‘That’s why you were so angry.’
‘Yep.’ He drops his gaze again. ‘And look how I behaved.’
‘You’re not the same as him.’
And then the words tumble out.
‘He abused her. It started with words. He used to make her cry, and he’d talk to her one way when people were around, and then when they left he’d be . . . vicious.’
His face is unreadable. The air is still and there’s one blackbird singing in the trees above us and the moment hangs there and neither of us says anything.
‘And I feel bad, because he used to talk to her like she was a piece of dirt. I grew up and I used to listen to him using her as a figure of fun. He’d mock her, and make her feel small. And, once I realized it was happening, I couldn’t work out how to make him stop.’
I reach forward and pick up his hand, holding it in mine.
‘It’s not your job to make him stop.’
‘And then one day something went wrong at work, and he was drinking wine and he hit her across the face. I heard a crash and came down from my room, and he tried to act like everything was OK.’
‘And that’s when you left?’
He shakes his head and almost smiles. ‘You’d think.’
‘What happened?’
‘He apologized, said he’d see a counsellor, promised things would change. Mum wore make-up to cover the red hand print on her face.’
I feel sick thinking about it.
‘Nothing did change, though,’ Ed says. He turns my hand over and traces the lines on my palm for a moment before he continues, his voice quieter and lower. ‘He got missed over for a thing at work and came home furious. He drank a bottle of red wine before dinner and spent the whole meal criticizing Mum’s cooking and my schoolwork. Then he lost it, pushed her across the kitchen, and I got in the way. He went to hit me, but then he stopped himself.’
‘And that’s when you left?’
He nods.
‘She picked herself up off the kitchen floor and we grabbed our stuff and went. He said we’d come crawling back the next day.’
‘But you didn’t.’
Ed shakes his head.
‘They sorted us out a B&B place, and then they moved us to the house out here. It’s only temporary, until Mum gets money sorted. But, meanwhile, he’s got everything, and we’ve got nothing.’
He lifts his foot, indicating his holey trainer again.
‘And where is he now? Did he get in trouble with the police?’
Ed laughs, but it’s a hollow, angry sort of laugh. ‘Well, he’s not allowed near Mum, but he’s not exactly suffering.’
He pushes himself up to standing and bends down, taking a handful of stones from the edge of the stream. He throws them into the pool so they splash in, one after the other.
‘He’s in our house in Edinburgh. With all our stuff. And all Mum’s stuff too.’
‘Can’t you get it back?’
‘It’s complicated. He’s . . . he says he’ll give it back if I’ll go and see him. He passed on the message through Claudia.’
He runs a hand through his hair, leaving a smudge of mud on his forehead.
‘That must be . . .’ I trail off. I think about the way Mum and I have lived and how, despite it all, there’s always been love. And I wonder how it feels to have a dad who behaved like that, and I feel strangely glad that mine isn’t in the picture at all.
‘I thought perhaps if I went to see him, maybe I could make him see that the way he’s behaving isn’t OK.’
I don’t know very much about situations like this, but I know that doesn’t sound like a good idea.
‘I thought you said you weren’t allowed to?’
He shrugs. ‘I’m not really. He doesn’t know where we are. The women’s refuge people helped. My grandpa sent some money. He doesn’t really know what’s going on. He’s usually drunk on sherry by lunchtime.’
He squats back down beside me and looks at me directly.
‘I thought if I met up with Claudia yesterday, maybe she could go and get our stuff back, or something.’
‘And can she?’
‘She’s going to try.’
‘But is she safe with him?’
He shakes his head. ‘I think it’s only Mum he had a problem with.’
I can feel the expression on my face shifting to a frown of confusion. If he’s capable of hitting Ed’s mum, surely he’s capable of hitting another woman – especially someone who’s trying to get one over on him?
‘That’s why all my stuff looks like this. We’re waiting to get money sorted out, but he’s making it as difficult as possible.’
‘And you had to leave your school and all your friends and everything?’
Ed gives a wry sort of smile. ‘That bit wasn’t exactly the end of the world.’ He topples over on his knees, and laughs for the first time that afternoon. It’s nice to see the smile that stretches across his whole face and shoots his eyebrows upward into the thatch of his hair.
‘Which school did you go to?’
He names one of the exclusive private schools in the poshest part of Edinburgh. No wonder he has the accent that he does.
‘And now you’re at Hopetoun High?’ I scrunch up my nose.
Ed shrugs. ‘School’s shit wherever you are. At least here people make it clear they don’t like you.’
‘Why don’t they like you?’ I think about every time a gang of people our age has come past when we’ve been together, and how Ed has shrunk and tried to make himself invisible, just the same way I do in Kilmuir.
‘Where’d you want to start? You know what it’s like – if you don’t conform in every way, you’re in trouble. Too tall, too posh, too many weird clothes with holes in . . .’
‘But they’re all –’ I motion to the logo on the front of his T-shirt.
‘Not the right label.’ He laughs. ‘Back in Edinburgh, I could wear this lot and blend into the background. Here I stick out like a sore thumb.’
‘And your dad has all the money?’
‘Literally. Everything we own.’ A shadow passes over his face as he says it. ‘Mum inherited the house from my granny. He’s taken everything.’
‘So why can’t you throw him out?’
It doesn’t make sense.
‘Simple. He’s incredibly powerful, he’s incredibly well respected and, believe it or not, he’s convinced everyone we used to know that Mum walked out on him because she’s having an affair.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Claudia told me. He had everyone in the family round for dinner last week and did the whole poor-little-me act.’
‘But that’s not fair on your mum.’
Ed shrugs again. ‘Nope.’
I think about her hurtling up the high street and the angry voice as she beckoned him into the car that first night we sat and talked by the canal.
‘That’s awful.’
He nods. ‘That’s why I’m going to get him back.’ He sighs. ‘I’m sorry for what I said, and for the way I behaved.’
‘It’s OK.’
And I realize it makes sense. When you’re living half a life, desperately trying to hide what’s going on at home, the stress feels like a mountain inside. I sometimes used to look at the people at school who seemed to have everything easy, with their two-car families and their nice summer holidays to France, and I’d feel twisted up with envy that their lives were so normal. I’m not surprised all those feelings burst out of us. I reach forward and tangle my fingers in his. And I say it again.
‘It’s OK.’
We sit in silence, listening to the splash of the waterfall and the birds in the trees overhead. Ed’s fingers are laced in mine, and his head’s in my lap, looking up at me, his long body sprawled out on the grass. And then somehow we’re lying beside each other and his hands are tangled in my hair and I’m kissing his jaw where the muscle was jumping and he rolls on top of me so I’m pinned to the ground underneath his wei
ght and I’m the best kind of breathless I’ve ever known and I realize that it’s lucky we’re somewhere we might get caught because I’m not sure either of us would stop – but there’s a whistle in the trees somewhere as a walker calls their dog and we both roll on to our backs and look at the sky through the branches and burst out laughing.
‘I’ve got a confession to make,’ I say, reaching out and lacing my fingers through his. ‘I thought Claudia was your secret Edinburgh girlfriend.’
Ed rolls on to his side and pushes my hair back from my face. ‘No,’ he says, and his big mouth curves into the smile I love and his eyebrows rise slightly, and I know before he continues what he’s going to say.
‘In fact,’ he begins, ‘I kind of thought the position of girlfriend was taken.’
By the time we walk back, hand in hand, the sun has gone in. The air is thick and warm, but there are bruised purple clouds gathering over the edge of the hills. I swing Ed’s hand as we make our way back to town. I’m sad for his mum that things are so awful, but I’m glad that Claudia isn’t anything other than his cousin, and glad that something in my life is going right for once.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Lauren and Mum are baking in the kitchen when I get home. I try to ignore the fact that the hall has a heap of bags lying on the floor, and there are shoes and flip-flops pulled out of the shoe cupboard under the stairs. It’s not my job, I remind myself, to stress out about the state of the house.
‘Hello, honey.’ Mum leans against the kitchen doorframe. ‘Ooh, my leg is killing me.’
‘I don’t think you’re supposed to be standing up on it for this long,’ Lauren says with a laugh from inside the kitchen.
‘You’re probably right.’ Mum flops down on the dining chair and pushes up the sleeve of her top. ‘How was work?’
‘Amazing!’ I beam, thinking of afterwards and not the riot control of juggling handfuls of small children in a packed pool.
‘Amazing?’ Mum cocks her head. ‘You’re a bit enthusiastic for someone who’s been out of the house since God knows what time this morning.’
I smile to myself. It’s half seven, and I’ve been gone twelve hours. It feels like a lifetime ago that I headed for the bus stop, leaving the house silent.
A while later, Mum heads upstairs for a bath, and Lauren tidies up the kitchen. There’s an awkward sort of silence.
‘How’s –’ she begins.
‘What –’ I say at the same time.
We laugh and start again, both saying ‘You first’ at the same moment.
I sort of want to ask why she hasn’t invited Madison and all her other friends up here. Madison lives at the bottom of the estate, so it’s not like she’s too posh to hang out here.
‘Is Madison away or something?’
Lauren squeezes out the kitchen cloth and hangs it neatly on the tap to dry. She doesn’t reply for a long moment.
‘No, she’s around . . . I think.’
And there’s something in the way she says the words that suggests she wants me to ask.
‘You think?’
‘I’m trying to have a bit of a break from her. She’s quite –’
There’s a moment when we look at each other, and neither of us says anything. We don’t need to.
‘Your mum seems so much happier, don’t you think?’ Lauren lifts the kettle. ‘D’you want tea?’
I nod.
‘What were you going to say?’ she asks, pulling out mugs from the cupboard and milk from the fridge.
‘I dunno,’ I say. ‘Just . . .’
I pause. It’s weird, because Lauren being here feels like it makes sense, and until now I’ve been on guard, waiting for her to bring the rest of her gang of friends around and make me feel like a social outcast. Now I realize she’s avoiding them too.
The silence hangs in the air as the kettle rumbles to a boil.
I take my phone out and message Ed.
‘Here you are,’ Lauren says, sliding a cup of tea under my nose.
Ed’s reply flashes up on the screen, and I feel her eyes on it, taking it in before I have a chance to stuff the phone back in my pocket and pick up the mug as if nothing’s happened.
‘Who’s Ed?’ Her mouth curves into a curious smile and she sits down opposite me, cupping her mug in her hands and looking at me over the top of it.
‘Just a friend,’ I say, and the words sound so unlikely that when she looks me directly in the eye and her eyebrows shoot up I give a tiny, self-conscious smile.
‘A friend,’ she says, teasing.
‘Yep.’
‘Do I know him?’
I think again of Madison’s perfectly dressed gang at school and the way they sashay through the corridors as if they own the place. ‘No.’
And then I think of Ed’s expensive-but-too-small clothes and realize that maybe in another world he’d fit in with her far better than he does with me, and I feel a bit uncomfortable.
‘He’s just someone I met at the pool.’
‘I thought you seemed a bit keen on spending as much time in Hopetoun as possible.’
‘I happen to be a very dedicated member of staff,’ I say, teasing.
‘Of course.’ Lauren laughs, and she seems so much like her old when-we-were-a-family self that it’s lovely. She leans forward and whispers, ‘Have you got a photo?’
I feel myself blushing. ‘Of my friend, you mean?’
‘Of your friend Ed, who is just a friend and definitely nothing else.’
‘I might have.’ I grin at her and scroll through the photos on my phone, selecting one where he’s sitting on a bench hugging Meg, her tongue hanging out and her chocolate-drop eyes bright. I pass it over.
‘Cute,’ Lauren says. She peers in closer. ‘Dog and friend, I mean.’
I go pinker. ‘Do you think?’
I realize that I’ve never quite finalized the question of whether Ed is cute to me because I like him, or weird-looking like I thought right back at the moment when we first met. Because he’s got those big questioning eyebrows and a huge smile that takes up half his face and that mop of scruffy curly hair that flops over his forehead and – I feel a squirling in my stomach and realize that I don’t need someone else to tell me if he is or not, and it feels like a significant moment.
Lauren hands the phone back, and nods. ‘Definitely.’
The phone slips in my hand, and the photo scrolls sideways to the next picture, which is a selfie of the two of us. I go to put the phone away and Lauren laughs.
‘Go on, let me see,’ she says.
I am so red by now that I suspect I could probably be seen from space. Even my hair feels hot.
I pass the phone back.
‘That is adorable,’ she says, looking at the picture of the two of us. It was taken by Ed, standing behind me, his mouth to my ear and his long arm outstretched. I’m cracking up with laughter because he’s whispered something as he took the picture, and my eyes and nose are scrunched up and my head bent. He looks directly at the camera, deadpan.
‘I’m glad you’re happy,’ Lauren says, and she really seems to mean it. There’s a fleeting second when her face registers sadness, but she takes a drink of tea and it’s gone, almost before I can work out if I imagined it or not. I don’t feel like I can ask her, but it isn’t hard to work out how she’s feeling. I wouldn’t want to go back to living with Neil and whatshername if I was her either.
I hear Mum singing from the bath, and we both laugh, and the moment is gone.
‘Bloody hell!’ Allie kicks at a mountain of nettles on the path ahead of us. ‘The plants are taking over.’
Since the last time they took me up to the clearing, nature has reclaimed her space. The little path is looped with bramble cables and thickets of sticky willow, which wrap around our legs and stick tiny bobbles to everything.
‘This is hideous,’ says Rio, flicking each little green dot off with an irritable movement.
‘You’re really not cut out f
or this eco-warrior lifestyle, are you?’ Allie picks up a fallen branch and thwacks down some brambles so we can step over them without being torn to pieces by thorns.
‘I keep hoping someone from a spacious New Town apartment is going to come along and announce I’m their child and we were swapped at birth.’ Rio purses his lips. ‘This is horrendous.’
I swear he’s become even more fashion obsessed since they’ve been doing this summer job at the gallery. His hair has changed again, gelled into sharp red sideways spikes. If you had to pick which one of the three of us grew up in a sustainable eco-house with hippy artist parents, he’d be your last choice by a long shot.
‘There.’ Allie knocks the swing with the branch so it sways drunkenly back and forth. ‘I’m not getting on that until we’ve shaken off the spiders that are probably lurking inside.’
Tall spires of rosebay willowherb are growing around the edges of the fallen logs where we sit, and—
‘Oh, bollocks.’
Rio gives the wireless speaker a shake. Rusty water leaks out of it.
‘Forgot to put this away the last time we were here.’
‘Don’t worry.’ Allie grins. ‘I can sing if you like.’
‘You’re all right,’ Rio and I both say in unison.
‘Mum’s given us a six pack of Coke and some picnic stuff.’ Allie starts pulling things out of her bag with a magician-like flourish.
We crack open a can each and sit back for a moment, taking in our old kingdom.
‘Funny that we haven’t been here in ages. It seems smaller, somehow.’ Allie stands up and walks over to the tyre swing, giving it another shake and turning it upside down so the rainwater falls out of it. She clambers into the swing and dangles her legs, pushing herself back and forth.
I take a stalk of the pink rosebay and pull the flowers off, one by one, waiting for her to talk.
He loves me, he loves me not, I find myself chanting in my head.
He likes me, I concede.
I’m sixteen. I like him. I don’t know enough about him to love him.
My Box-Shaped Heart Page 16
