“How do you know? How do you know it would be disappointed?” My voice is thick. It doesn’t sound like mine.
“You tell me, Lim. Honestly. Did she ever leave you any other kind?”
He picks up his beer again. Jared is frozen between us, and the only sound is the fire crackling.
I can’t look at either of them any more. Not Steffan, for what he’s done, and not Jared, for not letting me stop him.
“I’m going to bed.”
My bag’s already in my tent. I zip the entrance closed behind me and lie down on the thin foam mattress and I close my eyes, because no one can really cry with their eyes screwed shut and if I don’t cry then it doesn’t hurt. It can’t.
There’s an owl out there somewhere, and I can hear it hooting nearby. Calling to its own kind. It’s peaceful. Soothing. At least, it’s soothing if you’re not a mouse or a shrew or any of the other small furry things that are about to become its dinner…
I can hear the others moving about outside the tent, probably getting ready to turn in for the night themselves. I feel momentarily guilty: I guess I put a bit of a damper on the evening. Well done me. There’s a hissing sound as one of them throws water on the fire, and Steffan coughs.
They’re very quiet by their standards, quieter than they should be, and it’s not because they think I’m going to sleep or anything. If they wanted to make a racket, they’d make one regardless of who I was or what I was doing. I catch the odd word of Welsh – mostly Steffan, but sometimes Jared. They’re talking about something, talking quietly like it’s a thing that shouldn’t be discussed in the open. Like it’s a secret. Even though I can’t understand what they’re actually saying, I understand the tones of their voices well enough, and Jared’s not happy. Neither of them are, not really. However cheery they seemed in the day, the night has brought something else out of them.
I’m still listening to the murmur of their voices and wondering what it is they don’t want me to know as I drift off into sleep.
limpet’s iPhone / music / playlists / road trip
Taylor Swift - I Knew You Were Trouble
The Killers - Mr. Brightside
Mallory Knox - Death Rattle
The Heavy - How You Like Me Now?
Catatonia - International Velvet
Stereophonics - Local Boy in the Photograph
Foo Fighters - Learn to Fly
will.i.am feat. Skylar Grey - Love Bullets
Ella Henderson - Glow
5 Seconds of Summer - Amnesia
The Vamps - Wild Heart
Avicii - Wake Me Up
limpet’s iPhone / notes & reminders
Charge phone in car.
Beach!
Kick S till he bleeds, because bastard…
Never sleep in tent again. Ever.
J’s dad?
Call Amy!!!
ten
I sleep better than I have done for weeks, even though I’m in a tent in a scrappy little bit of woodland in the middle of nowhere and my neck aches and I’ve obviously been lying on an entire fallen tree the whole time. Still the best sleep I’ve had in a while. When I woke in the night once or twice, all I could hear was the river, and someone snoring. My money’s on Steffan.
But the sound that wakes me in the morning? That’s not snoring. That’s…
My ears are telling me I know that sound. I know what it is, and it shouldn’t be here. I shouldn’t be hearing that out here. No way. Scrabbling for the zip to the tent, I shake the last of the sleep from my head and – ever graceful – half climb, half fall out into the daylight. Jared and Steffan have obviously done the same thing, and as I dust myself off and straighten up, we stare at each other.
“You heard that too, right?”
“Well, yeah.”
“So I’m not losing my mind? Good.”
“Losing? Ha!”
“Funny.”
And then everything stops, because there’s the sound again – and it is very, very definitely being made by an elephant.
We stare at each other some more.
“That’s insane,” says Steffan.
“That can’t be real,” says Jared.
“Where do you think it’s coming from?” I ask – and the two of them are frowning at me. “What?”
Maybe they’re waiting to see whether I’m still angry with Steffan. I am, I suppose, but he’s my friend. You get angry with friends, don’t you? That’s kind of the whole point: that you get angry, and they understand why and you move on – and they try not to be such a dickhead in future. Or something. And they don’t ever, ever touch your phone again; not if they want that hand to be able to touch anything else afterwards.
What’s the point in dwelling on it, anyway? He deleted a voicemail. He was trying (in his tactless, hopeless, usual bloody way) to help – and for that alone I guess I have to forgive him. After all, if anyone understands the way I feel now, it’s him – although sometimes, I do wonder…
But you push on, don’t you? It’s not worth losing a friend over. Nothing is. Not a friend like this; a friend like him.
They’re still frowning.
“You want to go find the elephant.” He thinks he’s humouring me. I’ll show him.
“Listen to what you just said, Jared. It’s an elephant. An elephant. Here. We’re not exactly tripping over exotic animals roaming the woods of west Wales, are we?”
Steffan mutters something about “town on a Saturday night”.
We both ignore him.
“It’s not real,” says Jared, bluntly.
“Okay, so why, for the love of god, would someone pretend to be an elephant all the way out here where there’s no one to even hear them?”
“Well, there’s us.” Steffan shrugs. “We heard it.”
“Exactly. Wait. No. What was I saying? No. Never mind. Come on. Aren’t you even curious? At all?”
They answer almost simultaneously: “Not really,” says one. “Nah,” says the other.
“You’re crap. The pair of you. Where are your balls?”
“Look who’s talking,” Steffan says with a barely disguised snigger.
I thump his arm. “Oi! What’s that supposed to mean?”
Somewhere in the back of his head, a little alarm bell apparently starts ringing. I can see him very carefully considering what to say next – just in case he triggers what he only semi-affectionately refers to as “the femrage”. This is the charming nickname he’s come up with to describe the look on my face when I’ve caught him being…well, a bloke. It’s a fairly loose category which includes (but is not limited to) making smutty comments and whispering to Jared in Welsh whenever one of the Year Thirteen girls walks past the common room. Like I don’t know him well enough to know exactly what he’s saying. And don’t even get me started on the wallpaper on his computer. Seriously.
Finally, Steffan decides he’s figured out a way through the minefield. “Didn’t you need Jared to go hold your hand in the changing room because of the scary, scary druggies who left a load of crap around?”
I’m going to let it go – purely because he was as worried about it as I was. He’s teasing me. It’s his way of checking whether normal service has been resumed, or whether I’m going to try and punch him in the kidney the second he turns his back. Tempting as that may be, it’s not really in line with my whole “friends” policy. More fool me.
“Whatever. Elephant.”
The elephant in the woods trumps everything.
We leave the tents where they are for now; there’s nothing much in there to steal and none of us can be bothered to take them down yet. Besides, it’s bad enough that Steffan insists on taking the violin back to the car and hiding it under a load of junk in the boot. I don’t want to wait any longer. Because, you know, elephant.
I say we’re out in the middle of nowhere. Technically speaking, for round here at least, that’s not strictly true. There’s the pub, a couple of villages within ten minutes’ drive,
a handful of farms, and of course there’s the St Jude’s field. Like I say, by the standard of things round here, we’re practically in the suburbs. Years ago, the woods had a reputation for attracting stoners looking for mushrooms – and the reputation’s stuck, judging by the needle I almost trod on. So maybe there is something weird going on out here.
The ground is parched and dusty, even in the shadow of the trees; the summer’s taken no prisoners. Big cracks criss-cross the soil where tree roots have pushed up close to the surface, and brown leaves, their edges curled, skitter about in what passes for a breeze. They’re thicker on the ground than usual at this time of year – even the oldest trees are struggling in the heat. And when we get close, the river’s lower than I’ve ever seen it. Shopping trolley and all.
“You want to try crossing?” Steffan scowls at the water, like that’ll make any difference.
“It’s shallow enough.”
“You first, is it?”
“Coward.”
“Manners. Ladies always go first, I thought.” He winks at me. He’s waiting for me to fall over and land on my arse in the middle of the river. Of course he is.
“Well, fine.” As I pick up my shoes, I congratulate myself on wearing shorts today – not that they could save me from getting wet, of course; it just feels like this way I’ll be somewhere closer to the “dignified idiot” end of the sliding scale than the “total loser” end.
The water’s cooler than I was expecting. After the first shock of it, it’s nice. The riverbed here is mostly flat rock, worn smooth by the rush of the water, and it feels almost soft beneath my feet. Something solid, moving, brushes my toe. “Just a fish, just a fish, just a fish,” I whisper to myself. Not a monster. Definitely not any kind of monster, and an axe murderer would have a hell of a time hiding in this little water. Besides, how do you swim holding an axe? (Answer: carefully.)
I can feel their eyes on my back the whole way across – so when I make it to the other bank without having slipped, splashed, tripped over my own toes or otherwise embarrassed myself, I’m feeling more than a little smug. “Ta-daa!” I shout back at them. I bow. They roll their eyes.
“Yeah, alright. Bravo. You walked in a straight line and you didn’t fall over.” Steffan is not as impressed as he ought to be, frankly.
“Ah, correction: I forded a river and didn’t fall over. Totally different thing.”
“Christ, you’re annoying.” He’s strung his shoes together by their laces around his neck, as though he’s wading across the Amazon. As he sloshes through the water, they swing to and fro and smack into his chest with every step. Jared – thoughtful as always – follows him across, carrying his trainers and peeling off his T-shirt to dry his feet when he reaches the other side. The sunlight, dappled through the moving leaves above us, dances across his bare shoulders. There’s a scattering of freckles just below his collarbone – and before I can stop the thought, I imagine my fingertip tracing the line of them over his skin; feeling the warmth of his chest beneath my touch.
I boot the thought out of my head as fast as I can – but what if it shows on my face? He’s got his trainers back on now and he’s standing up, wriggling back into his T-shirt. What if he looks at me? Will he know what I was thinking? Do I know what I was thinking – was that even me? I mean…it’s Jared, right?
“Bloody tart.” It’s Steffan, sitting on the ground and trying to work his still-wet foot back into his trainer. It’s taken him till now to get the laces unknotted. “Whipping his top off left, right and centre. Any excuse.” He shakes his head. Jared just smirks.
I’m safe.
It takes Steff a very, very, very long time to get his hobbit-feet back into his shoes. “Right, then,” he says finally, standing up and brushing himself down. It’s exactly the same thing his dad does: the gesture, even the intonation of his voice. Steffan probably has no idea. I wonder whether we all copy our parents in one way or another. Are their mannerisms built into our bones, or do we just catch them after years spent in close proximity? Can you catch a gesture, a turn of phrase, like a cold – or are they already coded into our genes? And what about the other things: taste in music, in books? Favourite foods? Tics and bad habits. Diseases…and addictions. What about those?
The trees are thinner on this side of the river. Less wild – not that the woods across the river are particularly wild. After all, they belong to someone, don’t they? Here, though, they seem…neater, somehow. As though somebody wanted to keep them that way. And there’s the beginnings of a path, by the look of it. Are we about to just go tromping into the middle of someone’s garden? There’s only one place I can think of this far into any woods round here, and surely we can’t be…
The path suddenly deposits us onto a sweeping driveway winding through the trees – once it was gravel by the look of it, but now it’s mostly dust and potholes.
“Oh, no,” says Jared from behind me. When I look round, he’s rubbing his face. He knows where we are. He drops his hand, and shoots me an anguished look.
I know where we are too. And suddenly, I understand the elephant in the woods.
This is Barley Vale.
I had no idea we were so close to it – although I probably should have twigged as soon as I heard the noise this morning. Any other time, I probably would have. I wonder whether Steffan realized; it’s painfully obvious that Jared didn’t. I guess we’ve all just got other stuff on our minds.
It used to have a different name, this place, until a handful of locals complained that it was “out of keeping with the area” – for which you can usually read: “’s foreign, isn’t it, and we don’t like foreign” – so Barley Vale is what it became. The sky-blue railings and the slightly ramshackle collection of Portakabins and breeze-block buildings in front of us, all painted white with peeling red guttering, and the agricultural shed behind them, looming out of the trees, is all that is left of the hospice. Somewhere behind them, set into the side of the hill, must be the temple.
Just like everybody knows the story about the mushrooms, everybody knows the story of Barley Vale. How it started as a beaten-up old shed used by a couple of hippies, and then turned into a commune. Somehow, a guru got wind of the place and moved in, building a small hospice for the terminally sick and spiritually inclined, and a temple. The hospice turned into a bigger hospice, the temple turned into two temples and a visitor centre and kitchen, as well as a hostel for pilgrims who came to see Guru and pray at the temples.
Oh, and there was the elephant. According to the local papers, it was rescued as a baby by Guru from…somewhere, and brought to live at the Vale. They built the barn for him to sleep in, and there were rumours about him following Guru around like a puppy and being taken for walks in the woods on a lead.
Barley Vale was where some people came to live and some came to die. Some were just passing through on their way to somewhere else. Until it went bankrupt.
Which brings me back to Jared – standing in the middle of the ruins of his father’s biggest con.
eleven
I know what you’re thinking. What kind of man steals from a hospice – a hospice with a temple and a guru and an elephant, no less?
I’ll tell you what kind of man.
Jared’s father.
I can’t remember whether the fraud was why he went to prison the time before last, or the time before that. There was an assault in there somewhere, but I don’t know if he actually did time for it. The latest conviction was the really spectacular one: for attempted murder. It was the first time where Jared refused to visit him inside – which may or may not have had something to do with it also being the first time Jared had sat in the gallery in court. He was old enough to hear it all by then – all the things his grandparents and even his mother had tried to protect him from. He heard it all and with it he heard everything that had gone before. I can’t imagine how that must have felt.
The rule with Jared’s dad – with Jared all over, I guess – is that
we don’t ask. Not Steffan, not me. Not really. It’s part of the roles we’ve built for ourselves over the years: the Rich One, the Quiet One, the Responsible One Who Is Prone To The Occasional Outburst Of Drama. The names are only part of it. We owe it to him not to ask the big questions, because the answers are messy and painful and will force him to dig up things he’s long since buried. And besides, neither of us want to ask those questions, because all they would do is push Jared back into the box of his relationship with his dad – someone who’s been gone more than half Jared’s life anyway. Someone who doesn’t know the first thing about what makes him laugh, or what his lopsided squinting-frown means (that he doesn’t approve), or anything more significant than what his favourite football team used to be when he was five.
No, don’t ask me. It’s sport, isn’t it? I don’t do sport.
Barley Vale was one of Jared’s father’s scam victims – along with most of the town. He stole from more people than he didn’t, and he didn’t discriminate and he showed no mercy. Everyone was fair game – even this place. Nobody knows where the money went, but it sure as hell went. The hospice was the first to shut down, for obvious reasons. The little community there just couldn’t keep it running. The monks managed to keep the hostel running a little longer, but that money ran out pretty fast…and gradually, everybody left. Now, all that’s here is a bunch of rotting buildings and a rusty tin shed.
The Last Summer of Us Page 8