by Sara Foster
She can’t have seen me walk in, surely. I haven’t yet experienced Georgia with a boyfriend, and I’d always hoped to be the kind of mum she could be open with – but now I find myself full of good old-fashioned embarrassment. I suppose it makes a change, since I’m usually the one making Georgia cringe. I try to imagine her reaction if she saw me kissing Callum like this, and almost splutter at the thought of it.
Mr Freeman is still standing close by, watching them. Mortified, I step across to try to distract him. I’m about to ask him if he’s enjoying the day – fell-running is a school tradition he may not have experienced before, since he only joined us this term – but he doesn’t even realise I am there. He is staring at Georgia with the strangest expression.
When I follow his gaze I see that while my daughter’s lips stay locked on Danny’s, her eyes stray to find Freeman’s. The look that briefly passes between them is full of raw and unadulterated knowledge. My worries begin to swirl, a roulette ball whirling faster and faster. A series of events click into place. In seconds, a dreadful idea spins round and round in front of me, locked in, and I cannot do a thing to change it.
28
GEORGIA
Danny takes Georgia by surprise with the kiss. She realises he is just continuing where they left off last night, but with everything else going on she had almost forgotten it had happened. And they have never kissed in public before. This is a declaration, a claim on her, and although she’s excited her eyes cannot help but stray.
She sees him watching. Her pulse races; her blood burns. She wants to run across and tell him that this doesn’t mean a thing, if only he would look at her like he used to.
She kisses Danny harder.
She locks eyes with Leo. And remembers.
• • •
On their run back from Loughrigg Tarn, the rain had picked up. Georgia had increased her speed as the dusty track quickly dissolved into muddy slime, aware of Leo close behind her.
She hadn’t even heard him fall. She had just become aware that he was no longer with her, and turned to see him sitting on the ground some distance away, clutching his ankle.
She had jogged back and knelt down beside him. ‘What happened? Are you okay?’
‘I hit a rock awkwardly and slipped.’ He grimaced as he got to his feet. ‘It should be fine, I’ll walk it off in a minute.’
They set off down the muddy slope again, Georgia hovering next to him, beginning to shiver now she wasn’t generating heat from running.
Leo was obviously limping.
‘Here, why don’t you lean on me?’ she suggested. ‘How does it feel now?’
He put an arm around her shoulder. ‘Not so good. Shit,’ he said, hobbling over to a rock and sitting on it, re-examining his ankle. ‘This is all I need. Not a good start to a new job.’
‘Will it matter?’
His laugh was derisive. ‘It might to the kids at Fairbridge. Not sure they want their new head of sport showing up with an injury.’
As Georgia had processed his words, a burn had begun around her collarbone, spreading outwards until her whole body was aflame. She had sat there, her hands clutching her knees, oblivious to the rain until he said, ‘We should try to keep moving before we get too cold.’ Until he said, ‘Georgia?’
His voice calling her name had reconnected her to their surroundings. She got up, helped him to stand. She felt colder all the time; her legs were shaking. She said nothing. In each place their bodies touched she felt her silence as betrayal.
They had struggled back to the park, gaining attention from everyone they passed – walkers with their faces hidden by thick anoraks twisting awkwardly to stare, each gaze an accusation, as though they could all read the fresh secret she carried.
In hindsight, she had wondered if things would have been different if she had told him straightaway. There were a thousand moments she could have confessed the truth. On that track, the second he mentioned Fairbridge. Or when they reached the car park and realised Leo wouldn’t be able to drive himself home. Instead, she let him climb into her car and gave him a lift. She had parked outside a small restaurant at the southern end of town and helped him through the nondescript red door next to it, and up the stairs into his first-floor flat. Even as she knew she shouldn’t be there she asked him what he needed and collected ice from the freezer, trying not to absorb the surroundings, a trespasser into a life she shouldn’t be part of.
As he lay on the sofa she couldn’t bear it any more. She had lied, told him she had a shift that afternoon, apologised and said she should get back. When she was about to leave he had said, ‘Georgia,’ and beckoned her closer, and when he could reach her hand he had pulled her to him and kissed her and said, ‘Thank you. I’ll see you soon.’
For an instant it was Georgia and Leo again, and nothing and no one else. She had a short-lived swell of hope. Was there any way, despite what she had learned, that they could keep themselves separate from the rest of the world?
Once she was home, the day had passed in a jumble of realities. The emotions when she replayed Leo kissing her at the lake. The confusion she felt when she imagined him at school, taking a class, with Georgia surrounded by her friends. She saw the faces of Sophia and Bethany and Danny and Eddie Miles laughing hysterically at the thought of Georgia and a teacher out on a date. She relived Leo pulling her close and kissing her, and his obliviousness to the true scenario they had found themselves in made her feel sick.
She didn’t sleep. The next morning he sent her a text. His ankle was much better. Could he cook her a meal to say thank you for looking after him? Tonight?
She would go and tell him, she decided. She didn’t know why she dressed up for the occasion, choosing a silk top and short skirt and adding a few sprays of Dolce & Gabbana, as though she were heading out on a proper date. Or why she concealed her outfit under her coat as she told her parents she was heading for Bethany’s house, and might be late. Perhaps if she could just get to know him a little bit better, spend extra time with him. If she could be certain he was as in love with her as she already was with him – well, then surely they would plot together how to keep their secret rather than let it tear them apart. She was about to turn eighteen, not under age, and they had got to know each other in complete innocence, hadn’t they?
In order to think like this she had to shut out everybody else. There wasn’t space for imagining her parents’ reactions, or Sophia’s, or Zac’s, or people at school. At home she found it near impossible to escape a succession of imaginary chiding voices, but as she made her way to Leo’s flat it began to feel like only the two of them mattered.
He didn’t seem to worry that she was quiet over dinner. He talked a lot instead, telling her about himself, his family in Dorset, his first job in London where he’d been promoted year after year. How proud he was to have been head of department by the age of twenty-six. All things she knew she shouldn’t be hearing. All things she was desperate to know.
He was older than she had thought. But now she was here, she didn’t care. The seafood was delicious, and the wine had relaxed her. By the time they moved to the sofa she had begun to smile more, to laugh as they remembered the state of themselves by the time they got down from Loughrigg, to tell him about her own running ambitions – carefully, of course, since every piece of information had to be weighed now, so the secret didn’t come out accidentally, only when she was ready. When they were in so deep that it wouldn’t matter.
And then she was topless and his hands were running over her breasts and his warm breath came in bursts on her skin. She’d had one other brief sexual experience, but it had been nothing like this. Leo pulled off his T-shirt, and his gaze ran over her with such lust that she shivered and pressed her palms against his chest as he lifted her onto a desk in the corner of the room, next to a window that looked down from the flat onto the street below. Her skirt was up round her hips as he buried his face in her neck and she glanced between a crack in the curtains to s
ee a bus pulling up beneath them, tyres sloshing in the rain. Reds and yellows and whites blurred and bounced off every soaked shop window and pavestone as the lights of town refracted in the rain water. Some boys fell off the bus and cut through the puddles towards a laneway, jostling in a friendly way with their shoulders hunched. She felt separated from it all by much more than a pane of glass. It was so easy to forget everything else, and to believe that this was all that mattered.
Afterwards, she slept for a while in his bed. She woke around midnight and texted her parents, telling them she would be staying over with Bethany, and then snuggled back down next to him. But when she came to again with the dawn, the world had changed. All the ecstatic certainty she had hidden behind in the low-lit evening became a tumult of emotions that began to face her down as the daylight grew stronger.
He was asleep next to her. The dawn light coming through the curtains gilded his features, their perfect contours giving her goose bumps. In the blissful hours they had spent together she had been aware of little else but how much they wanted each other. Yet now she was terrified. She could not keep lying to him while falling ever deeper in love.
She had stifled a sob. She didn’t want him to wake up and find her like this – with guilt written all over her. She climbed quietly out of bed and pulled on her clothes, all the time watching him, his features becalmed by sleep.
When she was ready to go she took one final look back, her chest heaving at the decision to leave. But what else could she do? While the truth had been sidelined last night, she knew they had gone too far. She could not live in the lie any longer. Nor could she confess while lying naked in his bed.
Surely he would understand, because she could not imagine anyone else so perfect, so meant for her. The blanket nestled against his waist, and a beam of golden light ran down across his face and along his muscled torso. He was so beautiful that she had felt for her phone in her pocket and flicked it onto the camera, framing him in the little square, knowing that although the moment couldn’t last, she could preserve the memory in this picture forever.
Then she had slipped out while Leo slept, breaking into a jog on the way home and not stopping until she reached her front door. She thought she could hide in the house, forget her decisions, but when she got home it was obviously too late for that. This wasn’t something she could outrun.
She had paced around her room all day, ignoring her family as much as she could, not able to stomach heading down for dinner, neither for food nor conversation. She had seen Leo’s texts, checking she was okay, telling her he’d had a great night, asking when he could see her again. He couldn’t hide his eagerness – he wanted more, just as much as Georgia did. She didn’t reply. Instead, she had Googled student–teacher affairs, craving comfort, but finding that even though she was over the age of consent, he was still in a ‘position of trust’. They had just done something illegal – if anyone found out, Leo would be in big trouble. She had put him in a terrible position, and he was oblivious to her deception. After that, she had gone into the bathroom and dry-retched.
She stalled for two days, trying to figure out what to do. It was too big a burden to carry alone. She went through a list of people she could confide in who might have some treasured piece of advice, some neat and easy way through this that she hadn’t thought of, a way of setting things right without causing pain. But when Leo sent her a text, asking if she would meet him at the spot they had first run into one another, the section he now knew as the spirit road, she had said yes. She knew that this couldn’t go on any longer. Leo had to know the truth.
• • •
He was waiting for her as she ran up to him, and one look at his face told her there was nothing left to confess.
‘I saw a photo of you at school yesterday,’ he said, his tone low and unforgiving. ‘Now I know why you’ve been avoiding me.’
She stared at him, mute and ashamed.
‘You knew, Georgia, and yet you came to my house – you let us . . . we . . .’ He could hardly say the words. As their eyes met, his distress was so acute that she felt her throat constrict. The anger in his gaze could not conceal his pain.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, her words faint and her head swimming, but as soon as she began to speak he held up a hand to stop her.
‘This is a huge, huge promotion for me. I haven’t even started this job yet, and now I’m fucked. Do you know what you’ve done?’
‘I’m so sorry.’ She began to cry. ‘I’m so, so –’
‘Then why, Georgia?’ he interrupts. ‘Was this just a game to you – something to laugh about with your friends?’
‘Of course not,’ she wailed, ‘it wasn’t like that at all.’
‘So you haven’t told anyone about us?’ he asked, glaring at her, his hands on his hips.
‘No.’
He nodded. ‘Then, if you care anything at all for me, don’t. There’s nothing to tell any more.’
Her breath caught at his words. She took a step towards him, tears cascading freely down her face, but he waved a hand as though dismissing her. ‘Stay away from me, Georgia,’ he said, before he turned to go. ‘Just keep right away.’
• • •
She was in agony during the two weeks before term commenced, an agony of lost love combined with a fear of what was to come. It was almost a relief to get to the start-of-term assembly and see him up there in the rows of teachers, watch him introduced as a new member of the school, hear her friends comment on what a hottie he was.
The day passed in a daze. She had never felt so ridiculous in her striped blazer. She held her breath as she reached every corner, aware that Leo and her mother were now in close proximity. She couldn’t concentrate when people spoke to her. She threw her lunch in the bin.
She tried to tell herself that everything else was another life. But each time she pictured his face close to hers she knew that what had happened between them had been real. She had no doubt he’d had genuine feelings for her – surely he couldn’t switch them off in an instant.
By lunchtime she couldn’t bear it. She had walked up to the sports hall and found him with a group of table-tennis players. She had watched him for a while in the shadows of the doorway, and when the games finished she had loitered while people came out. When everyone had gone, she slipped inside the hall.
He was putting equipment away, and as soon as he saw her, he stopped.
‘What are you doing here?’
‘I needed to see you.’
Neither of them moved. Then he turned away and began to collect more bats and balls. She walked over and put her hand on his. ‘Leo?’
He whipped his arm away as though her touch had stung. ‘Stop!’ he cried, his gaze shooting across to the open doorway. She followed his glance, to see one of the students coming back in. ‘Forgot my jumper,’ the boy said, and hurried across to a row of chairs, eyes averted, collecting his clothing and heading straight back out. Until he disappeared, until she exhaled, Georgia hadn’t realised she was holding her breath.
‘For god’s sake, Georgia. Come to my office after school,’ Leo had said. ‘Now, go.’
She was thrilled to have another opportunity to see him. She had counted every second of the afternoon, unable to catch her breath, lightheaded by the time the final bell rang. She needed to talk to him before they met up somewhere with other people around. Although he wasn’t her regular sport teacher, who knew when he might take one of her classes unexpectedly. This was only the first day; she couldn’t go on like this.
She waited until most people had gone, before heading to the main building where the offices were. She marched up to one of the forbidding wooden doors and knocked.
‘Come in,’ a voice called.
She entered, closing the door quietly and coming to stand at the opposite side of the desk.
He said nothing, glowering at her. A fiery flush began to spread from her face down through her whole body. He was waiting, but she could not find an
y words to try to appease him. The room began to fill with the weight of expectation, as though an unseen poison was finding its way through every crack and crevice, coming closer, ready to choke her, leaving her with no way out.
She watched him move around the desk, his expression changing to contempt. As he approached, her exhilaration drained away; fear was taking its place. He was acting so differently to the person she had known. She felt her legs start to weaken and the word she uttered came out so quietly that at first she was not sure she’d said it at all.
‘Leo.’
She wondered if he would see how close she was to fainting – if she did, would he catch her? – but when he got near enough that his whisper would only be heard by her, he stared straight into her eyes and said, ‘Do not ever call me by my first name. I’m warning you, Georgia: stay away from me, and I’ll stay away from you. I won’t warn you again.’
29
ZAC
Zac is sitting in the cobbled square in the centre of town, summoning the energy to take the short ride up to school. It’s nice here, away from the tension. Everyone is getting on with life, there’s no sign of the apocalypse that Zac is certain awaits him.
He had stopped at a bakery and eaten two sausage rolls in quick succession, ignoring the vibration of Georgia’s phone as three more calls from Sophia went unanswered. However, when he realises his own phone is beeping in his pocket, he pulls it out. It’s Maddie.