by Helen Eve
‘Aren’t you going to answer that?’ Phoebe waves my phone in front of me.
I hadn’t noticed that it was ringing, and now I stare without enthusiasm at the image of Jack’s face on the display. I haven’t thought about our last conversation yet this morning, but now I see a stream of messages. Do you even care about this? says one.
Before I can cancel the call, Libby has swiped the phone. ‘She’s right here,’ she tells Jack briskly. ‘Yes, I’m feeling much better, thank you.’
She raises an eyebrow at me as I remember using her as an excuse last night, and I shrug helplessly as she hands over the phone.
‘Siena?’ he says. ‘Where are you?’
‘I’m at breakfast,’ I tell him. ‘Where are you? I’ve been looking for you everywhere.’
‘I’m still at the hospital,’ he says flatly, and my heart sinks. The longer he stays there, the greater the chance of me being expected to visit. ‘Are you going to make it here? You’ve got two free periods.’
‘I’m tied up all day,’ I say contritely. ‘You know I’d make it if I could.’
He hangs up abruptly and I register relief that he’s accepted the decision so easily. I’m about to rejoin the debate, which is now tackling the pros and cons of drop pearl earrings, when Libby’s phone clangs with its annoying bell tone.
She reaches for it like a reflex, answering within the first ring. ‘She’s always hectic,’ she says distractedly. ‘But I can move a few things around if it’s really an emergency. I could have her with you by eleven, with a clear forty-minute window. Forty-five, if I ask Henry to step on it.’
I’m only half listening until she puts down the phone. ‘You should have said you needed to be at the hospital with Jack. I know I can be a taskmaster but I’ll almost always grant leave on compassionate grounds.’
‘That was Jack?’ I say. ‘You told him I could visit the hospital today?’
She’s beaming, completely oblivious to the subtext. ‘Of course! He sounds so lost without you that I was glad to help, and we can reschedule your Three Sisters audition. It’s frankly an insult that you have to audition at all, even if it is just a formality.’
I stare at her, feeling my face burn with annoyance.
‘You don’t seem pleased,’ she says, sounding less confident. ‘Did I do something wrong? Don’t you want to support Jack in hospital?’
‘Of course I do,’ I say, pulling myself together and smiling as sincerely as I can. ‘More than anything. Thank you, Libby, for rectifying the matter so efficiently.’
‘You’re welcome,’ she says in relief. ‘That’s what I’m here for. What else would I do all day?’
* * *
I’m quietly furious as I storm through the courtyard at the appointed time. Libby has her own on-call chauffeur, Henry, and I nod as he opens the car door for me.
‘Hospital?’ he says as we wind down the long driveway. I force a smile in case he reports on my mood to Libby.
‘Has the world changed much since you left it?’ he asks after a few minutes.
I laugh despite myself, because Henry always professes to find it strange that we love school so much. He can’t understand why we always cry on the last day of term, but never the first; why deep gloom descends as he drives each of us towards an enforced, extended separation; why our panic and alienation at leaving school don’t lift until we return.
‘It looks the same, I suppose,’ I concede, although I never notice my surroundings much. I check the mirror for visible signs of stress, and, the next time I look out of the window, we’re at the hospital.
Henry takes out his newspaper as I pinch my cheeks to restore colour to them. ‘I won’t be long,’ I say, more to reassure myself than him. ‘It’s a flying visit.’
‘You take all the time you need,’ he says. ‘I’ll be waiting.’
His unswervingly good nature annoys me. I step out of the car, approaching the entrance with unnatural sloth.
I hope that Security, or confidentiality, or something, will stop me advancing beyond reception, but I can’t catch a break, and as soon as I say Jack’s name I’m waved through. I trudge up three flights of stairs, partly to delay the inevitable and partly to burn off the apple I ate earlier.
Jack is sitting at the far end of a dimly lit hall, beneath a strip light that flickers and buzzes so loudly that I can’t understand why it’s not driving him crazy. I decelerate further, still hopeful of finding an escape, but he turns at the sound of my shoes.
It’s too late to turn back, but I wish I could, because the flickering light is bright enough to show tears streaked on his pale cheeks. He turns away to wipe them with his sleeve as I sit beside him. I know I’m blushing, and that neither of us wants to acknowledge what’s happening, and so I examine my manicure, focusing on a tiny chip as I reach for my nail file.
He watches as if he’s interested in what I’m doing. Then, as I consider the best place to start, he snatches the file and tosses it right down the corridor. I watch, stupefied, as it skitters to a halt.
‘What was that for?’ I ask. ‘I’m here, aren’t I?’
‘You think I wanted to book an appointment through Libby?’ he asks. ‘You think I wanted to force you here kicking and screaming?’
‘I’m here,’ I repeat. ‘That’s what you wanted.’
Unexpectedly, he takes my hand. ‘Can’t you see that, if this were happening to you, I’d be by your side in a heartbeat? I’d do everything possible to make it easier on you. I’d never make you go through it alone.’
‘Where’s your dad?’ I ask, looking around. ‘I thought he’d be here by now.’
He laughs. ‘He’s in the middle of a deal. He says he came last time, and the time before. Like he’s in credit for hospital visits or something.’
‘So how is she?’ I ask stiffly. Even this question feels unnatural.
He clears his throat. ‘It’s too early to tell. You know she’s done this before?’
I nod, because everyone knows that she does this at least three times a year. His dad’s regular donations to the ward ensure her a premier service, but even so, her insides must be hewn from titanium.
‘They think she might have permanent damage,’ he says. ‘They won’t know until she wakes up.’
He ducks his head and I hear him sob properly. We’ve been together for over four years, but I feel like a stranger as I gingerly rub his back.
A nurse comes out of the door beside us. ‘Are you ready?’ she asks, sounding far gentler than I ever do. But then, Nursing College probably offers a module on Sympathetic Voices, while Mrs Denbigh’s Manners classes have never yet touched on bedside technique in any medical sense.
I scowl as she squeezes Jack’s shoulder, even though I should be pleased to have someone do my job for me.
‘You can go in too, sweetie,’ she tells me.
I look up quickly. ‘Isn’t it family only? I’m not…’
She looks at our entwined hands. ‘I didn’t think you two were related. It’s fine.’
Jack is looking at me hopefully. ‘Please, Siena. Please come in with me.’
I don’t tell him that sitting in this antiseptic corridor, underneath a buzzing, flickering light that makes me want to scream, is already more than I can cope with.
We’ll never come back, will we? I asked on the day I left a hospital just like this one.
Paula was wheeling my mother’s chair slowly and cautiously to avoid upsetting both her and the sleeping bundle on her lap, but my mother leaned forward, urging her to speed up.
Blinking into the light, she gulped raw spring air before taking my hand in her cold fingers.
We’ll never come back, she promised.
I close my eyes and try to imagine that I’m not here at all, but riding Pip through a field at sunset. I concentrate on his thundering hooves, and his coarse mane twisted through my hands as I lean so far into him that my head is almost buried. And for a second I’m able to think of nothing else
.
‘Don’t let us keep you.’
My eyes snap open to see the nurse, much altered from the recent moment in which she called me sweetie, looking annoyed. I shouldn’t be surprised that she’s taking Jack’s side over mine, but I ignore her anyway as I stand briskly and smooth my skirt.
‘Come on,’ Jack says, already on his feet.
‘Let’s get this over with,’ I mutter as I follow him.
The buzzing of the light is replaced immediately by the buzzing of whatever machine it is that his mother is rigged up to. He’s beside me as we enter the room but he stops short at the sight of her.
‘Haven’t you been in here yet?’ I whisper.
He shakes his head. ‘They wouldn’t let me in last night. And today…’
The nurse cuts in, still sounding irritated. ‘He was waiting for you. It’s a shame you were so … detained.’
She looks about forty and is wearing a wedding ring. I’d put money on her having teenage sons herself and hoarding pent-up resentment from watching them wait for girls to respond to their calls or texts or inadequate conversational overtures.
This makes me picture Jack alone in the corridor underneath a malfunctioning light, going to increasingly desperate lengths to make me arrive; risking never seeing his mother again unless I’m by his side.
‘You shouldn’t have waited,’ I mutter. ‘What if she’d … before I got here?’
‘I couldn’t do it alone,’ he says. His teeth are clenched, but his whole body is shaking.
I start to back away. He looks at me in disbelief and I avoid his eyes; for some reason, it’s not him who changes my mind, but the nurse. Her expression, disbelieving and knowing and contemptuous all at once, makes me snatch up his hand and hold it tighter than I ever have before.
‘I’m sorry I wasn’t here for you,’ I tell him, allowing myself a second to glare at her. ‘I promise I won’t leave you again.’
We sit on opposite sides of the bed, the beeping of the monitor even more distracting than the flickering light, and I pray that I can make it to the end of visiting time without running out of here as fast as I can.
Chapter Fourteen
Romy
Student Council meetings take place in a damp room underneath a staircase, the main benefit of which is that no one can find and vandalize it. It’s remarkable that the Starlets ever allowed me to be a member during my previous incarnation, and I can only think it was to allow them a clear hour each week in which to discuss my wrongdoings behind my back. There would never have been a conversation shortage.
I wait at the door for Siena, who’s predictably late. Only as I’m about to go inside without her do I hear her familiar Louboutins clacking on the polished floor.
‘Where have you been?’ I ask curiously, because she’s flustered, her hair untidy and her collar creased. She looks upset, although this quickly mutates into annoyance.
‘I’m here now, aren’t I?’ she glares as she fastens her hair.
I shrug. ‘It’s no skin off my nose whether you turn up or not.’
‘I think you’ll find we both have to keep our end of the bargain. Good job at breakfast, by the way. I don’t think the Starlets suspected anything.’
‘Where’s your gown?’ I ask. ‘We’re supposed to wear them to meetings.’
‘Where’s yours?’ she snipes, turning up her nose at my outfit for the second time today.
Having made an effort for my return, I’ve lost interest in clothes. As opening my wardrobe requires energy I don’t possess, I’m already in direct defiance of the Starlet Statute that requires all members to change ensembles a minimum of twice a day; thrice on Saturdays. I’ve thrown on a rust-coloured jumper I found abandoned in my old locker, and it’s only now that I notice a hole in the sleeve and a piece of hay woven into the cuff.
‘Was that heinous knitwear too stylish to cover up, or have you lost yet another gown?’
‘My gown,’ I remind her, ‘is now a pile of ashes on the tower room floor.’
She unsnaps her handbag and produces her own gown. I know it hasn’t occurred to her to lend me one, even though it’s her fault that I’m without and she has a shelf full of spares, pristinely ironed and subtly customized. I pull an oversized black cardigan around my shoulders and hope that no one will notice the difference.
She blanches as I open the door. ‘Is there nowhere else you could meet? Like Soho House?’
I remind myself that she’s exceeded expectations just by turning up. It seems petty to feel annoyed that she’s made me late for the very first meeting of term.
The Council are assembled, but conversation grinds to a halt as we sit in the remaining empty spaces. One of the youngest girls, who’s been doodling crowns and hearts and wedding rings on her notepad, drops her pen and stares at us in unabashed amazement, while another starts to shake visibly.
‘This is Siena Hamilton,’ I announce. ‘She’d like to join me on the Council this term. That is, if you’ll have me back.’
I say this with sarcasm, because bringing Siena onto the Council is so far beyond the dreams of any of its members that I could throw Libby headfirst down a ladder a million times over before they’d kick me out again. But no one’s even listening, because Siena has adopted the smile she always exhibits when forced to meet and greet the general public. Introducing her is as absurd as introducing Kate Middleton; as though everyone in the room doesn’t already know every single fact and unverified rumour about her life in as much detail as their own. But Siena probably doesn’t have the faintest idea who any of these students are, even though she’s lived with them for four years, and shared classes and swimming pools and even dormitories with them.
The Council has about twenty members, and frankly that’s a tremendous achievement. Most year groups are better represented than ours, which today comprises just me and Siena, and that’s possibly because they’re unhindered by the disapproving – and by that I mean downright threatening – existence of the Starlets. Their hatred of the Council might be borne simply as a reaction against a rival power-seeking group, but my involvement certainly intensified it.
‘Why would you do this?’ asked Libby when I first requested to join. ‘I know you don’t fit in here, but surely you can see that joining the Council would be completely off-brand?’
‘Why would you do this?’ the Council members asked with equal bemusement. ‘You don’t fit in here.’
‘I know that,’ I told both sides. ‘But even if I don’t fit anywhere, I have to be somewhere.’
Finally I persuaded the Starlets that I could enter the Council as a double agent, keeping a foot squarely in both camps and ensuring that their priorities were adequately heeded. Given that the Council handles the budget for all social events as well as academic affairs, there were advantages to giving me my way.
Siena holds out her hand. ‘Pleased to meet you,’ she greets each member as she makes her way around the table. The shock of being in such proximity to her apparently prevents them being offended that she follows each handshake with a pump of sanitizer. Despite a changeover of Head Girl and Boy, and the appearance of a few nervous-looking Shells, the Council is much the same as I left it. This is possibly because it attracts a very clear type: everyone is pale and earnest with a pathological loyalty to the school crest and a world-weary duty to impart rules upon individuals who will never be grateful to learn them. One might as well wear a bullseye as a Council badge, and so the only volunteers are students who care about library provision and prep and helping Shells make friends more than they care about keeping their hair free of spitballs and not being tripped up or flushed down a toilet every time they venture out in public.
‘Eric’s missing,’ I frown.
‘Eric left the Council,’ says Ambrose tremulously, pushing his glasses up his nose.
‘Again?’ Eric is in the Lower Sixth like me, and, despite being a loyal and helpful member, is periodically forced into hiding amid safety fears. ‘S
hall I go and fetch him?’
‘It won’t be any use,’ sighs Avery. ‘He’s really left this time.’
‘Why did he leave?’ I ask, looking suspiciously at Siena.
Ambrose and Avery exchange glances. ‘There was an incident,’ begins Avery carefully. ‘More of a misunderstanding, really. I’m sure the Starlets would never…’
I groan, but Siena isn’t listening to me; rather, she’s taking a Smythson notebook from her bag and unscrewing the lid of her silver fountain pen. Siena’s Student Council, she writes on the first page, underlining the words twice and admiring them. Her handwriting is elaborately curvy and covetable; like all the girls in our class, I’ve exerted considerable effort over the years to subvert my own spider-like scrawls into some semblance of it.
‘What did you do to Eric?’ I ask her.
‘Who’s Eric?’ she asks without looking up.
‘He’s quite short,’ explains Avery. ‘Quite freckly. Quite pale. He often carries a bag of rocks and a Tupperware box of frogs.’
‘I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure,’ Siena says delicately.
‘You know perfectly well who Eric is,’ I snap at her. ‘You’ve known him for four years. Tell me what you did to him.’
She clicks her pen lid thoughtfully. ‘If we’re thinking of the same person, it’s possible that Phoebe recently enlisted him to help with her photosynthesis experiment.’
‘She buried him,’ whispers Avery. ‘In the shrubbery.’
Around me is a simultaneous group shiver; a Mexican wave of girls and boys fearing for their lives.
‘She did nothing of the sort.’ Siena is righteously indignant. ‘She planted him. Like the specimen he is.’
‘Underneath some of his rocks,’ Ambrose adds. ‘He wasn’t discovered for a while.’
‘He’s not there anymore,’ Siena reassures me. ‘I’m sure I’ve seen him since. If anything, the experience has improved him. He’s flatter now, and the exposure has ameliorated his complexion.’
‘Where is he today?’ I ask.
‘He felt that Council membership was making him a sitting target,’ says Ambrose. ‘He took up Samurai training this term instead.’