by Lisa Jewell
POLICE: ‘It’ being …?
JM: Our mutual sexual attraction.
POLICE: So he intended for you to have sex that night?
JM: That’s what I took it to mean, yes.
POLICE: And you intended to have sex that night?
JM: I wasn’t sure. I hadn’t made up my mind.
POLICE: And did you? Did you and Mr Fitzwilliam have sex that night?
JM: I would prefer not to answer the question.
49
22 March
‘You know,’ said Freddie’s dad, later that evening, ‘I’m starting to really like your hair. Genuinely. It suits you. You’ll be fighting the girls off now, I reckon.’
Freddie threw his dad a withering look. ‘That is the single most hopelessly inept dad thing that you have ever said. And you have said a lot of hopelessly inept dad things.’
His dad laughed. ‘Just trying to be, you know …’
Freddie put his hand in front of his father’s face. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Just no. You’re not cut out for this kind of repartee, so it’s best you don’t try.’
‘OK,’ said his dad. ‘OK. I’ll back off. But you do look very handsome.’
Freddie nodded the compliment away. This conversation was unnerving him. When he wasn’t with his dad, when he was thinking about his dad, or looking at the marks on his mum’s neck or talking about his dad with Jenna Tripp, the man loomed in his consciousness like an angry bear: dark and lethal, capable of anything. But here, in the soft evening light, the radio murmuring in the background, his dad sitting with him, cool and calm in a baby blue lambswool sweater, being the sweet to Freddie’s sour, the concept of his dad being a predator or a wife-beater – it all seemed mildly ridiculous.
‘There’s a girl that I like,’ he found himself saying. ‘Her name’s Romola.’
‘Oh!’ His dad glanced up from his laptop, his eyes wide. ‘I see. And who is this girl?’
‘She’s from St Mildred’s. She’s in year ten. She’s new.’
‘And?’ said his dad. ‘What’s the deal? Have you asked her out?’
‘No,’ Freddie said. ‘Not yet. I want to ask her to a dance.’
‘How very old-fashioned.’
‘No it’s not,’ said Freddie. ‘What’s old-fashioned about asking a girl to a dance? It’s timeless, isn’t it? What about you?’ he began, sensing a space in the conversation to dig a little. ‘How did you ask Mum out for your first date?’
‘Well, I would say there was never really a first-date scenario. We just got chatting on a bus. She recognised me from her school days.’
‘You mean she was at your school?’
He watched his father closely for signs of bristling. ‘At my school? You mean, where I taught?’
‘Yes.’
Freddie saw definite signs of bristling.
‘No. Well, not exactly. There may have been a brief overlap, between me starting and her leaving. But I didn’t know her then. And then we bumped into each other on the bus, and the rest is history.’
‘When she was nineteen?’
‘Yes. When she was nineteen.’
‘And you were thirty-five?’
‘Yes, or thereabouts.’
‘Did anyone mind?’
‘Mind?’
‘Yes. Like her family? Did they mind that she was dating her old teacher? Didn’t they think it was a bit weird?’
‘No,’ his dad said, too fast, too firm. ‘It wasn’t like that. I wasn’t your mum’s teacher. I never taught her. She just happened to be at the school where I worked. That’s all there was to it.’ He banged down the lid of his laptop and got to his feet.
‘Have you ever had an affair, Dad?’
‘What!’
‘I mean, have you ever been unfaithful to Mum?’
‘What on earth …? I mean, why on earth would you even ask a question like that?’
‘Because women seem to like you. And Mum is a bit annoying. And maybe sometimes you regret choosing her and wish you could be with someone else.’
His father shook his head slowly. ‘Freddie Fitzwilliam, you do say the strangest things.’
‘Why is that strange? I think it’s perfectly rational. Loads of men have affairs. Even really ugly men with crap jobs have affairs. And you’re … well, you’re not ugly and you don’t have a crap job.’
‘Gosh, thank you, Freddie. I’m flattered.’
‘It wasn’t supposed to be a compliment.’
‘No, Freddie. I know it wasn’t.’ His father paused and closed his laptop. He slid it into its padded case and looked at Freddie. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I have never been unfaithful to your mother. And neither have I ever wanted to be.’
‘Not even with Viva?’ he said, speculatively.
‘Viva?’
‘Yes. The girl from the school where you taught whose mum was hitting you in the Lake District. It would explain why she was so angry with you.’
He stared at his father unflinchingly. It was possibly the worst thing of all the bad things that he had ever said to his father. He saw a muscle twitch in the corner of his mouth. The soft shawl of geniality was slipping. There was the angry bear. Right there.
‘I have no idea what you’re talking about. And I have no idea who Viva is. Or was. But I have never had an affair with a student and I most certainly would never dream of such a thing.’
50
23 March
Jenna hadn’t recognised him at first. He’d had all his hair shaved off and he looked slightly alarming, like the sort of person who might snatch your phone out of your hand and run. For a moment she thought about pretending she hadn’t seen him. He was such an awkward boy and his awkwardness made her feel uncomfortable. But she allowed him to catch up with her and he arrived a moment later at her side, breathlessly.
‘Jenna,’ he said. ‘Jenna Tripp.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘That’s me.’
‘I need your advice.’
She looked from left to right to see if anyone else was witness to this strange exchange. ‘Right,’ she responded cagily.
‘I want to ask a girl to a ball. It’s not you, so don’t panic. Although you are pretty. But you’re too old for me. And too tall.’
‘Right …’ she said again.
‘I wanted to ask you, in your experience of being an attractive girl, how would you like someone to invite you to a ball?’
She narrowed her eyes at him, gauging if she was perhaps being pranked in some way. But he looked back at her guilelessly and so she sighed and considered his question. ‘That depends if you know if she likes you or not.’
‘She doesn’t know I exist.’
‘Right. So she won’t be expecting it?’
‘No. She won’t be expecting it.’
‘In that case,’ she said, ‘I wouldn’t ask her face-to-face. I’d text her. Or message her. Give her a chance to find a nice way to say no. If she wants to say no.’
He nodded, frantically, his eyes wide and unblinking. ‘Great,’ he said, ‘that’s absolutely great. You’ve been … great.’
‘No problem,’ she said.
He turned away from her and then back again. ‘I’m going to school now. I’ll see you around.’
She watched him for a while as he walked double pace up the hill towards the city. She smiled.
Jenna wondered if the rest of their friendship group knew about Bess’s ‘pregnancy’. She wondered if they even knew about her having sex in the first place. Maybe it wasn’t Mr Fitzwilliam after all? Maybe it was just a boy? A boy from this school or maybe a boy from another school, a posh school, maybe, like Freddie’s? Maybe it was Jed? But no, Bess had said she thought Jed was an idiot. But still, if it was just a boy and she’d had sex with him and now she was potentially pregnant, why had she chosen to shut Jenna out at this point of her life, the point, surely, where your best friend was the person you wanted to keep closest?
Maybe Bess thought that Jenna was a prude; maybe she was
worried that she’d be judgemental, that she would disapprove somehow of the choices she was making?
Maybe Bess had outgrown her?
But the idea was preposterous. Jenna had always been the ‘grown-up’ one in their friendship. She’d always kept Bess afloat, stopped her from getting into trouble, explained things to her about the world and how it worked. And Bess, with no siblings and a mother who was more like a fun-loving big sister than a mum, had needed that in her life. There was no way that Bess was emotionally ready to step outside of Jenna’s influence. There was no way that she could make good decisions without Jenna’s guidance. Surely.
Jenna saw Tiana and Ruby coming out of the girls’ toilets after lunch on Thursday.
‘Is Bess with you?’ she asked.
‘No,’ said Tiana, ‘haven’t seen her since food tech.’
‘Did you not have lunch with her?’
‘No.’
‘What’s going on with you, Jen?’ Ruby laughed. ‘Why are you stalking her?’
‘I’m not stalking her. It’s just, you do know there’s stuff going on with her, don’t you?’
Jenna watched their reactions for a glimmer of understanding or subterfuge in their facial expressions or body language. But they both stared at her blankly and Tiana said, ‘Like what?’
‘Nothing,’ Jenna said. ‘Just personal stuff. I thought she might have told you. Don’t worry about it.’
Ruby’s eyes widened. ‘Tell us! What? What’s going on with her?’
But Jenna headed away from them, leaving Ruby and Tiana standing staring after her, eyes wide and hungry for scraps.
It was almost worse, Jenna thought, that the people Bess had been hanging out with for the past few weeks didn’t know what was going on with her. It meant, she theorised, that things were clearly at the worse end of the theoretical scale. If it was just a boy, and Bess was simply too embarrassed to tell Jenna that she’d had her sexual awakening two years earlier than planned, she would have told her other friends. The fact that she hadn’t set alarm bells jangling in Jenna’s mind.
She went to her locker to collect her books for double geography and then she headed towards room 138. She passed the offices on her way there and peered surreptitiously, as she always did, towards Mr Fitzwilliam’s door at the far end. As she did so the door opened and there was Bess leaving his office, smiling brightly, Mr Fitzwilliam’s hand upon her arm.
‘I will,’ she heard her saying. ‘You know I will.’
‘That’s my girl,’ she heard him reply, ‘that’s my girl.’
51
Freddie wrapped the dress from Urban Outfitters in some tissue and slid it into his rucksack.
He’d ironed his school shirt the night before even though it was a non-iron shirt, and he was wearing his best trousers, the ones that didn’t need the hem letting down or have encrusted acrylic paint from art class splattered all over them. As a nod to his new sense of vague rebellion, he wore black trainers instead of his crappy, ugly lace-up things that were so worn out they slipped off his heels when he ran in them. If a teacher picked him up on the breach of uniform policy he would simply say that the other ones were broken, which wasn’t too far from the truth. He touched his fingertip against the rim of his dad’s aftershave bottle and pressed the scent into the dips of his throat. He flossed his teeth. He sprayed on extra deodorant. He used a dab of his mum’s foundation on a spot, realised it drew more attention to the spot than the spot on its own, and wiped it off again.
And then he headed to school, his jaw set with determination, ready to crawl through the eight hours between now and home-time.
It was four fifteen and he was standing outside St Mildred’s School, watching the girls oozing through the gates, a river of royal blue and grey, idly tossed hair and Fjällräven rucksacks, laddered tights, Skinnydip phone cases and loud, loud voices.
Jenna Tripp had told him to write to Romola Brook. She’d told him that that would make it easier for Romola Brook to say no. Which was the exact and precise reason why Freddie was standing outside Romola’s school about to ask her to come to the ball with him, face-to-face.
He straightened up at the sight of one of the bitchy-looking girls he remembered from the night he’d stood outside her house, the one who’d modelled the Urban Outfitters dress on Instagram. Her name was Louisa. And sure enough, following behind was Romola. For a worrying moment he thought maybe they were all going somewhere together and that he’d have to spend an hour standing outside Caffè Nero waiting for them to finish. But to his relief he heard Romola say, ‘See you tomorrow,’ and watched as she peeled off from the bitchy girl and he followed her as far as the end of the road before falling into step with her.
He’d practised this all night lying in bed. He’d run through it a hundred, two hundred times, finessed the timings and the nuances and the precise wording of the thing. And he was feeling cool and he was feeling fine. The very worst thing that could happen would be that she would say no. Rejection was a fact of life. It wasn’t a nice fact of life. But it was a fact. And Freddie was bright enough to know he had to accept that if he ever wanted to get anywhere.
‘Excuse me,’ he opened.
She turned at his approach and he saw her do a double take, probably assessing whether or not she should be scared, then seeing the emblem on his blazer and wondering if maybe she should know him.
‘I’m sorry to bother you,’ he said, ‘my name’s Freddie. Freddie Fitzwilliam.’ He offered her his hand to shake and she stared at it uncertainly for a moment before turning to see who might be watching, then gave him hers. It was limp and icy cold, bones as thin as kindling. ‘I’m at Poleash Hall,’ he said then, with a flourish, pointing at his blazer, ‘which is clearly totally obvious.’
‘Do I know you?’ she asked.
‘You’ve probably seen me around,’ he said, boldly going off script. ‘But no. You don’t know me. Or at least not yet.’
He smiled and she looked at him pensively as though scared of what he might say next.
‘Listen,’ he said, ‘and I have no idea if this is a good idea or a bad idea but I’ve got a ticket for the spring ball tomorrow night and I was going to try and be really cool and just show up by myself like an independent dude. But then I lost my nerve. And I just wondered, I’ve seen you around, and I think you’re remarkably beautiful and I wondered if you might like to come with me?’
‘You mean, as your date?’
‘Yes,’ he said, firmly. ‘As my date.’
He saw her face fall by just a tiny degree and he knew, he just knew she was already mentally flipping through her stock of polite let-downs. ‘Or not,’ he said, quickly. ‘Doesn’t have to be a date. I could just be, you know, your chaperone.’
She smiled at this and he mentally fist-bumped himself for hauling it back so smoothly.
‘That’s a very old-fashioned idea.’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It’s retro. A kind of vintage thing. You know.’
She smiled again and he could feel the weight of the thing tipping back in his favour.
‘Freddie?’ she said.
‘Yes. Freddie. And you are?’
‘Romola,’ she said.
‘Romola,’ he repeated, as though he’d never before heard the name. ‘What a great name.’
‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘I was named after an actress.’
‘Called Romola?’
She laughed. ‘Yes!’ she said ‘Called Romola!’
God, he felt ten feet tall, this was going so well. He’d known it would.
‘So,’ he said, letting his hand drop into his pocket and leaning into his heels, ‘what do you think? Would you allow me to chaperone you to the spring ball?’
‘But not a date?’
‘Well, we could play that by ear. Maybe. See how I do. We could always upgrade it to a date? Halfway through.’
He was knocking this one out of the ballpark. Completely.
But then he saw that look pass ov
er her face again, the look that said I am not 100 per cent sure about you.
‘I don’t know,’ she was saying, ‘I’m not really looking for a date. Or a chaperone. I was just going to hang with my friends.’ She looked scared when she said this, as though she thought he might punch her in the face for rejecting him.
He played his last and his best hand. ‘Look,’ he said. ‘No pressure. And I totally understand what you’re saying. I myself have only very recently got into the idea of dating. But, whatever you decide to do, this …’ He unzipped his bag and pulled out the tissue-wrapped dress. ‘Is for you.’
‘Oh my God,’ she said, looking at it with wide eyes. ‘Oh my God. What is it?’
‘It’s a gift. Something I saw and thought of you. Take it.’ He held it out closer to her. ‘If you don’t like it, you could give it to a friend.’
‘I can’t,’ she said. ‘I can’t take a gift from you. I don’t even know you.’
‘Please. I insist.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘I can’t.’
‘Are you worried that if you accept the gift then you’ll feel like you owe me something?’
She nodded.
‘Well, you have my word, Romola Brook, that you can take this gift and walk away and never acknowledge my existence again.’
Her mood changed again. He bridled. ‘How do you know my surname?’
‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Yes. Fatal error.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean, I was trying to be cool and make out like I didn’t know who you were. But I totally know who you are.’
‘You do?’
‘Yes. I suppose that was obvious though, as I’d bought you a present.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘That makes sense.’
‘So,’ he said. ‘Will you accept it?’
She nodded, awkwardly, and said, ‘Yes. OK.’ Then she looked up at him and fixed him with her grey-blue eyes and said, ‘Did you send me the brown skirt?’
‘Yes,’ he said.
‘So you know where I live?’
‘Yes,’ he said again.
‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Right.’