‘You look different.’
I look down at my feet, wishing I could wipe off all that stupid make-up.
‘Good different,’ Jake says.
I look up and Mrs Zas gives me one of her winks.
‘Thanks…’ I say.
I untie Houdini.
‘I’ll see you next Saturday then?’ Mrs Zas calls after me.
I nod. ‘I’ll be here.’
Mrs Zas goes back inside. Jake looks over at Rev Cootes’s house.
‘Why don’t we go and see Clay?’ he says.
‘No.’
‘I thought you liked him?’ He pokes me in the ribs. ‘You could dazzle him with your new look.’
‘Mum was horrible to him.’
A beat of silence.
‘He met your mum?’
Jake knows that Mum doesn’t like visitors.
‘Yeah. I asked him over. It was a disaster.’
‘Want to talk about it?’
I nod and tuck my arm under Jake’s and lean my head on his shoulder.
Next to the Lido, the chestnut tree in the middle of The Green is one of the places we go to talk. We started climbing it when we were seven and since then we’ve spent hours sitting in its branches, spying on the village. Jake gives me a leg-up and follows.
We sit on one of the top branches for a good hour. I tell Jake about everything that happened with Clay and Mum and he listens, like he used to listen, like he understands and cares.
‘You’re doing an amazing job with your mum,’ Jake says.
‘I’m not doing an amazing job with anything right now,’ I say. ‘I wanted to help Clay and he ended up getting shouted at by Mum.’
Jake laces his fingers into mine.
‘He’ll understand.’
‘I don’t think he will.’
‘He’s got his own demons to fight, Feather. Your mum’s the least of his worries.’
I take my fingers out of Jake’s. He’s doing it again, talking about Clay like they’ve been friends their whole life. Like they’re us.
‘And it must be weird, him coming back to the village after all this time.’
‘He spoke to you about that?’
Jake nods.
‘He doesn’t really remember it, of course. He was only three at the time. But I suppose there’s a kind of subconscious remembering.’
I wonder what else they’ve been talking about without me and then I tell myself to stop being so pathetic. Jake’s allowed to have other friends and I’d rather he’d hang around with someone like Clay than with Amy.
‘I’d better get home,’ I say. ‘I need to do Mum’s hair.’
Sundays and Wednesdays are Mum’s hair-washing days. And even though I’m angry with her, it still needs to be done.
‘Sure,’ he says and we jump down into the grass.
I tie Houdini back up in his kennel and as I look up, the garage door catches my eye.
‘Can I show you something?’ I ask Jake.
‘Sure.’
If I’m going to piece together what happened between the time when Mum was happy and smiley and liked swimming and being with people to how she is now, I’m going to have to see more of those photos.
I guide Jake into the garage and walk over to the dustsheet, which covers Dad’s old boxes, and lift it into the air. The boxes I saw the other day are still piled high. There must be loads of evidence in those.
‘What are you doing?’
‘You know the photo I showed you?’
‘Of your mum at the Lido?’
I nod. ‘This is where I found it.’
I pick up the top box, the one that was full of photos, and realise, straight away, that it’s way lighter than it should be. I put it down, open the flaps and look in. It’s empty.
‘There were millions of them.’ I stare into the empty box.
And then I notice a photo, face down, under one of Dad’s filing cabinets. I kneel down, pick it up and turn it round. Jake looks over my shoulder.
‘It’s you at the Lido!’ He says. ‘As a baby.’ He makes a cooing noise. ‘What a cutie.’
And he’s right, it is me, it has to be, only I’m not the only one in the photo. Sitting beside me is a little boy with blond hair and transparent skin and blue eyes and I understand then why Clay feels so familiar: it’s three-year-old him, sitting there right beside me, smiling, the Lido sparkling behind us.
February
19
After everything went wrong with Clay and Mum and not getting any further with my investigations about Mum’s past, I decide to take a different tack. I’m giving No. 3 on my list another go: Get Mum and Dad to be happy with each other again. Everyone says you lose weight when you’re in love and Mum and Dad haven’t been in love for years. People think they’re really close because Dad’s so nice to Mum and they are close and he is nice (Dad would do anything to make Mum happy), but that’s not the same as loving each other romantically, and that’s how you’re meant to love each other when you’re married, otherwise you might as well just be friends, like me and Jake.
When they danced and won competitions – when, like Rev Cootes said, they were the most beautiful couple in Willingdon – they must have been in love with each other. Properly in love. And that doesn’t just disappear.
I’m going to do everything I can to make it come back to life. And maybe when they’re in a better place, they’ll tell me more about what life was like when I was little and how Mum got to be sick.
One of the ways I’ve planned to bring Mum and Dad together is a romantic Valentine’s supper. Yesterday, after swim training and a Slim Skills meeting, I went to M&S in Newton and bought lots of posh ingredients. I’ve spent most of my savings but I’ll make it up with the money I earn working for Mrs Zas and, anyway, if it works, if it makes Mum and Dad notice each other again, it’ll be worth it.
Amazingly, Rev Cootes has allowed me to use his kitchen to do the cooking. With his whole tea-ritual thing and liking things just so, I thought he’d freak at us making a mess, but it was his idea: he said that we’d have more room to cook here than at Steph’s.
‘When you get home, you’ll need to store these in the fridge.’ Clay puts the tray of strawberry tarts on the table.
It’s like he’s completely forgotten the disastrous Sunday lunch with Mum. I guess I was wrong about him never wanting to see me again.
He’s wearing Rev Cootes’s navy pinstriped apron, his hair and eyebrows are dusted with flour and his cheeks are flushed pink. It was Clay’s idea to make a fancy meal. Turns out he’s this gourmet chef, which you’d think was weird considering he doesn’t eat anything, but Mum and I watched this programme on anorexia and how one of the symptoms is being obsessed with food and cooking. Apparently, some people with eating disorders like to go shopping and to cook and to breathe in food smells but then won’t even take a bite when the dish is made. It made me think of Mum, but sort of in reverse, how she likes watching other people cook these amazing meals on TV but doesn’t make anything herself and eats crisps and chocolate instead of proper food. I wonder how we all got so screwed up about food.
I’m glad that Jake’s not here yet; it’s nice to have Clay to myself for a bit. I keep blinking at him, hoping he might notice my eyes: I’ve been practising with the mascara and eye shadow Mrs Zas lent me.
I grab an onion for the risotto, peel off the skin and balance it on the chopping board.
‘So you’ve been to Willingdon before?’ I try to sound casual. ‘When you were little?’
Clay stops arranging the strawberries.
‘Yes.’
I press the knife down into the moon-glow flesh of the onion.
‘You were visiting your grandpa?’
‘I was born here.’
He slices up another strawberry.
‘You were born here?’
I want to show him the photo of the two of us that I’ve been keeping in the back pocket of my jeans, to show him how we’ve kn
own each other for years and years, how we’ve got a special connection. But I’m scared about how he’ll react.
My eyes have started to run from the onion fumes so I rub them with the back of my hand.
Clay runs tap water into a glass and hands it to me.
‘Here, drink this, it’ll ease the stinging.’
Clay’s fingers brush mine as I take the glass.
‘Thanks,’ I say.
I’m not doing very well at the putting a stop to my feelings thing. Which is why I feel totally embarrassed that my nose and my eyes are streaming. I picture my face as this gross, blotchy mess. And then I see the back of my hand, smudged black. I try to get a look at myself in the kitchen window but there are too many reflections. I bet I have these ridiculous splotchy panda eyes. I was stupid to think I could pull off wearing make-up, or that it would make Clay like me more.
‘You okay?’ He asks.
I nod and sniff. Clay’s got panda eyes too, except his are from the big shadows he has. Maybe he finds it hard to sleep, like Mum. His cheekbones jut out even more than they did when I first met him. And his skin’s kind of yellow. I wonder what happens to your body if you stop eating altogether. I want to touch his cheek and to tell him that I can help him.
He steps away.
‘You can add a few more strawberries to the plate when you serve up,’ he says. ‘And dust them with icing sugar.’
He’s as much of a perfectionist about his baking as Rev Cootes is about his tea. Clay made the pastry for the strawberry tarts from scratch. We tried to find healthy versions of everything so that I didn’t feel guilty about feeding Mum food that would make her worse, but we still made sure it would taste nice so that Mum and Dad felt it was a treat. I questioned Dad until he told me that they’d had risotto and strawberry tarts at the restaurant when he proposed.
I go back to chopping my onion. ‘Your dad wasn’t around, even back then?’ I ask Clay.
‘No. It was a one-night stand. Mum never told him.’
‘That doesn’t sound like your mum – I mean, like the mum you’ve described.’
He laughs in a kind of cold way that I don’t like. ‘What? Not telling my dad that he had a kid? That sounds exactly like Mum. She wanted to be in control of my life from the word go.’
Whenever he talks about his mum, his words get all these sharp edges.
‘That must be hard for you. Not knowing your dad, I mean.’
Clay goes over to the sink to wash the strawberry stains off his hands.
‘You know, Feather, there’s loads of crap we don’t know about our parents.’
A few weeks ago, I would have leapt right in and disagreed with Clay. I thought I knew everything about Mum and Dad. But things are different now.
‘Do you love her?’ I ask. ‘Your mum?’
Clay comes over to the table. He brushes his hair out of his eyes and looks right at me. ‘It wouldn’t make a difference.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘She’d still hate me, even if I did love her.’
‘What did you do that was so bad?’
He pauses and looks at the door to the kitchen. Rev Cootes is in the lounge practising his sermon for Sunday.
‘I wrote an article for the school newspaper. For her school newspaper. She didn’t like it.’
‘What didn’t she like?’
‘I wrote about how screwed up I am.’
I take a breath. ‘You mean because of you being ill?’
‘Yeah, I wrote about being anorexic.’
I suck in my breath. It’s the first time he’s used the word.
‘She didn’t like it,’ he adds. ‘And she didn’t like the language I used either.’
I think about what Miss Pierce said about how some situations require strong language. I bet Clay used just the right words.
Still, writing an article isn’t enough of a reason for a mum to disown her kid and send him a whole ocean away.
‘Was that all you wrote about?’
He stares down at his hands and rubs at the strawberry stains on his fingertips.
‘I said that it was her fault. That schools like hers were making kids sick.’
‘Wow, you wrote that?’
He nods. ‘Mum doesn’t get it. She thinks she’s this amazing Head, who gets her pupils to achieve these incredible results, that it’s down to her that so many of them get into Ivy Leagues and become lawyers and bankers and senators. She even thinks it’s because of God, because her school’s religious and it has this special blessing from heaven. She doesn’t get that you can’t force everyone to be the same, that if you stop them from being who they really are, you’re doing more damage than good.’
I wait a beat and then I ask, ‘Who are you then… really?’
Clay looks up at me for a second and I know that he’s weighing up whether he can trust me.
And then the doorbell goes.
Jake. Damn it. Just when I was getting somewhere with Clay.
A moment later, Jake comes in, dragging Amy behind him.
She jumps onto one of Rev Cootes’s counters and crosses her long legs. Even though it’s below zero outside and the pavements are frozen over, Amy’s legs are bare – and tanned. She’s wearing a short skirt and knee-high boots. I wonder whether her legs are longer than my entire body.
‘Smells delish, Clay,’ Amy says, passing her tongue over her lips.
I wish Jake would wake up and dump her.
‘My mum says it’s the wine that makes the risotto.’ She jumps down off the counter, grabs the bottle of white I bought for Mum and Dad to have with the meal, unscrews the cap and splashes it into the pan that Clay’s stirring.
Clay laughs. Which makes me feel sick. Surely he can see through Amy?
Amy takes a swig of wine and wipes her mouth.
‘It’s so much fun hanging around with you guys.’ Her eyes swim, which makes me wonder whether she started drinking before she came here.
Jake grabs the bottle from out of her hands and for a second I hope that he’s going to tell Amy to stop being such an idiot, but before he has the chance to say anything at all, she leans forward and kisses him right on the mouth.
Jake pulls back.
He’s never said it out loud but I know he doesn’t like to do things like kissing when other people are watching.
A moment later, Amy, Jake and Clay are standing over the pan, laughing and pouring in more wine, the wine that I paid a fortune for. And I feel invisible. It’s like Jake’s replaced me twice over: first, with his girlfriend and, second, with Clay, his new best friend. And you know what I feel like, watching them together? Like maybe Jake just put up with me as a friend until he found someone better, that he was only friends with me because our mums were close and because he didn’t have any other options. I feel like I’ve been a stopgap.
‘You’ll need to heat up the risotto before you serve it,’ Clay says. ‘If it looks dry, you can use a bit more wine – like Amy said.’
Like Amy said? So he’s sucked in by her too?
Jake leans over Clay’s shoulder and stares at the strawberry tarts. ‘You could totally win The Great British Bake Off.’
‘The what?’ Clay asks.
‘It’s a cooking competition on TV,’ I explain. ‘Mum’s obsessed with it.’
‘So, what can we do to help?’ Jake asks, looking around the kitchen.
I look at my watch.
‘Dad will be back from work soon and we have to set up the conservatory.’
I’ve planned it all. Candles. Rose petals. Soft music.
‘Okay – so, why don’t Amy and I stay here and help Clay clear up,’ Jake says. ‘And you go and set up?’
I look from Clay to Jake to Amy and try to think of a way to counter this suggestion without sounding pathetic.
‘Can you manage on your own?’ Clay asks me.
I nod but don’t look at him. ‘Sure.’
I place the pan with the risotto at the bottom
of a jute bag and balance the tarts on top of it and walk out of the kitchen.
I wish I could have stayed with them but at least now I’ll be able to leave the card for Clay without him seeing that it was me. I mean, he’ll obviously know it was me because he’ll find it in his bedroom, but we don’t have to talk about it, not unless he wants to.
It’s the first Valentine’s card I’ve ever written. And I know that it could spoil everything, that he could freak out and never want to speak to me again, but it’s the only thing I could think to do to let him know how I feel.
There’s a saying Dad’s used whenever I’ve been scared of doing something important: If you don’t let go of the edge, you’ll never learn to swim. I remember it more than any of the other things Dad has said because it’s about swimming and because it’s true: when you’re a kid and you’re still a bit scared of going into the water on your own, you have to just jump right into the deep end and trust that your body will know what to do: that you’ll be able to keep your head out of the water and that your legs will start kicking and that you’ll be able to swim.
I put down the bag, grab my duffle coat from Clay’s bed and pull my Valentine’s card out of the pocket. My heart’s banging away like the crazy beat in one of Jake’s Macklemore albums.
It feels kind of exciting to be in here without Clay and a bit wrong too.
I look around for the best place to put the card. And that’s when I spot it. The wishbone I gave him when he came round to the house for lunch. He’s tied a piece of red string around it and used it to bind up a small notepad that looks like it might be his diary. So he kept it. And it means something to him. Blood rushes to the surface of my skin and I’m glad he’s not here to see me standing in the middle of his room, pink as a lobster.
And then I notice something else.
An envelope on his bedside table. The first thought I have is that it must be from Clay’s mum. Only, when I get closer, I see there’s a heart on it, and bright pink writing: My Secret Valentine.
I swallow, hard. I look to see if there’s a postmark, thinking that maybe it’s some girl from New York, but it’s been hand-delivered. Why am I so surprised? Even though Clay’s had loads of days off school, he’s already caught the attention of the girls at Newton Academy. I bet the card’s from one of Amy’s friends. I bet Amy brought it over herself and slipped it into his room before coming to the kitchen.
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