by Julia Green
Miranda looks stricken. She doesn’t speak at first. Then she says, ‘That’s bad. Very bad. And worse than you think.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, I didn’t know anything about Theo, did I? And I didn’t realise you hadn’t told Gabes about you going to Oxford, obviously, since you didn’t tell me you hadn’t. Why would I guess a thing like that? So when I bumped into Gabes in town, yesterday, I just mentioned about you being in Oxford for the day, and I suppose he did look a bit peculiar, but I didn’t know why, then . . . Now it makes more sense.’ She pushes the empty glass round with her finger. She looks back at me. ‘What I don’t get, more than anything, Freya, is why you have kept all this secret from me. I thought we were best friends.’
‘We are,’ I say. ‘I’m so sorry, I know it seems weird, the whole thing.’
‘You planned it all out, and you didn’t tell me.’
‘I know.’ My voice sounds feeble, pathetic.
‘You didn’t tell me because I’d have made you see what a mistake it was. I’d have stopped you. Honestly, you are totally hopeless, Freya.’
A little spurt of fire rises up inside me. ‘You don’t understand. It’s not like you think. Gabes and I aren’t going out together. We’re just friends. That’s all.’
‘Really? Does he know that? And you’re not going to be friends any more, I don’t think. Not when he finds out about you and Theo.’
‘You won’t tell him.’
‘No. But you should.’
I unwrap a chocolate bar and break off half for Miranda. Is she right? Is it anybody’s business, any of it, other than Theo’s and mine? I know the answer, really. I sigh deeply. Why do things get so complicated? I wish Miranda and I really were just ten years old, ice-skating, scoffing chocolate, best friends for ever and ever.
‘Remember that rhyme, from primary school?’ I say. ‘Make friends, make friends, never, never break friends.’
She scowls at me. ‘And?’
‘Nothing; it just came into my head. Things were easier then.’
‘Well. Yes. Duh! We were kids. And now we’ve growed up, remember? No one said it would be easy.’
‘Grown, not growed.’
‘You!’ Miranda stands up and pushes me, and I shove her back, and we start laughing again. ‘Come on, let’s get moving!’ She grabs my arm and we hobble back to the ice, and soon we’re gliding smoothly off again, arm in arm. We leave our differences behind. We cross our arms in front, still holding hands, and then twist, turn, arms behind us, like an elaborate dance movement. The feeling of speed, of lightness, feet gliding over ice, through air, spins a new mood over us both.
The music changes. An announcement about anyone with a blue band comes over the loudspeakers. Our two-hour slot is up.
We’re tired out. We sit for ages, unlacing our boots, collecting our shoes, sorting out coats, talking all the while about this and that; nothing important, nothing that will spoil things between us.
We emerge from the skating rink into a wet afternoon. We walk slowly back to the station and wait for a train home. ‘We should go skating again, with the college crowd,’ Miranda says. ‘We all need more fun in our lives!’
‘You are so right. Let’s go next weekend.’
‘You’re not going back to Oxford, then?’
‘No. Nothing planned.’
‘Tell me, next time?’
‘Yes.’
‘Promise?’
‘Cross my heart. Hope to die if I tell a lie!’
We both laugh.
I give her a hug. ‘Thanks, Miranda!’
‘Whatever for?’
‘Being you. Being here. Understanding me.’
So it’s so much worse, that I break my promise.
I don’t tell Gabes about me and Theo, even when I go over to his house to see the newborn kittens.
I don’t tell Miranda that Theo phones, twice. Sends me a postcard. Invites me for another weekend.
Seventeen
It’s a bitterly cold day in early December. Because the Oxford University term is so short, theirs has already finished, whereas we’ve got another three weeks left at college.
Theo’s waiting for me at the station. As the train pulls in, I can already see him scanning the carriages ahead, and then he spots me and our eyes meet. A delicious shiver runs down my spine.
He waits for me to open the door, his face solemn. He’s got his coat collar turned up, and a black hat and grey scarf. His hands are pale and naked-looking.
I step down on to the platform. He holds both my hands in his for a second.
‘You’re freezing!’ I say. ‘Sorry to be so late. There were wrong signals or something. We waited for ages outside Didcot.’
He shakes his head.
I know I sound utterly banal. I can hear my own voice, babbling rubbish as we cross the car park.
We pause for him to unlock his bike, and then he pushes it along beside us as we walk back towards the city. We stop on the bridge to stare down at the frozen canal from the bridge. The houseboats are all marooned in ice.
‘Steadily going nowhere! Happy the whole day long!’ The silly line from an advert on telly pops into my head and out of my mouth without warning. The more I want to be intelligent and mature, the worse I get. I put my arm through his, anyway, and we push on forward into the crowded streets.
‘Coffee first?’ Theo asks.
‘Yes! Can we go somewhere else, this time? Not that greasy spoon place.’
Theo shrugs but he steers me down a narrow alleyway and along a cobbled street to a different café. He locks the bike outside and we go in and sit at the window table. We order coffee, and toasted crumpets because we’re both suddenly starving. It seems the right sort of food for Oxford.
Theo warms his hands under his armpits, hugging himself. Now he’s taken off his coat he looks thin, much thinner than last time I saw him. His face is pale, his eyes too dark.
‘How’s the term been?’ I ask him.
‘Mad. Too much work. Too many essays, all due in the same date.’
‘But you’ve finished, now?’
‘Yes.’ He narrows his eyes as he looks at me. ‘Did you read the story? The one I wrote, I mean.’
‘Yes.’
‘You didn’t mention it.’
‘No. I didn’t know what to say.’
‘Did you like it?’
‘Yes. But it made me confused. Like, was it made up? Or real?’
‘Does it matter?’
‘To me, yes.’
He leans across the table so his face is close to mine. ‘What did you think, though, as you read it? That it happened like that? Could have happened?’
He frightens me when he’s this intense.
I think, fast.
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘It was totally believable. The girl – Bridie – seemed so real and alive it made me really sad . . .’ my voice fades out. ‘That she . . . that she isn’t, any more.’
Theo doesn’t speak for a while. Our coffees arrive, and we eat the crumpets: two each, with butter dripping through the holes and pooling on to the plate.
‘But she lives on, in a way, through my story, doesn’t she?’ Theo says.
‘Yes, I guess . . .’
‘And I might write more about her.’
I don’t know what to say to that. Bridie’s ghost is hovering between us now, an unwelcome guest at the table.
‘I hear her voice, sometimes,’ Theo says.
I look up at him. ‘Yes?’ My heart beats faster. ‘That happened to me, too, after Joe died. I’d hear his voice, just as I was dropping off to sleep. I’d even see him, sometimes, or feel his arm brush mine . . . it’s natural, when you’ve loved someone, Theo.’
‘No, not like that. I actually hear her. She talks to me,’ Theo says.
I don’t try and argue. There’s no point.
I try to put it out of my head, but it’s as if a shadow has fallen over us. Everything has shifted for
a second. Things are not quite as they should be.
‘So,’ I say brightly, to lift my own spirits. ‘Can we go to the Botanical Gardens, next? They’ll be amazing in the frost.’
Theo makes an effort to lift the mood too. ‘You can draw them. Did you bring your notebook?’
‘Of course! But it’s too cold to sit still and draw,’ I say. ‘I’d like to see the river. And I want to find the seat where Lyra and Will sat, at the end of the last His Dark Materials book.’
‘See, you muddle up real life and stories all the time, too,’ Theo says.
We put on our coats and scarves and Theo pays. ‘Ready?’
I nod.
‘There’s a place on the river where people swim, all year round,’ Theo says. ‘Even in the winter.’
‘Well, that’s just crazy!’
‘I thought you liked river swimming?’
I know we’re both remembering being at the stream together at Home Farm. The time we first met.
I’m thinking about what he said, on the way back from our swim that late summer afternoon: I wish I’d found you first.
‘What’s your friend Duncan doing today?’ I say.
‘Why?’ Theo stops and for a second he looks almost angry. ‘He’s packing up, if you must know, ready to go home to Birmingham.’
‘There’s no need to be so spiky! I only asked.’
Theo recovers himself. ‘Sorry, Freya. I don’t know what’s the matter with me.’
We go past the big bookshop.
Theo points to a book in the window display, about finding your inner fish.
I laugh.
The tension between us gradually begins to ease.
The Botanical Gardens are thick with frost. It has edged the leaves with white fur, transformed seed heads into white baubles; the grass is like cake icing, crunchy under our boots. We run over the lawns, making maze patterns for each other to trace round and round. Our breath makes clouds in the still air.
It’s much too cold to sit for long on the bench where Lyra and Will sat in the story. We walk along next to the river for a while, and then we go into the glasshouses, where the air is warmer, before we start walking back a different way, skirting through the backs of the colleges.
We’re both freezing. The sun still hasn’t come out, but the frosty air turns to a grey mistiness, damp that seeps through clothing. We stop off to buy food at the covered market off High Street. I buy a postcard to send to Evie and Gramps, and another, for Danny. But that makes me feel bad, somehow. Because I’m here with Theo, and I know they wouldn’t approve . . .
On an impulse, Theo grabs my arm and takes me down a narrow medieval street and through one of those secret wooden doors into a small courtyard.
‘Are we allowed?’ I whisper.
‘It’s fine,’ Theo says. ‘I want you to see what it’s like, inside.’
We go through another door, across a small courtyard with a beautiful plane tree in the centre. From a lit window two storeys up the first notes of music drift across the courtyard as someone begins to practise the piano. It’s all quite magical. We go up some steps, and through a door, and I find myself in a chapel, the light coming through a huge medieval stained-glass window at one end. The wooden ceiling is decorated with paintings of angels, and a real boy is sitting on a chair, playing a lute. We might have stepped back hundreds of years.
We stand together at the entrance to the nave, and turn to look up at the tower above, just as the bell begins to strike. A crowd of tourists comes through the door. Someone begins to explain the history of the chapel. We tiptoe out again, back through the way we came, out on to the street.
We don’t say much. We weave our way back to Jericho. My feet are tired. I’m cold and damp. It’s a relief to finally arrive at Theo’s house.
Duncan’s already gone. He’s left a note for Theo on the kitchen table, with a P.S. for me. Theo hands over the piece of paper. It’s an invitation to us both for a New Year’s Eve Party, at his home in Birmingham. ‘What do you think?’ Theo asks.
‘No way will my parents let me go,’ I say. ‘Not so far, just for a party, and with people they don’t know.’
‘So, how come they didn’t mind you coming to Oxford to see me?’
I feel myself blush. ‘I didn’t tell them.’
‘So where do they think you are?’
‘I said I’d been invited to Home Farm, again. That I’d stay in Laura’s room, like I did before. It seemed easier, somehow, because . . . well, now my dad’s been there and met your parents . . .’ I’m so embarrassed I stumble over my words.
Theo stares at me.
Is he shocked that I lied?
It was too horribly easy to lie to Mum and Dad. They trust me, I guess. I’ve never given them reason not to.
‘So they think right now you are with Gabes?’ Theo says.
I don’t answer, and Theo doesn’t say anything either.
I stare at the scrap of paper in my hand, at Duncan’s flamboyant handwriting in black ink. I look at our two names written side by side: Freya and Theo, as if we are a couple. Is that what Duncan thinks? What has Theo said about me, exactly?
Now Duncan’s gone home for the holidays, Theo and I are going to be alone together in the house for a whole weekend. No one knows I am here. It’s beginning to feel a bit scary.
Nothing will happen unless I want it to, I tell myself. And my instincts all say, Wait, go slowly, don’t rush into anything!
We make a meal together with the food we bought at the market. Theo, like everyone in his family, knows how to cook. I help chop onions and slice mushrooms and carrots. While the beef casserole is slowly cooking in the oven, he shows me how to make a cake he calls Linzertorte, with hazelnuts and cocoa and cherry jam. The kitchen is warm and steamy, scented with allspice and nutmeg. It begins to feel more normal, making a meal together; not so intense.
‘Do you see Beth, sometimes?’ I ask Theo. ‘She lives in Oxford, doesn’t she?’
‘Summertown,’ Theo says. ‘North of here. I’ve been there once this term. Mostly, at the weekends when I’ve got more free time, she’s staying at Home Farm. As you know.’
I think guiltily of my last visit there, with Gabes, to see the kittens just after they were born. Four tiny tabby-and-white kittens, small as mice. It was mid-week, so Beth wasn’t around. We weren’t there for long, and after supper and kitten-viewing we went back to town for a film with Miranda and some of Gabes’ friends. And I felt terrible the whole time, because I didn’t say anything to Gabes about Theo, and he didn’t say anything either, about Miranda telling him I’d been to Oxford . . . and it was a relief that we were hardly alone at all the whole evening.
Theo’s phone rings, and he goes through to the sitting room to talk. I listen, of course, but he doesn’t give much away. It sounds as if he’s arranging for us to meet some people later on. Or possibly for them to come here. I’m slightly nervous. They will all be much older than me. Twenty, twenty-one. University students.
I look up as he comes into the kitchen.
‘All right?’ he asks.
I nod.
‘Want a drink?’
‘Just tea, please.’
‘I bought some milk this time, specially for you.’ He opens the fridge and gets out a carton. ‘See?’ He plonks a tea bag into an orange-and-white-striped mug with the words Brave New World in black letters on one side.
‘Have you read the book?’ I ask him.
‘Huxley? Yes. The title’s a quotation, from Shakespeare,’ Theo says.
‘How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world that has such people in it. It’s from The Tempest. I know because it’s Gramps’ favourite play.’ I feel rather proud of myself, but Theo doesn’t look particularly impressed. He starts to wash up the load of pans and bowls we’ve used. I take my tea into the sitting room and try to make myself cosy on the sofa. I draw my knees up under the blue blanket someone’s left in a heap.
‘Do you want to
light a fire?’ Theo calls. ‘There’s wood and stuff in the basket.’
I kneel on the rug in front of the fireplace, and make a wigwam of the smallest bits of wood, and scrunch up newspaper, light it with a match. The thin blue flame licks along the edge of the paper, flares up as it catches the dry sticks. I add more wood, piece by piece, the way Evie’s taught me. It’s odd, the way I keep thinking about her and Gramps. It’s the third time today.
I draw the curtains and pull the sofa closer to the fire, and sit with my back against it, the blanket over my knees, to wait for the room to warm up. Theo is still busy cleaning up the kitchen. The room gets quietly darker, and I don’t put the lights on. It’s better this way, with just the light from the fire.
Theo comes to join me. We sit very close, our bodies touching all along one side. I sip my tea, the mug warm between my hands. We stare at the fire, and neither if us says anything for a long time.
‘She couldn’t sit still,’ Theo says. He’s thinking about her, again. Bridie.
‘Not for even a few minutes. Last time I saw her, she was all nervy and on edge, her hands twitching, even when we were sitting down. She kept getting up, and she had to be smoking, or drinking, or something, the whole time. She was so thin, it was as if her skin was transparent. I knew she was ill, really badly ill. Why didn’t I do something?’
In the light from the fire I see tears on his face. A memory washes over me, of my brother biting back tears – already, aged about fifteen, ashamed to show his emotions. Thinking about Joe makes me braver with Theo.
I put my arms around him. ‘It wasn’t your fault. There wasn’t anything you could do,’ I whisper into his hair.
Izzy’s light voice comes into my head, from the summer I spent with her, the year after Joe died. She made me a necklace with a pebble from the beach: a talisman to cure you from sadness.
Theo needs someone to help him get over his sadness, like Izzy helped me, and that someone could be me, if only I could work out exactly how. And then maybe something good can happen out of all this, and I don’t need to feel bad about seeing Theo, and hurting Gabes . . .
