Of all the crappy reasons to be sneaking around at night. “That woke you up, did it?”
“It was a gift,” he says. “From someone special. I wanted to get it back.”
From someone special. I step back and gather my stuff together. My necklace falls from the pile and lands right at his feet. He picks it up and dangles it from his hand, the pendant spinning softly. “That’s unusual. I admired it when I saw you wearing it yesterday. Is it a pearl?”
“A black South Sea pearl. The chlorine in the pool would damage it so I take it off to swim.” I hold out my hand but he’s still examining it in the half-light. I don’t want anyone else handling it. It belonged to my mother.
“May I?” He lifts my hair and fastens it around my neck. I can feel goose pimples spreading down my arms as he says quietly, “So how can I apologize for nearly drowning you? How about a trip out at the weekend? You can show me the bustling metropolis of Ashburton.”
If he hadn’t just told me about the ‘someone special’ I’d think he was asking me out. But he must mean as friends. Christ, I’m turning into Keira, losing my senses over a good-looking guy turning on the charm. I think it’s better for all concerned if I don’t get close to someone. And yet Dan…
“It’s late, so…” I point at the door. “Make sure you pull it shut when you go.” Before he can answer I slip out and run across the damp grass back to the accommodation blocks.
*
Back in my room, I realize the encounter with Dan has made me even less inclined to sleep. I sit up in my pyjamas and switch the light back on. I retrieve the two cards from their hiding place and look at them carefully again. The mourning card I know you didn’t jump addressed to Hanna and the postcard THINGS ARE SELDOM WHAT THEY SEEM slipped into my bag.
Puzzling, but should I be worried by them? Are they connected, or is it a silly prank by someone gearing up for Halloween? The shrine and the vigil have encouraged people to be melodramatic and morbid. That’s all it is.
Though it’s funny how they’ve started just when Dan arrived.
8
Try the following memory exercise: Read each word once. Close the book and write down as many as you can remember:
friendship
open
scream
guts
drink
window
blood
guilt
Work Your Memory
I hate the great outdoors. Maybe because I grew up with a dog-turd-covered triangle of grass opposite our house to explore, but probably because I prefer the certainty of streets and buildings. I’d be a brilliant London taxi driver (aside from my lack of interpersonal skills and driving licence) because I actually have ‘The Knowledge’ of London streets and routes. Black-cab drivers take three years to learn it, zooming around on a moped with a clipboard. I don’t want to brag, but I covered their Blue Book in a few days.
I know the Ordnance Survey maps for the area around Dartmeet. The roads and towns are easy enough, but the moor itself is tricky. Too much empty space with no distinguishing features. The landscape changes according to the season, and one wet bog looks pretty much the same as all the others. Large areas of the map are plain green with contour lines and nothing more than ‘cairns’ or ‘stones (remains of)’ marked. How are you meant to have a clear picture in your head?
But there’s no avoiding Dartmoor with Hanna’s Hike. Keira and Maya are in overdrive organizing it with Dr Harrison, who was probably in the Scouts. He thought it would ‘do me good’ to be one of the organizers and to enter a team. It is not ‘doing me good’. So far, even this meeting is annoying. Why did it have to be outside, staring at the moor and shivering in the drizzle? He’s working out a route, pointing at the distant tor, a mass of granite at the highest point we can see from the college grounds. “Shall we include the old mine-workings before sweeping round past the reservoir?” he asks. “It’s good to have points of interest.”
Points of interest? It’s a wilderness.
“Then we can carry on along the river and over Ryders Bridge?” he adds.
I’m only here to show willing and convince Harrison and Barker that I’m fine. I didn’t know I’d actually have to contribute. Luckily Maya’s here, and she can’t be quiet for more than two minutes, so she can answer his route-planning suggestions while I nod wisely. Shouts travel from the rugby match on the playing fields. There are plenty of kids who’ve come here from minor public schools and think a weekend isn’t a weekend without the chance to grind your classmate’s face into the mud. I switched from team sports to the shooting club last term. There’s something strangely satisfying about firing at little discs pretending to be pheasants. The Saturday running club has already streamed past in a blaze of Lycra. Running isn’t for me either. I soon pulled out of that – I’m not keen on things I’m bad at. I’ll stick to swimming. By myself. I have perfectionist traits. I brood forever on my failures, reliving coming last in a race over and over. Teachers feed you a lie that it’s not about the winning or the losing, it’s the taking part. That’s so not true. I only play at anything if I have a fighting chance of winning.
I yawn after my lack of sleep last night. Keira’s airhead grasp of organization isn’t firing me up to stay alert. Her latest idea is to link up with the marines from the Commando Training Centre at Lympstone.
“They’re always doing exercises on the moor and they help with the Ten Tors competition,” says Keira. “And they’re hot,” she mouths while Dr Harrison disappears behind a map he’s having trouble refolding.
“But this is our challenge for people who actually knew Hanna,” says Maya.
“I agree with Maya. This is a Dartmeet College event. A low-key event,” says Dr Harrison. “Not an endurance race.”
“It’s Hanna’s Hike,” says Maya, who would have gone for anything we’d come up with as long as it had alliteration and a T-shirt opportunity. Hanna’s Hula-Hooping, Hanna’s Hopscotch, Hanna’s Hair-Straightening. Hanna’s face smashed into the cobbles flashes into my memory again. I can see the mess. I can smell the mess.
“Jess? Jess?” Maya’s waving her hands in my face. “Tune in, what do you think? Bring in the marines or not?”
“Not,” I say, trying to look like I’m bothered either way.
“That’s decided, then. We need marshals, water points…”
I tune out again. I don’t want all this trivia swimming around my head forever. Turns out Hanna’s more trouble dead than alive.
I really don’t care what colour the T-shirts will be, but to stop Maya and Keira going through all the options I lie and say that Hanna’s favourite colour was lime-green. Maya looks terrible in citrus colours and I can tell she’s wavering so I add a few lip quivers to seal the deal.
They fix the date for Saturday November 5th. Mainly so that there can be fireworks and sparklers afterwards like we’re a bunch of ten-year-olds.
“We can have a huge bonfire in the paddock and get the kitchens to do hot dogs and toffee apples. Perfect,” says Keira.
“Do you think Hanna would like that?” Maya asks me, with that intense face she does so well, her brown eyes fixing on mine.
Hanna’s dead. She doesn’t think, she doesn’t express opinions, she doesn’t have to run round the moor freezing her bits off to earn a jacket potato and a look at a Catherine wheel. But I don’t say this. I play nice. “She’d have loved it,” I say in my most sensitive tone of voice. That is partially true. Certainly not the hike on Dartmoor, but she’d have liked being wrapped up in her Danish jumpers and hats and the whole ‘hygge’ vibe of fire and candles and hot drinks outside in the crisp air.
Most of all, she’d have liked being the centre of attention.
Hanna always did.
9
Remembering events is different to remembering facts. You get just one shot to ingrain an event.
Principles of Memory – Professor A.E. Coleman
I need to get supplies from town. I
say ‘town’, but Ashburton is basically two bisecting streets with limited shopping opportunities. If you need a waxed jacket, a cream tea and a Dartmoor tea towel, it is the place to go. Not so great for a seventeen-year-old. But needs must. I can’t hide in Dartmeet College all the time or I’d die of boredom.
After the swimming-pool episode I’ve been avoiding Dan but he’s standing outside the dining room rattling car keys. “Jess, Ashburton awaits,” he says, as though I agreed to go with him.
Keira can’t hide her surprise and her usually perfect pout settles into a thin line. Excellent. Why shouldn’t he be interested in hanging out with me? It’s obvious that Keira’s put out and regrets committing to make Hanna’s Hike posters all afternoon with Maya. So although I hadn’t planned on going anywhere with Dan, it suddenly has the added bonus of annoying Keira and freeing me from an afternoon dodging the dimwits.
“You didn’t mention you had a car,” I say, pleased that we won’t be having to take the rickety bus that takes three times as long. Maybe Dan isn’t so bad. A rich kid who can drive could definitely come in handy. But when we reach the car park and I see the actual vehicle, I’m not so excited. It’s a rust-bucket ancient Mini.
I think Dan can sense my disappointment by the way I’m staring at the car and making no effort to open the door and get in it. “Did you think I’d have a Porsche or a Ferrari?” he says.
“Is it even safe? I mean, should we take the bus anyway? Do you even fit in there?”
Dan lays a hand on the roof of the car. “Now we’re hurt, aren’t we, Uja?”
“Uja?”
He points at the registration: UJA 658K.
He unlocks the door by physically turning the key – no electronic beeping here. But the passenger door needs pushing open from the inside. “Take a seat, while I warm her up.”
He turns the ignition and fiddles with the choke. “Sometimes I have to flip the bonnet and wallop the solenoid with a hammer,” he says proudly. The engine whirrs into action. “But not today. She must like you.” He gently revs the accelerator. “Look at the windows – wind-up handles. The back ones you push out on a hinge. Vintage.”
“And this is a good feature?” I say.
“Wait till you see how she drives. You’ll love her too. Have you passed your test?”
I don’t want to push my luck and apply for a licence. It might attract the wrong sort of attention – from Coleman. “Not yet,” I say. “Busy, busy.”
Dan eases out of the parking space and on to the long, tree-lined drive down to the road. His enormous frame fills the car, his seat pushed back as far as it’ll go. “I fixed her up myself. She was a real heap when I got her. My dad bought me Meccano and electronics kits when I was a kid. This is a big version of that.”
His whole face has become animated, excited. About a car. I would never have guessed he was a petrolhead.
“I like seeing how things work. Underneath. You don’t get that with sealed-unit modern cars.” He pats the dashboard affectionately.
“But you want to be a psychologist,” I say. “Not an engineer or a mechanic?”
“Stripping down an engine and putting it back together so it works better – pretty much the same thing as psychotherapy.” The clutch groans as he grapples with the gearstick. “It’s all seeing what goes on underneath the surface.”
I exhale as always on leaving the Dartmeet College bubble for a few hours. It’s one of those rare sunny days with blue skies and changing colours in the gorse and the sprinkles of woodland. We pause for a couple of Dartmoor ponies as they meander across the road, unhurried by the gentle beep of the horn.
We motor on, thundering over the occasional cattle grid until Dan slows for a ‘Blocked Road’ sign as a traffic policeman flags us down.
“Stupid pony again,” says the police officer. “Took out a farm vehicle which spilled silage all over everywhere. Take the high moor road instead.”
We pull over so Dan can rummage under my seat for a dog-eared road atlas. “I’m not sure Uja would survive a collision with a furry pony,” he says. “No satnav and there’s no phone signal. We’ll have to try the old-fashioned, vintage method: map-reading.”
The road map’s pages are crinkled and stained with coffee. I don’t need it anyway. I chuck it on the back seat.
“It’s that way,” I say, pointing at the small turning off behind us.
“So did the bus often take this route? I can’t imagine it did,” says Dan as we bump along the track. “And I know you don’t go running. Do you have an amazing sense of direction?”
“I’ve looked at the map before.”
“What? And that’s enough?”
I nod.
“So have you got a photographic memory? There was a boy at my junior school with that. Is that why you knew the Japanese word the other day?”
I hesitate. I’ve never denied having a photographic memory if someone asks outright, but not come clean on how good it is. It’s the least exceptional part of my memory, after all. The autobiographical side, that’s the really bizarre bit. “I don’t like to show off about it,” I say. “Turn right here.”
“Why don’t you ever talk about it?” he says. “If I had a photographic memory, I mean, wow.”
“What? You’d never shut up? Oh, wait, you never shut up anyway.”
“Funny!” He flicks my arm with his fingers. “Can you really remember that map? All of it? Do you see it in your head?”
“Sort of. The roads are easy. The moor’s more difficult – not enough features.”
“Can you count cards? Could you win us loads of money in a casino?”
“No,” I lie. “If this is turning into an extended road trip we need some music.” I’m regretting telling him about my memory now. I fumble with the car radio and hissing static of Radio Devon until I work out the cassette player. The Beatles blast through the tinny speakers. “Retro quaint.”
“It must be useful,” says Dan. “I’m hopeless at remembering facts.”
“It doesn’t mean I’m super-brainy,” I say. “But I can revise well for exams. I joined in January part way through last year but I caught up quickly. It helps.”
“I bet it does. I could do with it now.”
“I can’t necessarily write a good essay or solve theorems. I can regurgitate information well, that’s all.”
Except that it’s not all. I’m the mutant who remembers everything.
“Which can be mistaken for genius,” says Dan.
“I saw a TV series once which paraded quirky ten-year-olds in bow ties and velvet jackets and tested them,” I say. “For the tiger parents it was all about hours of tuition, rote learning and memory testing so that they could wow the world with the correct spelling of ‘tenesmus’ and know pi to the nth place. That’s not the same thing as genius.”
“I guess for genius you need original thought,” he says.
“Solving the antibiotic-resistance problem, showing the world in a new way,” I say. “More than knowing a back road to Ashburton.”
“I wouldn’t say no to it, though.” He slows down on a ridge. “Look at that view. You can see all the way to the coast. Beautiful.”
“Where’s home?” I ask.
“Not so far away. Cornwall. I grew up by the sea. You?”
“Suburbia: tarmac and wheelie bins.”
“We’ll have to go to the beach on our next trip. Get learning the route.”
Next trip?
“I like having my very own satnav person.” Dan smiles over at me and I feel a flutter of excitement. Is this drop-dead gorgeous, sensitive, clever guy – with his own car, however ancient – coming on to me?
“Do you ever think if that memory part of your brain is so advanced maybe something else is less developed?” says Dan, wiping condensation off the windscreen. “Your sense of smell, drawing talent?”
I do think about that. I’ve read books and papers on it. And I’ve worked out exactly what I’m missing.
&
nbsp; But to him I say: “I’m hopeless at dance. A complete klutz.”
Dan laughs. “Yeah? So am I. We should go dancing sometime, memory girl.”
10
Dum memor ipse mei
As long as I can remember who I am
Aeneid Book 4 – Virgil
I tried to shake him off but it turns out Dan’s quite good company. Who’d have thought I could have fun in a tiny little Devonshire town? For a couple of hours I feel almost normal, my usual defences breaking down. I don’t feel the pressure of the bad stuff rattling away at me from the shelves of my mind-library. I keep the Autobiography section locked as best I can. I don’t know how, but Dan’s able to potter about in charity shops as though they’re the most interesting places he’s ever been to. Maybe Cornwall’s even more boring than here. He buys cassettes for the car while I choose old board games. He tries on clothes from the seventies and I tease him we should match the Mini so I tie a bandana round my hair and put him in cool sunglasses and a beige jacket.
We get wistful looks from the old lady at the Devon Hospice shop who says we remind her of when she and her husband were young. Dan dances with her round the clothing rails to a Fleetwood Mac album, then when she needs a breather he switches to me.
“I said I’d take you dancing,” he says, twirling me under his arm.
We pay for our stuff and the shop lady gives me a wink and says, “Your boyfriend’s very handsome.” And I don’t correct her on either point. Dan makes things feel easy, normal.
He says we should pair up as a team for the hike and kits me out with thick socks and I buy a slab of Kendal Mint Cake as though we’re proper walkers.
But just when I’m relaxing and enjoying myself for a change, Hanna butts in and ruins the moment. She was always good at that.
“You must miss Hanna,” says Dan. “What was she like?”
Instantly a thousand images of her swoop before me. I blink hard but she doesn’t go away. Dan’s standing there, expecting a tearful reminiscence. How do I sum her up to someone who never knew her? What was the essence of her? Of any of us? “She loved fresh air,” I say. “I was always shutting the windows and she’d open them again. This melancholic band called Silent Fjords was her favourite and she played them all the time.” I see her, clear as anything, sitting on the bed, singing along. “She was uninhibited,” I add. “Sitting around in only her pants, painting her toenails.”
The Truth About Lies Page 4