by Jane Casey
‘For a year, anyway.’
‘A year,’ I repeated. ‘A whole year. What about school? What about your job?’
‘You can go to school here, Jess – I’ve already found out about it. The local school has an excellent reputation, far better than Cranway College.’
‘Well, that wouldn’t be hard,’ I said, thinking of the dingy buildings and chaotic classes in my very under-resourced London school. But there were other things there that mattered, such as my friends. Such as my life.
Mum breezed on. ‘And I don’t care about my job. You know I’ve been taking pictures while I’ve been here. Dan showed some of them to Nick Trabbet, who runs the Sentinel Gallery on Fore Street, and he wants to sell them. He’s already sold two, actually.’ She was glowing with excitement and I hoped it was because of the pictures and not Dan. Bloody Dan, making her dreams come true and giving her a reason to stay.
‘That’s lovely, Mum, and I’m very proud of you, but we’re not going to be able to live off the sales from your photos and my charity-shop money.’
‘I know that – but I’ve been offered a job. I’d be working in the gallery.’
‘Wow. Nick must owe Dan money or something.’
‘Don’t be so cynical.’ Mum looked hurt. ‘Nick really believes in my talent. He wanted to help me. He said it would be a shame if I went back to London and lost this opportunity.’
‘Right.’ This wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment thing, I was starting to realize. This had taken planning. ‘And you didn’t say anything to me about any of this.’
‘Not until I knew it was all going to work out. Besides, you were busy not saying anything to me about cutting your hair and trying to find out what happened to your cousin and putting your life in danger.’
Moving swiftly on . . . ‘Where are we going to live?’
‘With us,’ Tilly said promptly. ‘For as long as you like. The whole year, preferably.’
‘Really?’
‘Sandhayes is a huge house. It’s your family home. And we’d love to have you.’
‘It’s perfect. You know, Jack turned one of the outhouses into a proper dark room for Freya, so I can use that too.’ Mum sounded truly excited.
Tilly smiled at her, and then back at me. ‘Please say yes. Your mother won’t commit to any of this until you say yes. Don’t you want to stay and get to know your cousins a bit better? I think you’ll enjoy it if you do.’
I ached to be a part of the Leonards’ family. I had always longed for siblings, and Hugo, Petra and Tom were as close as I was going to get to that. And Mum looked so wistful, but at the same time determined not to show her disappointment if I said no.
Plus, there were all the other reasons for wanting to stay around, which I wouldn’t think about because at the top of the list was Will, and I hadn’t seen him since the beach, and I really wondered what I had done wrong. But he was still the main reason I wanted to stay.
Against that, Dan. And missing my life in London – my friends too. And missing Dad.
Who hadn’t been in touch, it occurred to me, since we’d arrived.
‘Does Dad know what happened to me?’
Mum looked surprised, as well she might because it wasn’t an obvious response to what I’d been asked, but she answered anyway. ‘Yes. I called him on Saturday night when I heard you were at the hospital.’
‘He hasn’t called me.’
‘I’m sure he will. He’s probably busy.’
I deserved more than that, I thought, just as Mum had deserved more than he’d given her. If she had a chance to be happy now, I shouldn’t take it away from her. She’d waited long enough to be a success. I just had to hope that her vision of the future didn’t include comforting a certain police inspector after his wife passed away. I forced that thought out of my mind and smiled at her.
‘OK. Let’s stay.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Absolutely,’ I said, sounding confident even as I worried about what might happen.
Mum and Tilly both jumped up to hug each other then turned on me, and it was beyond alarming to see the two of them coming at me like double vision from delayed concussion. They were so happy, the two of them, and it made me happy even though there was still a little voice whispering doubts in the back of my mind. I thought, on balance, that I’d made the right choice for both of us.
At least, I hoped so.
There was one more surprise for me when we went to Sandhayes the following day for a celebratory lunch. The Leonards lined up in the hall to welcome us – except for Hugo, who was sprawling on the stairs, reading. Petra more than made up for his detached attitude by jumping up and down.
‘Can I tell her? Can I tell her?’
‘Say yes, Mum, or she won’t stop,’ Tom said.
Tilly laughed. ‘Go on.’
‘You’re going to have Freya’s room!’
I gasped. ‘I couldn’t.’
‘You must,’ Tilly said. ‘I don’t want to leave it as it is. I want someone else to use it. Live in it.’
I turned to Petra. ‘What about you?’
She wrinkled her nose. ‘I like my room. I don’t want to change. Besides, it would suit you, I think.’
‘It’s that or the other one upstairs – the one with the sea view,’ Jack said with a grin as his family snorted at the idea that five square centimetres of sea counted as a view. ‘I’d take the nicer one of the two if I were you.’
‘Go up and have another look at it,’ Tilly suggested. ‘You can make up your own mind.’
I did as I was told, skirting Hugo carefully as I went. On the top floor I put my head into the other room first, seeing a small space with a single bed in it and a chest of drawers and nothing else. Even the floorboards were bare. The window was small and overlooked the town so the view was crowded with houses. The sun glittered on the tiny patch of sea that was visible, as if to emphasize how small it was.
And on the other side, the room I loved with its two big windows. The pair of tabbies were curled up on the bed like a stripy yin and yang symbol. I walked in and shut the door and waited to feel as if I was intruding, to see if Freya minded me moving in on her territory. There was no sign of it. I stood with my back to the door and looked around, thinking about what I would leave as it was and what I would change if I did decide to stay there. I could move the desk. And I’d have to clear out the wardrobe or there would be no room for my things. Unless someone had done it already. I went over and pulled open the wardrobe door to check, then stopped dead.
It was still full of Freya’s clothes, but that wasn’t a shock. What made me stand stock-still was the dress that was hanging at the front of the rail, the dress I had last seen when I peeled it off on the cliff. It was still dirty from the fall and ripped in a couple of places.
Will had brought it back. He’d got it from the ledge where I’d dumped it and returned it to where it belonged.
He’d sorted out the dress, but he hadn’t come to see me.
I stared at it for a long time, feeling miserable and pathetic in equal measure. What did it matter? So what if he’d decided he had better things to do than visit me? I had rationalized it to my own satisfaction: the near-miss kiss on the beach had been his reaction to the relief of making it down the cliff safely. He hadn’t meant anything serious by it and now he was scared I’d think he wanted to revisit the moment. Which I didn’t, obviously. I hadn’t even thought about it since. Not more than sixty times a minute, anyway.
I turned round and my eye fell on the photograph of his hands on the wall. I turned my back to it and found myself staring at the roof of his house above the trees at the end of the garden. There was no escape. Maybe the other room would be better after all.
I was halfway to convincing myself that was true when anger kicked in. I stopped. ‘This is ridiculous. If he won’t come to see me, I’ll just go to him. There’s no reason not to.’
Except the crushing fear that he wouldn’t want to see m
e, of course. But it was better to know the truth either way than to live in hope.
I was fairly sure.
Without waiting to have second thoughts, I limped down the stairs and paused beside Hugo. ‘Are you sorry we’re moving in?’
He shook his hair out of his eyes to look up at me. ‘Of course not.’
‘You’re not acting as if you’re very pleased about it.’
‘This is me being delighted.’
‘OK,’ I said. ‘As long as you’re sure.’
He waited until I’d reached the hall. ‘Jess.’
I turned round. ‘Yes?’
‘You have to promise me one thing.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Make friends with lots of pretty girls and invite them here.’
‘So you can pick them off one by one?’
‘Exactly.’ He grinned at me lazily. ‘I knew you’d understand.’
‘No way. You’ll have to do your own hunting, I’m afraid.’
‘You’re in a fierce mood,’ he observed. ‘Where are you off to?’
‘I’m going to see Will.’
Hugo raised his eyebrows. ‘Good luck to him, then.’
‘Have you seen him since Saturday?’
‘Of course. Haven’t you?’ The eyebrows went up again. ‘Oh. I see.’
‘There’s nothing to see,’ I said, with as much dignity as I could manage. ‘I just want to thank him for helping me. That’s all. Do you happen to know what number his house is?’
‘Twenty-three. But you could just go through the garden. You can climb over the wall in the corner, on the left.’
‘On a first visit I think I should use the front door.’
‘That’s what I’m looking forward to. Learning how they do things in London. Getting a bit of metropolitan sophistication.’
‘Shut up, Hugo,’ I said, for what was not going to be the last time, and I left.
19
IT WAS A five-minute walk round to Will’s house and I could see why going over the wall was a better, quicker option, but I was glad of the time to think about what I was going to say. I did want to thank him. I also wanted to know how he felt about me, but if just turning up wasn’t enough to elicit a response, I didn’t really know what I was going to do. I couldn’t just ask. I could fling myself at him and hope he caught me. I could tell him how I felt about him.
Which depended on me knowing how I felt, obviously. Confused was the word that came to mind. Maybe he felt the same way. Maybe we could work it out together.
Number 23 was small and square, more of a cottage than a house. The paint was greying in places and peeling in others, the front garden was overgrown and there was a general air of people being too busy with other things to care about keeping the place looking nice. It occurred to me shortly after I had knocked on the door that I might be about to meet Will’s mother and I froze, suddenly terrified. What would she say if she knew who I was – or rather, who my mother was? Did she know Mum was back in town? Would she care?
I was racking up the unanswerable questions at a rate, so I was almost glad when the door opened, even though it was Dan who stood there. He looked surprised to see me.
I nerved myself to speak to him as if he was a normal dad. ‘Sorry to bother you. Is Will in?’
He stared at me for a long moment, taking in the jade drops that hung from my ears – Sylvia’s present – and the pretty top I was wearing for the family lunch, and the jeans Darcy had talked me into buying with my charity-shop wages. I looked as if I had made an effort, I realized, and restrained myself with difficulty from explaining that it wasn’t for Will’s sake. It was just a coincidence that I had got my nerve back when I was looking pretty. Honest, guv.
‘Come in.’ He held the door open. ‘First on the left.’
I went past him into the tiny hall and turned left, my heart racing at the thought that I was about to see Will again. It was a bit of a letdown to find myself in a study, which was empty. I turned round and found Dan standing right behind me, closing the door softly, and I stepped back, suddenly on edge.
‘I want to talk to you and I don’t want to disturb Karen.’ He went and sat down behind his desk. ‘She’s not well.’
‘So I heard.’ That doesn’t make it all right for you to flirt with my mum. I wished I could say it.
He fiddled with a paperweight. ‘I’m glad you’ve come round. I wanted to ask you something.’
‘OK,’ I said, sounding as wary as I felt.
The paperweight clattered on the desk. ‘I want you to stay away from my son.’
‘What?’
‘Stay away from Will.’
I shook my head, stunned. ‘You can’t ask me to do that.’
‘He doesn’t need any distractions. He’s got enough to worry about at the moment.’
‘Because his mum is dying?’
He flinched. ‘Yes.’
‘Don’t you think he might need some support? Don’t you think now is exactly when he might need to have someone who cares about him?’
‘Maybe.’ Dan looked down, then back up at me and I saw the hatred in his eyes again, the same look I’d seen the first time I met him. ‘But it shouldn’t be you.’
My knees had begun to tremble. ‘Why not me?’
‘He doesn’t need to make the same mistakes I made.’
‘Are you talking about Mum?’ I shook my head, angry now. ‘It’s not the same thing. And from what I understand, the mistake was yours anyway.’
‘Is that what she told you?’
‘I’m not going to discuss a private conversation with you, Mr Henderson. Besides, you were there. You know what happened.’
He winced.
‘I’m not my mother,’ I said softly. ‘And Will’s not you.’
‘So you’re not going to do as I ask.’
‘I don’t know. I don’t know how Will feels about me. I don’t know if he wants me around or not. But if he does, as a friend or – or – or whatever, nothing you say or do will keep us apart.’ I could not say ‘girlfriend’ to Dan Henderson, it turned out.
‘Is that right?’ A smile curved the corners of Dan’s mouth, but there was nothing pleasant about it.
‘Try me.’
He stared at me for a long moment, then nodded. ‘Consider yourself warned.’
‘I do.’ I was still shaking but I hoped he couldn’t see it. ‘But I came to see Will, and I’m not leaving until I do.’
He was at the back of the house, in a dusty garage that housed a car I only just recognized as a Ford Capri, low-slung and with pure seventies style in every line. It was painted brown and seemed to be missing about half its bodywork. The bonnet was open. Will was fiddling with something deep inside the engine, concentrating on what he was doing so I was able to stand and watch him for a couple of minutes before he noticed me. When he did, he straightened up with a start.
‘Hey.’
‘Sorry. Did I scare you?’
‘Surprised me. What are you doing here?’
‘Watching you. Being told off by your dad for coming round.’
He had been wiping oil off his hands with a rag, but now he went very still and stared at me. ‘Seriously?’
‘Am I laughing?’
‘What did he say to you?’
‘That I should leave you alone.’
Will looked down at his hands and started to work on them again. ‘Oh. That must have been a pleasant conversation.’
‘It had its moments.’ I hesitated. ‘Did he speak to you too?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Is that why you didn’t come to see me?’
He didn’t answer me for a minute. ‘Not exactly.’
‘Oh.’ My face started to burn. ‘I see. I thought—’
He interrupted. ‘How are you?’
‘Fine.’
‘Great. I’m glad. Thanks for coming over.’
‘Well, I was at the Leonards’ anyway,’ I said, gesturing in that general d
irection. This was horrible. This was the worst conversation ever. Will was like a stranger and I didn’t seem to be able to find a way past the polite chit-chat to what I wanted to say. I tried a different angle. ‘Did you hear the news? Mum wants us to stay here for a year.’
‘I heard.’ Will turned back to the engine and his voice was muffled when he asked, ‘Are you?’
‘That’s the plan. We’re staying at Sandhayes.’
‘Oh, right.’ He sounded vague, as if he wasn’t listening properly.
‘What’s the matter?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You know what I mean. You’re being weird.’ I felt as if I was on a tightrope over Niagara Falls and I hadn’t practised. I was very much afraid of getting this wrong and there was nothing I could do but keep going. ‘I thought . . . when we were on the beach, it seemed . . . you were going to—’ Was it actually possible to die of embarrassment?
Will straightened up again and looked at me, his expression completely unhelpful. ‘What are you trying to say, Jess?’
‘I haven’t seen you. I waited, and you didn’t come.’ I knew there were tears in my eyes because he had gone blurry all of a sudden. ‘What did I do wrong?’
‘Nothing. Absolutely nothing. It’s not you. Or Dad.’ He couldn’t even look at me. ‘It’s just better if we don’t get too close.’
‘In what way?’
‘Jess, why do you think your mum wants to stay in Port Sentinel? And why do you think my dad doesn’t want us to get involved with one another? They’re just waiting for my mother to be gone so they can get together. If we were going out, it would make it a bit awkward.’
‘You’re wrong.’
‘I wish I was.’
‘That may be your dad’s plan, but it’s not Mum’s. At all.’
‘She knows what he wants and she’s gone along with it so far,’ Will said. ‘Whose idea do you think it was for you to stay here? It didn’t come from her.’
‘She told me she wouldn’t go back to him. She said it was all in the past.’
‘Not very far back.’ Will kicked the tyre nearest him, very gently. ‘Do you know what Dad said? I’d ruined their lives once before. If it hadn’t been for me, they would never have split up. He said it was his turn to be happy for the first time in eighteen years and he wasn’t going to miss out on it again.’
