by KE Payne
I knew I could have sat with Eden talking to her until the first rays of sunshine rose up again the next morning, but I couldn’t. Finally, reluctantly, I told her I ought to head home.
“My parents stress about me travelling home alone on the Tube after dark,” I said, pulling an exasperated face. I felt like I needed to explain.
“No worries.” Eden stretched her long legs out in front of her. She linked her fingers together and stretched her arms high above her head, suppressing a yawn. “I should get going, too. We’ve been out nearly ten hours, you realize that?”
“I haven’t bored you, have I?” I said, suddenly worried that I might have kept her, and that she’d been too polite to say anything.
“God, no.” Eden stopped stretching and swung around to face me. “I’ve had an awesome day.” She paused. “Have you?”
“I think,” I said, choosing my words carefully, “this has been the most fun day I’ve had since I came to London. And I really mean that.”
Eden stood and held out her hand to me. I took it, letting her haul me to my feet. I quickly dropped it again and stuffed my hands into my pockets.
“Then we should do it again sometime,” Eden said, walking away from the bench.
I followed and fell into step with her. I didn’t know which was stronger—my happiness about having been with her, or sadness about leaving her. It would be over a day before I’d see her again at school.
What was it about Eden that had hooked me so quickly?
No idea.
We said our goodbyes at Covent Garden, and as I watched her get swallowed up by the throng of people inside the station, all I knew was this: after ten magical hours together, I missed her the second she disappeared from view.
Chapter Eighteen
The Girl.
That’s all she’d been to me at the beginning. Just the nameless girl who I knew I wanted to get to know better the second I set eyes on her.
I sat on the Tube taking me back home, looking at the dead, expressionless faces of the people sitting opposite me. I imagined Eden heading home on her train, too. What was she thinking? Had she really meant it when she said she’d had an awesome day, or was she just being polite? Spontaneously, I reached for my phone and opened up the photo she’d taken of us on the London Eye.
She was gorgeous. The sunshine in the capsule made her eyes look even brighter than they normally did. I looked at her soft hair, her lovely upturned mouth, her freckled nose, her long, dark eyelashes. Then I ran my thumb over the screen and scrolled through until I found the photo of Amy that I’d shown Eden. I gazed down at her smiling face and realized with a pang that she still hadn’t replied to my text from hours earlier when I was in the tapas bar, telling her I loved her.
My confusion intensified.
Undivided attention from Eden for the last ten hours.
Silence from Amy.
Finally the train arrived at my station. Fighting the urge to text Eden to thank her for an amazing day, I switched my phone off and made for home. I was cross with Amy for still not having replied but accepted that I didn’t really have the right to feel like that.
I knew the second I put my key in the door I’d get grief for coming home after dark, and I wasn’t wrong.
“I’m not sure what part of Be home before dark you don’t get.” My mother was waiting for me in the hallway, tea towel in her hands, usual pissed-off expression on her face.
“I didn’t realize the time.” I took my jacket off and flung it onto the stairs.
“Please, Tabby”—my mother wiped her hands on the towel—“if we ask you to do something, it’s for a good reason, okay? We just don’t like you to be on your own after dark. Not around here. It was different at home, but here—”
“I’m seventeen, you know,” I interrupted. “I’m not a kid any more.”
“Do you think that makes a difference if someone wanted to mug you out there? Knife you?”
“Knife me?” I scoffed. “No one’s going to knife me.”
“You hear about it all the time.” My mother persisted. “And don’t say it’s our fault for making you move to London. I’ve heard it all before.”
“I’m not going to say that,” I said truthfully. “But you’re right, I should have been home earlier.” I looked down at my feet. “And I also know it’s not as safe as Cragthorne here, and I’m sorry,” I said. “I should have thought.”
My mother drew her breath in, ready to retaliate. When she realized she didn’t have to fight back, she wavered. “Right. Okay,” she said, looking at me uncertainly. “You want anything to eat?”
“I’m going to Skype Amy, then I’ll come down afterwards, if that’s okay?” I started to walk up the stairs, pausing to wait for my mother to acknowledge what I’d said, then carried on up to my room.
Kicking off my boots, I propped myself up on my bed. I nestled my iPad on my knees and rang Amy. Habits were sometimes hard to break. Plus, I guess a small part of me wanted to know why she hadn’t messaged me all day.
She answered on the third ring, her face flickering into life on the small screen in front of me.
“Hey!” She looked pleased enough to see me.
“You okay?” I shuffled myself down slightly to make myself more comfortable.
“I’m good. You?”
“Yuh-huh, fab. You had a good day?”
“Meh, not bad,” Amy said. “I met up with some friends from school. Hey, you know that cafe we used to go to? Down by the river?”
“Yeah. Owner was Italian?”
“Yeah, well, it’s gone. Can you believe it? After all these years.” She pulled a face. “Went to get a cappuccino this morning and it was all closed up.”
“Right. Shame.” I nodded. “What friends?”
“You don’t know them,” Amy said. “Well, I say friends, but it was just one.”
“I see.”
“The others bailed on me.” Amy ran her hands through her hair and looked away from the screen briefly. “Anyway,” she finally said, “how was your day? What’ve you been up to?”
“I’ve been in London all day,” I said happily. “Went on the Eye, walked around town a bit, sat down by the river. It was nice.”
“So you got to go on the Eye,” Amy said, “just like you wanted?”
Did I detect a tone? Maybe. Maybe not.
“I did.” I left it at that.
“Sounds neat.” I heard Amy’s phone make a noise and waited as she leant away to look at it.
“It was,” I said when she reappeared on the screen. “I texted you while I was out. You didn’t reply.” I tried to sound pissed off. Evidently I should have tried harder.
“Oh yeah.” Amy dismissed. “Sorry. Busy day and all that.”
“S’okay,” I said, thinking Amy might elaborate. She didn’t. “Hey, you’ll never guess what I had for lunch as well.” I laughed, remembering.
Amy raised her eyebrows.
“Tapas. It was epic. Really nice. Very garlicky.” I wafted my hand in front of my mouth.
“Tapas in London, hey?” A forced smile. “Sounds a million miles from anything we’ve got here.”
“I’m sure there are places in Durham we could go to—”
“If you still lived here.”
“Which we can go to when I visit,” I corrected. “Or I can take you to this place next time you’re down.”
“I’m not sure Spanish food’s my thing,” Amy said, wrinkling her nose. “You know me. Pie and chips.”
“Then maybe it’s time you broadened your tastes.” I laughed. I wasn’t laughing inside.
“Like you have?”
“No, I didn’t mean—”
“I know what you meant,” Amy said. She contemplated for a moment. “So, when are you coming back up here?” she eventually asked. “You’ve been gone from Cragthorne nearly three months.”
“When I can squeeze the train fare out of my tight-arse father,” I said. “He’s finding London
—now what did he call it?—pricier than he remembered.”
“So no time soon, then?”
“You’ll have to come to me if you can’t bear to be apart from me.” I grinned and pulled a silly face.
“There’s the small matter of a train fare to London, though.” Amy looked slightly irritated, I thought.
“Which you’ll find a lot easier getting out of your parents than I will mine.” I wavered. “Anyway, isn’t it more fun if you come down here? I mean, there are more things to do here, and it’s all new for you. It’s not like I don’t know what home looks like, is it?”
Amy’s look of annoyance increased. “I don’t want to keep coming down to you,” she said. “If I want to know what London looks like, I’ll Google it. I want to see you, not the Houses of bloody Parliament.” She looked at me for a moment before speaking again. “Don’t you want to come home?”
“Of course,” I said, without much enthusiasm. “I just thought…it doesn’t matter.” I took a breath. An argument was looming. “Let’s not fight, huh? I’ve had an awesome day and I don’t want to finish it with a fight.”
Amy leant back. “So who did you hang out with today?”
“Oh, a mate from school.”
“Libby?”
“No,” I said. “Someone else. Eden. You saw her at the pizza place last week.”
“The posh girl?”
“If that’s what you want to call her.”
“You didn’t say you two were close.”
“We’re not, we just hung out today.”
“So a new taste in posh friends and a new taste in posh food.” A dig at me. Again.
“It’s no biggie. I like all foods. Spanish, Italian, Indian…you know me.”
“We only ever had chips or Chinese from the bloke on the corner when you lived at home,” Amy said. “I didn’t know you had a more sophisticated taste than that.”
“Even after two years of dating?” I laughed.
“Seems not.” Amy looked away as her phone made a sound again. She picked it up, looked at it, her expression never changing, then placed it back down again.
“I better go,” she said at last. “I’ve got some work to get done for school tomorrow.”
“Okay.” I tried to sound disappointed, but suddenly I was really hungry. Now all I wanted to do was go downstairs and eat.
“I’ll text you later, yeah?” Amy waved goodbye at the screen. “I’m glad you had a good day.”
And then she was gone, leaving me staring at an empty screen, but with a head full of questions and doubts.
Chapter Nineteen
“One whole day in the company of Eden, and you’re acting like a lovesick puppy.” Libby linked her arm with mine as we walked down to the laboratory for our first lesson of the day. “And I think if you look at that photo one more time, you’ll go blind.”
It was Monday morning. Thirty-six hours, four minutes, and too many seconds since I’d last seen or heard from Eden. I’d spent most of Sunday in my bedroom, effortlessly avoiding my mother, father, and Ed, and trying—but failing—to speak to Amy. She’d been out all day, at work I assumed. I felt like we’d left on bad terms the night before. I wanted to clear the air, but her absence meant I had nothing to do but spend hours lying on my bed trying really hard not to think about Eden instead.
“It was awesome, Lib,” I said, stuffing my phone back into my trouser pocket. “She’s awesome.”
“When I was younger,” Libby said, her arm still linked in mine as we sauntered down the corridor, “I used to like to watch old cartoon reruns on the Cartoon Network.”
“Fascinating.”
“And my particular favourite used to be Pepé Le Pew. Do you remember Pepé Le Pew?”
“Strangely, no.”
“He was this French skunk who was madly in love with a cat,” Libby said, “and he’d go around with this soppy grin on his face and little red hearts popping around his head every time he saw her.”
“Does this have a point? Or are you just reliving your childhood?”
“You remind me of Pepé,” Libby said, waving to someone she knew further down the corridor.
“I remind you of a French skunk?”
“No.” Libby squeezed my arm. “Only the lovesick bit. I imagine you having little red hearts popping around your head every time you see Eden.”
“Thanks,” I said. “I think.”
“Anytime.”
Libby unzipped her bag and pulled out a textbook. “So, she was awesome, huh?” she asked as we arrived at the lab and made our way inside.
“Totally and utterly,” I said. “She said I was like a breath of fresh air, too. How amazing is that?”
She glanced at me as I sat down. “You really like her, don’t you?”
“Mm.” I pulled my notepad from my rucksack. “She’s not seeing William any more, by the way.”
“And you’re telling me this because…?”
“Just making conversation.”
“Did she say why?” Libby asked.
“She didn’t, no,” I said, taking the top off my pen. “Maybe William was a prat.”
“Or maybe she catches a different tram into town,” Libby said, still grinning. “You can dream.”
“Different tram?” I looked at her incredulously. “What is this? The 1800s?”
“My gran used to say it about my cousin,” Libby said airily.
“The cousin that dabbled?”
“The very same.”
“Sometimes I have no idea why we’re friends.”
“Can I gatecrash your conversation?” Eden loitered uncertainly a little way from our bench.
Cue flashback, superfast: London Eye, tapas, Eden sitting barely feet from me.
“Sure.” My voice was controlled. I was pleased.
Eden threw a quick look back behind her and came closer. “I just wanted to say again how neat Saturday was,” she said. “And that we should do it again…so I can show you some more of London, I mean.”
Libby busied herself with her books, focusing on them as if her life depended on it.
Way discreet, Lib.
“It was good, wasn’t it?” I blinked. Pulled my eyes from hers.
We both heard Beth before she’d even entered the room, her voice reverberating hollowly outside in the corridor.
Eden stepped back from my bench. “Better go.” She smiled and retreated from us just as Beth entered the lab.
Libby practically bubbled next to me.
“Don’t,” I said. “Just…don’t.”
Chapter Twenty
I’d had a long conversation with Amy on Skype earlier in the evening. Less conversation, more of her frustration that I “hadn’t made any effort to see her.” I’d promised I’d speak to my father about it, which is how I now found myself arguing my case with a man who, just lately, was grumpier than I’d seen him in years. And that was saying something.
“I’ve told you no, and that’s an end to it.” My father picked up his newspaper and started reading. Discussion over.
It was late Wednesday evening—around ten p.m.—and my father had just come home from the office, tired, hungry, and irritable. My insistence that I go visit Amy that weekend was only shortening the fuse of his bad temper. He looked dog-tired, the seventy-plus hours he’d worked that week showing starkly in his face. I stared at him, trying to find a speck of sympathy, but I couldn’t. He chose to accept a job where a nine-to-five day didn’t exist, so what did he expect?
He glanced over the top of his paper and, seeing me still looking at him, frowned. “And you can stop glowering at me as well,” he said. “You’ve got schoolwork to do this weekend, so Amy can wait for another weekend when you don’t have schoolwork.” He looked steadily at me. “I’m sure she’ll cope.”
“But I haven’t seen her for ages,” I protested. “And I found a train that’s reasonable, and I can do my schoolwork on Sunday when I get back.”
My father put his pape
r down. “Do you know how much I pay for you to go to that school? Hmm?”
And do you know how much grief I’m getting from Amy about not visiting?
“No,” I said, “but I have a feeling you’re about to tell me.”
He raised his eyes upward and muttered under his breath, calculating. “Let’s say roughly two hundred pounds per day.”
“You’re not an economist for nothing,” I mumbled sullenly.
“Now. Do you think I pay two hundred pounds a day for you to attend one of the best schools in West London just so you can cram your homework into a Sunday night?”
“I’m thinking no,” I said, looking at my nails.
“No.” A self-satisfied look. “So when I say you can’t go visit Amy, I mean it.”
My father continued to look at me. I remained slumped on the sofa, inspecting my nails as if my life depended on it.
“I know you think I’m the worst father on the planet,” he now said, “but it’s important you do well at school.” He folded his paper up. “You have a tendency to drift.”
“I like Queen Vic’s,” I said. I’d told Amy that before; I was surprised I was now admitting it to my father. “And I want to do well there. I just didn’t think having a weekend away so early in the term would be such a biggie.”
“You like it?” My father looked surprised—shocked, even. “Well, that’s good.”
“I do,” I said truthfully. “It’s a good place. The teachers are cool, the people in my classes are nice.”
“So where’s the punchline?” he asked.
“I’m sorry?”
“The glib remark you always come up with to counteract the positive thing you’ve just said.”
“There is no punchline,” I said. “I like the school. That’s it.”
“Well…that’s good to hear.” I saw my father’s face soften for the first time in our conversation. “I’m pleased.”
He placed his newspaper on the coffee table. “And will that feeling last?” he asked. “Or will you spend half your time skipping classes? Spending your days around at your mates’ houses like you used to in Cragthorne?”
