Should Have Known Better

by A J McDine

  ‘That would be so kind of you.’

  ‘But Chloe’s asked me not to. She said she wants to get there on her own merits.’

  Kate sighed in frustration. ‘That sounds like Chloe. As pig-headed as her grandfather.’

  ‘Perhaps you could have a word with her because I’m more than happy to give Jan a ring. Maybe even set up a meeting between them.’

  Kate touched his hand. ‘You are one amazing man, Adam Sullivan.’

  He shrugged. ‘Plenty of people helped me when I was Chloe’s age. It’s nice to pay it forward.’

  ‘In that case, I’ll see if I can talk some sense into her.’

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  CHLOE

  Chloe knew something was wrong the minute the usual babble of voices fell silent as she walked into the sixth form common room. Two Year 12 boys, all testosterone and bum fluff, leered at her. A diffident girl from her economics class made to approach her, then apparently thought better of it and backed away towards the water cooler.

  Chloe scoured the room for Annie as she headed for her locker, but her best friend was nowhere in sight. A wolf whistle from a far corner of the room stopped her in her tracks. She spun on her heels and glared at the perpetrator, a barrel-chested boy called Kyle she’d known since primary school.

  ‘Simmer down, Kyle,’ she said, injecting as much scorn as possible into her voice, despite her growing sense of unease.

  His mouth turned down in a sneer as he nudged the boy standing next to him and said in an undertone, ‘I would, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Would what?’ Chloe said, marching over to him. The room was so quiet she could hear the blood pounding in her ears.

  Kyle stepped forwards until their faces were barely a few centimetres apart. ‘I’d give you one,’ he said, puffing out his chest as a nervous titter spread through the room like a bush fire.

  ‘In your dreams,’ Chloe snapped, pushing past him to the lockers. She felt the heat of a dozen pairs of eyes on her back. What was wrong with everyone? It was as if the entire sixth-form was playing a huge prank and she was the only one who wasn’t in on the joke. Perhaps they were all hyper because their mocks started today. Perhaps she’d gone to sleep and woken up in some weird parallel universe where all her classmates had been taken over by zombies. Perhaps she was still asleep…

  Fingers shot out and grabbed her arm. She whipped around, her hand raised in the air.

  Annie caught her wrist.

  ‘Chloe, you need to come with me,’ she said, pulling her towards the girls’ loos.

  ‘What the hell’s going on?’ Chloe cried as Annie pushed open the door and the smell of urine and bleach filled her nostrils.

  Annie reached in her coat pocket for her phone and handed it to Chloe.

  ‘There’s something you need to see.’ The grave expression on Annie’s face should have been warning enough, but the shock still hit Chloe like a kick in the stomach. She briefly registered the yellow Snapchat logo before her gaze fell on a photo of her naked body, hands on hips and staring at the full-length mirror in her bedroom.

  ‘It’s you,’ Annie said unnecessarily. ‘And it’s already gone around most of the school.’

  Chloe’s legs turned to water and she leaned against the wall for support. ‘Shit.’

  Annie took the phone back. ‘Someone called No1fanbuoy posted it last night. He must have taken it from your back garden, the bloody perv. He’s zoomed in to your bedroom window, see?’

  Chloe did not want to see.

  ‘When was it sent?’ she asked.

  ‘Last night. I took a screenshot to show you before it disappeared.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me last night?’

  ‘I didn’t want to worry you. I was hoping No1fanbuoy had just sent it to me. But when I arrived this morning, it was all anyone was talking about. I’m so sorry, Chloe.’

  Chloe buried her face in her hands. Her eyes felt hot and she rubbed them. Annie handed her a length of toilet roll from the nearest cubicle and gave her a sympathetic smile.

  ‘I can call your mum if you like?’

  Chloe shook her head.

  ‘No way. She’ll go ape. She’s always nagging me to draw my curtains.’ Another thought pummelled her. ‘What if my Grandpa sees it? It’d kill him. No,’ she said decisively, ‘they must never know about this.’

  ‘You should still report it to Snapchat, though. Get them to take it down.’

  ‘What’s the point? Fatheads like Kyle Johnson will have already saved it and sent it on to God knows who.’ A sob rose in the back of her throat. ‘What if it goes viral?’

  Annie wrapped her arm round Chloe’s shoulder. ‘I’m sure it won’t. Looking on the bright side -’

  ‘There is one?’ Chloe muttered.

  ‘Looking on the bright side,’ Annie continued. ‘At least everyone’s saying how hot you look.’

  Chloe and Annie waited in the toilets until the bell for registration sounded before they made their way to the hall for their first of three economics papers.

  ‘What if we see anyone?’ Chloe said.

  ‘Brazen it out. If people think you don’t give a toss, they’ll soon stop giving a toss, too.’

  Chloe supposed it made sense. But it wasn’t true. She did give a toss. She felt violated as if she’d caught someone rifling through her knicker drawer. As if someone had stared into her soul and seen every atom. Her faults, her failings and her darkest secrets. Everything.

  Nevertheless, she took Annie’s advice, and when they passed a gaggle of boys outside the sports hall, she held her head high and stalked past, ignoring their wolf whistles and dirty laughs.

  But inside she was bleeding.

  Chloe sat towards the back of a row of identical desks all facing the stage. She laid out her clear plastic pencil case, her watch, her bottle of water and the one mascot she was allowed - a wallaby keyring from Uncle Rory.

  Crossing her ankles, she stared at the exam paper face down on the desk in front of her. The main invigilator stepped onto the stage. Clearing his throat, he announced that they were now under exam conditions.

  ‘If you have a question at any time you must raise your hand and wait until an invigilator comes to you,’ he said.

  Chloe held her head in her hands and tried to blink away the Snapchat image, but it refused to disappear.

  The invigilator glanced at the clock and rocked forwards on his toes. ‘It’s nine o'clock. You may open your question papers and begin.’

  Chloe turned over the paper and picked up her pen. She scanned the first question.

  In 2015 a report by Public Health England recommended the imposition of a 20% tax on the sale of soft drinks that contain high levels of sugar. Evaluate the likely microeconomic effects of such a tax.

  She took a deep breath and reread the question. But the harder she stared at the lines of text, the more the words unravelled, like tiny lengths of squid ink spaghetti on a plate, twisting and spiralling until they became meaningless.

  She sat on the edge of the hard plastic chair and looked around. Everyone else was writing furiously. A rustle of paper to her left caught her attention. She stared, astonished, at a boy two rows along who was already turning onto a fresh sheet of paper, his right hand gliding over the lines as if it had a life of its own. How on earth could he write so quickly? They’d barely sat down. But when she checked her watch, she gasped in horror. Thirty-five minutes had already passed, and she hadn’t written a single word.

  Christ, this couldn’t be happening. She was Chloe Kennedy, all-round nice girl and grade A student. Polite, conscientious, never put a foot wrong. And yet in the space of a morning, naked photos of her were spreading like a virus through the internet, as unstoppable as a pandemic, and she was about to fail an exam for the first time in her life.

  Chloe’s chest tightened, panic rising in time with the flush creeping up her neck. She dropped her pen, earning her an irritated look from Amber Jackson, sitting to her right,
as it clattered across the desk. Her heart skipped a beat, and she clutched her chest, wondering if she was having a heart attack. Reason told her she was too young and fit and healthy. But a little voice in her subconscious whispered a memory of Megan Wright’s brother who’d been just nineteen when he’d dropped down dead in the middle of a football match. No-one had any idea he had a congenital heart condition until it was too late.

  A wave of dizziness sent Chloe’s stomach swirling. She closed her eyes and was transported back to the night of the party, chill air hitting her face like a slap as she tottered outside in her high-heeled boots. Squelchy grass. The taste of bile. Her fingers worrying at a square of silky cotton. And then a new memory. A male voice, soft in her ear. ‘I’ll look after you.’ And the feel of warm flesh on her goosebump-cold skin.

  Chloe gripped the edges of the desk until her knuckles turned white. She took a long gulp of air and willed herself to forget the party. It didn’t matter. None of it mattered. All she cared about were her A-levels; her ticket to Kingsgate. If she went, she could leave all the shit behind.

  She breathed slowly and picked up her pen. She reread the question, trying to dredge up some form of an answer about indirect taxes and the social cost of sugary drinks, but her mind remained blank. The pen felt slippery in her sweaty palm, and underneath the table, her knees trembled.

  Panic rose like a tidal wave and this time she succumbed to its force. She set her pen down at the feet of the beady-eyed wallaby and held her hand in the air.

  Chapter Thirty

  KATE

  Kate wandered through the Great Hall, checking glasses for smears, re-arranging place cards and straightening cutlery. She’d been at The Willows since nine, helping Lola lay the twelve tables under Patrick’s watchful eye. It was a lavish reception for over one hundred and twenty people and was costing the happy couple almost forty grand. More than double her annual salary, she thought, brushing a wayward anemone petal off the top table.

  Pete was in the steaming kitchen putting final touches to the canapés - local chipolatas with red onion chutney, bitesize goats’ cheese tartlets and satay chicken skewers.

  The sound of Love is all Around was playing in the background as the wedding ceremony began in the all-weather marquee behind the main house. Kate checked the time. Midday. The waiting staff were starting to arrive in dribs and drabs. As it was a big wedding party, Patrick had brought in two teams. Kate still needed to allocate hands and run through the order of the day so they would be ready to serve champagne and canapés the minute the ceremony was over, but she still had time to touch up her make-up, and headed to the poky staff room.

  Unlike the rest of the lavishly-decorated mansion, it was no-frills, with a trestle table surrounded by six plastic chairs, and hooks along one wall strung with cheap cardigans and thin coats from Primark and H&M. Bethany and Shannon, two of the younger waitresses, were sitting at the table on their phones. Kate found her bag hanging on the furthest hook and scrabbled around for her brush and lipstick.

  Patrick liked all his ‘girls’, as he proprietorially referred to them, to look well-turned-out at all times. He was a stickler for it. His mother had been the same. Legend had it that she’d once sent a girl home after spotting a star-shaped henna tattoo on her neck. Only Kate knew it wasn’t a legend - she’d been there when it happened. The girl had walked in as cocky as you like and left in tears after the dressing down of her life.

  Kate stood in front of the only mirror and reapplied her lipstick, brushed her hair and retied her ponytail. She ran her tongue over her teeth, as even a touch of lipstick on a tooth was enough to prompt a sarcastic comment from Patrick. Satisfied she would pass even the most critical of inspections, she put the lipstick and brush back in her bag, just as her phone vibrated.

  Nothing was guaranteed to wind up Patrick more than staff using phones on his time, so she left hers on silent at work and usually never bothered to check it. But now her heart missed a beat. Perhaps it was Adam, suggesting a third date. Smiling to herself, she gazed at the screen.

  Five missed calls and one voicemail message, all from Chloe’s school. The smile slipped from her face as she gripped the phone tightly. Had something gone wrong in Chloe’s exam? Maybe she’d forgotten her pencil case and had asked the school to phone Kate to run it in. But no, that was silly. Chloe would have phoned herself or borrowed a pen from a friend.

  It must be something else. Kate remembered a call from Chloe’s primary school, not long after she’d started. One of the other reception kids had thrown a stone which had hit Chloe and cut the soft skin above her eye. When Kate had arrived at school, she found Chloe sitting pale-faced outside the school office holding a wet flannel to her forehead. Kate had almost passed out when she’d seen her daughter’s uniform drenched in blood.

  Head injuries, even minor ones, always bled a lot, a nurse in the local minor injuries unit had reassured her. A couple of stitches later, Chloe was as right as rain. Kate had gone home and poured herself a generous glass of wine.

  She listened to the voicemail.

  ‘This is Mrs Stanton in the school office. Please could you ring as soon as you pick up this message?’ She paused momentarily and added almost as an afterthought, ‘It’s about Chloe.’

  ‘When are we having the run-through?’ Bethany asked.

  Kate, still staring at her phone, said, ‘I have to make a quick call.’

  She dialled the school, clamped the phone to her ear and listened to a recorded message. No, she didn't want to report an absence, and she already knew the bloody term dates were on the website. Why was the number to actually speak to someone always last on the list? Eventually, she was connected to one of the secretaries.

  ‘It's Kate Kennedy. You left a message about my daughter, Chloe, in Year 13 and asked me to ring.’

  ‘Mrs Kennedy.’ Kate didn’t bother to correct her. ‘Thanks for calling back. Chloe wondered if you would be able to pick her up. She’s a bit… upset.’

  ‘Why, what’s happened? Is she ill?’

  ‘Not ill exactly. Just a bit… under the weather.’

  ‘I’m at work at the moment. Is she well enough to catch the bus?’

  There was a pause, and the secretary said, ‘She’s right here. I’ll ask.’

  Kate stared at the ceiling as a muffled conversation took place on the other end of the line.

  ‘She’d like to have a word. I’ll pass you over.’

  Kate’s grip on the phone tightened as her daughter came on the line.

  ‘Mum?’

  ‘What is it, Chloe? You sound awful. What’s wrong?’

  ‘I... I almost passed out.’

  ‘Passed out?’

  ‘In the middle of the exam. I thought I was having a heart attack! Mrs Bentley reckons it was probably a panic attack, but what difference does it make? I’ve completely screwed up.’

  ‘Calm down, Chloe. It’s not the end of the world. It’s only a mock. I’m sure they’ll let you re-sit. Are you feeling better now?’

  ‘Not really,’ Chloe said. ‘Please will you pick me up?’

  ‘I’m at work, Chlo. Canapés are in,’ she glanced at her watch. Shit. ‘Fifteen minutes. Can’t you catch an early bus?’

  ‘Please Mum.’

  Kate felt a tightness in her throat. When did Chloe ever ask for anything? She was always so fiercely independent. She made a split-second decision.

  ‘I’ll be with you in half an hour. You hang in there, sweetheart, OK? I’m on my way.’

  ‘Holy crap, Patrick’s going to lose his shit if you go now,’ Shannon said, her eyes wide.

  ‘He’ll survive,’ Kate said, more bravely than she felt. She grabbed her coat and hitched her bag onto her shoulder. ‘I have to go.’

  ‘Good luck,’ Bethany said. She let out a titter of nervous laughter. ‘’Cos you’re gonna need it.’

  Twenty-five minutes later, Kate pulled into the quiet residential street that led to the school. Parents were banne
d from parking in the school grounds, and the caretaker policed the rules like an autocratic leader of his own small state. Kate cruised slowly down the road towards the entrance, looking for a place to pull in.

  She was so intent on finding a space that she didn’t see the grey hatchback speeding towards her until it sounded its horn. Not a polite toot-toot but a long and angry blast. She stamped on the brakes, expecting the other car to do the same, but it kept coming, bearing down on her Mini like an unstoppable force.

  For a second she froze, then adrenalin kicked in and, checking nothing was behind her, slammed the car into reverse. The Mini’s engine whined as she twisted around in her seat and backed up the road. Narrowly missing the wing mirror of a parked Freelander, she swerved into a bus lay-by and stared in disbelief as the grey car raced past.

  ‘Tosser!’ she yelled, banging her palm on the steering wheel. ‘Absolute bloody wanker!’ she added for good measure. She looked around to see if anyone else had witnessed the unbelievable display of dumb-ass driving. But the street was empty apart from two collared doves, who were sitting side by side on a telegraph wire, watching her.

  Glancing in her rear-view mirror, she pulled back onto the street. Finding a small space just past the school entrance, she parked up and sat for a minute until her breathing returned to normal, then gathered her coat and bag and went in search of her daughter.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  CHLOE

  Chloe hugged her schoolbag to her chest and gazed out of the car window.

  ‘D’you want to talk about it?’ her mum asked, keeping her eyes on the road.

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘It might help.’

  ‘What’s there to say? My life is a grade one shitshow.’

  ‘Come on, Chlo, that’s a little over-dramatic, don’t you think? You heard what Mrs Bentley said. You won’t be the first student to have a panic attack in the middle of an exam, and you certainly won’t be the last. She’s going to let you resit next week, and she’s promised to help you with some coping strategies in the meantime. It’s not the end of the world.’