by Lyn Gardner
“Oh, Tom,” whispered Eel. “How could you?”
Tom looked at their horrified faces. “But I didn’t. I swear I didn’t…” He groaned. “I wrote it to Katie, not Liv.”
Eel turned the note over and saw the name Olivia on the front in block capitals.
“Phew,” she said. “For just a moment, Tom…” But she was talking to thin air. Tom had gone. They all ran out of the stage door after him.
“Where are you going?” yelled Eel.
“To find Liv,” he yelled back. “I’ve got to sort this out.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Olivia fumbled as she put her key in the lock of the side door of the Swan. Eventually she managed to open it. It was eerily quiet. At night it always felt to Olivia as if the building was sleeping, worn out by all the activity it witnessed during the day. She had often thought that if the Swan had ghosts – which as far as she knew it didn’t – they would be of an all-singing, all dancing variety. She stood on the wide staircase and listened. All was silence.
She knew that Alicia would be in the flat at the top of the school, awaiting her and Eel’s return. She didn’t want to go up there. She didn’t want to have to face Alicia’s penetrating gaze and searching questions. She just wanted to be on her own. She suddenly thought about Jack. It was Jack that she wanted to speak to most in the world. Her dad was the only person she knew who would really listen to her and try to understand how she felt. He couldn’t wave a magic wand and make everything better for her, but he would listen and she knew that if he thought she deserved it, he would be on her side. He would understand her deep sense of injustice and hurt.
Perhaps if she explained everything that had happened very slowly, right from the beginning outside the Duke’s Theatre on final audition day to Tom’s horrible note tonight, Jack would be able to make some sense of it and tell her how she could make everything all right again. How she wished she could roll back time! If she could go back to that moment when Tom and Georgia had chosen The Sound of Music over Romeo and Juliet on the High-Wire, she would behave so differently. She would be pleased for them and control her own disappointment and hurt feelings rather than behaving selfishly. But it was impossible to have your life over.
She felt for her phone. The red light was flashing on the front. When she flipped it open it said eleven missed calls. She ignored them, and called Jack’s number. She heard the ringing tone, and then it went directly to voicemail. Hot tears swarmed down her cheeks. Even her dad wasn’t there for her when she really needed him. She felt as if she was the loneliest person in the universe.
Olivia prowled around the foyer like a caged cat before wandering into the school hall. The trapeze seemed to be calling her. She knew that up there she would forget everything in the thrilling sensation of flying through the air. She started to climb the rope.
“The Swan Academy. Please hurry!” said Pablo to the taxi driver as they all piled into the vehicle. They caught up with Tom at the end of the street and he jumped in. Eel, Abbie and Georgia all kept calling Olivia’s phone but there was no answer.
“Maybe we should split up and look for her on the streets?” said Pablo.
“I’m sure she’ll go back to the Swan,” said Tom. “I know Liv. In times of crisis she’s like a homing pigeon. I reckon she’ll be on the high-wire. That’s where she goes to forget herself.”
Pablo was suddenly seized by a feeling of panic. He leaned forward and said to the taxi driver, “Please, drive as fast as you can. This is an emergency.”
“We’re sure to beat her back to the Swan,” said Abbie brightly. “Even Livy can’t run as fast as a taxi, and when she gets there we’ll all explain that she’s fallen victim to another of Katie’s nasty tricks.”
But luck wasn’t on their side, and the taxi got caught up in a traffic jam caused by a bus that had jackknifed across the road. All the side streets were snarled up too, and in the end Pablo paid the cab off and they just ran as fast as they could.
In Idaho, Jack was sitting in a plane on the runaway of the local airport ready to do another late afternoon recce of Snake Canyon when he realised he’d missed a call from Liv. He was missing both girls enormously. It was harder to be away from them than he had ever imagined.
He knew that he wanted to spend the whole summer with them. Maybe he’d even try to get a little circus tour together if he could get his hands on a tent. He wondered whether he could get Pablo to fix something up. Eel could do acrobatics and Olivia could do some high-wire walking, maybe even some swinging trapeze if Pablo thought she was good enough and they could rig the tent.
He looked at his watch. It was eleven p.m. in London. He knew Olivia wouldn’t be calling that late without a reason. He asked the pilot to wait a moment before taking off and pressed the button to return the call. The phone rang and rang and then went to voicemail. He left a message telling Olivia how much he loved and missed her. Then he signalled to the pilot and the plane taxied down the runway and took off into the sunset over the wilderness of Idaho.
As she monkeyed up the rope, Olivia heard her phone ringing again. She ignored it, and ignored the bleep that followed. The trapeze was rigged and ready to go. She climbed on to it and started to swing. She flew higher and higher. She bent and curved her body, sending herself upwards. When she had gained sufficient momentum she let go and flipped downwards so she was sailing through the air with her knees hooked over the bar.
After a few seconds she pulled herself upwards again, stood on the trapeze and swung higher. She felt utterly exhilarated. She arched her body backwards and forwards, and the trapeze obeyed the instructions she was sending it and flew through the air. She sat down again on the bar, and when the trapeze reached its peak she somersaulted backwards, fell momentarily through space and then caught the bar with her ankles. She swung upside down like a beautiful bat, before using the momentum to swing herself back on to her feet again. She pushed harder so that the trapeze reached another peak, and she was poised to repeat her previous feat, counting the beats in her head because success was all in the timing, when the door to the hall was flung open.
“Liv!” cried Tom.
Startled, and about to launch herself into space, Olivia lost her grip. The trapeze juddered and gave a violent twist, and she slipped. She clutched for the rope but it was beyond her grasp and she fell towards the ground like a wounded bird shot down by a hunter. She hit the mats with a terrible, final thud.
There was a moment of shocked silence. Then Georgia screamed, and Tom and the others ran towards Olivia’s crumpled body. She was lying on her side. Her eyes were closed, and her face was lily white and her lips bluish. A bruise blossomed on her forehead.
“Livy, Livy,” wailed Eel as she knelt beside her.
“Don’t move her,” said Pablo, dialling nine-nine-nine on his mobile. He spoke tersely into his phone, giving the address for the ambulance. Olivia’s eyes fluttered and then opened.
“Oh, she’s alive, she’s alive,” wept Eel.
Olivia saw Tom kneeling over her. “Tom,” she whispered.
He took her hand. “Liv. Please forgive me.” She said nothing but he felt her fingers make the tiniest pressure on his hand.
Olivia felt a jolt of pain and she drifted into unconsciousness.
“Can we try and make her more comfortable?” asked Georgia tearfully.
“No,” said Pablo grimly. “It is forbidden. She could have spinal or neck injuries. If we move her, we might do a lot of damage. She might never walk again.”
“Never walk…?” said Tom, horrified.
There was a noise behind them. It was Alicia. “What on earth is going on…?” She saw their pale, shocked faces and Olivia lying on the floor.
“Oh, Livy, my little Livy,” she whispered. “What have you done to yourself?”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Tom, Georgia and Eel were sitting around the sides of Olivia’s hospital bed. A vase of daffodils, the colour of sunshine, sat on the
bedside table. Olivia was sitting up in bed, looking very pale. She had a large bruise on her forehead and a black eye. But she was smiling broadly as Tom recounted yet again his rescue from the dressing-room window.
“There was a horrible moment when you let yourself down from the window sill on to the castell and it began to resemble the Leaning Tower of Pisa,” she said. “But everyone was awesome in the way they held it together.”
“They’ll be queuing around the block to sign up for circus skills at the Swan now,” said Georgia.
“Are they going to allow you to get up soon?” asked Eel, who kept stroking Livy’s arm as if she were a cat.
“They’re going to come and help me try shortly,” said Olivia. “But it’s going to be fine. I know it. I feel as if I could run a marathon.”
“Oh, Livy, I thought you were dead when I saw you lying there so pale and still,” said Eel, and her eyes filled with tears.
“Don’t cry, Eel sweetie. I’m very much alive,” said her sister. “Apart from the concussion, the black eye, the mild dislocation of my neck, the bruising along my spine and the ankle sprain, I’ve really never felt better in my life.”
Everyone laughed.
The night before, things had looked far grimmer. The paramedics had put a neck brace on Olivia and strapped her on to a stretcher before racing her to hospital with sirens wailing and red lights flashing. The doctors had assessed her immediately, their faces grave. They tapped Olivia’s toes, ordered X-rays and shone lights into her eyes. Two more doctors had been called. Pablo had looked agonised; he felt that he was to blame. Alicia resembled a living ghost, and for only the second time in her life Eel was rendered entirely speechless. The first time had been after the car accident that had almost ended Jack’s high-wire walking career for ever.
Tom and Georgia’s parents had come and picked them up from the hospital, even though both of them protested that they didn’t want to leave and wouldn’t be able to sleep until they knew what was happening with Livy. Pablo promised he would text as soon as there was any news, and Alicia said they should take the day off school tomorrow.
“We must ring Jack,” said Pablo.
“But what can we tell him?” said Alicia. “They’re several hours behind in Idaho. We don’t know how bad it is yet, and he won’t be able to get a flight until the morning now anyway. He’ll just be worried sick.”
Pablo said nothing. It looked pretty bad to him. He had overheard one of the doctors muttering about concussion and possible paralysis.
But in the event things had proved far less calamitous. The doctors studied X-rays and stopped looking so worried, and at about two–thirty a.m. they’d come to see Alicia, Eel and Pablo in the little relatives’ waiting room with good news: Olivia’s injuries were all relatively minor, and although they wouldn’t know the full extent until the next day, when they would try to get her up and walking, there was nothing immediately life-threatening to worry about.
“She’ll need to stay in for a couple of days so we can keep an eye on her, particularly because of the concussion,” said one of the doctors. “And the shock could take its toll. But we feel optimistic. She’s a very lucky girl and a very strong and resilient one. Not many people could take a fall like that without so much as a broken bone.”
Alicia had wept, and both she and Pablo had tried to reach Jack, but his phone had just gone straight to voicemail.
First thing in the morning Tom had turned up at the hospital, clutching a bunch of early daffodils. Their yellow cheerfulness felt like a reproach to him. The nurses had told him he was far too early and that non-relative visiting time wasn’t for hours, but he refused to go away and just sat on a bench in the corridor, clutching the drooping flowers and swinging his legs despondently. Pablo had let him know that Liv was out of danger, but that didn’t make him feel any better. He felt that he couldn’t escape blame for the fact that she was in hospital. Their friendship had gone so terribly wrong.
In the end, the ward sister took pity on him and let him visit Olivia, who was on her own in a side room. It might, she hoped, cheer them both up. Olivia’s face was as long as Tom’s. From past experience, the nursing sister knew that most people who survived such a horrific accident relatively unscathed were relieved, often incredibly exhilarated, but Olivia seemed miserable and listless, as if something else was troubling her far more than her injuries.
Tom stood stiffly by the side of the bed. Olivia was lying propped up on a pillow, her hair like a dark cloud around her head.
“Hello, Liv,” he said. “How are you feeling?”
Olivia said nothing. She just turned her face away from him and closed her eyes. A tear trickled out of the corner of her bruised eye and she winced.
“Liv, please listen to me,” whispered Tom.
Olivia didn’t move. It was as if she was made of stone, like an effigy in a churchyard.
“Liv?”
“Go away, Tom,” she whispered. “You made your feelings quite clear in your note. I don’t want your flowers or your guilt. I just want you to leave me alone and never come back.”
Olivia turned her head and looked him full in the face. Her eyes were huge pools, black and hard like granite. “I thought that you and me, and Georgia and Aeysha were real friends. But I was so wrong. I’ve been lying here thinking about it. Maybe I don’t know what friendship is. I’ve not had much practice, what with all the travelling I’ve done with the circus. Maybe what we had was just a temporary alliance like those people we learn about in history. Maybe we were just all useful to each other. Maybe that’s why it fell apart so easily. It’s like a castell. It has to be strong at the base, otherwise it just wobbles and crumbles away. Anyway, whatever it was, it’s over now. Destroyed.”
Tom walked closer to the bed. She flinched as he came nearer.
“Liv,” he said desperately. “I’m going to go away. But before I do I want you to do one last thing for me. And if after you’ve done it, you still want me to leave, I will. I promise. I’ll never bother you again. I’ll even leave the Swan if that’s what you want. I swear.”
Olivia stirred. Tom leaving the Swan was a massive sacrifice. She knew how much he loved it. It was more like home to him than it would ever be to her, and she lived there. “What do you want me to do?” she asked.
Tom took another step closer and dropped a piece of paper on to the bedclothes. Olivia saw what it was and shrank away.
“Liv, I want you to look at that really closely and tell me if you notice anything strange about it.”
Gingerly, Olivia picked up the note, holding it as if it was a hand grenade that might explode in her face at any moment. She scanned the words, each one feeling like a needle in her stomach.
“Turn it over,” said Tom.
She did. Tom held his breath. Olivia stared at the name on the front and suddenly she smiled, and it was like the first ray of sunshine hitting the sea at dawn on a summer’s morning.
She looked up at Tom. “Oh, Tom, I’m so sorry.” She frowned. “But I don’t understand. The note is definitely in your handwriting.”
“Yes,” said Tom, “but I wrote it to somebody else. Then they must have put your name on the front and left it with Bert.”
“Who?” asked Olivia.
“The same person who deleted the text that you sent me apologising and substituted it with another saying how much you hated me and Georgia and Aeysha.”
“Katie Wilkes-Cox!”
Tom nodded. Olivia patted the edge of the bed and Tom sat down and started to tell her everything that had happened.
By the time that Alicia, Pablo and Eel turned up an hour later, Olivia was transformed. Georgia arrived shortly afterwards with chocolate and lemonade, and the next time the ward sister popped her head around the door, there seemed to be a full-scale party going on in the side room. She was going to tell them off, but caught a glimpse of Olivia’s laughing face and just closed the door and pretended she knew nothing about it.
Chapter Twenty-Five
“But I could just walk down to physiotherapy!” said Olivia impatiently, as a porter and a nurse helped her from the bed into a wheelchair.
The nurse shook her head and said, “Not allowed, Livy, I’m afraid. We’ll wheel you down to physio so they can assess you and then you can try to walk in controlled conditions. Just be patient. I’m sure that by this afternoon you’ll be able to walk from Land’s End to John O’Groats if that’s what you really want to do. But you may find that you won’t want to walk as much as you think you will. Your body has had a real shock. It needs rest, and time to recover.”
They wheeled her to the lift and took her down two floors to the physiotherapy department. Eel, Alicia and Pablo followed. Tom and Georgia had gone home to rest because they had a performance of The Sound of Music that night. Alicia had wanted Eel to go back to the Swan for a rest, too, but Eel had refused to leave Livy. She was glued to her sister’s side.
Once Olivia had been assessed, her chair was placed between two parallel bars.
“We’ll help you out of the wheelchair,” explained the physiotherapist, “so you can put your weight on the bars. Then in your own time you can take a step or two and see how you feel.”
“I feel fine,” said Olivia confidently. She grinned. “I might even do a cartwheel.”
The physiotherapist looked shocked. Most of her patients had to be coaxed into taking their first steps after an accident, but Olivia was almost too confident about her own abilities.
“Let’s give it a go and see how you get on,” said the physio, and she asked the nurse to help her lift Olivia into a standing position. Olivia stood between the bars. If she was being honest, she found she was pleased she had them to hold on to. She felt a little as if she were standing on the deck of a ship in a violent storm and her legs were surprisingly shaky. Now she was upright, the floor suddenly seemed a very long way away. She held tightly to the bars, then after a few seconds the dizziness passed.
