Too Close to Home

by Susan Lewis

  “Which is definitely what I’m aiming for.”

  “You know how much it would mean to him to see you there.”

  “I’ll do my best. Let me know how you get on at the vet’s.”

  “OK, will do. Have to go now, Paige is trying to get through.”

  —

  “Hi, Mum, it’s me,” Paige said into her mobile.

  “I know. Are you all right?”

  “Yeah, I’m cool. Well, actually not really. Do you think you could come and get me?”

  “What is it?”

  “I just don’t feel well. I’ve spoken to Mrs. Haynes, and she says it’s all right for me to go home. When do you think you can get here?”

  “Well, I’m on my way to the vet with Waffle right now—he’s cut his paw—then I have to take Josh to the dentist and collect Grandma’s prescription, but I should be able to come after that. Can you hang on for a couple of hours?”

  Utterly fed up, Paige said, “I suppose I’ll have to.”

  “Oh, Paige. If it was an emergency you know I’d come straightaway.”

  “It’s OK. I get that everyone else is more important than me.”

  “That’s not—”

  “I’m ringing off now. Don’t bother coming, I’ll get the bus home.” And before her mother could argue, she ended the call.

  Charlotte and Hayley were watching her worriedly, using their slight bodies to shelter her from the wind. They were huddled behind the head teacher’s study, where they’d come to get away from the snide remarks and name-calling that had been going on all morning. It was lunch break now, but it would soon be time to go back inside, and Paige wasn’t sure she could bear to.

  “I know it’s running away if I go home,” she said miserably, “but everyone’s being so vile, and it’s not as if I did it.”

  “We keep telling them that,” Hayley assured her.

  “They ought to realize someone hacked into your account,” Charlotte declared hotly. “Are you absolutely sure it wasn’t this Julie person?”

  “No, I’m not sure,” Paige cried. “How can I be when I don’t even know who she is? I just don’t know why she’d do it, that’s all.”

  “Tell us again what she said when you asked her,” Hayley prompted.

  “That there was no way she’d do that to me. She wants to be my friend, she said, and she thinks it’s terrible that someone would pretend to be me.”

  “That’s rich when she’s pretending to be someone else,” Charlotte snorted.

  “I don’t see what she’d gain from it,” Paige pointed out.

  “What does anyone gain, apart from turning the whole world against you?” Hayley put in.

  “Thanks for that,” Paige retorted.

  “Sorry, I was just saying…Anyway, I don’t think it was Kelly Durham, or not her personally. Remember, I sit next to her in ICT, so I know how crap she is when it comes to understanding anything about computers.”

  “It doesn’t have to have been her,” Charlotte pointed out. “It was probably one of her psycho mates.”

  “Like Harry Adcock,” Hayley agreed. “He’s a total genius with computers. He even writes his own programs, so he’d know how to do it.”

  Paige looked past them to where a group of year eleven students were going into the study center. Owen’s sister wasn’t amongst them, or not that she could see, but when she’d passed Olivia in the corridor earlier, on her way to Religious Studies, Olivia had given her such a filthy look that Paige had wanted to curl up and die.

  As for Owen, he hadn’t come in at all today, so at least he was being spared all the spitefulness and prejudice that scared him so much.

  If only he’d return Paige’s calls or texts.

  “He’s got to know I’d never do anything like that to him,” she exclaimed in frustration.

  “But you did keep saying you thought he ought to come out,” Charlotte reminded her.

  “Yes, but not like this, and whose side are you on?”

  “Yours, obviously. I’m just saying, that’s all.”

  “You think I did it,” Paige accused.

  “No way!”

  “God, I can’t believe this is happening. It’s like everyone’s turning against me, accusing me of being a two-faced bitch…There are even people posting who I’ve never heard of.”

  “They’re just sickos jumping in for the ride,” Charlotte assured her. “You have to ignore them.”

  Paige sighed. “I just hope Owen’s reading what they’re saying. He’d know then that everyone’s too busy turning against me to bother about him. Try texting him again,” she told Charlotte, unable to bear Owen’s silence.

  Obediently Charlotte took out her phone and pressed to send the same message she’d sent four times already. Owen, please don’t think it was Paige, because it wasn’t. She’s been hacked. Ring me when you get this. Cxxx

  As she finished, the bell rang for afternoon lessons to begin.

  “What have you got now?” Hayley asked Paige.

  “Double English,” Paige replied. “And there’s a rehearsal for Under Milk Wood after school. Miss Kendrick’ll go mad if I miss it.”

  “So what are you going to do?”

  Paige’s face was pale as she stared off toward the science block.

  “Don’t you sit next to Cullum for English?” Charlotte reminded her. “He’s OK.”

  Paige nodded. “Unless he’s decided he hates me too. He’s good mates with Owen, don’t forget.”

  “What he said to me this morning was that Owen will come round once he realizes you had nothing to do with it.”

  Since that sounded as though Cullum believed her, Paige took heart. “I should stay,” she stated, suddenly determined not to miss the rehearsal. She really wanted to play this part, had almost learned it by heart already, so she’d hate herself if she ended up letting the Durmites spoil it for her.

  She looked at her phone as a text arrived from her mum.

  Do you want me to come for you or not? XX

  Texting back, she said, No, don’t bother. I’ll be fine. She didn’t add any kisses; that way her mother would know she was still pissed off about being made to wait.

  As they started back toward the main doors Paige felt as though the whole school’s eyes were on her. Everyone obviously knew by now, no matter what year they were in, that Owen Masters had been outed on Paige Moore’s Facebook page. No doubt they’d all been online to have a look, and even add their own snide comments. She wondered how many of them believed she’d been hacked. Probably none.

  What mattered most was that Owen should believe it, because she really didn’t want to lose him as a friend.

  As they approached the lockers to sort out their books for the afternoon Paige spotted Kelly Durham and her gang hanging around close to hers, and felt a desperate urge to shrink out of the way before they noticed her. She wouldn’t allow herself to do that, though; she had to find the courage to stand up to them.

  Spotting her, Kelly immediately gave an exaggerated glance at her phone followed by a pantomime gasp. “Oh my God, have you seen this?” she asked her friends, while keeping an eye on Paige to make sure she could hear. “She must have been hacked again.”

  As the others shrieked with laughter and turned to walk away, Paige felt herself turning hot and cold all over. What was on Facebook this time? What sick lies was someone telling? Why were they doing this to her?

  “Got it,” Hayley murmured as Facebook came up on her phone. Her eyes widened with horror as she read the latest post on Paige’s page.

  My best friend Charlotte is a minger who sucked Mr. Thomas’s cock.

  Charlotte’s face was ashen as she and Paige looked at each other.

  “Don’t worry, I know you didn’t do it,” Charlotte assured her.

  “I swear I wouldn’t.”

  “It’s OK, I know.”

  “Charlotte!” someone called along the corridor.

  They all looked up to see Kelly and he
r gang still hanging about outside the loos.

  “You can come with us if you like,” Kelly told her. “I mean, who’d want to be friends with someone who says stuff like that about them? I know I wouldn’t.”

  As Paige’s heart twisted, Charlotte scowled angrily, then shouted back, “Just fuck off.” Grabbing Paige’s and Hayley’s arms, she turned them around to go off in the opposite direction.

  —

  The following morning, after dashing through the school run and walking the dog in his protective boot so the stitches didn’t come out, Jenna was handing Martha a coffee while removing a bucket of Legos from the kitchen sofa to make room for her guest to sit down.

  “We have biscuits,” she declared, whisking a plate from the countertop. “I’m afraid they’re mostly of the jammy dodger or peanut butter variety, but there are a couple of rich tea and a custard cream in there somewhere.”

  Laughing, Martha was about to have a rummage when her mobile rang. She checked the screen and grimaced. “Sorry, I’ve been waiting for this call. Do you mind?”

  “Please, go ahead,” Jenna urged, and reached for her own mobile to check her messages as Martha wandered from the kitchen into the sitting room. Apparently the call was confidential.

  They’d spent the past hour in the office with the new website displayed on Jenna’s screen as they talked through everything from fonts to page layouts to navigation systems, until eventually Jenna’s head had started to spin. Not that she didn’t appreciate Martha taking the time to walk her through the most recent changes, as a member of her team could easily have done it; it was simply that trying to digest so much technical information in one go didn’t come easily to her. This was why Jack ran that side of the business, leaving her to concentrate on artistic content, though she was touched that Martha apparently felt it important to keep her in the loop.

  “Sorry,” Martha apologized, coming back to the kitchen. “I’ll turn it off now.”

  “Oh, you don’t need to do that,” Jenna protested. “I understand how busy you are.”

  “But it’s lovely to have a break once in a while,” Martha assured her. Returning to the sofa, she picked up her coffee and crossed her plump, shapely legs as she sat down. She was an ample woman of around forty with chaotic blond curls and the kind of face that, while not classically beautiful, was enhanced by her sleepy eyes and her constant air of cheerfulness.

  “Do you think she’s sexy?” Jenna remembered asking Jack after they’d first met her.

  He’d looked at her askance. “I suppose she could be,” he’d replied, “if you like them that large.”

  “I thought you did.”

  “What? How do you figure that, when I’m married to you?”

  “I’m thinking about the girlie magazines you like looking at. They’re all pretty busty….”

  “Yeah, because they don’t get cast for how petite they are.”

  “They turn you on.”

  “Only when we look at them together.”

  Wondering why she was recalling that conversation now, Jenna settled at the other end of the sofa, aware of Martha looking around the kitchen with an almost girlish enthusiasm.

  “So how are you enjoying Wales?” she asked, a hint of mischief in her tone. “I expect it already feels like a lifetime since you moved in.”

  Remembering the pristine kitchen in Martha’s glamorous seafront villa, and trying not to wince at the clutter in her own, Jenna rolled her eyes. “Tell me about it. But we’re very happy here. The kids have settled in even better than we’d hoped, and Jack just loves it.” She gave a wry laugh. “You know what he’s like—Mr. Sociable. He’s made so many friends I’m losing track of them all. One day he’s sailing, the next he’s playing golf or helping out with some fair or festival. That’s when he’s not working on the business, of course, which takes up most of his time.” She wondered why she’d felt the need to assure Martha of that, as though Martha were the boss rather than their adviser. “I take it he told you about the invite from the Welsh Arts Council to drop in anytime?”

  “He did. And he went yesterday?”

  “That’s right. No feedback from the meeting yet, but it’s probably a bit soon.”

  “I’m sure it’ll be good,” Martha declared confidently. “They’re a great bunch, and they love anyone who takes an interest in our little principality.”

  Jenna smiled and tried to think what else to say. Jack was in London now, visiting his mother, but Martha didn’t need to know that.

  “Tell me about you,” Martha suggested, her merry eyes seeming genuinely interested as they came to rest on Jenna’s. “How’s the writing going?”

  Jenna grimaced. “The less said about that the better,” she answered dryly. “Actually, I’m thinking about paying back the advance to try and buy myself some peace of mind.”

  Martha appeared concerned and sympathetic. “I guess with four children to take care of, a home to run, and a new company to launch, it can’t be easy to find time for yourself.”

  Jenna sighed. “It’s not, but on the positive side I’m loving working on the submissions, and as for everything else…” She cast a sardonic look around the kitchen. “As you can see, I don’t get too fussed about everything having to be in its place. I used to, before I was a mother, but by the time the twins came along I realized it was a losing battle. You have children, don’t you?”

  Martha nodded as she helped herself to a second rich tea. “Yes, two. A boy, David, who’s almost fourteen, and our youngest, Julia, is twelve. They’re at boarding school, near London.”

  “Do you miss them?” Jenna ventured gingerly.

  Martha’s smile seemed resigned. “Of course, but I work such long hours, and, being a pilot, Martin’s away half the time…It’s better for us all this way.” She looked round as the doorbell rang.

  “It’ll be the postman,” Jenna said. “I won’t be a moment.”

  By the time she returned Martha was on her feet studying the children’s paintings and poems stuck to the fridge.

  “They’re so sweet,” she commented, “and talented.”

  Jenna laughed. “I’m not so sure about talented, but they like to think so, and I guess that’s what counts. Ah, Mum will be pleased,” she declared, bringing a wallet of photos out of a padded envelope.

  “Are those actual prints?” Martha asked with mock incredulity. “You almost never see them these days.”

  “I’m sure we wouldn’t if my mother didn’t insist on keeping albums.”

  Apparently entranced by the idea of prints, Martha said, “May I? Are they of the children?”

  “I’m sure most of them will be,” Jenna replied, handing them over, “and please don’t feel you have to be polite.”

  “No, really, I’d love to see them.”

  Suspecting they were going to show a very different kind of family from Martha’s own, Jenna could only wonder what Martha was thinking as she went through a messy birthday party, a chaotic sandcastle build, a trot around the woods on ponies, and Paige striking a few pouty-model poses before going out to a disco. Though Martha paused every now and again and either smiled or frowned curiously, she made almost no comment until she’d handed them back. Then she said, “I think it’s wonderful that your mother keeps a record, like this. I wish we’d done it for ours.”

  “But you have them all on computer?”

  “Of course; it’s just not the same. I see Jack doesn’t feature in many, so I’m guessing he’s the photographer.”

  “Usually. But the younger children like taking photos too. They’re just not very good at framing or focus, so we tend to edit them out before ordering prints.”

  Martha smiled. “Your eldest daughter—Paige, is it? She’s very pretty.”

  In spite of rolling her eyes, Jenna felt a rush of pride. “She doesn’t seem to think so, but I guess that’s part of being her age. Would you like another coffee?”

  “Oh no, thanks, I really should be going.” She
glanced at her watch. “I’d hoped we might make that lunch today, but once again time’s running away from me.”

  As they walked out to Martha’s car, Jenna said, “Thanks again for coming all this way. It was so much simpler to understand the changes than if you’d sent a set of instructions.”

  “I’m afraid one will be on its way,” Martha warned, “but hopefully it’ll make more sense now you’ve seen how it works.” She held out a hand to shake, her pretty dimples showing as she smiled. “It was lovely to see you.”

  “To see you too,” Jenna replied, meaning it. Hearing her mobile ringing, she made to turn back before realizing how rude it would seem.

  “It’s OK, go ahead,” Martha encouraged, taking out her own phone as she got into the car. “Give me a call if there’s anything, won’t you?”

  After assuring her she would, Jenna ran back to the kitchen and picked up just in time. “Hi, darling, sorry,” she said. “I was just seeing Martha out.”

  “Right. Good. How did it go?” Jack asked brusquely.

  “Fine. She’s very good at explaining things.”

  “She’s supposed to be. So what did you chat about, apart from the technical stuff?”

  “Nothing much, really. The kids, photographs…She thought Paige was very pretty.”

  “She’s right, she is. So it went well?”

  “Were you expecting it not to?”

  “No, of course not. I just wondered, that’s all. Was Bena there?”

  “No, she had to take Aiden back to the hospital this morning. She’ll be in later. How are things going with you? Is your mother…?”

  “Hang on, sorry, I’ve got another call coming in. I’d better check who it is.”

  After clicking off her end Jenna picked up Martha’s empty coffee cup and carried it to the sink. She was glad to have spent some time with her, though she had to admit she didn’t feel she knew her any better as a result of it. In fact, thinking back over the morning, she was starting to sense that there might have been more to Martha’s visit than the demonstration of a new computer system. Though what that could be presumably only Martha knew.

  —

  It was Friday evening. Jenna and the younger children were around the table having their tea when the back door opened and Jack burst in as merrily as Santa on Christmas Eve.