by Julia Green
‘You look so funny sitting there all wrapped up in your big coat,’ Theo says. ‘A little hungry waif.’
‘You said I was wholesome and healthy before,’ I say. ‘What happened?’
‘Dark magic in the museum, of course!’ Theo says. ‘Those hungry spirits, just waiting for a healthy girl like you to come along, to give them a home.’
‘Don’t. Not even as a joke.’ I shiver again.
‘What a sensitive flower you are. I’d never have expected it.’
‘Why not?’
‘Didn’t think of you like that. You are so cheerful and positive all the time. All that swimming and cycling and outdoor stuff you do.’
‘Only you could make that sound insulting,’ I say. ‘Anyway, you can talk! You swim and cycle too.’
‘But I’m not relentlessly cheerful, or quite so positive.’
I don’t like him saying that.
‘And now I’ve offended you.’
‘Yes.’
Theo frowns.
‘There’s nothing wrong with being cheerful. It’s better than being moody and pretentious and arrogant!’ I say.
Theo cuts another slab of cake for himself and eats it slowly. He looks at me from under that stupid fringe and makes his mouth go into a sort of pout, a caricature of someone who’s sorry.
I can’t seem to stop myself. ‘You’re not the only person who reads poetry and long, complicated novels and has deep thoughts and . . . and sad things have happened to them.’
Theo looks genuinely hurt.
I’m glad.
Finally he apologises. ‘I’m sorry I upset you,’ Theo says. ‘I really didn’t mean to. I like you a lot, Freya. Always have done, from the beginning. I was just being – I don’t know – glib? It’s just how I talk. A habit. Covering up what I’m really feeling.’
For a second I catch a clear glimpse of a different Theo. Someone much more vulnerable than he lets on. Someone I could really like.
I change the subject. ‘Your cake is delicious, actually,’ I say. ‘And I love your house.’
‘Shall I show you round?’
‘Yes please.’
It’s really tiny; just two two bedrooms and a small bathroom upstairs. Theo’s room is at the back, above the kitchen, looking over the garden. The tree fills the window space, throwing deep shadows into the room.
Theo turns on the desk light. He has lined up rows of photographs along a bookshelf, almost an echo of the photo display on the piano back at Home Farm. The familiar faces of his family smile out at me. And there’s one more face: the one I’ve been half expecting to see: the girl he played with as a child, and was fascinated by as a teenager, and who has planted herself in my brain, too: a ghost girl.
In his photo she’s older, with long dark hair, thin face, dark eyes; she’s wearing a sleeveless cotton dress. Her arms are painfully thin.
‘That’s Bridie, isn’t it?’ I ask.
Theo’s sitting cross-legged on the bed. He doesn’t look at me. ‘Yes.’
I pull out a chair, to sit facing him. I notice, now, how obsessively tidy the room is compared to downstairs. The books and DVDs are shelved alphabetically; his guitar hangs by its strap on a special hook, his clothes (almost all black) hang neatly on a rail. Even the floor looks clean.
‘And?’ Theo says.
‘Gabes told me about her.’
‘I know.’
‘You do?’
‘Yes, of course. We’re brothers. Closer than you think.’
‘So you know about . . . me, on the train, at the funeral and everything?’
‘Yes.’ He looks so terribly sad.
‘You weren’t there, were you?’
‘No. I hate funerals. I couldn’t bear it.’
I watch his face.
‘I think about her all the time,’ Theo says. ‘I go over in my mind what I could have said or done, to stop her. But I had no idea . . . I mean, I knew she got depressed, that she was ill, but . . . well, there was so much I didn’t know about her. Mum told me, afterwards, about the drugs, and what was happening in her brain . . . Mum felt guilty too, for not saving her.’
‘We felt like that when my brother died,’ I say. ‘My parents, Gramps and Evie, me.’
‘But it was an accident, right?’
‘Yes. I know that, now. But I didn’t always. For a while I wondered whether it was on purpose . . . that he meant to die.’ The memory of that summer is still so sharp and powerful I have to steel myself not to weep buckets all over again.
I concentrate on Theo. ‘What was Bridie like when you were both little?’
Theo stays silent for a while. He looks up at me. ‘She was funny and odd and very, very naughty.’ He leans back against the wall next to the bed, half smiles. ‘She always pushed things to the limit. Like, there was this game we played where you had to jump off the stairs on to the hall floor, and you had to keep going higher, to see how many steps you could jump off and she’d keep going, four, five, six stairs – crazy, she almost broke her neck doing that. Climbing up trees, she’d always have to go way too high, crawl out along stupidly thin branches at the top. Her favourite thing was dares. Taking it in turn to dare each other to do something – silly, dangerous things, mostly.’
‘Gabes told me she pushed Kit out of the window.’
‘She didn’t actually push him. Mum got there in time. Maybe Bridie wouldn’t have actually done it for real. It was a game.’
‘Not a very nice one. Not for Kit. Or your mum!’
‘No. She wasn’t nice. You wouldn’t ever use that word for Bridie.’
‘What word would you use?’
‘Exciting? Scary? I don’t know. Never boring. You felt like you were alive, being with her, because she made you feel everything so intensely.’
The irony of that sinks in. Alive.
Theo looks at me again. ‘You know something? That kind of compulsion to take risks . . . I’ve met other people like that here, in Oxford. These medical students I was friends with last year, they were like that: adrenaline junkies. Climbing, caving, hang-gliding, drinking too much . . . I reckon those are just more expensive, grown-up ways of making yourself feel you’re alive. In the daytime they had to do all this horrible stuff to do with illness and bodies and death, so in the evening and at weekends they pushed out the boundaries of living.’
‘It’s an interesting theory,’ I say. ‘It sort of makes sense. But why would Bridie . . . what was going on for her?’
Theo shrugs. ‘Who knows? Something very dark and damaged. Mum says she wanted attention, wanted to make sure people noticed her, needed to convince herself and the world that she existed.’
Theo looks gloomier than ever. ‘But she glittered and sparkled, too. A bit manic, maybe, but at the time she . . . well, she was beautiful to me. Painfully thin. Like glass. Of course she’d break.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘It hurts you to talk about her.’
‘It’s not the talking that actually hurts though, is it? The hurt’s happened already. And mine means nothing, compared to hers.’
I rack my brains to remember the comforting things people have said to me, over the last three years. ‘Sad and terrible things happen. It’s how you react to them that makes the difference.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘What you do, after. I think that’s why I so want to make my life matter, to live a good life: because Joe didn’t have the chance. I don’t want to be bitter and sad and hopeless.’
Theo gives me the saddest smile. ‘You know what, Freya? The truth is, you are so the least bitter, sad person I know. And you’ve already made a difference to me.’
I shiver. There’s something really scary about him saying that. It’s as if Theo’s words tie me to him in some way. Like there’s a new kind of pact between us. As if I’ve got to go on making a difference to him. Or else what?
What might he do?
The front door opens. We hear Duncan come in and go into the
kitchen. The floor’s so thin we can even hear the sound of him flicking the switch on the kettle.
Theo gets up and smooths the bed covers where they were creased up under him. ‘In a minute I’ll introduce you to the lovely Duncan, but you must promise not to fall in love with him. Of course he’ll fall in love with you, though. How could he not?’
‘Meaning what?’
‘You are the bright star come to dwell amongst us. Our muse and our salvation. He’ll be writing songs for you before you know it.’
‘You talk such utterly pretentious rubbish, Theo Fielding!’ I shove him back on the bed, and he pulls me down with him, and we kiss.
Properly, this time. Not the quick touch of lips like earlier, in the garden, but deep and dark and dangerous and delicious. I have that sensation of falling . . . out of control . . . all over again. I know it’s a mistake: he’s five years older than me; he’s Theo, for God’s sake! Gabes’ brother. Mixed-up, contradictory, crazy Theo!
I know.
I know.
I know.
Fifteen
My train leaves at quarter to six. It’s a mad scramble to get to the station on time.
‘Why don’t you stay?’ Theo asks, as I pick up my coat. ‘Or at least get a later train?’
‘I can only use my ticket on this one. I know, boring. But I don’t have any money.’
‘I’ll pay.’
‘No. Thank you. But no.’
Duncan comes to the door to wave me off. ‘See you again soon. It was a total pleasure to meet you!’ He blows me a kiss.
‘Thanks for tea and everything,’ I say.
‘Wait a second!’ Theo says. ‘I want to get you something.’ He runs upstairs.
Duncan smiles at me. ‘He’s happier already,’ he tells me. ‘Well done, Freya!’
‘I haven’t done anything!’
‘No? The evidence is to the contrary!’
Theo thumps back down the stairs holding a see-through plastic folder with sheets of typed paper inside. ‘Reading matter, for your journey home.’ He shoves the folder into my bag.
I don’t ask what it is. Poems, I guess, and my heart sinks, ever so slightly.
We run through the streets of Jericho, past St Barnabas Church, along Walton Street and then turn right into Worcester Street. It’s already dusk; cars are streaming out of the city centre, lights reflecting off the wet road. At some point in the late afternoon it must have rained.
We arrive on the platform just as the train slides in. I lean from the train doorway to kiss him goodbye. ‘Send me another postcard, when you have time. Thanks for a lovely time!’
I settle myself in my seat, still smiling. I don’t look back, out of the window. The train gathers speed, rushing into the darkness, taking me home.
It’s not till I’ve changed trains at Didcot that I get out the folder of paper he put in my bag. I leaf through the pages. Not poems, but some sort of story, typed on thin white paper. I start to read.
It doesn’t take me long to realise that the story is about Bridie, and that’s why he wanted me to read it. It’s about him too, I guess, even though the boy in the story isn’t called Theo. What I don’t know, and can’t tell, is how much is real, how much is made up – Theo’s fantasy about her.
In the story, it’s the morning of Bridie’s eighteenth birthday, and the boy has made her a cake. That bit I can believe. He’s bought birthday candles specially: pastel colours good enough to eat: candy pink and lemon yellow and pale blue and soft lime. The story starts as he’s walking down this street past a row of derelict houses, quite close to the railway. When he arrives at the squat where she’s living, he sees her at the window, her face like a pale flower.
She runs down the stairs and comes to the door, but she won’t let him in.
‘We’re going out,’ she tells him.
‘Where?’
‘I’ll show you. Follow me.’
She takes him to this rusting old blue Ford estate car: she says she’s borrowed it from one of the guys in the squat (later, the boy wonders if she stole it). She is going to drive them to the seaside. Has she got a driving licence? No, course not. But she’s picked up the basics of driving, more or less, from all the times she’s been in the car with this other guy. And they go, the car doing those rabbit hops as she starts off, until she gets the gears right. After that, it’s fine.
That can’t be true. Can it?
In Theo’s story, anyway, she makes the boy read the map and the road signs and somehow they make it to the Gower coast – that’s way beyond Swansea, in west Wales: it’s motorway all the way once you’ve got on the M4, and then some wiggling about beyond Swansea on small roads and they get lost loads but they are laughing and singing and having fun and finally they get to the beach Bridie has remembered from when she was a little girl and visited with her mum.
There’s a huge expanse of sand, and a river flowing right across it, and stepping stones to cross at low tide, but at high tide the whole beach will be covered and Bridie wants to wait till that happens, to see the river filling up and the water submerging everything, and she wants to sleep the night in a cave, and swim in moonlight . . .
It’s too windy to light the candles on the beach, so they climb up the cliff and find a cave, and the boy sings ‘Happy Birthday’, and Bridie blows out the candles, and they make a camp, and collect driftwood for a fire, and stay all night, while the tide comes in and washes over the beach . . .
The sound of the sea lashing the cliffs fills their heads all night, and there’s no way they can swim with the water so high there’s no beach left. They watch the sky clear, and it’s filled with bright stars, and the moonlight shines on Bridie’s face, making it white and strange, like the face of a ghost.
In Theo’s story, Bridie is so vividly alive it takes my breath away. I can see the beach and the cliff and the night sky as clearly as if I’ve been there. It’s almost a shock to find I’m still on the train, travelling westwards. When I peer out of the window, my own face reflects back at me, pale and troubled. I fold the pages back into my bag, and my hands are shaking.
Sixteen
Now, safely back home in my room, I don’t know what to make of it all. Oxford, Theo, Bridie. I put the story safely away in a drawer, change my clothes, go downstairs for supper.
‘Black bean chilli with avocado salsa,’ Mum announces proudly, placing the steaming dish on the kitchen table. ‘Thought I’d try something a bit different for a change.’
It’s a shame that I’m not hungry, really. I pick at the salsa and some rice.
Dad shovels the chilli beef into his mouth and fires off questions about the Oxford Art course. ‘What did they say about the lecturers? Did you meet any? See their work? You want to be somewhere where they are all actively painting. And do they actually teach the basics? Drawing?’
I sigh. I don’t want to have to lie, so I don’t say anything.
Mum glances at me. She knows something’s up. ‘Freya’s tired, Martin! Let her eat in peace. Let’s talk about something else, for now.’
So they have a conversation about the garden, and Mum starts talking about what we should do for Christmas this year. It’s become this huge issue, ever since Joe died. How to spend the least painful day together.
‘We should have your parents over,’ Mum says to Dad. ‘We could pay for their flights, this once.’
‘Or we could go there.’
Mum shakes her head. ‘No. I don’t think so. I don’t think that’s a very good idea at all.’
‘Why make such a big thing about it?’ I say. ‘It’s just a day.’
They both look at me, and then at each other.
I pick up my plate and take it over to the dishwasher. ‘I’m going upstairs.’
Up in my room, I text Miranda. Are you free tomorrow? Can we do something FUN?
It’s ages before she replies. I’ve almost given up; have had a bath and got into bed. I try reading, but my mind keeps drifting aw
ay from the page. At last my phone bleeps. Text message.
Ice-skating? Meet 11am station? Unless yr mum/dad can give lift?
Yes! 11 at station x I text straight back, and then I turn off the light and burrow under the duvet, as if the soft darkness will keep my own thoughts at bay.
It’s the most fun we’ve had together since . . . I don’t know, Miranda’s last birthday party, probably. She’s much better at skating than I am; she used to have lessons, after school, and she can do all the stuff like turns and going backwards and even a bit of ice dancing. It’s packed with people, being Sunday morning, but mostly families, younger kids. We lace up our boots and then hobble over to the rink, and holding hands, to begin with, while I get my confidence up, we skate round the edge of the ice near enough for me to grab the side rail if I start to tumble. After a few goes, I’ve got my balance right and we go faster, further from the edge. The effortless speed is exhilarating! We let go of our hands, and Miranda shows off her pirouettes and jumps and figures of eight. She teaches me how to go backwards, how to stop quickly, how to turn. We laugh and laugh, and then I make a mistake, and trip up and land hard on my bottom on the ice, and we laugh even more.
We come off the ice for a drink at the funny old-fashioned café at the side. Our cheeks are glowing, I’m wet through, but I feel brilliant. We sip milkshakes through straws. It’s like being ten again, when it was so much easier to just have fun and not worry about anything.
‘So,’ Miranda says, doing an extra-loud slurp through the straw to get up the last chocolatey bubbles. ‘What happened yesterday?’
She knows me so well!
‘I didn’t go to the open day thing at all.’
‘Ah.’
‘I met Theo, instead.’
‘Theo?’
‘Gabes’ brother.’
‘Freya!’
‘Don’t be shocked!’
‘But I am! What were you thinking of? Are you completely crazy?’
‘Don’t say that. I know, it’s stupid. He’s too old. He’s Gabes’ brother. But I had such a lovely time. We met in a café. He took me to this extraordinary museum. We went back to his house. We talked and talked. He kissed me.’
