Who Did You Tell (ARC)
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WHO DID YOU TELL?
elfin haircut standing in the foreground. Simon’s voice whis-
pers in my ear. ‘Everybody else is doing it, so why can’t we?’
My stomach contracts. I stand, motionless. It isn’t real, it’s in
my head. It must be. Just like all the rest of it. It’s what he said that first time I met him, and I’d smirked, thinking it was a
come- on. Then I heard what track was playing and felt like
a right twat. It was ‘I Still Do’ by The Cranberries and what he’d
just said was the name of their debut album.
I can’t see whether there’s a bleach stain on the T- shirt from
here because of the angle of the mannequin’s arm. I’ll have to
go inside and take a closer look. But as I’m moving towards
the door a deep voice calls my name from the other side of the
street.
It’s Richard Carter, Josh’s dad. He’s hurrying towards me,
grinning from ear to ear. ‘Hi there, Astrid. I see you’ve bought
a sketch pad.’
Flustered, I hold it out in front of me, as if I’ve only just real-
ized it’s in my hands.
‘Yes, I’m going to make a start later today.’
‘Fantastic. I can’t wait to see what you come up with.’ He
slides his glasses up his nose with his finger. ‘To be honest, I
was worried I’d scared you away last night.’
My cheeks burn. ‘Sorry about that. I’d promised my mum I’d
go with her to the doctor’s.’ The lie slips out automatically. ‘I
only just got back in time.’
‘Ah, I see. Maybe another time, eh?’
‘Yes, that’d be nice.’
‘It’s a good thing you’re doing, Astrid. Looking after your
mother. Lots of young people wouldn’t put their careers on
hold the way you have.’
I force a smile and watch as he raises his hand in a mock-
salute and marches off. He has the same confident loping stride
as his son. Now he’s stopped to talk to a woman with red hair.
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LESLEY K AR A
She turns and looks in my direction. Is he saying something
about me? No, of course he isn’t. I’m being paranoid, as usual.
She’s probably just keeping an eye out for a traffic warden. Why
do I always think everything’s about me?
I turn back to the shop, bracing myself for what I’m about to
do. I’m going to go inside and check the hem of that T- shirt. The
T- shirt that can’t possibly be Simon’s. It’s a coincidence, nothing more. But in the short time I’ve been talking to Richard, someone has hung a closed sign at the door.
Josh’s text comes through just as I’m hurrying back to the
Oxfam shop to see if it’s reopened.
‘Hi Astrid. Dad said he bumped into you earlier. Hope your
mum’s ok? Let me know if you fancy going out for a drink. Or
maybe I’ll see you down on the beach sometime? x’
I stop to tap out a reply.
‘A walk on the beach would be good. What about Saturday? x’
I could suggest tomorrow, but I don’t want to sound too eager.
‘Great. Ten o’clock at the spit? x’
‘Ten is good. x’
I fire off the last message just seconds before I reach the shop.
I stop dead in my tracks. This can’t be happening. The manne-
quin is wearing the same black jeans and blue trainers as
before, but the T- shirt is different. It’s a plain grey crew- cut. I’ve only been gone half an hour and the shop was shut. Surely
someone hasn’t bought it already?
I open the door and go in. The sight of Rosie behind the
counter gives me a start. I’d forgotten she volunteers in here.
‘Hi, what happened to the Cranberries T- shirt in the window?’
Rosie lifts a pile of books from a chair and places them on
the counter between us, starts scribbling prices in pencil on
their inside covers. ‘If it’s not there now, then we must have
sold it. I’ve only just got in.’
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WHO DID YOU TELL?
Why do I get the impression she’s lying?
‘You don’t happen to know who donated it, do you?’
She carries on writing. ‘Sorry, no. Sometimes people just
leave things outside in bags.’ She looks up then and fingers the
silver locket at her neck. ‘What did you say it was?’
‘A Cranberries No Need to Argue T- shirt.’
She makes an ‘oh’ shape with her mouth. ‘I don’t remember
seeing it. Doug must have dressed the mannequin this morn-
ing and sold it before I came in.’
‘When will he be back?’
‘I don’t know. He’s gone home sick. That’s why I’ve had to
come in on my day off.’
She carries the books over to a set of shelves and slots them
into the gaps. Then she turns and gives me that sly smile of
hers, as if we are conspirators in a secret, which of course we
are. We are members of a secret club. What’s that Groucho
Marx quote? ‘I don’t want to belong to any club that will accept
me as a member.’ AA is the sort of club nobody really wants to join. We might not have a special handshake, but we have our
own literature and our polite little rituals and, thanks to our
founder and his insistence on anonymity, we have our secret
code. We are all ‘friends of Bill W.’
‘How are you?’ she says.
‘I’m fine.’
She’s got that strange look on her face again, as if she knows
things about me, or thinks she does. This is what some of these
old- timers at AA are like. Just because they’ve been round
the block a few times. Just because they’ve laid themselves
bare and dished themselves up to God on a plate, they think
that gives them the right to your secrets too. Perhaps it’s like
Scientology. Tell them all your shit and they’ve won. They’ve
got you.
‘I’d better go,’ I say.
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She reaches out and rests three fingers on my wrist. ‘You will
come back? To meetings, I mean.’
I nod. Her fingers are still on my wrist.
‘He wants you to,’ she says. ‘He’s watching over you.’
I give her a blank stare. Then it dawns on me. She’s talking
about God. She withdraws her hand and I turn away. I don’t
want to offend her, not if she really believes in all that, but I
can’t stay and listen to it. I really can’t.
Outside on the street, I stare once again at the mannequin.
There’s something menacing about its faceless white head, the
way it’s cocked to one side. Could someone really have bought
that T- shirt and this Doug person have re- dressed the manne-
quin in the short time it took me to go home and come back
again? It’s possible, of course it is, and anyway, there’s no rea-
son to think the T- shirt was Simon’s. There must be a fair few of
them knocking about, limited edi
tion or not. But what are the
odds of one of them turning up in a charity shop in the very
same town I’m now living in and of me seeing it?
Could I have imagined it? I haven’t had a drink in months.
I’m stone- cold sober, but my mind’s still playing tricks on me.
What with thinking I saw him down by the beach huts last
night and now this . . .
But what if I’m not imagining it? What if it really was him and he’s deliberately trying to freak me out? I hurry away from the
shop window, trying to convince myself that the mannequin
with no eyes isn’t watching me as I go.
If only I’d been able to check for that bleach stain.
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9
As I walk home, I try everything I can to get that mannequin
out of my head. I watch my feet pound the pavement. Left right
left. I had a good home and I left. I left on my own and it served me right. Left right left. It’s a marching song my nan used to sing –
something her nan had taught her. Funny the random things
that pop into your head. Things you thought you’d forgotten
rising to the surface like bubbles. Dear old Nan.
I’m so deep in thought I almost walk straight into a push-
chair, swerve out of the way just in time. The young mother
tuts and I mumble an apology and keep going, head down,
heart thumping. I know what’s coming next and there’s noth-
ing I can do to shut it down. There’s a painful lump at the back
of my throat as all the bad things crowd into my mind at once.
Things my nan would struggle to believe. I blink away the tears
of shame and hurry towards the cottage, narrowly avoiding a
dead baby bird splattered on the pavement like a tiny foetus.
My stomach lurches. It’s so unexpected and horrible, so pink
and raw. The poor, helpless little thing. I cringe at the thought of what it would have felt like if I’d trodden on it. The soft squelch.
The splintering of tiny bones. Maybe if I was wearing my DMs
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I’d nudge it off the kerb into the road so that nobody has to go
through that, but I’m wearing my cheap plimsolls today and
can’t bear the thought of its limp little body rolling against my
toes, gathering the grit of the pavement in the folds of its skin.
Mum’s sorting through a pile of post in the porch when I arrive.
‘Anything from the DWP?’ I say.
She gives me a blank look.
‘Department of Work and Pensions. My benefits letter?’
She shakes her head. ‘It’s all junk mail.’
She hands me the pile of leaflets and flyers to dump in the
recycling box by the front door. Are they ever going to sort out
my claim? It’s so demoralizing living on paltry handouts from
my mother at the age of thirty- two.
She notices my sketch pad. ‘Oh, that’s good, darling. I was
going to suggest that you start drawing again, but I didn’t want
you to think I was nagging.’
I tell her about the sketches I’ve offered to do for Josh’s dad.
‘I think I’ve still got some of your old charcoal and graphite
pencils somewhere,’ she says. ‘Do you want me to look for them?’
I nod and her face softens in pleasure. It’s so rare to see her
smile these days and, before I know what’s happening, my eye
sockets are tingling. Mum used to be so proud of my art. She
used to pin my pictures on the kitchen wall when I was little.
She even got a couple of them framed, the ones I did for my art
GCSE. They’re still on the wall in the living room.
I look away. It’s one of those charged moments that seems to
encapsulate everything that’s gone wrong between us, one of
those moments when either one of us might reach out and say
something profound, something that spans the chasm between
us, and I know it should be me that says it.
But now I’m sliding my plimsolls on to the little shoe rack in the
porch and Mum steps back into the hall. The moment has passed.
*
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WHO DID YOU TELL?
It’s ten past ten on Saturday and Josh is standing by the spit,
gazing out to sea. He hears me approach and turns, a slow
smile spreading across his face. He didn’t think I was coming.
I like that about him, the visibility of his emotions. His
openness. Simon was always so guarded, so secretive. I used to
ask him what he was thinking, and he’d just narrow his eyes
and say, ‘You don’t want to know.’ But I did. I always wanted to
know. Even when I didn’t.
‘I wasn’t sure whether to give up on you,’ Josh says.
‘Sorry. Lost track of the time.’ In fact, I was ironing my jeans
dry, then cleaning my teeth a second time and swilling my
mouth out with Mum’s extra- strong mouthwash (alcohol- free, it goes without saying), holding it there till my tongue burned.
No way am I going to smell like Rosie.
He puts his hands on my shoulders and draws me towards
him, so close I see flecks of gold in the green of his irises. He
brings the palms of his hands to my cheeks and cups my face.
‘Your cheeks are cold,’ he says. It’s intimate, and a hundred
times more exciting than a kiss, but I wish he’d kiss me any-
way. Especially after all that effort. A mouth this fresh deserves
to be kissed.
‘How’s your mum today?’
I swallow hard. Lying used to come so easily I didn’t even
have to think about it. Perhaps if the notion of my hale- and-
hearty mother succumbing to depression, or any other illness
come to that, wasn’t so outrageous, I wouldn’t be having this
much of a problem. My mother is not the sort of woman who
needs looking after. She might be small and thin, but she has
wrists and nerves of steel. I’ve seen her advance upon a gang of
youths with nothing more than a wooden spoon in her hand.
I’ve seen her wrestle a live rat from a drain.
‘She’s not too bad at the moment,’ I say.
‘I’m glad you got back in time for her appointment.’
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‘Yes. Me too.’ I clear my throat. ‘What way shall we walk?
Towards Mistden?’
‘Why not?’
The sea looks grey and uninviting today. Large rollers sweep in
at a curve and break noisily on the shore. Even on a weekend, at
this time of morning on an overcast day there aren’t many people
about. The odd dog- walker or jogger. A mother making sandcas-
tles for her toddler, who promptly kicks them over and shrieks
with high- pitched giggles. That girl in the grey puffa jacket again, marching along the esplanade, head bowed against the wind. But
for long stretches of time we have the beach to ourselves.
Josh makes a sudden detour round the name ‘Billy’, which
has been written in the sand in big, shaky letters.
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‘Did you use to do this?’ he says. ‘When you were a kid?’
‘Not that I can remember.’
‘I did. And I used to get really angry when people walked
over my handiwork.’
‘I hated my name so much I wouldn’t have wanted it scrawled
across a beach for everyone to see.’
‘Really? I think Astrid’s a lovely name.’
‘So do I. But it isn’t the name I grew up with.’
He spins round to face me. Why am I telling him this? It’s as
if I’m approaching the truth from an odd angle. Feeling my
way towards it in stages. Trying to make up for the lies.
‘Well, come on, then. Don’t keep me in suspense. What was it?’
Me and my big mouth. ‘Hilary.’
He narrows his eyes. ‘You don’t look like a Hilary.’
‘Do I look like an Astrid?’
He puts his head on one side and squints at me. ‘Yes,’ he says.
‘You do.’ He stoops down to pick up the pointy piece of drift-
wood that Billy probably used as his pencil. Oh God. I hope
he’s not going to do what I think he is. Please don’t turn this into a scene from a cheesy movie, Josh.
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He runs his hand over the smooth, bleached wood, then
tosses it back on to the sand. I breathe a sigh of relief.
‘How did your parents react when you changed it?’ he asks.
‘Were they upset?’
‘Mum refused to accept it at first. Thought it was just a silly
phase I was going through.’
I kick a pebble with the toe of my plimsoll and watch as it
shoots across the sand and lands in a dip by the wooden breaker
up ahead. Maybe if she hadn’t rolled her eyes and tutted every
time I refused to respond when she called me Hilary the nov-
elty would have worn off in time. As it was, her disapproval
made me even more determined to go through with it.
‘Dad was fine about it. He used to call me Asteroid, just to
annoy me.’
Dad’s face flashes into my mind. Those amused, crinkly eyes.
The gentle set of his mouth, always on the point of a smile. The
image is so clear, so heart- wrenchingly familiar, it makes me
gulp for air.
‘I’m sorry,’ Josh says. ‘I shouldn’t have asked.’
‘It’s okay.’
‘No, it isn’t.’
He’s standing in front of me now, hands on my shoulders
again. His eyes are so kind. I look at them for only a fraction of