by Maria Goodin
“How’s Josh?”
I turn around again. She’s stopped what she’s doing and is looking intently at me, one of her paintings clutched in front of her like a shield. I feel like she’s throwing me a lifeline, a reprieve from the mess I’ve managed to cause.
“He’s good,” I say, gratefully.
She nods thoughtfully. “Good.”
“He’s doing really well at school. Going into his GCSEs. He’s got a girlfriend.” This last bit’s not exactly the truth but I think it virtually is, or would be if he could summon the courage to ask Chloe out. Plus, on some level, I feel it might connect us, me and Libby, remind us of what we once were, where we came from. And for a moment something does seem to shift. We hold each other’s gaze, searching for something, a connection. Dots of rain cling to her hair. I’m just about to ask how she is, open things up, take us over this bumpy start, but she cuts me off.
“Okay, well, take care then,” she says flatly, attempting a forced smile.
And then she turns away.
I walk for a few seconds along the towpath and then I stop and turn around. Sadly, I watch her back, bending and stretching as she works, and wonder how on earth I could have got it so wrong. And then I realise that I didn’t even get around to saying the most important thing of all, the thing I’ve always wanted to tell her, that I really want her to hear.
I never even managed to say I’m sorry.
Chapter 6
Sorry
I remember turning the corner and Addison saying in his smug, plummy voice: “Well, hello there, Hutton.” My heart sank. Did we really need to give this kid such grief every time we saw him? “And what are you doing loitering out here? Not skiving lessons again I hope.”
Hutton didn’t say anything, just sighed as if he was resigned to what was coming his way. His face – delicate and pale with dark, wary eyes – always wore the same tired expression. His narrow shoulders slumped and he put his head down, hoping to carry on past us through the alleyway that led from the old stone school buildings to the perfectly maintained sports pitches. He already knew he wasn’t going anywhere though.
“Er, Hutton?” said Addison, putting out a hand to stop him. “You were just asked a question.” He looked to us. “It’s not very polite of him not to answer, is it, boys?”
Watts and Smith shook their heads and sniggered. I shrugged non-committally and gave a half-hearted smile. What else was I meant to do? I felt bad for the boy, but over the last few weeks I’d managed to convince myself that he just needed to stick up for himself. This was all part of the private-school culture, wasn’t it? The way boys imposed hierarchy. Besides, whatever had been going on between them had started well before I joined the school.
“Are you going to give us a song, Hutton?” smirked Smith.
“Aaaveee Mariii-aa,” sang Watts, shrilly.
“Ah yes, our little choir boy,” sneered Addison. “You better watch out, Hutton, I think the Reverend Peterson has got his eye on more than that sweet, angelic voice of yours. A pretty boy like you…”
The others snorted with laughter.
“Come on, Madame Nedelec’s going to skin us,” I said, hitching my bag up on my shoulder, hoping we could just get going. But I knew that wasn’t likely. Hutton was just going to have to dig deep and find some balls.
It hadn’t been easy for me either, being accepted at this school. I’d been an outcast when I arrived at St John’s two months ago. No one had talked to me for weeks. For the first time ever I was alone and friendless, floundering in agonising isolation without Tom and Max by my side. They’d always been there, ever since I was five years old, my little gang. I’d felt lost without them, and I’d never been more miserable in my life.
I knew my parents wanted the best for me, but in the early weeks I’d felt angry at them for transferring me to St John’s. I wished I’d never started messing about at Allenbrook, wished I hadn’t drawn everyone’s attention to the fact that even in the top set I was bored out of my mind. I’d bought into my parents’ vision of a better future for myself, but now I felt conned. I didn’t fit in here. I was nothing like the other boys. I wasn’t rich. I didn’t even live in one of the nicer parts of Timpton, let alone one of the expensive surrounding villages a lot of the other kids came from. I couldn’t guess how my parents were finding the money for me to come here. I hadn’t come up through the prep school and didn’t have a clue about house colours and speech days. I was an outsider, and it showed.
It was only when I got out on the running track that anyone looked up and took notice of me. Sporting ability was currency at St John’s and thank God I had something to offer. I threw myself gratefully into the first group of boys who extended the hand of friendship. Smith, Addison and Watts were all sporty, clever and sharp. I didn’t feel totally comfortable with them yet, but what could I expect? I wasn’t going to find another Tom and Max. The kids were just different here, and as my mum kept pointing out to me, I had to make an effort to fit in with them, not expect it to work the other way around.
So what if my new friends could be a little patronising and arrogant? As my dad was always saying, we’re all just products of our upbringing. I could turn a blind eye to anything so long as I wasn’t an outsider anymore. Even this thing with Hutton. Maybe all the taunting and the teasing didn’t sit comfortably with me, but I reasoned that was the private-school way, wasn’t it? Isn’t that what toughened them up, made them leaders? I’d had to fight to fit in, why shouldn’t he? Besides, these rich kids had so many privileges, with their big houses, fancy holidays, prefect-looking families… A little hardship wasn’t going to dent Hutton’s golden-plated life.
These are the things I told myself when we hid Hutton’s PE kit and earned him a detention for not having the right equipment; when we stole his blazer after cross-country, leaving him shivering all afternoon in his thin school shirt; when we pulled his bag from his shoulder on the walk home and threw it between the four of us before chucking it over a garden wall. And when I say “we”, I don’t mean I ever instigated it, or that I ever really wanted to do it, but I was there and part of it, the silent accomplice. I didn’t join in when they called Hutton a fag or a retard. In fact, to date I’d never even spoken to him. But I was still there. I tried to think of it as ribbing, making fun, taunting. I couldn’t bring myself to see it as the relentless bullying it was.
“I need to go,” mumbled Hutton, trying to pass Addison.
“You’re bunking off again, aren’t you, Hutton?” said Addison. “And you know we’re going to have to report that, don’t you?”
“Screw you,” Hutton mumbled.
All four of us looked at each other in surprise. He had never spoken back like that.
Go on! I secretly thought, willing him to stand up for himself, not considering what might happen if he did.
“Er… sorry, Hutton, I think I misheard you,” said Addison, coming right up in his face. Smith and Watts crowded in beside him.
It seemed ironic that my new friends thought life in a comprehensive was all fighting, drugs and sex. They asked me a million questions about life at Allenbrook, hanging on my every word like I was giving them insider knowledge about life in Borstal. I embellished a bit, giving them what they wanted to hear, but the truth was that until I came to St John’s I’d never been touched by bullying in my life, just as I’d never been offered drugs or had a girl pin me against the wall and shove her tongue in my mouth until I went to a party at Watts’s house.
“I said screw you,” mumbled Hutton again. He made a move to pass us, but it was like watching a fly trying to extricate itself from a spider’s web. We all knew he wasn’t going anywhere.
With a thud, Addison dropped his bag to the ground.
I was never really sure what happened next. I didn’t see who lashed out first – I assume it was Addison – but the next minute all three of them seemed to be on Hutton, pulling at his blazer, dragging his bag from his back, shoving him between them. And then some
one spat and I saw it hit the side of Hutton’s neck, a globule of saliva just above his perfectly pressed shirt collar. Hutton always looked immaculate, his blonde hair neatly cut, his shoes shined, his tie perfectly straight. But now Addison was pulling on Hutton’s tie like he was trying to drag a struggling dog on a leash, and his blazer was half pulled from his shoulders.
“Hey, come on, you lot, just leave him,” I heard myself say.
“You’re such a loser, Hutton,” snarled Smith.
“Repeat what you just said to me, Hutton!” demanded Addison, jabbing at his shoulder.
“Come on, just leave him,” I said, a bit louder this time. This was going too far.
“Go on, say it again!” barked Addison, shoving Hutton in the chest, sending him stumbling backwards.
“Just get off him!” I snapped, and before I knew what I was doing, I’d grabbed Addison’s shoulder and was dragging him off.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Addison growled, knocking my hand away. He glared at me. He wasn’t used to anyone standing up to him, let alone manhandling him.
“What are you doing?!” I shouted, suddenly incensed by this behaviour. “Just leave him alone. You’re out of order!”
“I’m out of order?”
“All of you! What’s he even done to you?”
Addison squared up to me. He was broader than me and a good few of inches taller, so that I had to arch my neck to look him in the eye.
“Don’t go all wimpy on me, Lewis,” he said menacingly. “I thought you were meant to be tough.”
“Oh yeah? Well, I don’t know where you got that from,” I retorted, before realising the idiocy of what I’d just said.
Addison smirked. “Perhaps from the fact you’re a comp boy from the wrong side of Timpton?” he suggested, smugly.
“I’d rather be a comp boy from the wrong side of Timpton than a stuck-up, arrogant, bullying dickhead like you,” I said defiantly.
Addison’s face flushed red. “Go back to the sinkhole you somehow managed to crawl out of, Lewis,” he spat, grabbing his bag from the ground and striding off.
Smith and Watts exchanged glances, unsure what to do, before grabbing their own bags and heading after Addison.
“You’ve gone and made life hard for yourself, Lewis,” called Watts, glancing back at me. I wasn’t sure if it was meant as a final piece of friendly advice or a threat.
I sighed heavily and hitched my bag up on my shoulder, contemplating life ahead of me at St John’s now.
Just then, I heard the sound of someone clapping slowly.
I turned to see Hellie Larsen and her two sidekicks approaching. It was only at sixth form that St John’s admitted girls, and the small number meant I probably should have known all their names, but seeing as I was relatively new and still some way off the sixth form myself, the only name I knew was Hellie Larsen. Everybody knew Hellie Larsen’s name.
“Hurrah for the hero!” cheered Hellie, smiling at me. She was dressed in a smart, pastel-pink suit, her platinum hair tied up in a high ponytail.
I flushed, unsure how to respond. I wasn’t even sure if she was being sarcastic or complimentary.
“So, it’s Lewis, is it?” she asked, her accent an intriguing mixture of Scandinavian, American and cut-glass English.
I nodded.
“Well, Lewis,” she said, smiling at me over her shoulder as she continued on her way, “you’re my kind of friend.”
I stared after her, hearing her friends giggling and whispering.
“You didn’t have to do that,” Hutton mumbled.
For a moment I’d forgotten he was there. I turned and I glared at him. If it wasn’t for him I wouldn’t have got into this situation.
“They’ll probably be out to make your life hell too now,” he added.
It is that what they’d done? What we’d done? Had I really been part of making someone’s life hell?
I looked at my shoes, feeling ashamed. I hadn’t told anyone what had been going on with Hutton. Not my parents, not even Max or Tom. I’d convinced myself that it was irrelevant, but the truth was I’d known how wrong it was. My dad would have been so disappointed in me; my friends wouldn’t have believed I could be part of such a thing. They would have all told me to stop hanging out with Addison, Smith and Watts. But where would that have left me? Alone, again. Was I really that weak? I couldn’t believe I’d been such a sheep. Is this who I was without Tom and Max by my side? I felt disgusted at myself.
“I’m sorry,” I said, “for… you know for… all the stuff…”
The apology wasn’t well expressed, but I sincerely meant it. I felt horrible.
Hutton shrugged.
“’S’okay,” he said quietly.
I shook my head. “No, it isn’t, it’s shit. And I’m sorry.”
We stood in silence for a moment. The wind picked up around us, brown leaves blowing down the alley, over our smart shoes.
“What’s your name anyway?” I asked. “I mean, your real name.”
“Michael,” he said, with a shiver.
“I’m Jay.”
“I know.”
“Oh right,” I said, feeling stupid. “I hate this dumb system of calling everyone by their surname.”
“I hate everything about this place.”
I nodded. I could see why he would hate it. I suddenly realised that I did, too.
“I’ve got to get to French,” I sighed, ambling away.
After a few steps, I stopped and turned around.
“You coming or what?”
Michael eyed me warily for a moment, and then slowly moved to catch up with me.
“I’m really sorry,” I mumbled again as we walked along, as if saying it enough times would wash away my involvement.
“Okay,” said Michael, looking straight ahead of him, “you can stop apologising now.”
I remember staring out at the still water.
“I’m so sorry,” I whispered.
My breath clouded against the grey November sky. I imagined jumping into the canal, the shock of the freezing water whisking this horrible moment away. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Libby wrap her arms around herself and shiver against the cold.
“I honestly thought we were done,” I told her again.
It was a quiet, early Sunday morning. From our place on the bridge, we watched smoke rising from the chimneys of the narrowboats lined up neatly along the water’s edge, the scent of burning wood carrying through the air. A few of the boats betrayed evidence of last night’s festivities: a burned-out barbecue in a bow, two empty wine glasses on a roof. Scraps of fireworks littered the towpath, along with the odd blackened sparkler. The morning felt dead and bleak, a hangover from the celebrations. The odd dog walker trudged along the towpath, bundled up against the cold, but other than that there was no one else out.
“It didn’t take you long,” said Libby, bitterly.
I shook my head sadly. “I didn’t mean for it to happen. Like I said, I just… I was in a bad place. I’d had a bit to drink, so had she… I thought you and I were over, otherwise I never would have—”
“Was it because we hadn’t… you know. Because I kept saying we should wait—”
“No!” My voice sounded louder than I had expected, amplified in the stillness of the air. I pushed my cold fingers through my hair. “I honestly thought… you said we were done.”
“I said I was done with the way you were behaving.”
“You said you couldn’t handle our relationship anymore.”
“You. I said I couldn’t handle you anymore! And the way you were acting. I just… I needed a break.”
“But I didn’t know it was a break! Of course I didn’t know that, otherwise I never would have gone with her! I thought you were finished with me. I mean, why wouldn’t you want to finish with me? Look what I did to you!”
I gestured to her face and then quickly looked away, unable to bear what I had done.
“It was
nothing to do with that,” said Libby adamantly, touching the scar. “I told you I forgave you for that. It was all the other stuff I couldn’t handle. The drinking and getting suspended and behaving so closed off. It was so totally unlike you. Every time I thought it was getting better, it seemed to get worse again. I didn’t know what you were going to be like from one moment to the next.”
“I know I was being a pain in the arse, but I just didn’t know how to deal with what happened that night after the fairground. I could see I was going to drive you away but I couldn’t stop, and then when you said you’d had enough… What was I meant to think?”
“You were meant to think I’d had enough and that I was taking time out!”
“But all you told me was you’d had enough! It would have been handy to have added the bit about taking time out!”
“I thought… like I said, I just assumed…” Her voice trailed off and she tucked her chin inside her thick knitted scarf.
That was the worst thing of all: that she’d just assumed. That she’d had that much faith in us that it never occurred to her we were over. Whereas me, the moment I thought we were finished, I’d been overwhelmed by hurt and regret and anger and gone and put the final nail in the coffin. How could we have been on such different pages? Perhaps when you had a dad who came and went with the seasons it seemed normal to separate and then come back together. Her parents had been doing that for years, over and over. But that wasn’t how I was raised. In my world, you were either together or you weren’t. And I had honestly believed we weren’t.
Then, last night, Libby had come round to see me, said she’d had time to clear her head and wanted to move forwards, that she hoped the time out had done us both good but she didn’t want to be apart any longer.
And all I could think was what have I done? There she was, sitting on my bed talking to me, just like she had done several times a week in the year we’d been together, and it was as if nothing had changed, as if it could all be fixed and we could find our way back to where we were before.
Only I knew that everything was different.