Naomi was starting to feel queasy, but she fought it, telling herself that her uneasiness was only the memories from the fateful bonfire night, being disturbed. Siobhan’s tale was sickeningly familiar. But there was a crucial difference. Nathan hadn’t encouraged Annabel. Nothing had happened. Knowing the end of the story made it bearable as Naomi sat there, unmoving, with the ring pushing into her skin.
Naomi realised Siobhan had gone silent. ‘I already know about all this,’ she said.
‘From who?’
‘Bits from Annabel, the rest from Nathan,’ Naomi said, resenting the disturbance of painful private memories.
‘Well as a witness, I’m telling you my version of events. OK?’
It wasn’t OK, but Naomi found herself nodding and locking her fingers together beneath her backside.
Siobhan put her drink down. ‘OK, so Nathan said, “who’d have thought a piano could cost forty-five grand.” Annabel laughed and asked him where he’d got that crap from – that the piano was only fifteen grand. He told her he’d got it from you. That he was sure he was right. There was a bit of a silence. I thought they’d heard me, but then I heard the piano lid going down and Annabel standing up and walking away. I moved sideways so I could see through a tiny gap in the curtains. Annabel looked at him over her shoulder with her come-on eyes and said something like, “I’m sure you didn’t ask me in here to talk about pianos”.’
Siobhan paused to check on Naomi and ask if she was OK.
‘I know that nothing happened, Siobhan, so you might as well finish your story.’
‘OK, well Nathan appeared in front of her, very close, bodies almost touching. He told her she was drunk. She laughed and put her arms around his neck and said she knew very well what she was doing. Nathan touched her waist at the sides and slid his hands all the way up to her arms. He waited until her head had dropped to one side and she was moving in to kiss him, I swear she was. Then he unpeeled her arms from around him and told her he was with you.’
Naomi was aware of the drumming inside her chest. The need to get away was overpowering. ‘Is that it?’ she asked quietly as if she was in full control and nothing Siobhan was saying was having an impact.
‘Pretty much, except Annabel swore at him. She called him, you know, the B word and glared at him in disbelief. He didn’t apologise. I swear he was struggling not to smile. He calmly turned his back on her and walked out and closed the door. Annabel burst into tears, then dried her eyes and rushed after him in a rage.’
Naomi consciously wiped her face of all expression. Sad as it was, it turned out that Siobhan was a trouble-causer who would use an opportunity like this to twist the truth and make Nathan look bad. Naomi gave herself permission to resent Annie occasionally, but she felt like killing anyone else who found fault. Naomi took in Siobhan’s wide hair resting on her shoulders and decided that she wasn’t a good friend after all.
‘Say something,’ Siobhan said, appealing to Naomi through her piggy little eyes that barely held any colour.
Naomi couldn’t look into them for a second longer. ‘I’d like to go to my room and be alone now. Please don’t follow me.’
‘OK.’ Siobhan dropped her gaze and said nothing more. Naomi collected her bag and stood up. Her legs felt heavy. Forcing herself to move, she made it out of the college, along the pavement, into the reception area and up the lift to the sixth floor and into her room without clocking a single detail of the journey.
<><><>
After an hour of glaring at a bare wall from her bed and feeling time crawling by, Naomi twisted her head in search of her phone. She picked it up. Two-forty.
‘Stuff it, they’re my parents,’ she muttered out loud. ‘I have a right to ring them if I want to.’
Tough words, but did she, really? was the thought that nagged her while she flicked through her mobile phonebook searching for Camilla’s number. The easier option was ringing Henry. It wasn’t Henry’s voice she needed to hear. She wondered how she’d begin the conversation and felt the gulf that divided her from her parents. Her dependency on them gave them a kind of power that left her exposed and vulnerable. When she’d most needed their support, they’d crushed her just by doing nothing at all. How could an absence of words be so cruel? She clutched her phone to her chest and lay back on her pillow again. A few frustrated tears slid down the side of her head and settled inside her ears. She mopped them up with her sleeves and started to think hard.
The issue ran much deeper than dependency. Earning positive words from Camilla had become a quest. She couldn’t separate her hours of music practise and school revision from the hope that Camilla would notice. Her pathetic life had been about surviving off rations of hard-to-come-by praise. It had landed her in a music college. Do I even want to be here?
Naomi thought of Megan’s mum who rang or texted most days and sent boxes of homemade fudge in padded brown envelopes. Megan would text a single line to announce the parcel had arrived and add a row of kisses. It was enough for both of them. Naomi had realised something bizarre – that Megan and her mum were friends. That concept was as foreign to Naomi as quantum physics.
In fact, most of the parents were more like attentive servants. There was a constant flow of money and phone calls that asked the tireless question: are you alright? For Naomi, the parent-child differences had been marked like a netball court her whole life. She must not step over this or that line. She must not enter a forbidden part of the court that her position didn’t allow. She must not break rules. Or what? Annie had always answered that question: be labelled a huge disappointment.
Naomi scrolled to the top of her address book to Annabel’s number. Seeing her name pricked more tears. Annie wasn’t rebellious, she just had the courage to be herself. Naomi could see it suddenly and clearly. She needed to speak to Annabel. Now. Maybe they could be a team too. When the phone started ringing, she sensed Annie a breath away and felt elated.
Annabel answered frostily and told her it was quarter to eleven at night, then asked her what she wanted. Naomi delivered her little speech without a break and told Annabel she loved her and missed her. Annabel broke down. Naomi allowed the kind of silence that seemed to bind them together and make everything better. When Annabel was able to speak, she told Naomi she loved her too.
‘Do you hear me?’ she said.
‘Look, I’m sorry about the piano.’ Naomi was crying by now.
‘I don’t give a toss about the piano. But because I care about you, I’m telling you that you’ve got to get that ring off your finger and dump that loser who’s conned you into getting engaged. I’m telling you he’s no good.’
Naomi closed her eye, determined to stay calm. ‘Annie, you’re bound to feel angry with Nathan –’
‘I’m only angry because he’s managed to get engaged to my sister when he doesn’t deserve her.’
‘You don’t know him. If you knew –’
‘Naomi, wake up. I’m begging you.’ Annie’s voice had turned suddenly urgent. ‘I know guys. I know enough about him to know that he’s no good. He’ll hurt you really badly if you don’t end this now.’
Naomi wiped her tears and took the phone away from her ear and stared at it. Annabel’s voice flowed from it, faintly.
‘Naomi, are you still there? Can you hear me?’
Naomi extended her forefinger slowly and disconnected her twin and threw her phone across the bed.
22
Lorie could feel her phone vibrating against her leg from deep inside the pocket of her jeans. It was an impossible time to take a call or even find out who it was. She turned to Nathan and told him her phone was ringing. He shrugged and smiled and twisted his neck to kiss her. She met his lips. It was a strain when they were both jammed inside a carriage of the most famous roller coaster in the country. Lorie traced the red track to the highest peak where the other train was tipping over the sixty-two metre drop and would plummet at seventy plus miles an hour. Screaming drowned the roar of the tra
in.
‘You can see why they called it The Big One,’ Lorie said, stomach fluttering.
‘Wait till you see the view from the top.’
‘I’m going to shut my eyes.’
Nathan laughed. ‘Don’t you dare.’
The train lunged forward. The track was more than a mile long. Nathan took her nearest hand. She glanced at him, giggling like a kid and tossed her windswept hair behind her with her free hand.
In the last moments before the big drop, Lorie watched the sea and the dying sun on the horizon which spread an apricot light over a small patch of dark water. The moon was out too, in its thinnest form, looking like a glowing smile that had been painted into the night sky by a child. Darkness was gathering, bringing the magic of Blackpool at dusk during autumn, the season of the illuminations.
The second before the train plummeted, leaving her stomach behind, Lorie wished she could freeze the moment and properly take in what she’d had to absorb in a flash. The Golden Mile stretching from the South Pier to the North, blazing with a million colourful dancing bulbs; dressed-up trams ferrying countless bodies up and down the ancient tracks; the Tower in all its glitzed-up splendour in the distance; red lasers slicing the skies.
After a mad couple of minutes, the train screeched to a stop and they tumbled out of the carriage and staggered away arm in arm.
‘Awesome,’ Lorie said, sticking her hand in Nathan’s back pocket.
Nathan squeezed her shoulder and laughed. ‘Want another go?’
Lorie nodded. They weaved their way through moving bodies and found the end of the snaking queue.
Getting away from home for the weekend meant complete freedom. Lorie could dissolve into crowds and not have to worry about knowing anybody. Almost. There was always a chance that probability would throw up a freak meeting with someone she knew. Actually, the risk almost added to the buzz of being in conspiracy with a guy she couldn’t stop watching. She never got tired of looking at his face and studying every wondrous part of it. Being so helplessly in love with him made her lightheaded sometimes.
After a weekend with Nathan, she felt like Cinderella after the ball. She’d float into work in a daze, knowing she couldn’t afford a slip. She must be as steady and reliable as the time on Henry’s Rolex watch. It must be as if Nathan Stone hadn’t strolled into her life and flipped her world.
So anonymity was a relief. On alternate weekends, they escaped to some getaway under the pretext of Nathan caring for his sick brother, a clever plan which meant that Naomi, having sacrificed Nathan to a nobler cause, knew not to call. It was precious time together that moved too quickly and came around too slowly. It was time spent in a frenzied haze of complete happiness; a time when they were aware only of each other, where they lived out fantasies and plotted moves and sketched out their future together.
It was Nathan who reminded Lorie she’d missed a call as he stood behind her in the queue, both arms wound tightly around her neck, chin resting on the top of her head as he breathed warm air on her. Lorie took her phone from her pocket and found the call was from Naomi. She dialled to receive her voicemail without telling Nathan, who was lifting her hair from one side of her neck and making gentle contact with his lips.
By the end of Naomi’s message, which Lorie struggled to hear word-for-word, she’d gathered enough to know there was a problem. She tensed. Nathan noticed. He released his grip on her, allowing her room to move. She did an about-turn in his arms until she was facing him. He fenced the sides of her face with his strong hands.
‘Hey babe, what’s wrong?’
‘Not good. Your fiancée wants me to spend the weekend with her because, well something about Annie. Because you’re away with Dan, she needs me to call her back asap. All I know is she’s upset.’
‘No,’ Nathan yelled, not in answer, but as if he was letting go of an anguished cry he couldn’t hold in. He released Lorie’s face and thumped his head with the palm of one hand and left it there. ‘Why does she have to be so needy?’
Lorie held her voice down and suggested he did the same. ‘Because we’ve engineered it that way so that she’ll want to cling to you for security.’
Nathan spun away from Lorie, agitated. ‘Ignore her. What can she do about it?’
‘We can’t ignore her. It isn’t me who should be comforting her, it’s you. You’re the one she really wants.’
‘You want me to call her?’ he asked, appalled.
Lorie sighed. A bubble had burst. The euphoria was leaking away and Naomi was to blame. ‘It’s not what I want that matters. It’s what has to be done. Let’s go somewhere quieter.’
Nathan snatched her hand and tugged her along as he found a route through the crowds. They made their way to a quiet hotel on a back street where they were staying on the second floor in room fifteen. The hotel reception was dead, apart from a short bloke who stood by the desk waiting for attention. He kept eyeing his watch every few seconds as if rehearsing the point he intended to make when someone showed up. From here, there was no sense of the thousands of bodies that milled around in the carnival atmosphere not far away. They dropped onto the bed and looked at each other and listened to the silence of the small room.
‘So, now what?’ Nathan said, eyeing her seriously.
Lorie shrugged. ‘We need to rethink. Something has happened with Annie. Naomi’s upset. As far as I know, Camilla hasn’t spoken to her since the engagement last weekend. She’s an immature kid with a desperate need to feel accepted by her parents. We had to expect a few waves. She’s feeling the heat.’
‘My heart bleeds.’
Lorie took one of his hands and played with his fingers. ‘One of us is going to have to go back.’
‘What? No,’ Nathan said firmly. ‘This is our time.’
‘Not yet it isn’t,’ Lorie said, knowing someone had to be patient and reasonable. She felt like being neither. ‘We knew things might get sticky. If she’s not convinced that you’re besotted with her, why should she risk losing her family to marry you? This is a job, Nathan. There are going to be sacrifices.’
‘Hell,’ he hissed, withdrawing his hand from hers and throwing himself backwards until he was sprawled out, arms above his head, eyes pointing upward. ‘Why can’t she talk to her friends? Isn’t that what girls do?’
Lorie didn’t respond except to smooth her hair. She stood up and checked herself in the mirror and watched herself talk. ‘This is what we’re going to do. I’ll ring her now and tell her I’m away with Simon for the weekend. We’ll go out. Eat. Jump on a tram. Have some fun. Later, you can call her and say Dan’s doing well and ask her how she is. She’ll tell you she’s feeling awful. You’ll sympathise and tell her she’s very important to you – more so than Dan – and you’ll come to the rescue by promising to be back in the morning so you can deal with the problems together. She’ll try to be brave. You’ll insist on being there.’ Lorie turned her back on herself to look at Nathan, who was still staring blankly at the ceiling as if he was struggling to accept some terrible news. ‘Got it?’
He didn’t look at her. ‘What if I don’t want to?’
‘What’s that got to do with it?’
Nathan emptied his lungs and half sat up, resting his weight on his elbows, lips pouted irresistibly. Lorie couldn’t stay away. She dropped down beside him, half amused.
‘We’ve still got tonight,’ she said. ‘Why waste it on tomorrow’s problems?’
Nathan focussed his eyes on hers and his face softened.
‘It isn’t enough.’
‘It’ll have to be. You’ve got some serious work to do. Annie’s pretty much out of the picture, but it’s time you turned the charm on with Camilla before she decides you’re not having her father’s money.’
‘She wouldn’t!’
Lorie raised her eyebrows in response.
Nathan almost smiled. ‘She takes the bait so easily. Winding her up is amazing fun.’
‘I can think of better. You’ll be
thanking me once we have more than a million in the bank, plus a windfall of insurance money and no more worries. Persuade her you’re worth her inheritance or all this will be for nothing.’
Nathan fully sat up now. ‘That sounded like an order.’
‘It was. From now on, you don’t put a foot wrong around her, you hear me? When she tells me I’ve got a wedding to plan, I’ll know she’s accepted it. She hasn’t mentioned it once all week.’
Nathan took her face in one hand. ‘I’m going to take that as a challenge.’
‘Good.’
‘I’m going to break the ice-queen’s shell.’
‘Good.’
‘Why are we talking about Camilla?’
‘Good question,’ Lorie whispered, closing her eyes in anticipation of Nathan’s lips. He was drawing closer. ‘I hate the thought of you kissing her. Do you enjoy it, Nathan?’
She could feel his breath now. Because he didn’t answer immediately, Lorie opened her eyes. He hovered, very close, the hint of a smile on his lips.
‘You’ve asked me that a hundred times.’
‘And you’ve never answered it once.’
<><><>
Camilla was in the garden because she felt best when she was using energy and because she enjoyed being there, or so she kept telling herself despite a firm awareness that she was acutely miserable, and cross, and had been dodging outside every day to be out of Henry’s way.
His acceptance of Naomi’s engagement and his insistence that Camilla should do the same, meant that every time she looked at him she found it impossible not to feel irritated by his patronising little smiles and his infuriating attempts to make her feel better, all of which were successfully having the opposite effect. She was tired of him patting the space next to himself on the sofa as if she’d be grateful to drop into it and offload her heart’s weight into his ear. And if he offered to make her one more cup of tea!
Either Side of Midnight (The Midnight Saga Book 1) Page 27