by LK Chapman
Josh
3
‘I can’t believe you talked me into this,’ Josh said, as he and Gareth made their way towards the marquee in the middle of a wide grassy area at Eashling park. Trees surrounded it on three sides, giving the area some privacy from the other visitors at the country park. The sound of families picnicking around the pond and children playing in the large adventure playground drifted through the trees, and for a moment Josh felt so out of place he had to fight an impulse to turn around and make a run for it.
‘I guess this is it,’ Gareth said as they paused to take in the huge banner on the front of the marquee, which read ‘Wayfield Community School, Class of 2002’. Some guests had already arrived with their families, and children were busy running around on the lawn in front of the marquee, or playing with the giant wooden tumble tower that had been set up. A small group were playing football near the trees. ‘Look, everyone has families,’ Josh continued.
‘No, they don’t,’ Gareth said. He waved in the direction of a few groups of adults near the entrance, talking together. ‘They don’t look like they do. Not every single person will have kids. Or be married.’
Josh looked round at his friend, who seemed perfectly at ease in what Josh was finding a pretty uncomfortable environment. But then, it was no surprise. Never had Josh met anybody who cared less than Gareth about what people thought of him. Sometimes, Josh wondered whether he realised other people even had the capacity to think anything negative about him. He certainly assumed things would go his way, and usually they did.
Compared to Gareth – who was wearing smart jeans and a simple white shirt, his black hair combed over, making him look smart and polished – Josh was aware that his own caramel-coloured hair could, at best, be described as tousled. In addition, his face almost certainly had a rabbit-caught-in-the-headlights expression, which was something of a speciality of his.
‘I’m not sure I recognise anyone,’ Josh said, as they approached a small group.
Before they could join the conversation, a woman emerged from the marquee and beamed at them. Her long coppery hair flowed around her shoulders, making an electrifying contrast with her emerald green dress. The loose fabric swirled around her ankles, and on her feet were a pair of flip-flops sparkling with tiny beads in assorted metallic shades. She tucked her hair behind her ear, and Josh was taken aback by a scar across her cheek. Who was she? There had been a girl in his year with long ginger hair, though her name escaped him – it began with an M, or maybe an N. But she hadn’t had a scar.
‘So, I’m Natalie Woodrough, in case you don’t remember,’ she said, looking from one to the other. ‘You’re Gareth …’ Her eyes fell on Josh. ‘It’s on the tip of my tongue.’
‘Josh. Sparkes,’ he said, a little shyly.
‘Yes, of course!’ she said. ‘Okay, so, we have name badges, to save everyone spending the day awkwardly having to admit they’ve forgotten each other’s names. I’ll go and get yours. I’m supposed to have one too, but it fell off somewhere. I’ve been trying to find it the last fifteen minutes.’
They followed her inside the marquee, where a half-empty basket of name badges sat on a table alongside a scattering of old photos. Gareth leafed through a few, while Josh looked around at the tables, which had a couple of copies of the school year book on each. Towards the back of the marquee was a large screen and a projector. Natalie followed his gaze. ‘That’s for later,’ she said, ‘we’ve got some activities planned.’
Josh laughed. ‘I don’t know how much I like the sound of that.’
‘I know what you mean,’ she said. ‘I dread to think what the girls have managed to dig up to show later!’ She leant towards him conspiratorially. ‘I did hear some rumours that a couple of our old teachers might make an appearance.’
‘Really? Which ones?’
She tapped the side of her nose. ‘I’m sworn to secrecy.’
As she handed Josh and Gareth their name badges, a family entering the marquee caught her attention. ‘Oh, sorry guys, I’d better just…’ She rushed off in a waft of floral scent, just as Gareth burst out laughing. ‘Oh man, look at this,’ he said, holding up a dreadful photo of himself and Josh. Standing outside the school hall, both in jeans and t-shirts, they were staring defiantly at the camera as though they considered themselves a pair of rebels. Instead they looked moody and awkward. ‘When is that from?’ Josh said. ‘I don’t remember that.’
‘It’s at a school disco or something,’ Gareth said. ‘Look at the state of my hair. And your glasses.’ Josh winced as he took in the horribly unfashionable frames. Nowadays he wore contacts.
‘Did you ever have anything to do with Natalie?’ he asked Gareth. ‘I’m not sure I spoke to her back at school. She seems very friendly.’
‘No, I didn’t know her back then. She wasn’t really part of our crowd, was she?’
‘Two people isn’t a crowd.’
‘Fair point,’ Gareth said, with a grin. ‘Let’s get a drink. If I’ve got to pretend to be interested in how people’s children are getting on at school and where everyone has been on holiday this summer, I can’t do it stone cold sober.’
***
‘So,’ Gareth said as he sat down beside Josh, ‘I’ve managed to find out what happened to Natalie.’
Josh gave him a sharp look. Surely the last thing she wanted was everyone gossiping about her. But he had to admit he was curious.
‘Don’t pretend you don’t want to know,’ Gareth said. ‘You’ve been staring at her every chance you get.’
Josh shifted uncomfortably. Had it been that obvious? He wasn’t staring because of her scar, though; something about her just kept drawing his attention. The way her hair was like a flame across her dress, and how she was always laughing and talking animatedly to anybody and everybody. How could she just fit in so easily? He’d never been able to. He hoped he’d get a chance to speak to her again, but she was so busy, and he hadn’t gathered up enough courage to approach her himself.
Gareth was smirking, and Josh’s insides twisted uncomfortably. He was about to say that he didn’t want to discuss Natalie’s life behind her back, but Gareth had already begun to speak. ‘A woman was talking on her phone and drove through a red light into the side of Natalie’s car. The woman is fine now, apparently, but Natalie nearly died.’
Josh let out his breath. ‘That’s awful,’ he said. A sickly feeling spread over him. He shouldn’t have let Gareth tell him. It was her business, not a piece of juicy gossip to be passed around.
‘She was a model, you know,’ Gareth said. ‘I’d forgotten about that. She got spotted–’
‘Yeah, I remember something about that,’ Josh said.
‘She isn’t any more.’
‘Because of her scars?’
Gareth shrugged. ‘Guess so,’ he said.
Josh frowned. It seemed very unfair. ‘What does she do now?’ he asked.
‘Dunno.’
Josh glanced up and his eyes fell on Natalie again. With the hem of her long dress caught up in her hand, she was joining in a game of football with some of the families.
‘I can’t imagine what that must have been like for her,’ he said, ‘being in such a bad crash.’
‘Don’t try to, then,’ Gareth said. ‘It’s best not to think about stuff like that. Now, just wait till you hear what I found out about Darren …’
***
It wasn’t until the evening that Josh got a chance to speak to Natalie again. Most of the families had left now that it was getting dark, and Josh sat with Gareth at a table in the corner of the marquee, Gareth proudly holding his ‘most eligible bachelor’ award. Josh raised an eyebrow at his own ‘same hairstyle’ certificate. It could have been worse, though. At least he’d dodged ‘least changed’ – the idea of which was vaguely depressing. Natalie caught his eye, and came over to sit down at their table. ‘What a day!’ she said.
‘You did a great job,’ Gareth said, ‘you and Sophie and t
he others.’
‘Yeah, well, they were the brains behind it all. I just helped on the day. I’ve been working at my sister-in-law’s event planning business – that’s mainly weddings, but it’s a pretty similar deal – just make sure everyone is fed, watered, entertained and can find the loos.’ She pointed a finger at Gareth. ‘On the topic of jobs, I can’t believe I didn’t know that you made that dating site, Hearts. Olivia told me a few minutes ago. I’ve actually used it, and I never knew!’
Gareth shrugged, but his eyes glinted with pride. ‘It’s not that big a deal.’
‘It’s a huge deal!’ Natalie said. ‘How many people do you think got together because of Hearts? Do you ever hear from anybody who married someone they met on there?’
‘Occasionally.’
Natalie gave him a playful slap on the arm. ‘Stop being so modest! I think it’s brilliant.’
Gareth smiled, the kind of smile that said he thought it was brilliant too, but he felt no need to say so. At that moment, somebody called out his name, and he turned. ‘Oh, it’s Emma,’ he said. ‘It looks like she’s going, I’ll just go and say goodbye.’
Natalie smiled knowingly as Gareth got up. ‘He’s been talking to Emma a lot,’ she said. ‘You know, he shouldn’t really be single, should he?’ she added mischievously. ‘He’s not a very good advert for Hearts.’
Josh laughed. ‘I never thought about it that way.’ He paused. ‘Well, to tell you the truth I don’t think he’s looking to settle down.’
‘Ah,’ Natalie said with another glance towards Gareth, who was leaning close to Emma and saying something in her ear. ‘Have you and him stayed in touch this whole time?’
‘Yeah, mostly. We lost touch for a few years, but then he got in contact – he wanted my advice on Hearts when he was developing the website. We hang out quite a bit since then.’
‘What made him decide to make a dating site, do you think?’
‘No idea. He’s done pretty well out of it, though. Especially now he’s got the app as well.’ He paused for a moment. ‘You said that you’ve used Hearts…’ he said tentatively.
‘Oh, yeah. For a bit. I did start seeing a guy I met on there, but then it sort of fizzled out. We wanted different things. It can actually be a bit of a pain, having the job that I did at the time. Once guys found out, it seemed like they just wanted to tell their friends they were dating a model, or something. It was hard to know if they were being genuine with me.’
‘I’m sorry.’
She laughed. ‘Honestly, Josh, if I had a pound for every time I’ve had to deal with some creep of a guy–’ She waved her finger around as if she was counting. ‘Well, it wouldn’t really come to that much, I guess. But it’s happened more times than I care to remember. And I’ve turned up to a couple of jobs where the pictures they wanted to take were not the ones they were advertising for.’
‘Seriously?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Seriously. Being a model is not all it’s cracked up to be, believe me.’
‘What did you do, when you turned up at those photo shoots?’
‘Told them to stick it,’ she said. ‘I don’t take any crap like that.’
Josh couldn’t help but smile. It was quite clear that Natalie didn’t take any crap.
‘It sounds like you have a lot of interesting stories to tell,’ he said.
Suddenly Natalie paused and pointed her finger at him. ‘You have an interesting story to tell,’ she said. ‘I just remembered. You got arrested, didn’t you? For something unusual like…’ She puzzled over it briefly … ‘Hacking.’
4
Josh’s cheeks grew warm. How on earth was he going to explain that? He tried to smile. ‘Yep, you got me,’ he said, but his flippant words clearly didn’t fool her.
‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘That was insensitive of me. We don’t need to talk about it.’ She gestured at a wine bottle left over from dinner on the table behind Josh. ‘Can you grab that?’ He picked it up and refilled her glass.
‘Thanks. I’m not really used to drinking now. After the accident I moved away from the city back to Wayfield so I could be near my parents and brother.’ She gave a short laugh. ‘Bit of a shock to the system coming back to suburbia, but I needed it. It means I don’t really get out so much as I used to. I feel like I’m practically a recluse nowadays!’
‘I … I heard about your accident,’ Josh said, a little guiltily.
‘Yeah, I think everyone has.’
He took a large gulp of wine. ‘I don’t really know what to say,’ he said. ‘I’m so sorry that happened to you.’
She nodded, but didn’t reply.
‘I didn’t really get arrested,’ he added. ‘I think Gareth told everyone that after it happened, to make it sound more rock’n’roll.’
‘Really?’
‘I actually turned myself in.’
‘Oh, okay.’ She looked slightly bewildered.
‘Yeah, I–it’s kind of hard to explain what I was doing–’
‘It’s okay,’ she said, ‘you don’t need to blind me with science.’
‘No, I just mean I feel really stupid about it. I was…’ He paused. ‘I was just messing around, seeing if I could get into the exam board’s system–’
‘The exam board! Were you trying to change your grades?’
He shifted uncomfortably. ‘I don’t know what I was trying to do. I didn’t think I’d be able to get into their system at all. I was surprised I got as far as I did. But then I felt so terrible I went to the police station and told them what I’d done.’
Natalie put her hand up to her mouth to stifle a laugh. ‘That’s actually really sweet,’ she said.
‘I guess I was always the kid who worried about rules and stuff.’
‘What happened to you when everyone found out?’
‘Not much, really. I was having some problems. Nothing major,’ he lied, ‘just teenage stuff, you know? Once I’d talked things through, it was better.’
They fell into a brief silence, as Natalie digested what he’d said. ‘What do you do now?’ she asked. ‘I feel like you must have already said, but I can’t remember–’
‘It’s my job now,’ he said. ‘Stopping hacking, that is. It’s called penetration testing.’
Natalie smirked, then shook her head. ‘Sorry. Once I’ve had a few drinks, my sense of humour takes a nosedive. Someone could say “bum” to me and I’d be in stitches.’ She tried to make her face serious again. ‘Do you like doing it?’
‘What? Penetration?’ he asked in an innocent voice. As he hoped, Natalie snorted with laughter. ‘Sorry, sorry!’ she said. ‘I’m ridiculous.’
‘It can be quite hard, sometimes,’ he continued.
Natalie burst out laughing again, and Josh couldn’t help but join her.
‘You know,’ she said eventually, ‘based on our sense of humour you wouldn’t think this was eighteen years after we’d left school. You’d think we were still sixteen.’
‘Sometimes I feel like I’ve only just stopped being a teenager,’ he said. ‘It feels like it was really recent. Then I see an actual teenager, and suddenly I feel really old.’
‘Yep. I get it. And doing a job where everything was focused around my appearance certainly made me conscious of time passing.’
‘I think you look great,’ he said, and then he cringed. What? Where had that come from? The words had popped out before he’d thought about them. He must have sounded like such a prat.
‘A lot of people feel like they have to say that,’ she said, raising her hand towards her scars. ‘To reassure me. I don’t need them to.’
‘That’s not why I said it.’
Natalie didn’t reply. Was that a smile hovering around her lips? Josh’s head swam. How much had he had to drink?
‘Natalie!’ a voice called from across the marquee. It was one of the organisers, Aisha.
‘I think everyone’s going,’ Natalie said. ‘I probably need to help clear up.’
<
br /> ‘Don’t go,’ he said stupidly as she began to stand.
She looked startled.
‘No, I just mean, I want to–’ God, what was wrong with his head? ‘Could I see you again sometime?’ he managed to stammer out.
She paused for a moment, and then she smiled. ‘Sure,’ she said, ‘give me your phone and I’ll put my number in.’
He handed it over. ‘You know, I almost didn’t come tonight, but I’m glad I did.’
She finished typing and handed his phone back. ‘Likewise,’ she said.
5
He couldn’t sleep. Every time he closed his eyes, there she was, holding her green dress up while she joined in the game of football; laughing at his daft jokes while the lights inside the marquee lit up her hair; talking to him through lips of the glossiest pale pink, which left a little ring of shimmering colour on the edge of her wine glass.
Josh sat up abruptly. Stop thinking about her! He cringed at the memory of their conversation. Why had he said so many stupid things? Natalie apparently hadn’t minded, though. He’d made her laugh. But was she laughing with me, or at me? He sighed and picked up his phone to check she really had given him her number and that it wasn’t all a dream. Yes. There it was. Natalie Woodrough. He put his phone back down and went to the bathroom to splash cold water on his face. It was hardly as if he could call her in the middle of the night. He had to wait until morning at least. But would first thing in the morning be too keen? Should he wait until the afternoon? Evening? The day after that, even? He shook his head. He was driving himself crazy. He wasn’t going to play games like that. He’d just text her mid-morning. That would be okay.