Goodbye, Perfect

by Sara Barnard

  ‘It’s faster. It’ll be best for everyone if they can get her back home before the press finds out where she is.’

  ‘Why can’t we go back to York?’ I ask, which is stupid, because I don’t even want to go back to York. What I want is some kind of sense of control back.

  Valerie just grimaces and points at her swollen foot. ‘Look, don’t worry,’ she says. ‘Everything’s being taken care of. We’ll be home tonight. All of us.’

  ‘And Bonnie?’ I say. I can’t quite believe it.

  She nods. ‘And Bonnie.’

  The first time I ever travelled on a plane, I was nine years old. Mine and Daisy’s adoption was almost official, and we all went on a ‘We’re a family!’ holiday to Portugal. Bob spent ages before we went explaining to me how flight worked, and why I shouldn’t be scared because flying is the safest form of travel. The thing was, I wasn’t scared. I was excited. I didn’t even care about the rest of the holiday – I just wanted to fly.

  I got to have the window seat, and Bob sat between Daisy and me. (I thought that was just because he wanted to carry on explaining lift and drag, but I learned years later that Carolyn is afraid of flying and she was worried we’d pick it up from her.) When we were airborne, and England began to shrink at an alarming rate below us, Bob pointed out of the window. ‘See how small it is, Eden?’ he said. ‘You remember that, if life ever feels too much. It’s all so very small.’

  This is what I’m thinking of as our plane takes off. Connor, Valerie and I are all on one row, with me by the window and Connor in the middle. Valerie’s foot is swathed and tightly packed with ice; at each small jolt of take-off turbulence, her eyes squeeze shut and her forehead crinkles slightly. Connor’s head is leaning around mine, watching Glasgow disappear beneath the clouds. All three of us are silent.

  On the other side of the plane, Bonnie is sitting between Lorraine and another police officer. Even though we waited for and boarded the same plane at the same time, she hasn’t even looked at me; not once. Her face is set and blank, eyes on the back of the seat in front of her. She looks like someone who has lost everything. Someone I don’t know at all. All I can think of is Bob’s voice, warm and calm, saying, ‘See how small, Eden? It’s all so very small.’ Which is funny, because I hadn’t thought of those words and that moment since I was in it.

  I imagine unbuckling my seatbelt and going over to speak to her. All the things I want to say. That I’m sorry, that I didn’t mean it to work out like this. But that I’m also not sorry, because it was always going to work out like this, and how could she not know that? I’d tell her that I did it all for her, because that’s what best friends do. I’d say, hey, did you notice that when you got wild, I got steady? Look at us, bucking the stereotypes everyone had of girls like us. I’d say, God, I missed you. I’d say, don’t worry. I’d say, your parents will forgive you. I’d say, I forgive you.

  But I don’t move. I know there’s no point. The Bonnie from before, the Bonnie I thought I knew, would have listened, but that Bonnie is gone. If she ever existed at all. In her place is this angry stranger who probably hates me, the girl who ruined the party, the one who broke her promise.

  I don’t know what’s going to happen when we land. I can’t imagine what the new normal is going to look like, just that there’s no way to go back to how we were. But here’s the thing I realize: I know what it means to lose someone you thought was forever. I’ve done this before. The people that you let into your life are a choice, and sometimes that choice changes. I look across the aisle at Bonnie, still staring fixedly in front of her. I think about how I never told her I liked her red hair, that it suits her, in a weird, unexpected kind of way. I think, if she looks at me, just once, I’ll tell her.

  She doesn’t.

  Later, when the plane starts its descent, Valerie takes another round of painkillers and cranes her neck to try to look out of the window. ‘I am so ready to be back at home,’ she says.

  ‘Me too,’ Connor says, with feeling. ‘I’m going to drink the fuck out of a cup of tea.’

  Valerie and I both crack up at the same moment, both of us no doubt slightly giddy on hysteria (me) and codeine (her). Connor’s ears go pink, but he’s grinning, slouched down into his seat. I lean over so I can rest my head briefly against his shoulder as the loud clunk of the landing gear extending sounds below us.

  ‘You ready for this?’ Valerie asks me. Out of the window, England looms large, the buildings suddenly life-size.

  ‘Do I have a choice?’ I ask.

  ‘Nope.’ She flinches as we hit the tarmac with a bump, then visibly relaxes. ‘Home!’ she says, a smile blooming on her face.

  We’re all escorted off the plane in a group, flanked by the police who’d flown with us and a new set who meet us on the tarmac. There’s a wheelchair waiting for Valerie and she lets out an audible whimper of relief when she slides into it. I let the group guide me through the terminal, my eyes on the back of Bonnie’s downcast head. I’m half expecting her to make a break for it, or at least do something suitably dramatic, but she just walks, hands at her sides, silent. The only word for her is ‘defeated’.

  ‘Where are we going?’ I ask one of the policewomen who is flanking us, realizing as I turn to look at her that it’s DC Doyle, who’d sat at my kitchen table and taken notes instead of talking. The one who’d winked like she’d seen right through me way back at the beginning of all of this.

  ‘To a safe meeting place,’ she says, which sounds ominous until she adds, ‘To see both your parents.’

  These words seem to do something to Bonnie, because she stops dead in her tracks. Lorraine, walking beside her, puts a gentle arm around her and guides her on. ‘It’ll be just fine,’ she says, gratingly soothing.

  ‘I don’t want to.’ I hear Bonnie’s voice, raspy and quiet, tinged with panic.

  I have a sudden flash of Bonnie’s mother in her hallway, blazing with anger, snapping at me about priorities. I wouldn’t want to be facing her in Bonnie’s shoes right now, either. In fact, I’m not really sure I want to be in the same room when the explosion happens.

  Somehow, with Bonnie’s dragging feet and most everyone else stepping back, the two of us end up entering the room side by side. We’re so close that I feel Bonnie’s whole body convulse when she sees her parents, who are already up and moving towards her before we can even walk properly into the room.

  ‘Bonnie,’ her mother says, her voice all cracks. She reaches forward, cupping both her hands around her daughter’s face. ‘My Bonnie.’

  There’s no explosion here. I glance up at Bonnie’s dad to see that there are tears on his cheeks. He’s reached past his wife and has one hand on Bonnie’s shoulder, squeezing down. As I try not to watch, I see Bonnie crumple into them both, a heaving sob muffled against her mother’s arms. I hear, ‘I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,’ and her mother saying, ‘It’s OK, it’s OK,’ and her father saying, ‘We love you.’

  My vision is all blurry, but I see Carolyn making her way towards me, a smile on her face. She reaches for me and I let myself be gathered into a hug, closer than she’d usually attempt, closer than I’d usually allow. She whispers into my ear, ‘Well done,’ before she pulls back, her eyes scanning behind me for Valerie. I can tell by the way her face lifts again that she’s spotted her. She turns back to me and gives my hand a tight, Carolyn squeeze, her eyes on mine.

  ‘You’re home,’ she says.

  August

  THURSDAY

  The school is bustling. Busy in a way that feels completely wrong for a Thursday morning in August; a time when school isn’t meant to exist.

  Connor and I walk through the main reception doors together and head into Room 14A, which is where we used to take Science, but is now the official Results Room. I head towards the third row, where the ‘M’ box is, and Connor steps up to the first, for the ‘E’ box. It’s Mr Hale who’s manning the ‘M’ box, and he smiles at me as I approach.

  ‘Ah, Eden,’
he says, friendlier and warmer than he ever has been before. Affection, apparently, is earned with hindsight. He rifles through the box and pulls out an envelope that he hands to me with a flourish. ‘All the best to you, Ms McKinley.’

  I know it’s the last time I’ll ever see Mr Hale. It feels weird and kind of sad and right all at once. I make sure to smile back before I walk away to open my envelope. It’s not possible to find a quiet spot, and I want to see my results before I find out Connor’s, so I turn my back on the room and create a quiet corner of my own.

  It’s as I expected. My results are mostly Ds, with a handful of Es and a couple of Cs. I stare down at the letters, waiting for some kind of feeling to hit me. Relief? Joy? Sadness? But to be honest, I just feel the same as I did before. Nothing’s changed.

  I fold up my results sheet and slide it back into the envelope, turning to look for Connor in the crowd. He’s making his way through the throng to reach me, a smile on his face.

  ‘All good?’ he asks me. He’s holding his own results in his hand, but still he thinks of me first, because he’s Connor.

  I shrug and smile. ‘All fine. No surprises. You?’

  ‘Eight Bs,’ he says. ‘Two Cs. Not bad, hey?’

  ‘That’s great,’ I say, leaning up to kiss his cheek.

  ‘Connor,’ someone calls, and we both turn to see Connor’s Art teacher waving at him to come over.

  Connor glances at me and I nod my permission, leaning against the wall to watch the room buzz, running my fingers absently over the fold of my envelope. I’m just wondering if I should call Carolyn now rather than wait until I get home, when my eyes fall on a figure on the other side of the room, standing quiet and somehow unnoticed, beside her mother.

  Bonnie.

  As I watch, she unfolds her own sheet, glances at it, and then hands it straight to her mother, her expression unchanged. She looks small. Shoulders hunched, eyes downcast under her glasses. But her hair is still, impossibly, red. Bobbed, as it was the last time I saw her.

  In the end, Bonnie only missed the two exams that took place in what the rest of us all call ‘That Week’. The remaining exams she took on schedule and without fuss, though she had to take them in a room on her own with private supervision, instead of in the hall with the rest of us. Even after everything, she’s probably still ended up with far better grades than me.

  Not that I’ll know. We haven’t spoken a word to each other since that Friday afternoon in a Scottish city in May. She’s gone from Facebook, gone from my phone contacts, disappeared all over again, but permanently this time. I don’t know anything about her life. And I mean her real life, not just the stuff that gets leaked to the press even now, three months after she was headline news. I don’t know what she thinks or feels. Whether she blames me for them getting caught and, if so, if there’s a chance she’ll forgive me one day. The Bonnie I once knew would have understood that I did it all for her. Part of me thinks that version of Bonnie is gone forever, but there’s another small part that still believes in her, that is still waiting.

  Rumour has it that she’s going back to Kett in September to take her A levels, alongside the retakes she’ll need for her GCSEs. It sounds about right to me. Anywhere she goes she’ll be gossip fodder, so she may as well be it somewhere that’s familiar. She won’t be Head Girl, of course. I wonder if she minds.

  Everything between her and Mr Cohn ended when we first got back home, obviously. But I don’t know how much of a say in it she had, if she realizes now what a mistake it all was, or if in her head she still thinks it was worth it, because she hasn’t said a word publicly about him since. His trial is due to start next week, and Bob says he’ll probably get a few years in prison. Sometimes I wonder if Bonnie is just being quiet in public. Maybe in private, or even just in her head, they’re still together. Maybe they send each other secret letters while Mr Cohn is in prison – who knows?

  This is what’s left of Bonnie being missing, and of me missing her. Rumours. Questions. That feeling of something half forgotten, half finished, that comes with loss.

  I watch as Mrs Wiston-Stanley says something to Bonnie, who nods. The two of them start to make their way towards the door, and that’s when Bonnie turns her head and looks straight at me, like she’d known I was there all along. Her face doesn’t burst into any kind of an expression at the sight of me. She doesn’t even smile. Her head tilts ever so slightly, and then her hand lifts into a brief, silent wave. Before I can even react she’s turned away, following her mother out the door, disappeared into the crowd. It was nothing more than an acknowledgement, really. But it was there.

  ‘Ready to go?’ Connor asks, reappearing at my side.

  ‘Definitely,’ I say.

  There was an independent investigation into the school to try and find out how it happened, and why, and it found ‘serious failings’ at a ‘senior level’, which basically means that no one was checking up on Mr Cohn and his possibly-too-friendly relationship with his students, even when people like Rebekka Bridges raised the alarm. She wasn’t even the only one who’d done it, it turns out. Schools are meant to have all these procedures in place, and Kett messed them all up. That’s not supposed to happen, and they promise it won’t, not ever again.

  Still, I’ve made Daisy promise that she’ll tell me if any one of her teachers ever tries to give her their mobile number or email address or anything even slightly personal. She rolled her eyes and called me an old nag, but then she sat on my lap to hug me like she was still six years old, and whispered that she’d never run away from me or our family.

  It’s a beautiful day, bright and warm, and it makes me smile as Connor and I walk out of the main door into the sunshine. I glance back at the building as we walk down the steps, passing a group of the clever bunch posing for a picture with the local paper, their results in their hands and grins on their faces. Bonnie would have been part of that group, no doubt. She’d have been front and centre. I wonder if that knowledge hurts her, if it makes her regret everything that happened. Livia Vasin catches my eye and smiles, automatic but genuine, and I smile back before I feel Connor’s hand squeeze around mine and we head out together into the car park.

  Just like that, Kett is a part of my past.

  ‘Off to work then?’ he asks me, his eyes scanning for his gran’s car.

  ‘Not until after lunch,’ I say. ‘Are you free tonight?’

  He nods, smiling, and leans down to kiss me goodbye. I watch him jog over to the car, open the door and slide inside. Connor will be coming back to Kett in September to join the sixth form, which is weird to think about, but then again a lot of the future is weird to think about. Me, I’ll be going to college to study horticulture; something I’m actually interested in, something I’m actually good at, for the first time ever. The course is approved by the Royal Horticultural Society, and everything. And one of the best things is that I had a place there, regardless of today’s grades. It just makes it even sweeter.

  Last month, I started working part time at the local garden centre. Carolyn got me the job, and I thought I’d hate it, but it’s actually pretty brilliant. I mostly work in the cafe bit, making tea and spooning out soup portions, but it’s still great to be officially part of the gardening world. I’m usually on-shift with Layla, who’s my age and likes to jive across the tiny kitchen area singing made-up songs about soup (‘Oh potato and leek, you make my week, so green and sleek, la-dee-da-deek’). This Saturday, we’re going into town together after work so I can get my nose pierced like hers.

  I head across the car park, my results envelope light between my fingers, the sun on my back. Valerie smiles as I approach, pushing herself up from where she’d been leaning against the bonnet of her car.

  ‘Hey,’ she says, sliding her sunglasses up on to her head. I can tell she’s excited, because results days are exciting for her, though she’s trying not to show it. ‘How was it in there?’

  I hand over my envelope and she beams, pulling out
my results. ‘Busy,’ I say. ‘Bit weird.’

  ‘You passed Maths!’ she bursts out, and she’s thrilled, I can tell. Sweetly, genuinely thrilled. ‘Eden! That’s amazing!’

  I can’t help grinning back at her. ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Yeah!’ She leans over and nudges my shoulder with her fist. ‘Congrats.’

  I take the paper back and fold it away. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Ready to go for lunch?’ she asks me, reaching up to slide her sunglasses back down over her eyes.

  I glance back one last time at my old school, my old life, and then turn back to my sister.

  I smile. I say, ‘Ready.’

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  First and foremost thanks, as ever, to Claire Wilson, without whom I wouldn’t have one book to my name, let alone three. (People ask, what does an agent do? And the answer is everything.)

  Thank you to Rachel Petty, for your unflappable brilliance, and the team at Macmillan Children’s Books, for once again going above and beyond for me and my books. Particular thanks have to go to Rachel Vale, who creates the kind of covers I once only dreamed of. Thank you, Kat McKenna, George Lester and Jess Rigby, for every seamlessly organized event, each appropriately giffed email, and especially your unfailing support. And thank you, Bea Cross, for just about everything. It just doesn’t feel like work, guys.

  Thank you to the UK YA community for being a constant source of joy, camaraderie and friendship. There are just too many of you to name, so I won’t try! I hope you all know how valued you are.

  My dear friends Mel Salisbury, Holly Bourne and Katie Webber, who were all tapping away at their laptops beside me at one time or another – you’re brilliant, and I adore you. And to all my writer friends, always just a DM away – Harriet, Holly, Jess, Ellie, Non, Cat, Lexie, Christi, Lauren and Anna – thank you.

  Thank you, Tracy King, for once again being both my unwitting life coach and my friend. And thank you to the good ship DT, and all who sail in her. Weathering the storms with you is a privilege.