by Lesley Kara
minutes. Still, at least Mum can’t quiz me about where I’m
going. She’s taken a couple of her Sumatriptan tablets and, by
the sound of her breathing just now when I put my ear to her
door, she’s already fast asleep.
It’s not raining any more, but the streets are still wet and it’s
almost dark. The bottle is back in my pocket. It’s still wrapped
up in the sock but my fingers won’t leave the little bundle
alone. I can feel the shape of it through the cotton. I think of
that flyer in my bedroom and the hairs on the back of my neck
stand up. ‘It’s never too late to start planning your own
funeral.’
The fear returns in one sickening blast. As does the voice in
my head. The one that’s telling me to slug back the vodka right
now and chuck the empty in a bin. It’ll take the edge off my
fear, and what harm could fifty measly millilitres do? It won’t
even touch the sides.
Except that’s the trouble. It’ll just make me crave more.
I swing from fear to rage to paranoia, flinching at shadows,
my eyes darting from side to side as I walk. What was I think-
ing, coming out alone at night? I could have just tipped the
vodka down the sink and got rid of the bottle in the morning,
chucked it in a bin on the street somewhere. If anything hap-
pens to me, Mum won’t even realize I’m missing till she wakes
up, and that won’t be for hours. Sumatriptan always knocks
her out.
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I have to get rid of that bottle. If I’m not prepared to go to the
police, I have to deal with this my own way. I’m not going to
lose my mind over this. I’m not.
I make my way to the greensward, where there’s less chance
of one of Mum’s friends spotting me and reporting back and, as
I do, my fingers work to free the bottle from the sock. Now it’s
clasped in my hand, my thumb on the cap. A small grenade.
I’m holding it so tightly I’m surprised it doesn’t break. I imag-
ine the small explosion in my pocket, shards of glass digging
into my palm, wetness soaking into the lining fabric.
I’ve passed three litter bins already. What’s wrong with me?
Why don’t I just throw it away and go home?
You know why, Astrid. Because then you won’t have it any more.
You’ll have lost your chance to drink it.
That’s right. As long as it’s still here, in my pocket, I can fan-
tasize about drinking it, kid myself I could get away with it. But
the rational part of my brain knows that’s not true. There’s
another bin a little further down. I’ll throw it in there.
Except I don’t. I walk straight past it. This is crazy. How can
one tiny bottle exert so much control over me? But it’s not the
bottle, is it? It’s me. My addiction. She knows that. That’s why
she put it there.
This time, I do it. I toss it into the next bin I come to, hear the
soft little thud as it lands.
I take a lungful of night air, enjoying the sweet scent of rain-
soaked earth and the salty tang of the sea. I’ve done the right
thing, even if it did take me this long.
By the time I get home I’ve made a decision. I won’t live like
this any more. Whatever I did when I was drinking, I wasn’t in
my right mind. It wasn’t the real me. It changes now. No more
lies or prevarication. If I’ve got any kind of future with Josh, he
needs to know everything. Mum does too. It’s like Helen said
the other day: if I can conquer my demons and face up to my
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WHO DID YOU TELL?
past, what’s left to be scared of? Besides, if I don’t do it soon,
my stalker might tell him first.
What if she’s already told Richard? It would certainly explain
why he was acting so weird with me today.
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35
After yesterday’s rain the sky is a perfect eggshell blue, the
clouds little more than white wisps. Not that I’ve seen much of
the weather. I’ve spent most of the day pretending to work on
the trompe l’œil while Josh and Richard got on with the decorating upstairs. I’ve been rehearsing my speech in my head the
whole time.
Now, at my request, we’re taking the circuitous route back to
Flinstead. One last futile attempt at procrastination.
‘I was going to suggest this myself,’ Josh says, his right elbow
resting casually on the open window. ‘It’s a lovely afternoon for
a drive.’
For a moment or two, I almost change my mind about telling
him. It would be so easy to sit here, driving along with the win-
dows down and the warm breeze tickling our skin, chatting
and laughing and flirting like we normally do.
Josh indicates left and turns into a narrow country lane bor-
dered with hedgerows covered in frothy white blossom. I’ve
never been down here before; it’s beautiful.
‘Let’s open the sunroof,’ he says, and presses a button on the
dashboard. As it slides open the sweet smell of hawthorn comes
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WHO DID YOU TELL?
wafting in and with it the promise of summer. A world alive
with new possibilities. If only I could stay in this car for ever,
cocooned from the harshness of the world, suspended in this
moment before everything changes.
‘Mum loved this time of year,’ Josh says. ‘Everything coming
into bloom.’
A large green verge is coming up on the left, with a weeping
willow spilling over it, the tips of its leaves almost touching the
ground. Josh pulls over and parks as close to the trunk as he
can get so that we’re partially concealed by the green canopy of
the tree.
He unclicks his seatbelt and shifts position so that he’s look-
ing right at me.
‘I’m so glad I’ve met you, Astrid.’
I clench my fingers into the palms of my hands. Every sec-
ond that passes without him knowing the truth feels like an
even worse betrayal of his trust. Maybe I should do it right
now, in the car, before he says anything else.
But there’s really only one place to come clean with him, and
that’s where it all started. Down on the beach. Whatever hap-
pens next, the sand and the sea will still be there. The tide will
still turn.
He leans in to kiss me and, of course, I kiss him back. How
can I not?
When the kiss finally comes to an end, Josh refastens his
seatbelt, checks his wing mirror and pulls out on to the lane.
‘Shall we stop off at the Old Schooner before I drop you back
home?’ My heart turns over. ‘It’s a hundred times nicer than
the Flinstead Arms,’ he says. ‘And it’s got a beautiful garden.’
I know I should respond, but I can’t. Even if I could th
ink of
what to say, I doubt I’d be able to speak, my mouth is so dry.
All I can see is a tall glass of lager. I imagine it sliding down the back of my throat, crisp and cold, slaking my thirst.
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‘I . . . er . . . Actually, I think I’d rather just buy a can of Coke and go and sit on the beach. Do you mind?’
‘Of course not.’ He goes quiet for a while, then says: ‘I make
it a point never to drink more than half a pint when I’m driv-
ing. If that’s what you were worrying about.’
‘It wasn’t, no.’ How I wish I could live up to this image he has
of me. ‘I just need some sea air after being indoors all day.’
‘You are happy to do the painting, aren’t you? I hope you
didn’t feel like you had to say yes. Dad can be a bit – how shall
I put it – persuasive?’
‘I love doing the painting.’
His shoulders relax. We’re heading towards the beach now.
In a few minutes we’ll stop at the shop for a couple of Cokes
and then we’ll be there and I’ll have to tell him. Plunge straight
in and get it over with. The truth and all its repercussions.
‘I’ve got something to tell you.’
We’re sitting on the sand, our backs against the sea wall. Josh
does that crooked little smile I’ve grown to love and pulls me
closer. ‘Should I be worried?’
The smile fades when I don’t respond. ‘Astrid, what’s
wrong?’
A Jack Russell on one of those extendable leads comes up to
us and puts his paws on my knees. I fondle his soft ears and
gaze into his eager brown eyes. If only the owner wasn’t hurry-
ing straight towards us, her face one big, indulgent smile, I
could have told this little dog the whole story and Josh could
simply have listened. But now we’re smiling too, saying hello
and chatting about the weather.
At last, it’s just the two of us again, and Josh is looking at me
with questioning eyes.
‘I haven’t been entirely honest with you,’ I say. Understate-
ment of the year.
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WHO DID YOU TELL?
Something in Josh changes. He doesn’t say anything and he
doesn’t move. But the energy between us shifts.
‘There is someone back in London. I knew it.’
‘No. There’s no one else, I swear.’
‘What was his name?’
I breathe out. ‘This isn’t about him.’
‘What was his name?’
‘Simon. His name was Simon.’
‘Are you still in touch with him?’
‘I told you, this isn’t about him.’
‘You haven’t answered my question,’ he says.
‘No. I’m not still in touch with him.’ I stare at the sea. It’s
unusually still and calm today. Eerily so. It looks like a paint-
ing. ‘Simon’s dead. He . . . he killed himself.’
‘Shit.’ Josh runs his hands through his hair. ‘I’m so, so sorry.’
‘Simon and I, we . . . we used to drink. A lot.’
The silence tingles between us. ‘I started drinking heavily
when I was fifteen.’ I knead the palm of my right hand with
my left thumb, really gouging into it. ‘I’d like to say there was
a reason, one key event that started it all off, but there wasn’t.
I was a difficult teenager. It just kind of . . . crept up on me.’
I wait for Josh to say something, to ask another question, but
that’s not the way this is going to happen. Of course it isn’t. It
was never going to be a normal conversation.
‘I was stupid and selfish and I let people down. My parents,
my friends. I let myself down. Over and over again.’
Somewhere in the distance a siren wails.
‘Simon wanted to stop. He started going to AA.’ Now that I’m
actually saying the words I feel strangely removed from them.
As if this is somebody else’s story. Which in a way it is.
‘You have to understand that I’m different now. I haven’t had
a drink in over six months.’
‘What happened? With you and Simon?’
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A small flare of hope ignites inside me. He isn’t ranting
and raving about having been lied to. He’s still right here next
to me.
‘Simon tried to persuade me to stop too, and I tried, for a
while. But I was drinking in secret and he found out. Simon
left me.’
Why does it feel so bad, admitting that? After all the things
I’ve done and the people I’ve hurt, why does admitting that
Simon left me make me feel so humiliated?
I tell him the rest. About meeting up with him again, about
the beer in my rucksack and the binge back at the squat. I tell
him how it ended.
‘And that’s not all. Oh, Josh, I did something else once. I . . .
I might have hurt someone when I was trying to steal her bag.’
A wave of nausea rolls through me. ‘I wish I could remember
what happened, but I can’t. I just know it was bad.’
Josh hasn’t moved the whole time I’ve been speaking, but
now he shifts his weight forward and crosses his arms over his
knees.
‘I wish I’d told you right at the beginning. I wanted to, but I
didn’t know how. The longer I put it off, the more impossible it seemed.’
His face is closed, unreadable.
‘I almost told you, that day we made lunch together. But
then you started telling me about your mum and I . . .’ I stifle a
sob. ‘I just couldn’t . . .
I reach for his hand and hold it in mine. ‘I’m telling you now
because I need you to know. I don’t want there to be secrets
between us.’
He withdraws his hand. Slowly, calmly. A deliberate and
considered separation that’s a hundred times worse than an
angry shrugging off.
‘Say something, please. I can’t bear this silence.’
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But still he won’t speak.
‘It’s not as if you’ve been entirely honest with me.’
Josh’s face is incredulous. Appalled.
‘Come again?’
‘I know you’ve been sleeping with someone else. In the beach
hut. After we’d been there too.’ I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I have to know the truth.
‘What the hell are you talking about?’
‘The red lipstick on the brandy glass. The bikini. I saw them,
Josh. I saw them that day the huts got vandalized.’
Josh stiffens. The muscles in his jaw are tight where he’s
clenching his teeth.
‘But it doesn’t matter. We can start again now, can’t we?
Please say we can start again.’
I want to reach out and touch him, but the silence stretches
between us like a wall. An impenetrable boundary I daren’t
cross. It’s like a force field keeping us apart. Instinct tells me
that only he can break it and, right now, he can’t. Or won’t. I
don’t know how I expected him to react, but this glacial silence
is unbearable.
‘I love you, Josh.’ There, I’ve said it. I’ve said it out loud.
‘That’s why I’m telling you all this. Because meeting you and
your dad and all the rest of it – the painting, the swimming –
it’s been the best time I’ve ever had. It’s made me realize what I
want from life. What’s important. I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you
before, but I was frightened you’d hate me for it.’
Josh straightens up and blows air through his cheeks. He
turns to face me. There’s a coldness to him, as if he’s already
cutting off. ‘So what you said about being here to look after
your mum, I suppose that was a lie too?’
I force myself to hold his gaze. Now that I’ve started, I can’t
give him half the story. I have to tell him everything. No holds
barred.
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‘Mum paid for me to go into rehab. I had nowhere else to
live.’
‘So what you’re saying is, she’s been looking after you.’
I close my eyes and nod. There’s no mistaking that tone.
‘I’ve been going to AA. That woman you saw me with, she
isn’t Mum’s friend, she’s someone I met there. We’ve been sup-
porting each other. I go every week. I’m making it work, I—’
‘Shall I tell you why Dad and I went to Berkshire? What I was
doing with my cousins?’
Something weird has happened to his face, as if his features
are set in stone. His eyes darken.
‘We were visiting my mum’s grave. We do it every year on the
anniversary of her death. I’ve never told you how she died, but maybe now’s the time.’ He takes a deep breath and looks me
straight in the eye. ‘She was killed by a drunk driver.’
My gut recoils as if I’ve been punched.
‘The car mounted the pavement and ploughed straight into
her. She never stood a chance.’
He balls his fists on his knees. His upper lip distorts in a
sneer. ‘The guy who did it was released last year. Only served
eight years of his twelve- year sentence.’
‘Oh, Josh, I’m so—’
‘Don’t. Please don’t say anything else. Astrid, you’ve got to
understand that I’m finding all this a little hard to deal with right now. I need time to process what you’ve told me. I’ll ring you.’
