ‘May I?’ and press my lips to his when he says yes.
‘That was fast,’ Grace says, and I think she means the kissing, but she rolls her eyes, like, duh. ‘The drive, Izzy. Not everything’s about your blossoming romance, you know! Lovely to meet you, Harry like Styles.’
His eyes wrinkling with the confusion make him even cuter as he shakes Grace’s hand.
‘I’ve heard a lot about you,’ she says, and I turn back towards the house, sort of wishing she’d scarper but mostly pleased it’s so clear she approves.
‘So how soon are you two lovebirds heading off?’ Grace asks when she’s made Harry a coffee and grilled him on last night’s ‘interview’ with Mum.
‘Soon,’ Harry says with mild panic when he glances at his watch. ‘I promised your mum I’d get you back as early as possible. I also promised I’d take lots of breaks during the drive. And she’d rather we weren’t driving in the dark.’
‘Afraid your hands might wander,’ Grace says, then looks at me awkwardly, like maybe that kind of joke is all sorts of wrong.
It’s OK, I smile.
Harry is all red cheeks and bumbling ‘no’s as I tell him to ignore her, that she’s got a one-track mind cos she hasn’t s
een her girlfriend in weeks.
‘And whose fault is that, Izzy?’ But her fake pout bursts into a beam since she’s all set for seeing Nell this evening, especially as her mum is feeling bad about missing any clues for what was going on with me.
‘Can you tell Nell I’m sorry?’ I say to Grace when Harry and I are leaving.
‘She’s cool, Iz. She can hardly blame you for what happened that night, can she?’
‘It’s not just that night though, is it?’ The inside of my bottom lip bleeds metallic guilt between my teeth as I figure out how best to put it. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever really been that kind towards her.’ And Grace has this sad look that confirms it. ‘I really am sorry,’ I tell her. ‘I felt like I was losing you though.’
‘You’ll never lose me, you idiot. You’re my goddamn number-one girl.’
‘Goddamn it, you’re right. See you soon, yeah?’
‘Soon,’ she says, thrusting the bag she’s leant me into my lap, shutting the car door and checking I’ve done up my seat belt. ‘Let me know when you’re ho—’ She checks herself, realising, I suppose, that Mum and I are still in-betweeners, not yet belonging anywhere, not yet sure where it’s safe to call home. She blows me kisses from the pavement until we reach the end of the road.
‘Ignore him,’ I tell Harry when his satnav tells him to turn right. ‘We have to go somewhere else before we leave.’
God knows what Mum said to him because even the thought of delaying our journey seems to send him into some kind of fluster. ‘I promised we’d get back as quickly as possible.’
‘I understand, but this won’t take long.’ I place my hand over his on the gearstick. ‘I’m not leaving Whitstable without my Jar of Sunshine. If you won’t come with me to get it, then you may as well just drop me here.’
FORTY-SIX
It smells of him, the house. Of his aftershave and the bacon he’ll have eaten for breakfast, like he does every Saturday after parkrun, where if he’s not running, he’s volunteering, standing on the slopes cheering on the slow starters with his high fives. Those encouraging hand slaps of his. Daniel is good like that, you see. At being one thing for them and another thing for us.
