Naomi paused then decided to speak her mind. ‘Before you say anything else, can I ask you something?’
‘OK.’
‘Are you jealous of my relationship with Nathan?’
Siobhan drew breath to reply quickly, then changed her mind. She crossed her arms, leant back in her seat and pouted sulkily at Naomi. ‘I suppose the answer is yes and no.’
Naomi could feel herself scowling. ‘Yes, because?’
‘Because you’re one of the only friends I’ve ever had and because I didn’t want him spoiling things or changing you or taking you away from me.’ She couldn’t maintain eye contact and looked down. ‘And because I care a lot about you.’ Siobhan glanced up now and froze.
Naomi found herself locked in a glare with Siobhan. It was the kind of conversation where the gloves were off. She didn’t consciously arrive at the next words, they just came out. ‘Are you attracted to me?’
Siobhan’s eyes doubled in size. Her mouth fell open. Regret was pointless now the words were out and hanging between them.
‘If you mean do I fancy you – no, I do not.’ Siobhan sat up stiffly and looked round now as if she was conscious that someone might have overheard. Without a neck, Naomi wondered how she was managing to rotate her head. ‘How could you ask me that?’
‘I’m sorry. I misinterpreted what you meant,’ Naomi said, colouring from the neck up. She felt an immediate need to justify herself. ‘I’m just struggling to make sense of what you’re saying when you don’t know Nathan. I thought friends stuck together. It’s like you’re taking my mum’s side.’
‘I’m not taking sides. It’s because I’m your friend that I’m telling you this. After that, you can do what you like with it. It’s not like I can stop you.’
Naomi was hating this conversation. Hating, hating it. She resisted the impulse to stand and run. All week she’d been bracing herself for an epic battle with Camilla, and seeing as it had seemed unavoidable, she’d dreaded and wanted it in equal measures. But she was unprepared for a full-on dress rehearsal with Siobhan, and wasn’t willing to risk hurting or insulting her any more either.
‘I’m not following,’ was the best she could manage between clenched teeth.
Siobhan lifted her cup again and sipped. ‘Like I said, I have a confession,’ she said. Naomi could find nothing in response. She’d reached a point of resignation. She picked up her drink to give her something to do. Her hands trembled with fury. ‘I was in your piano room when Nathan came in with Annabel.’
Naomi frowned over the top of her cup. This was unexpected. ‘What? Why?’
‘They didn’t know I was there. I’d gone to the loo after dinner and seen your piano through an open door. It was curiosity that took me inside. I just wanted to look at your music room, your sacred place where it all happens, so to speak. I don’t know why. No reason.’
Naomi placed her drink down and tucked her hands beneath her legs to warm them and stop them from shaking. Her back was aching through tension. So was her head. ‘And?’
‘And I recognised Nathan’s voice outside the room. I didn’t want him to catch me being nosy, so I panicked and ducked behind the closed curtains behind me.’ She stopped to recall details and insert her nails inside each other. While Naomi waited, her engagement ring dug into her leg. ‘The first thing I heard him say when the door closed, was, “It’s good to get away from the crowds.” I was sure he must be with you. I was about to step out and own up to the fact that I was there until Annabel giggled and said, “It’s always quiet in here except when Naomi’s home. No one ever comes in. What can I do for you?” I was standing there, frozen, so I was, trying not to breathe too loudly. I was sure one of them would hear me. I could hear Annabel’s heels as she walked. They came to the piano, right near me. Someone played a few notes.’
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 of 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, t
hey’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 train.
‘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.’
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