Contents
Title Page
Map
Dedication
Jazmin Little
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Rex Muller
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Mari Scott
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Rex Muller
Chapter Seventeen
Jazmin Little
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Mari Scott
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Jazmin Little
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Matron of St Mary’s Hospice, Cumbria
Chapter Thirty-Two
Mark Keele
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Matron of St Mary’s Hospice, Cumbria
Chapter Thirty-Six
Jazmin Little
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Sally Gardner
Copyright
To Freya with all my love, SG
JAZMIN LITTLE
Chapter One
Judge me, hate me, find me unforgiven. You won’t be the first. I have lived with it long enough. It changes nothing. Becky Burns was my best friend. My soul sister, my blood. I knew her better than anyone else – or I thought I did.
She didn’t like heights. I heard once that if you dropped a stone off the Eiffel Tower, it hit the pavement at the speed of a bullet. Lord knows what the effect of two people jumping from that height would be. Most probably like a bomb going off – if they landed, that is.
I dream of Becky a lot. I’m still angry with her, angry with Icarus, angry with myself. Angry with all those who disregarded my story and accused me of being an unreliable witness.
I’m only human – fallible, full of mistakes.
Ruth wished the past to be washed away, wanted to bleach out my presence, my narrative. I have the right to my story. It was mine and Becky’s, not Ruth’s. She wasn’t even there.
At the inquest I was left voiceless, my evidence mocked. In the end I kept schtum, especially when those lawyers went at me. I only said what they wanted to hear and no more. Still they ate me up and spewed me out. There were calls for me to be sent to trial. Ruth would have loved to see me burn at the stake. She’d have been the first with a box of matches.
Which paper did you say you were from, Mr … er … Jones?
Oh, what kind of research? Is it for a UFO organisation?
It was so long ago, surely everything there is to say about it has been said or written.
Who else are you interviewing?
You know, I’m not the only one on your list who was laughed out of court. I see you’re going to talk to Mari Scott. She knew Skye and Lazarus quite well. At the inquest the lawyer accused her of speaking ill of the dead, dismantling their good characters. I learned the hard way, that’s what lawyers do – specialise in making you look stupid, cruel, careless.
The law is such a cold language. Who are they to judge others? Above and below my mistakes, I thought then that I did the right thing. Now I’m not so sure. Time has dragged up more questions than answers.
When it happened, this man from the Daily Mail sat outside our block of flats and followed me everywhere. He offered me money. I didn’t tell Mum. I know what she would have said: take it, we need it. But I couldn’t. I told him to get lost.
No, I never spoke about her, not to any of the newspapers, or any of the others that came afterwards. As I said, Becky Burns was my best friend.
Chapter Two
I met her at school when we were eleven. Her parents were socialists; they agreed with comprehensive education. They could afford to because they got tutors for anything that was lacking. Not that Becky needed tutoring. They lived in this really smart house in Camden Town, all scrubbed floors and Farrow & Ball colours. You know, like Elephant’s Breath. Bloody stupid name. We just had mould in our flat. Now, that looked to me like Elephant’s Breath – all black and blotchy.
I didn’t take much notice of Becky Burns when we started at Morsefield Secondary School. We were both in Mr Hallow’s class. She was thin, with dark, bobbed hair that hung down in sheets either side of her face. She never much pulled back the blinds to look out. We called her Moleskine. She didn’t have any friends. There were roughly three gangs in our year: the nerds who were going to do very well and go to university; my gang, who were going particularly nowhere, and then there were the arty ones. We left them alone. But Becky didn’t fall into any of those gangs. She sat outside them all, writing in her Moleskine book. Come on, who at eleven writes in a Moleskine book? Anyway, she wrote in it all the time. Her mum would come and pick her up in a four-by-four. My mum never could be bothered to pick me up, ever.
Comprehensive, yeah. You get to see how the other half live, that’s for shizzle.
Becky Burns irritated me rotten then, she and that little black book of hers. She wrote on those small squares in tiny letters, a traffic jam of words. One day in the playground, I found her sitting on a step, minding her own business, probably hoping I wouldn’t see her. I went up to her and took her Moleskine book away.
‘What are you going to do about it?’ I said.
She said nothing, not a word, not even ‘Give it back.’
She just stood up and went into the class. I thought she was about to report me to Mr Hallow but she didn’t. I took the notebook home.
There was a row going on in my flat that evening. My older sister, Kylie, lived with us, with her baby, Sam. She was separated from his dad, who was only eighteen when he became a father. Kylie had been sixteen. He and his mates came round every now and again, shouted abuse at our window, threw stones, that kind of juvenile thing. Once Mum had to call the police.
I went to my room and had a tin of cold baked beans for dinner. I quite like baked beans, prefer them cold. Hate hot baked beans. I sat in the bedroom that I shared with Sam and started to read what Becky had written. I was blown away – I mean, it was really awesome. I just wanted more. Next day I handed the Moleskine notebook back to her.
She looked up at me through the curtain of hair and said, ‘Thank you.’
Nothing more. After that, I think I rather fixated on her. I talked to her about her story. It was about a different world, with these strange creatures that were like us, but weren’t us. They came from outer space. I said I thought it was fantastic. She said it had all been done before, she’d just nicked everything from the sci-fi stories she’d read and collaged bits together with superglue – all the crazy things that interested her. She said it was something to do in a plastic world.
I thought that was kind of weak or really smart, and as I wasn’t sure which, I said, ‘Yeah, you’re right.’
Becky gave me another of her Moleskines to read. I was really gripped.
I said, ‘This is sick, better than Doctor Who, and really scary.’
Then she said, ‘Would you like to come back for tea?’
&nb
sp; I’ll never forget her mum picking us up in that four-by-four.
The Burnses’ house was well old, a Victorian thing with very tall windows. Such a beautiful house. They even had a housekeeper to keep it beautiful. Becky’s mum, Ruth – that’s what Becky called her, that’s what I called her: Ruth – she worked on a magazine, I think it was Vogue. Becky’s dad, Simon, was an architect. They talked about politics and art, and they didn’t argue, and they didn’t have Heinz baked beans for tea, cold or hot.
Well. Fast forward.
I got thrown out by my mum when I was about fifteen. I didn’t know what to do. Didn’t want to sleep rough. Kylie and Sam had left by then. I think Mum just wanted some space before she went stir crazy. It was a small flat. I asked a few of my mates if I could stay the night but it became awkward. Their parents would say, ‘Hasn’t she got a home to go to?’
I never asked Becky though. I told her what had happened but I never asked.
Then she said, ‘Why don’t you come and live with me?’
I was really nervous, thought her mum and dad would kick up a fuss. Turns out it went with their socialist principles that I should live with them. They gave me my own room. Like, why? My own room – I’d never had that, ever. Becky gave me some of her clothes to wear. We had wicked fun together, and we talked about her story a lot.
And just for a laugh, I said, ‘Why don’t you put it up on Facebook?’ She wasn’t keen, but I said, ‘You’ve nothing to lose.’
So we did. The next day, after school, we discovered it had two thousand likes. I mean, that’s stupid.
There were lots of comments too – like, ‘We want more.’
Becky said, ‘I don’t want to do it again.’ I asked her why not, and she shrugged. ‘Not ready,’ she said.
I feel bad about this part. I never really told anyone this but it’s bugged me rotten. Becky’s mum, Ruth, was one of the people who read it online.
She said, ‘Becky, everyone is waiting for the next chapter.’
Becky said, ‘That’s so stupid, it’s pathetic. It doesn’t mean anything.’
Ruth was so nice to me for the whole week, asking if I was all right, if I needed pocket money, and on it went.
At the end of the week, she said, ‘Jazmin, would you do something for me? Would you tell me where Becky keeps her Moleskine notebooks?’
And I did. Becky told me later that the next thing she knew all six chapters had been put on Whatwrite. You know, that website where you put up stories, poems, that kind of thing. People vote for the ones they would like to read more of. Yeah, you guessed it: Becky’s story won outright.
By then it was the summer holidays. I’ve an aunt, Auntie Karen, who lives in Margate – she looked after Kylie and me when she could. She invited me down. Becky came to the seaside with me for a while. She liked my aunt. She told me I was lucky that I didn’t have pushy parents. Then she had to go on holiday with her family. They were going to New York and then off to some swanky island that you can only get to in a little plane.
I stayed on with my Auntie Karen. I had nowhere else to go. Finally she called my mum down to Margate after Becky left. She said I was too young to be homeless and that my mum had responsibilities. They had a right bargy. You see, Auntie Karen never had children but she wanted them. Mum never wanted children but she had them. She said it was bad luck; I would say it was more to do with forgetting birth control. Auntie Karen told my mum what was what and Mum looked a bit sheepish. I think my aunt gave her some money so she could manage. Anyway, I went home with Mum to London and the flat.
All that summer, I never heard from Becky. Not a postcard, nothing. I was certain Ruth must have told her it was me who as good as handed over the Moleskines, though she’d promised it would be our secret.
I checked it online – I couldn’t believe the number of views those chapters had had. One million – that was phenomenal. I tried to contact Becky through Facebook because she never answered texts. Still nothing.
When school started in the autumn, Becky wasn’t there. The first day, some people said she’d left and gone to a private school. I knew her parents wouldn’t do that. They were strong on state education, even if they did drink champagne. Ruth said all people are the same, or something like that. But Becky Burns definitely wasn’t the same when she came back to school three weeks late. She wouldn’t tell me where she’d been. I asked her again and again and all she said was that she wished everything could be like it was before.
‘Before what?’ I asked.
She said it didn’t matter. I thought maybe she didn’t like me any more, maybe she’d gone off me. I just couldn’t work out what was wrong. It made me feel like I was nothing.
No teacher made an example of her for being absent. Maria McCoy had nearly been expelled for starting back at school late without a proper sick note.
Becky was distant. She didn’t eat, just played with her food. I was worried about her. She wasn’t like me – I blurt everything out, can’t keep it in. It was nearly half-term before she invited me for tea at her house. I was so relieved. Pathetic, I know.
We were listening to ‘Walk on the Wild Side’. She liked that song.
I said, ‘Why aren’t you writing in your Moleskine notebooks?’
‘That was then,’ she said. ‘This is now.’
I asked her if we were still friends.
She said, ‘Of course. You’re my best friend – my only friend – in all the world.’
Still she never told me. I only found out at the end of the autumn term. It was all in the papers. Even the head of our school said he felt very proud that there was such a fine young writer among us.
The only person who didn’t seem to be too thrilled was Becky. Her book, The Martian Winter, was to be published in February. There was already a film deal.
‘Why didn’t you say?’ I said. ‘That’s fantastic.’
‘Because I knew you would say that. And you would’ve agreed with Ruth that I shouldn’t waste such an opportunity, and all that shit.’
That was the only thing she ever said about it. I think she knew what I’d done. In a way, I’m part of the reason Becky Burns jumped.
Chapter Three
The Martian Winter became a bestseller. At first it was a bit of a laugh, sort of unbelievable. Becky went from having one best friend – me – to her entire class claiming that each one of them knew her better than anyone else. That’s what fame does – everyone wants a slice of that cake. The press sat outside the school gates with long-lens cameras. It was too much in every way. Way too much.
The book went to the top of the charts here and in America – it sold five million copies. Becky said, if books were bricks, how many cheap, unsound houses could she have built by now? I hadn’t a clue. She said that it was a theoretical question.
Becky became thinner and more locked inside herself. She hated all the fuss. Because she was a minor, Crossbow Books, her publishers, appointed this young woman called Laura to assist her and she spent her time making sure that Becky was ‘in the zone’, as she called it. She meant interviews and that kind of stuff. But no matter what the interviewers asked her, Becky stayed schtum. You have to talk in interviews; silence isn’t what anyone wants to hear. So they stopped trying to interview her. I suppose that just added to her mystery. It certainly didn’t stop people writing a load of crap, all that psychobabble about the tortured young writer. What was wrong with everyone? She hadn’t even taken her GCSEs.
I sort of lost touch with her. She wasn’t at school that much and then she left. Ruth had her tutored at home. I suppose it was to appease her guilt about betraying her socialist principles that she wrote an article in the Guardian about her genius daughter being bullied. Like, yeah, a brain-breaking stupid thing to do, if you ask me.
I did my GCSEs and was trying to get a part-time job while waiting for my results when Becky texted me, asking if I’d like to spend the summer with her in somewhere called Orford. She added, ‘Please sa
y yes, otherwise Mum will insist on coming with me.’
I knew it must be bad – she never called Ruth ‘Mum’.
I texted her back, saying I had to find work.
She said, ‘Ruth will pay better than any summer job.’ That was weird and I said I didn’t need paying to come and see her.
‘Just come then,’ she texted back. ‘I baked you a cake.’
I didn’t know where Orford was and had to look it up. You know England’s got this huge, round bottom that sticks out into the North Sea? That’s Suffolk, an open invitation to a UFO. It couldn’t miss a bum as big as that.
I was picked up that evening and driven there in the four-by-four. Not by Ruth but by a driver called Alan who now worked for the Burnses full time. They could afford that and more.
I hadn’t seen Becky in a while and I was shocked. She was stick-bone thin. It put you off eating to look at her. The cake was waiting for me. It had a small cement mixer’s load of icing on top.
‘It’s only for you,’ said Becky.
I knew she wasn’t well, it was obvious. She sat at the end of the scrubbed wooden table in the huge kitchen and watched me eat the cake.
‘What does it taste like?’ she asked, staring at the cake.
‘Crap,’ I said. ‘It tastes like crap. And I’m not playing this game.’
‘What game?’ she said.
‘The game where I eat for you. If you want to know what the cake tastes like, you eat it.’
I pushed the plate towards her.
She laughed. ‘You haven’t changed.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Unlike you.’
I stormed out of the kitchen through the French windows, past the spot where the lights come on automatically, into the darkness. Bloody hell, it was proper night out there. No hum, no orange glow, just a sky with a sneeze-full of stars. I had taken three packets of my mum’s fags, the ones she bought when she went to Gibraltar. I struck a match. Even a flicker of light was comforting in that abyss.
Becky came out and stood beside me with a torch in one hand and a plate with a slice of cake on it in the other.
‘It makes you feel so small when you look up,’ she said. ‘Small and amounting to nothing.’
My Side of the Diamond Page 1
