To Rosie, with much love.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
EPILOGUE
INFORMATION
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
AUTHOR’S NOTE
THE STATE OF GRACE
CHAPTER ONE
Under the surface, deep in the blue-lit water, nobody can see me.
There’s nobody to judge the clothes I wear, or the way my hair frizzles around my head like a halo. I’m wearing a black Speedo swimsuit, which looks like a million others. I’m under here, and when I pull my arms up, gliding and cutting through the surface, it still feels secure.
I count my strokes and revel in my power as I speed from one end of the pool to the other. I regulate my breathing. This is my thing. I have control.
I roll over and float on my back in the water. The sunlight pours through the glass panels in the roof and sparkles across the pool’s surface, shooting off prisms of light, which dapple the tiled walls.
Something hits me on the side of my leg and I feel the water sloshing over my face and up my nose. Instinctively I reach out to grab something, but I’m in the middle of the pool and there’s nothing there. I bob sideways, like a cork, and my feet stretch down to find the tiled floor. I swipe the water from my eyes and tuck a dripping strand of hair behind my ear.
‘Hey.’
The sound is distorted by the echoing acoustics of the swimming pool.
‘Sorry – didn’t see you there.’
My eyes are stinging from the chlorine. I blink, hard, and the person in front of me comes into focus. I step back reflexively, realizing it’s a boy. The resistance of the water makes it hard, and I wobble sideways. It’s hard to be graceful when you’re up to your shoulders in a swimming pool.
‘I didn’t spot you under there.’ His face is apologetic: eyebrows half raised, mouth in a smile that somehow tugs down at the corners. ‘Sorry. Didn’t mean to land on your head.’
‘You didn’t.’ I tug at the strap of my swimsuit, looking down. ‘It’s fine.’
I’m conscious that it’s a bit too small and a bit too tight. Generally, I don’t stand close enough to other people for them to notice me.
One of the eyebrows lifts up as we stand there for a second, neither of us saying anything.
He’s taller than me – which is unusual – and on his head is a wet thatch of dark brown hair. He rakes a hand through it, and there’s an awkward moment where neither of us quite knows where to look. That’s the moment when the fact that we’re both standing in a pool of water, wearing almost no clothes, seems to cross both of our minds at the same time.
I take a breath in. ‘OK.’
‘Right,’ he says. And he jerks his head upward slightly, in a sort of nod, and steps sideways. I watch as he dives down beneath the water and disappears under the sparkling surface of the pool.
‘Holls, my little ray of delight.’
The spell is broken in an instant. As if someone has flicked a switch, the atmosphere changes, and the space fills with the excited gabbling of small children and harried parents. Cressi, the swimming instructor, is beckoning me over. In three long strokes, I traverse the pool and lever myself out.
‘You’re supposed to use the steps.’ Her round face breaks into a mock-admonishing smile. ‘If you’re going to be leading these youngsters astray before you even get started, we’re going to be in trouble.’
I take a step back and look at her, my head cocked to one side. Does she mean –
‘I’ve cleared it with the management. You’re in.’
Cressi’s our neighbour – or near enough. She doesn’t live on our estate, but in a little stone house, which was there long before the housing association came along and filled the fields with row upon row of identical white-clad terraces. She sort of found us, and the next thing I knew she’d whisked me up to the pool where she worked, and now she’s offered me the chance to escape on a regular basis. They need an assistant to help with the swimming lessons, and I need a place to go that isn’t home.
‘Wednesdays are a definite, but can I get back to you about the others?’
I nod. I don’t think I can trust myself to speak – mainly because I can’t quite believe that I now have a justifiable excuse for being away from everything, here in the silence and the cleanliness and the space and the clear blue water.
‘Excellent. I think you’ll love it.’ Cressi gives a decisive nod. She sticks her pen behind her ear, and then she hoicks the strap of the swimsuit under her council-issued polo shirt, hefting up her not-inconsiderable bosom as she does so.
If Cressi was an animal, I think to myself as I’m washing my hair in the showers, she’d be a sea lion. She barks – which can be terrifying, until you realize that it’s just her posh, public-school background – and she’s sort of substantial. Like there’s twice as much of her as there is of other people. She owns her space. I like her for that.
I see the boy again afterwards.
The bus stop smells of the chip shop opposite, and my stomach is growling so loudly that the woman standing next to me smiles conspiratorially.
‘Those chips smell good, don’t they, hen?’
She picks up her bag as the bus groans to a halt and the doors open with a tired sigh. ‘No’ be long now and you’ll be home for your tea.’ She motions to the bus, gesturing for me to get on.
‘I’m waiting for the 236.’
The door squeaks closed on her reply.
Hopeburn High Street is quiet, the children are all home from school, and the procession of cars full of commuters from the train station hasn’t started yet. But there’s a queue forming outside the door of the just-opened chip shop opposite, and the warm smell drifts across on the wind. My stomach gives a hopeful rumble.
‘Hi.’
I assume that the voice is someone talking on their phone, so I don’t raise my eyes from the ground.
I’m still waiting for the bus. I’d text the thing that tells you when the next bus is coming along, but predictably my crappy pay-as-you-go phone battery has died. So I’m just sitting looking at the ground and watching a tiny ladybird making its way along a crack in the pavement.
The smell of vinegary chips hits the back of my nose, but this time it’s not on the wind – it’s so close that my mouth starts watering and I can feel my stomach contracting. I am ravenous, and the bus is never going to come.
There’s a beat of silence, and I realize the voice wasn’t on the phone; it was talking to me.
I let my eyes dart up, and as I do I feel the physical presence of the boy from the swimming pool as if it was an actual thing. It’s like the air is fizzing, or something.
‘D’you want one?’
He’s holding a bag of chips, and he shakes it in my direction. He’s got a big, open sort of face. Strong eyebrows.
(I have no idea why I’ve just noticed he has strong eyebrows.)
‘No – it’s fine, thanks,’ I say. I have no idea why I just said that either.
My stomach gives a growling sort of squeak, which is so loud neither of us can ignore it. His mouth (also big) turns down at the corners as he tr
ies not to laugh.
‘You sure?’
I reach out and take one, popping it in my mouth and closing my eyes for a split second as the taste of it fills me with delight. I haven’t eaten since this morning and I am so hungry that I realize now that the spacey feeling I’ve had since I got out of the pool is probably lack of energy.
I swallow.
‘Thanks.’
‘Have some more. I’ve got loads.’
He perches beside me on the seat so we’re almost the same height. He must be over six feet tall. I’m five eleven, so I tower over almost everyone I know. You’d think it’d be hard to be invisible when you’re the size I am, but somehow I just sort of blend into the background.
I pull out another chip. I’m aware that he’s offered chips, and therefore part of me feels that I ought to have some conversation handy for situations like this, but I have nothing. I’m racking my brains.
I look down.
He’s wearing a pair of black trainers, which have the ghost of a hole worn in the toe.
I like that. It makes him seem a bit more real, somehow.
‘Do you go to the Academy?’
He’s interesting-looking. And he doesn’t know anything about me.
‘Yes,’ he says, and he rakes a hand through his still-wet hair. ‘I just started –’
There’s a second where he stops, as though he’s checking himself. He looks at me sideways and rubs his chin.
‘Just started what?’
I turn to look at him properly. I think there’s something about being here, in a different place, that is making me act more like the person I think I am in my head, and less like the person I am back home in Kilmuir, even though it’s only three miles away.
I don’t think I’ve stood this close to a boy in years, but the weird crackly static I can sense in the air is probably completely in my head and the result of watching one too many cheesy films. And the thing is that as ‘meet cutes’ go (the bit, in case you’re wondering, where girl meets boy, and you know that they’re just going to get together), meeting at a bus stop after bumping into each other at the swimming pool would be quite a nice one.
Except this is reality, and I am not cute and ditzy and about to fall over and do something adorable. I am tall, I am a bit fat and I think my nose is weird.
‘I go to Kilmuir High.’
He looks blank.
‘So by rights,’ I continue, thinking aloud about the feud between the two schools, ‘you shouldn’t be sitting here. And you definitely –’ I take another chip and wave it for emphasis – ‘shouldn’t be giving me your chips.’
He raises an eyebrow slightly, and the corners of his mouth turn down again in that funny half smile.
‘But you know that already, right?’
‘Yep.’ He fiddles with the sleeve of his hoody, pulling it down for a second and then pushing it back up almost straight away. It’s a bit short. Or maybe he’s just a bit tall. I know the feeling.
‘Do you go to the pool often?’
It’s his turn to ask an awkward question. It’s sort of comforting that even weirdly good-looking boys haven’t got a clue how to have a conversation either. And we’ve got no idea when the bus is coming, so this could take some time.
‘All the time.’ I hitch my swimming bag on my shoulder as I say it, as if it’s just reminded me it’s there. ‘I’m going to be teaching soon.’
‘Cool,’ he says. He laces his fingers together and then untangles them. For a weird moment, I have to suppress the urge that my brain – which seems to be doing all sorts of odd things this afternoon – has to make me reach over and touch one of them, just to see if they’re warm or cold. I have no idea why. I have absolutely no reference points for this stuff. It’s not like I can watch my loving parents being physically affectionate to each other and think, ah – this is what it’s supposed to look like. I’m just making it all up as I go along, and it’s pretty confusing.
‘Maybe I’ll see you there again?’ he says. ‘I reckon I’ll be going most nights after school.’
‘Same,’ I say, and he gives me another one of his wide-mouthed smiles. Is he handsome or is he weird-looking? I can’t actually tell.
He’s sort of both at the same time.
A second later the bus pulls up, and I grab my things.
‘You coming?’ I ask, fishing my pass out of the front of my rucksack. I grab the metal rail and turn back to look at him. He’s moving in an unhurried sort of way, unfolding his long legs and straightening up.
‘Nah,’ he says, standing up and pulling up his hood despite the sunshine. ‘I wasn’t waiting for the bus.’
‘Can you two no’ have this conversation by text message?’ the driver calls out at us from behind the glass, nodding approval as he scans a look at my bus pass.
‘I –’ I begin, but the door swooshes shut, and I’m jolted as the bus lurches forward. I watch as – I don’t even know what his name is – raises a hand in farewell. I flop down into a seat and turn to look back at him. He grins at me as the bus pulls away, down the high street, back to my own life where nobody talks to me and strange, weirdly good-looking boys don’t offer to share their chips with me.
‘Those seats aren’t for you, hen.’
I feel my face going scarlet as the woman opposite me motions to the wheelchair sign. I pick up my bags, and – despite the fact that the bus is empty but for the two of us and two younger boys who are drawing faces on the window in the condensation from their breath – I move. Obediently, and without making a fuss. In my head I point out that if someone got on and wanted the seat, of course I would move. But, like most of the arguments I have with people in my head, it stays there.
We turn the corner out of Hopeburn and head past the castle on the way over the hill. The trees are lime green with leaves, and the sun is shining. It’s summer, and the loch is shining blue.
I rest my head against the window and it bumps along as we pass the outskirts of town, rising up to the crest of the hill that leads to Kilmuir. My stomach isn’t growling with hunger now; it’s lurching with a strange, half-nervous feeling. Am I ever going to see him again? What sort of person just randomly sits down and has a conversation in a bus shelter?
I think back over everything that was said (which isn’t that much, I know). His accent sounded more like Edinburgh – definitely not from round here. Maybe that’s what he meant when he said he’d just started?
My mum’s English, which means I don’t sound anywhere near as Kilmuir as the people at school. She was always really particular about me ‘speaking properly’, as she put it (if you’re looking for a way to mark your children out as different, teaching them to speak in a way that everyone considers stuck up is a good start). So we say yes, darling, not aye; and it’s not, never no’; and you don’t ever say dinnae. Useful if I was planning a career as a newsreader, I suppose. All it’s really done is give me a little extra something – as if I needed it – to make it clear I’m not like everyone else.
I used to daydream about moving house and starting again. In my fantasy, we’d have a huge, spacious white house (when I was ten, I used to pore over the IKEA catalogue and mark my favourite pages) with giant windows and bright light pouring in. It’d look like spring all year round. I’d be minimalist and uncluttered, and nobody would know who I was. When I turned up for school, I could reinvent myself, start afresh.
But that’s not what happened. Instead we live here in Kilmuir, where every single one of your mistakes hangs around your neck forever. That’s partly why I decided to start swimming at the pool in Hopeburn. Cressi sort of forcibly befriended my mum – it’s hard to explain, but that’s just how she is – and the next thing I know I was being bundled in the car with her and given a lift to the pool where she worked. And I realized that nobody there knew or cared who I was, and I didn’t have to worry about bumping into people I wanted to avoid. There is a pool in Kilmuir, but even though you might be hard to spot in the water
there’s always the chance that afterwards, hair ratted with chlorine, you might bump into someone from school. So I took Cressi up on her offer, started using my bus pass, and escaped to another world – or the closest I can get to one. I’m aware that exchanging one tiny Scottish town for another three miles away isn’t exactly reinventing myself, but there’s a limit to how much I can do. I’m only sixteen.
CHAPTER TWO
I’ve walked this path so many times that I swear my feet know their own way. I feel the gravel of the path crunching through the thin soles of my fake Converse (which are actually quite nice – they’ve got red flowers all over them), and I run the flat of my hand along the tops of the cow parsley, which is frothing along the verge. I walk past the path that leads down to Cressi’s little stone cottage and along the pavement towards the estate. Down the path, through the play area where three little girls are dancing on a makeshift wooden stage they’ve made out of an old pallet, like I used to with Lauren, when we were sisters.
A picture of her seven-year-old face pops into my head for a fleeting moment, and I remember the day we met for the first time: me on roller skates on the path outside the house; Lauren standing, a too-big pink holdall over one shoulder; and Neil, her dad, giving us both money for the ice-cream van.
And then Neil moved in with mum, and we went from two to four. Our house was my granny’s house, and when she died the housing association let us stay there. Over the years, the flowery wallpaper was painted over with bright colours, and the patterned curtains replaced with long cotton ones from IKEA. And Lauren and I crashed up and down the stairs surfing on a mattress and scuffing the walls with our school shoes, and for a while it felt like we were a proper family – the kind you see on the adverts on television. I liked having a stepsister, and I felt happy lots of the time. And Mum smiled a lot then too. Until Neil started disappearing and leaving us at the weekend and saying he was working. And then he’d come back and be all smiles and charm and flowers from the petrol station up the road and they’d share a bottle of red wine from the corner shop and Lauren and I would fight over the television and then one day it all just ended.
My Box-Shaped Heart Page 1
