Sworn Secret

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Sworn Secret Page 17

by Amanda Jennings


  ‘What happened the night she fell?’

  The question tumbled out of her by mistake and she hoped for a moment that maybe he hadn’t heard. Though it was a question she asked him in her mind all the time, it was something she’d been determined not to actually ask him. After all, he’d told the police what he knew; it was all there in their report. She practically knew it off by heart. Anna had called him and told him to take his dad’s keys and meet her at school with a bottle of vodka. They went up to the roof, and over the course of a few hours they finished the bottle between them. They were both very drunk. He was so drunk he felt ill. He had asked her to go home but she said no. She climbed up on the roof ledge. She laughed when he asked her to get down. She started dancing on the ledge. He was terrified, but she kept refusing to get off the wall. He didn’t know what else to do so he went back to the cushions where they’d been drinking and used her phone to call his parents, who said they’d come and pick them up. As he was going back towards her, he saw her stumble and that was it. He had been too far away to help her. The rest of the report came from Dr Howe. He and his wife had arrived at the school and found their son on the roof in a state. Haydn managed to explain that there had been an accident and while Mrs Howe stayed with him on the roof, he went down and found Anna in the playground. He checked her pulse. She was dead. Dr Howe went to his office and called the emergency services and then her parents, who came immediately. The death was estimated at sometime between Haydn’s phone call at three minutes to midnight and twenty-four minutes past midnight. These facts Lizzie knew. It was the incidental detail she was interested in. She wanted to know what they talked about, what song she was singing when she danced around the roof in the humid warmth of that fated night, whether Anna was happy or suicidally sad.

  But looking at Haydn’s face she knew she should have kept her mouth closed. It was just too painful, and she could have kicked herself. He walked out of the shop in a thundery silence and she followed like a beaten puppy.

  ‘I’m so sorry. Haydn? Don’t be cross. I shouldn’t have brought it up. The man was staring at me; he thought I was stealing gum . . . I . . . wasn’t thinking. It just popped out.’

  She glanced up at him, and her heart sank to see him closed off from her. He was having bad thoughts. She could see them wavering behind his beautiful eyes. She wished she could rub the dumb question out of his mind so he’d never even heard it.

  ‘I told it all to the police,’ he said.

  ‘I know . . . I know. It was a stupid question.’

  Haydn didn’t say anything. He opened his new packet of tobacco and began to roll a cigarette, making a conscious effort not to look at her. Lizzie looked away from him, tears spiking her eyes. She watched a group of kids across the road who were kicking a football up and down the pavement to each other. They celebrated imaginary goals, lifting their T-shirts over their heads and punching the air victoriously. Then a man in a suit on a bike with shiny brown brogues and a fluorescent safety sash was cycling on the pavement towards the boys. He tutted and shook his head when they didn’t move out of his way. Lizzie wondered if he knew he shouldn’t cycle on the pavement. He swerved around them, narrowly missing a post box. The boys laughed as he wobbled onwards and then went back to their game.

  ‘She and I were never together, you know,’ Haydn said.

  ‘Sorry?’ She stopped looking at the boys and turned back to him.

  ‘When you talk about her, you talk as if we were, you know, together.’

  ‘She told me you were.’

  He shook his head and lit his cigarette.

  ‘But I remember helping her pick clothes to wear when she was going to meet you. She used to tell me stuff . . . about what you did.’

  Lizzie felt her cheeks redden as she remembered those chats with Anna, lying next to her on her bed, giggling, desperate for her to tell her more, trying to disguise both her curiosity and envy.

  ‘I kissed her once. But after that she didn’t want anything to do with me. Not like that, anyway. She said I was too good a mate to be a boyfriend. Her BBM. Best boy mate.’ He laughed and shook his head. ‘That was my problem; I was too nice, she said, like a brother or something. She was weird. She used to come round our house a lot. You know, watch TV, hang out and stuff, like we really were best mates or whatever. Then other times she’d totally blank me, walk right past me in the corridor at school like she didn’t even see me. It made me crazy.’ He glanced at Lizzie and gave her an embarrassed smile. ‘Because, well, I was in love with her.’

  Lizzie’s stomach knotted with sudden jealousy and Haydn closed his eyes, his face scrunched up, and then he covered his pained expression with the flats of both his hands, his cigarette burning between two yellow-tinged fingers. Lizzie felt as if she were spying on him and dropped her eyes for a moment, as if to give him a moment of privacy to deal with whatever thought had jabbed him.

  ‘She let me watch her undress once,’ he said then.

  ‘What?’

  ‘All the way, no underwear or anything.’

  ‘You have to be joking!’ said Lizzie, stifling a nervous burst of laughter.

  ‘On my life,’ he said, and held a hand against his heart.

  ‘And you weren’t boyfriend and girlfriend?’

  He shook his head. ‘I know. Insane.’

  ‘Blimey,’ breathed Lizzie. ‘I can’t imagine ever doing something like that.’

  ‘And Mum and Dad were downstairs.’

  ‘No way!’

  He nodded. ‘She left the door open, like she got a kick out of them coming up and catching us.’ He paused and glanced at her, then drew on his cigarette. ‘She also made me, you know, touch myself in front of her.’ He paused, waiting perhaps for her to say something. She didn’t, though, so he went on. ‘She said she wanted to make sure she could do it properly, you know, see exactly what happened and stuff. So she sat on the bed next to me, got me to unzip my trousers, then told me to get on with it while she watched. She was asking me what it felt like, how hard I did it and that. Then when it was over she just got up as if nothing had happened.’

  Lizzie kept her eyes fixed on the pavement in front of her, making sure she stepped over the cracks between the slabs. She felt terribly uncomfortable. It was one thing to enjoy talking openly about her sister, but it was a whole different game listening to graphic stories about her doing things that made her shiver with revulsion. The way he spoke about it made it sound as if it were quite normal to ask a boy to masturbate in front of you, perhaps a bit out there but not totally bonkers, no more shocking than dissecting a rat in biology.

  ‘Don’t tell me anything more like that,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to know that about her.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  She shrugged.

  ‘You know, we used to go up on that roof all the time.’ He put his hands into his jeans pockets and hunched his shoulders. ‘There were all those old cushions and rugs up there, and I’d take my iPod and we’d listen to music. It was our place. Even though other people went up there, it was us that discovered it, so we always said it was ours.’ His voice cracked and Lizzie saw him swallowing hard. He shook his head as if the memories playing were so sharp they were making cuts in his brain. ‘I go over what happened, putting the key I copied in my pocket, buying the vodka with my fake ID, unlocking the school, walking up the stairs. How dark it was, my heart thumping mental, Anna giggling in front of me, her shoes tapping on the concrete, echoing like we were in a cave or something.’ His head was low to his chest. ‘If I’d said no, if I’d made her meet me in the park or in my room, she’d still be alive. And why didn’t I pull her off that wall when I had the chance? Hold on to her so hard she couldn’t have fallen, no matter what happened.’

  ‘You can’t think like that,’ said Lizzie. She lifted his chin to look at her. He moved without resistance, but when he met her eyes he suddenly turned away from her. ‘Haydn,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t help. We can all say what if. There a
re a million things that we all could have done differently that might mean she was still here.’

  Lizzie lifted her hand to touch his elbow, but he jumped backwards as if she’d given him an electric shock. Then he turned and ran at a garden wall that flanked the pavement, kicked it twice with his boot. He kicked it a third time and as he did he spun and collapsed with his back against the wall, arms crossed across his bent knees, head buried in the crooks of his elbows. He began to cry like a badly hurt child, his body raked with fierce sobs. She knelt next to him and put her arm around his shoulders. She rubbed his knee with her other hand, tried to shush him, but he only cried more, and she began to feel scared. She wanted to help him but had no idea what she should do. She looked up at the people walking past, hoping to catch a kindly eye, but nobody allowed a kindly eye to wander. Instead they passed on by, pretended the crying boy and the fretful girl didn’t exist, turned their heads in the opposite direction, pointedly checked their watches for the time and crossed the road.

  ‘Haydn,’ she said. ‘Haydn. It’s OK. Please. It’s OK.’ She put her other arm around him and held him tightly to her.

  He lifted his head. Snot and tears streaked his face. His eyes were bloodshot and puffed and searched her face backwards and forwards. ‘She was dead.’ He began to scratch at his forearms, raking his fingers up and down through his T-shirt. ‘I’d saw her lying on the ground. This weird, still shape on the ground. How could she be dead?’

  Lizzie pulled one of her sleeves over the heel of her hand and gently dabbed his face dry like a nurse cleaning the wounds of a soldier. They stared at each other. Her pupils fixed to his and she marvelled how deep and black they were, how she felt like diving into them just to find out how far they reached. A stab of hot desire shot through her. She would have kissed him, but he opened his mouth as if to speak, then shook his head, let out a frustrated sigh.

  ‘What?’ whispered Lizzie. He hesitated; there was definitely something there, something he wanted to say. ‘What?’ she asked again.

  But he closed his mouth and shook his head.

  She stood and held out her hand for his. He took it and hauled himself up, and as he did, her body, her fingers and toes, her insides, everything, began to tingle madly. She stood on her tiptoes to kiss him. She tasted the tears on his lips and was hit with a sudden lust, so intense she imagined her body might burst into flame. She pulled his T-shirt free of his jeans and ran her hands up underneath it. The feel of his skin was warm and smooth. His sandpaper hands were on her cheeks and neck. She lost herself to him. Pushed him backwards against a parked car. Brought his hands to her chest. She wanted him to touch between her legs. She ached all over, possessed by white-hot desire. Anna hadn’t had him like this.

  He was all hers.

  In the void outside her lust she heard a group of people laughing as they walked past. Get a fucking room, a voice said. Then more laughing. She drew back from him. His cheeks were red, her need mirrored in his glazed eyes.

  ‘Let’s go somewhere,’ she rasped. Her heart thumped; all she wanted was him, but the exhilaration, the nerves and the fear of what she was feeling, of what was about to come, threatened to overwhelm her.

  ‘Your house?’

  Lizzie imagined her mum finding Haydn in her room. Just the thought of Lizzie laying eyes on Haydn had been enough to make her angry. If she walked in on them kissing and more she’d go nuts.

  She shook her head. ‘I know where, though.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Wait and see.’

  They burst into excited giggles, the trauma of earlier forgotten as easily as a bad novel. They broke into a run, hand in hand, weaving in and out of people, dogs, kids on scooters, whole families Sunday-strolling to the park or river. Not running to have sex!

  They stopped outside the small gate that led to her grandparents’ garden, out of breath, their desire still raging. There was a code pad. She tapped the numbers in, barely able to think, panting and giggling nervously, gripping his hand as if letting go would mean death. The gate creaked open and she grinned at him. Then their faces fell serious with the realization of what they were about to do. Haydn tucked some hair behind her ear and she leant against his hand, turning her face to softly kiss his palm.

  They crept in, and Lizzie pulled the gate shut behind them. They heard voices further away in the garden and both of them froze.

  ‘My parents are having lunch here,’ she whispered. ‘But the shed behind this bush is mine and Anna’s; my grandparents gave it to us. They never use it because they’re both too old. Nobody ever comes up here now. Only me.’ She bent down and crept forward a couple of steps to peer through the leaves that shielded them from the terrace. Her heart was pounding. She could see her mum and dad talking with Uncle Daniel, though she wasn’t close enough to hear what they were saying. Her dad was standing on the grass, and her mum and uncle were sitting at the table.

  ‘What is it?’ Haydn whispered.

  Lizzie flapped a hand to quieten him. He put his hand on her bottom and she stifled a giggle.

  ‘They definitely won’t come up here,’ she whispered, watching her parents go into the house. She waited. Her uncle got up and followed them in. ‘They’ve gone inside. Come on,’ she said to Haydn over her shoulder. ‘I’ll show you.’

  ‘What if they get home and you’re not there? You’ll get grief, won’t you?’

  ‘Ohmigod,’ she said. ‘So don’t care!’ She grinned and pushed open the door. It was such a familiar place, with the upturned crate, its stub of candle glued to it with old wax, the ancient tins of soup, the box of toys, the postcards nailed to the walls like paintings, but it had a different feel right then, a frisson, the air molecules within it fizzing with a startling energy.

  ‘This place is mad!’ laughed Haydn.

  Lizzie pushed the crate and box of toys to the side and tried to ignore the vivid memories of playing happily with Anna. She sat on the dusty floor with her arms linked around her knees and smiled up at him. He dropped down beside her, then took her face in his hands and kissed her. Her heart thumped and her stomach pitched with nerves. She lifted her shirt over her head and lay back, suddenly painfully aware of how small her breasts were, how unsexy her plain white bra was, of how many dark moles and freckles splattered her pale skinny body.

  Haydn drew in a breath. He stretched out his hand and trailed his fingers from her neck to her tummy button. Then he pulled his own shirt over his head. There wasn’t an ounce of fat on his body and she could see every one of his muscles, defined and toned, not big like a body-builder, more like a long-distance runner, or maybe a tennis player. His skin was clear, but then she noticed his arms. She’d never seen them before, covered as they were with long sleeves, and she gasped in alarm. The skin between his wrists and elbows was laced with scars that criss-crossed like cobweb. Some were raised and white, while others were fresher with rough scabs of brown. Some had been opened up with fresh blood seeping from the edges, no doubt from before in the street when he’d scratched against them, so upset by thoughts of Anna’s death that he obviously hadn’t felt it. There were some really thick ones, but then others that were no more than scratches, the kind you might get from an overly playful kitten. She lifted her hand and ran her fingers over them.

  ‘What are they?’

  ‘They’re nothing,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to talk about anything. I just want to kiss you.’ His lust-filled eyes burrowed into her and the cuts and scarring were forgotten. She let her hand drop from his arm to rest on the waistband of his jeans.

  ‘You know,’ she said, ‘we’ll probably get splinters.’

  ‘I don’t care.’

  Then they kissed again and the passion from the street relit in moments, his hands on her, hers on him, their lips together. Her hands fumbled for the zipper on his jeans. His tore at the catch on her bra. Shiver after shiver of lust. Then he lifted his face from hers.

  ‘Are you sure?’ he said. His voice was throaty a
nd gruff. His eyes were glazed again. The skin around his lips was red from kissing.

  She nodded.

  ‘Hang on then,’ he said, and reached for his jacket. He rummaged in the pockets.

  Lizzie’s stomach churned with nerves. This was it. Losing her virginity; she was suddenly terrified. Was this how she imagined it? Certainly she’d imagined it with Haydn, almost from the memorial onwards, but in all those imagined times it was never in years of dirt on the hard floor of the shed in her grandparents’ garden, toys and memories surrounding them on every side. No, she told herself firmly. This is what you want. This is your new beginning. She took a deep breath and tried to relax.

  Haydn threw his jacket back on the floor and she saw he held a condom in one hand and his iPod in the other. He put the condom on the floor beside them and then he put one headphone into her ear and one into his.

  ‘I made us a playlist.’

  He pressed play, and she recognized the first song immediately. It was the Chris Isaak song that Anna loved. The one they’d talked about in the cemetery. Lizzie remembered Anna singing it in her room at the top of her voice, Lizzie sitting and watching her sister dancing around in her underwear, her womanly hips pushing through white lace knickers, her arms moving gracefully above her head, twisting and twirling, full of music, full of life.

  Lizzie smiled, then closed her eyes and waited for him to kiss her.

  The song and Haydn engulfed her. Were those really psychedelic lights when he kissed her? Electricity when he touched her? He kissed her breasts, sending blissful quivers through her so that she arched herself up to him, desperate for more.

  ‘I love you,’ he said. The words floated over the song and settled on Lizzie like three strands of drifting gossamer.

  ‘I love you, too,’ she whispered.

  ‘Say it again.’

  Lizzie almost burst. ‘Oh Haydn, I love you so much. To the moon and back. I will love you for ever.’

  Then he was inside her with a flash of pain.

  Afterwards they lay in each other’s arms, their hair full of leaf bits and dirt, her body tingling up and down.

 

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