Aaron reached out and squeezed my thigh. ‘Really cool,’ he said. Electricity shot up my leg and buzzzzzed in my body long after he’d let go. ‘So, what’re you up to this weekend?’ he asked, working hard to sound casual.
I worked even harder in my reply. ‘Stacking shelves in the library where I work. How about you?’
‘Writing an essay. Really dull.’
‘I’ve got loads of homework too. My mum’s putting the pressure on, going on about grades and how I need to do well if I want to go into law.’
‘Do you want to go into law?’ Aaron asked, folding his arms.
I wrinkled my nose. ‘Not really. But Mum and Dad are both solicitors so . . .’
‘So what?’
‘Well, it’s a good job, isn’t it?’
‘Depends on your definition of good,’ Aaron said. ‘Personally, I can’t imagine anything worse. Sitting in an office all day. Paperwork. Staring at a computer screen.’
Scared he was starting to think I was boring, I said, ‘Actually, my dream job is to write novels.’ I’d never expressed it so boldly before and immediately felt daft. ‘Not that I’ve got any chance of doing it. Not really.’
‘Hey, don’t say that! You’re too young to be cynical.’
‘Not cynical. Realistic. Writing doesn’t pay,’ I said, echoing Mum.
‘According to JK Rowling it does.’
I laughed. ‘Trust me, my story is not as good as Harry Potter.’
‘So you’re writing something? Tell me about it.’
‘No chance!’
‘Chicken.’ He started to quack and flap his elbows like wings.
‘Aaron, that’s a duck.’
He cracked a smile. ‘I might not be a bird expert, but I know a coward when I see one.’
‘Fine. It’s called Bizzle the Bazzlebog . . .’
‘Good title.’
‘. . . and it’s about a blue furry creature who lives in a tin of beans but then one day a boy called Mod fancies beans on toast so he opens the tin and pours them into a bowl but Bizzle plops out, and I’ve never said that to anyone so I don’t want you to react in any way.’ He did as he was told. Literally. Sat there completely still without breathing. I rolled my eyes. ‘Okay, maybe you can react a little bit.’
‘Phew,’ he exhaled. ‘I was beginning to suffocate.’ He shoved me playfully with his shoulder. ‘It sounds good.’
‘What’s your plan, then?’ I said to change the subject, turning to face him by straddling the wall.
‘My plan? I don’t have one.’
‘Everyone’s got a plan,’ I said in surprise.
‘Not me.’
‘So what, you’re just going to leave college and then—’
‘And then. . .’ Aaron waved his hand through the air, ‘. . . see what happens. Think about it for a while. There’s no rush, is there?’
Picking some moss with my finger, I tried to picture Aaron in thirty years’ time. Serious. Weary. Grey hair above his ears like Dad. It was impossible. Especially when he stood up on the wall and pulled me to my feet. I gripped his arm to keep from falling over.
‘I like climbing walls,’ he announced suddenly.
‘Er . . . I like climbing walls too,’ I said, struggling to balance.
‘I like winter and I like the dark and I like cats and I like the rain and I like walking up mountains and sitting at the top in the fog. That’s all I need to know about my life right now. It’s pretty simple. And I can experience it all for free.’
‘But you need money,’ I argued. ‘Everyone needs money.’
‘True. But just enough to survive. And maybe a tiny bit left over to have an adventure. That’s what I’m going to do when I leave college, actually. Go off somewhere. My dad gave me this big cheque on my seventeenth birthday to buy a car with a personalised number plate. I don’t think DOR1S is exactly what he had in mind. But she works well enough. And I’ve saved the rest of the money to do something fun.’
‘This is fun,’ I said without thinking about it, wondering if this is how Mum and Dad had felt at the very beginning when they used to write each other love letters.
‘Yeah,’ Aaron said, tilting back his head in the drizzle. ‘It really is.’
Just when I thought the night couldn’t get any more perfect, an image of a car park forced itself into my mind. A car park with two people walking through it. Stopping by the streetlight. Embracing in the amber glow.
‘I should go,’ I said suddenly, jumping off the wall, the moment ruined. ‘Mum said I had to be back by 6pm.’
Aaron stayed where he was, throwing out his arms and balancing on one leg. ‘Good job I gave you a lift. You’d have been late. What were you doing over there anyway?’
‘Sorry?’ I said, though I’d heard him just fine. I dusted down my school skirt, not meeting his eyes.
‘Why were you in that part of town after school? I live round there.’
‘Visiting my grandpa,’ I murmured, flicking non-existent dirt off the material.
‘What road does he live on?’
I couldn’t think of a single street so I just said, ‘He’s buried in the graveyard by the traffic lights.’
‘Oh. Sorry.’
‘Don’t be. He’s at peace,’ and Stuart it was sort of true because sitting in a hospital asking for strawberry jelly wasn’t exactly stressful.
Aaron hopped off the wall. I opened the passenger door. His bicep tensed as he grabbed my bag. Our fingers brushed together as he handed me the strap. Ten seconds later, he was still handing me the strap, my fingers tingling with all his multi-coloured DNA.
‘So this is the part where you give me your number,’ Aaron whispered. ‘Without me having to ask for it.’ My heart leapt, but I hesitated, thinking of the girl with long red hair. ‘Or you can take mine? You know. Just to arrange the bank robbery.’
I grinned. I couldn’t help it. I didn’t know my number so I shoved my hand into my bag, searching for my phone. School books. Pens. An elastic band. I moved my fingers into the very corners. Paper clip. Chewing gum. A lid from a bottle.
‘It’s not there,’ I said, confused, and then I gasped.
‘What is it?’
‘I . . . I must’ve left it at school.’
Aaron grabbed a pen out of the glove box. He took my hand, writing his number on my palm, the nib tickling my skin as zeros and sevens and sixes and eights spread from my thumb to my little finger across my life line and my love line and all the other creases that gypsies read in caravans. Black ink shone in the moonlight but all I could see was my phone in Max’s bedroom. On his desk. With a picture of me and Lauren as the screensaver. I pulled my hand away and lifted my bag onto my shoulder. A crease formed between Aaron’s eyebrows and I wanted to jump right in and fluff it up like a pillow.
‘Is everything okay?’ he asked and Stuart this was an impossible question but for the second time that evening I was spared the need to answer by an ambulance.
The same ambulance we’d seen just a few minutes before.
It was turning out of Fiction Road, my road, blue lights flashing.
Now I don’t know if you’ve ever been in a hospital waiting room but if you ask me it’s the worst place in the entire world. There was a battered sofa and a sticky coffee table and an overflowing bin and an empty water dispenser and a droopy plant that looked more ill than all the patients on the ward put together. Cigarette butts were squashed into the plant’s dry soil even though there were six No Smoking signs and one poster about lung cancer with graphic images of tumours. Next to it was a stack of leaflets about bladder weakness, which could explain why the nurses hadn’t refilled the water.
Voices sounded outside the room. Soph scrambled to her feet and pushed open the door but it wasn’t Mum or Dad or Dot, just a couple of doctors marching past with stethoscopes round their necks, white coats swishing. A siren sounded in the distance and a metal trolley clattered onto the pavement and somewhere close by a heart monitor w
ent beeeeeeeeeeep. I prayed and prayed that it wasn’t Dot’s.
Now Stuart I’m sure you’ve heard of something called sixth sense, a feeling that scratches your brain to tell you someone you love is in danger, and maybe you get it in your cell like if your brother who I’m guessing you don’t want to talk about has a sore throat then perhaps your tonsils sting too. Well, as soon as I saw the ambulance I started to run and I could hear Aaron shouting my name but I didn’t look back because I just had this feeling. Sure enough when I sprinted towards the drive, Dot was nowhere to be seen and Soph was crying.
Mum had travelled in the ambulance with Dot, telling Soph to stay behind. Well, I wasn’t having any of that so I called a taxi and we leapt in and all the way there Soph was sobbing sobbing sobbing.
‘She fell,’ she said, tears splashing down her face. ‘Right from the top to the bottom.’
‘Of what?’ I asked in a whisper.
‘The stairs. She was just lying there on the carpet and she wasn’t moving and . . .’ The sentence hung in the air as we arrived at the hospital where a nurse with a stern face took us to the waiting room.
After forever the hinges of the door creaked and there was Mum, standing in the doorway, her top hanging out of her jeans.
‘How’s Dot?’ I asked.
‘Is she okay?’ Soph whispered.
Mum collapsed onto a chair. ‘It’s . . .’
‘It’s what?’ I said, gripping Soph’s arm.
Mum sighed heavily. ‘It’s a broken wrist.’
‘A broken wrist?’ Soph asked.
‘Just a broken wrist?’ I said.
We all jumped as the door opened a second time. Dad came in carrying a briefcase, pink-faced and panting in the expensive black suit he only ever used for meetings with important clients or funerals.
‘I got your message! What happened? How’s Dot?’
‘She’s broken her wrist.’
‘Oh thank God,’ Dad said.
‘Thank God?’
‘Well, I thought from what you said on the message that —Anyway, is she okay?’
Mum stared at her lap. ‘It’s my fault. I should have been watching her.’
‘You can’t watch her all the time,’ Dad said gently. ‘Not all the time.’
‘She fell down the stairs. She must’ve tripped on a bit of tinsel. I don’t know why she was wearing it, but she tripped and just . . . fell. Knocked herself out. I couldn’t wake her, Simon, and she was just lying there like last time, hardly breathing and . . .’
Dad crouched down in front of her. ‘It’s not your fault, pet. Accidents happen.’
Mum took a deep, shaky breath and nodded as Dad rubbed her cheek. ‘How did you get on, anyway?’ she asked, taking in Dad’s suit. ‘Any luck?’
‘Down to the last two, but they gave the job to the other guy.’
Before Mum could reply, light from the corridor burst into the waiting room. A nurse was holding open the door to reveal Dot with a cast on her hand and silver tinsel sparkling round her neck. Soph was the first to reach her, falling to her knees and signing urgently, faster than I knew that she could. I missed what she was saying but Dot nodded and Soph pulled her into a rare hug. Dad picked her up and squeezed her tight and Mum said ‘Careful Simon’ and then we went home and Stuart I know that’s abrupt but there’s a cat meowing at the shed door so just a sec because I’m going to let him in.
Sorry but I better cut this short because it’s impossible to write with Lloyd purring on my lap, getting in the way of the paper. The white speck between his ears is softer than ever before and I keep touching it and putting my lips there too. I wanted to tell you how I wrapped my palm in a plastic bag to protect Aaron’s number in the shower and I wanted to say how I hid under my covers and held my hand to my ear, pretending to dial an imaginary phone and speak to him in the darkness. My words travelled through my veins which hung in the sky like telephone wires. I explained about the phone in Max’s room and he explained about the girlfriend and of course we forgave each other, lying there all night whispering love through our wrists in the pale glow of the unremarkable moon.
From,
Zoe x
1 Fiction Road
Bath
December 20th
Hey Stuart,
Yesterday I made you a card but don’t worry there are no pictures of families eating turkey or twinkling fairy lights or snowmen grinning with happiness made out of stones that can’t erode. None of that festive cheer felt appropriate so I drew a bird instead, a red kite flying above your cell which according to Google is roughly the same size as my garden shed, but it doesn’t have watering cans or a jacket or a box of tiles that cuts into your thighs, and it probably doesn’t smell of Dad’s old trainers either. In actual fact there’s nothing much in your cell at all except a bed in one corner with a very thin mattress and a toilet at the opposite end of the room. If you ask me that’s not very hygienic and you should think about writing a letter of complaint to the people in charge of health and safety or maybe an angry protest poem.
Last week I read your poem Verdict and according to verse two you didn’t cry when the judge said Guilty. You didn’t shout out in anger when your brother cheered and you didn’t cry out in terror when you were escorted to the prison because your mind was floating above the whole thing looking down on a man in handcuffs. Honest truth I know exactly what you mean because yesterday my brain was hovering with a pigeon near an oak tree watching a girl in a black coat write words on a white rectangle of card.
I felt not-there as we walked to the grave and I felt not-there when we laid down our wreaths and I felt not-there as Sandra put her hand on the marble headstone and traced the gold engravings with a gloved finger.
‘We’ll never forget you,’ she whispered and Stuart I could see his brown eyes staring up at me as she read out the words on her wreath. ‘Always on my mind. Always in my heart. Happy Christmas, my darling son.’
It was my turn to speak so I opened my lips that weren’t my lips. ‘Happy Christmas.’ The words on the coffin lid started to burn, the heat of the truth rising up from the ground, making me flush.
I didn’t want to be there. I would never have gone if Sandra hadn’t turned up at my house earlier that day, ringing the doorbell three times.
‘Is Zoe in?’ I heard her say from my bedroom, my body stiffening.
‘Er . . .’ Mum said, taken aback. ‘Yeah. Yeah she is. Why don’t you come in, Sandra?’
‘I won’t stay, thanks. I just want to talk to Zoe.’
Mum started on the stairs so I threw myself on the carpet to see if there was space to hide underneath my bed. Mum poked her head round the door before I could disappear. Of course I went downstairs and of course I was polite and of course I said yes when she asked me to visit the grave even though my brain screamed NO so loud I was surprised she couldn’t hear it.
‘You sure, love?’ Mum said, looking concerned, and I tried to tell her with my eyes that I didn’t want to go.
‘Of course she is,’ Sandra replied. She was even thinner, Stuart, her face a skull and her fingers bones and there was no mahogany left in her hair. ‘She wants to see him, don’t you?’ I didn’t dare refuse so I swallowed and nodded, finding it hard to breathe. Anger flooded my veins. Guilt too. They curdled in my stomach, making it ache and it’s still hurting now, a dull throb in my intestines.
Maybe he wrote the truth there too. Stuart I know it sounds crazy but that’s how it feels sometimes, like the words are clawed on my insides, red and sore and swollen, maybe even bleeding. The only way to make them disappear, to soothe the pain, is to write them down here. Tell them to you. I’m tired tonight but I’ll do it anyway, starting with the day after Dot’s accident.
PART SEVEN
I was balancing on the porch step, bracing myself for the weather, when Mum said she’d give me a lift to school.
‘I don’t want you catching a cold on top of everything else.’
Her face w
as pinched and violet bags hung under her eyes as we set off through the rain, proper English rain falling in lines not dots from jet black clouds. She was driving so slowly a neighbour beeped to tell us to get out of the way. Mum jumped and muttered under her breath, all grumpy as if she’d been tossing and turning on her pillow without any sleep, not even the tiniest wink of it.
Windscreen wipers sloshed and tyres splattered through puddles and Lloyd was running along the pavement, fur stuck to his bones, half the size of the fat thing that had been slumped on the sign. My heart ached with how much I wanted to be back on the wall saying ‘At least dogs aren’t stupid enough to go out in the rain.’ For the hundredth time I wondered if Aaron had seen my phone and if he’d had a huge argument with Max probably ending up with one of them punching the other.
Mum was sitting so far forward her head was hanging over the steering wheel. Dot was strapped firmly into the back seat, grimacing and holding her wrist and glancing at Mum to see if she’d noticed. Mum had given her the day off school and Soph had tried it on too, complaining about a sore throat, but Mum had checked her tonsils before we’d left the house. ‘They look fine to me. And your temperature’s normal.’
When we dropped Soph outside the gate of her primary school, she barely said goodbye, just traipsed down the drive as Dot waved cheerfully out of the car window with the arm that was supposed to be hurting.
The first time I spotted Max that day was in the lunch hall and honest truth he took my breath away and that was a surprise, like one second I was inhaling quite normally and the next my lungs stopped working as he walked in with a football under his arm, his dark hair dripping wet. We smiled at each other in the queue as the dinner lady yelled, ‘Next please!’
‘A salad?’ Lauren said as I picked up a bowl of leafy stuff and put it on my tray. ‘You hate salad.’
I stared at her pointedly. ‘No, I don’t. I love it.’
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