by Tanya Byrne
‘Off to meet Dominic?’ she said with a satisfied smile.
‘Jesus. Will you let it go? I’m not seeing Dominic,’ I said over my shoulder, turned and ran towards the theatre, my bag knocking against my hip.
By the time I got to it, my heart was pounding. My fingers trembled as I reached for the handle on the door. It’s been five months but I feel that every time and I love it, love how every bit of me shudders at the thought of seeing him again. I held my breath as I ran through the warren of corridors behind the stage, past the dressing rooms and abandoned ladders, checking over my shoulder every other step until I got to the prop room. I sucked in a breath and blew it out again, hoping it would satisfy my throbbing lungs as I stepped into the dim light. But as I walked past the metal shelves of wine bottles and candlesticks, and the rails and rails of costumes, to the back – where the painted wooden cut-outs of ships and cars stood propped against the wall – I couldn’t catch my breath.
I went to the corner, to the red-velvet couch we’d claimed as our own, to find it cloaked in a paint-splattered dust cloth. I was tugging it off when he jumped out from behind a painted crocodile, clearly thrilled as I screamed. I slapped his arm, but he was unrepentant, grabbing my waist and pulling me to him.
‘I’ve missed you, Miss Okomma.’ He breathed, nose in my hair, mouth on the shell of my ear and, I don’t know how, but I knew he was smiling.
‘I haven’t missed you,’ I lied, slapping him again.
He laughed and I could feel his whole body humming as he pulled me closer and it was like when we first got together and he couldn’t stop smiling, couldn’t stop looking at me, touching me, his finger turning in my hair then tracing the curve of my bottom lip then playing with a loose button on my blazer.
‘Are you OK?’ I breathed.
He looked at me, then pressed a kiss to my mouth. ‘I am now.’
When he held me again, I felt him shaking. He was nervous, I realised – jittery – like when I’m swimming a medley relay and I’m on the starting blocks waiting my turn. I stood back, sweeping his dark hair out of his eyes with my hand.
‘Hey, you.’
‘Hey.’ He smiled, but he wasn’t looking at me. His finger and thumb pinched my chin as though he was trying to memorise the shape of my mouth.
‘Look at me.’ When he did, I tilted my head. ‘Are you OK?’
‘I just needed to see you.’
‘I saw you yesterday.’
He pinched my chin. ‘You know I love you, right?’
‘Of course.’ I moved my hand and let his hair fall back over his eyes.
‘Don’t say of course.’ He frowned and took my face in his hands, the pads of his fingers pressing into my cheeks. ‘Say you know, Adamma, because I wouldn’t be doing all of this, all of this sneaking around and lying, if I wasn’t in love with you.’
‘I know.’
He kissed me again, then pressed his cheek to mine. When I’d caught my breath, I put my hand in his hair again and started playing with it.
‘This Scarlett thing hasn’t got you spooked, has it?’
‘Of course not. I just hate this.’ He took a step back and looked at me. ‘I saw you with Molly. I hate that I can’t just be with you, that you can’t even sneak out of the dining hall without someone seeing you.’
‘I know.’ I closed the gap between us, pressing my palms to his chest. ‘But it’s May, this year is almost over and then we have one more before we can move to Cambridge and be together.’ He shook his head, but I reached for his lapels and tugged. ‘My parents will be pissed as hell, but I’ll be eighteen.’
‘A year.’
‘I know.’ Panic plucked at me as he took another step back and rubbed his forehead with his hand. ‘But it’ll fly by. The last five months have felt like nothing.’
He reached for me again, one hand on my cheek. ‘Not nothing.’
I immediately felt better, pressing my cheek into the curve of his palm with a smile. ‘So stop fretting.’ But when he didn’t smile back, I knew it was more than that and I tugged on his lapel again. ‘What? Talk to me.’
He sighed and stepped back. ‘Why did you go to her party?’
‘I told you—’
‘You pissed her off,’ he interrupted, hands on his hips.
‘How do you know?’
Before he could tell me, my cellphone rang. I took it out of the pocket of my blazer to reject the call, but when I saw that it was Mrs Delaney, I muttered, ‘Damn.’
‘Hello, Mrs Delaney.’
He sighed and shook his head again and when he walked over to the painted crocodile he’d just jumped out from behind, I knew what he was thinking, that there was always an interruption, always something.
‘Where are you, Miss Okomma?’
If it was anyone else, I would have lied and said I was in the dining hall, but it was Mrs Delaney. ‘By the canal. I wasn’t feeling well so I thought I’d get some fresh air.’
‘Well, that’s hardly surprising. It is Tex Mex Day in the dining hall,’ she said with the sort of contempt usually reserved for paedophiles. ‘But you must remember to sign out, Miss Okomma.’
‘Sorry, Mrs Delaney.’
‘I need you to go to the car park,’ she said, pausing to tell someone to do up his tie. ‘It seems that someone tried to break into your car last night.’
‘My car? Are you sure?’
‘Quite sure, Miss Okomma. Security have arranged for it to be towed—’
‘Towed?’ I interrupted with a gasp.
‘I don’t know the extent, but there seems to be some damage. Security need you to sign the relevant paperwork.’
‘Yes, Mrs Delaney,’ I muttered with a sullen sigh.
When I ended the call, he asked me what was wrong and, even though he was sympathetic enough, I knew he was still pissed about Scarlett’s party.
‘I’m sorry. I’ll call you later,’ I promised, pressing a quick kiss to his mouth, before hurrying out of the prop room.
I was about to cross the Green when Olivia started walking towards me and my heart sank. I haven’t spoken to her since, I don’t remember the last time I spoke to her, but it was probably about Scarlett so I knew she didn’t want to chat about the weather.
‘I can’t stop.’ I put my head down. ‘Someone tried to break into my car last night and the Mercedes garage are coming to tow it.’ She followed and the shock of it almost made me break into a trot. ‘I have to go, Olivia. If I don’t give them the keys now I’ll be late for my one-to-one with Madame Girard.’
She’s as stubborn as her sister and caught up with me. ‘Didn’t you write a piece for the Disraeli about how Crofton is the safest boarding school in England?’
She wasn’t giving me a reason to slow down, but she kept pace as I crossed the Green and I realised that she wasn’t going to leave me alone so I slowed down. ‘Irony wins again,’ I muttered, reaching into my bag and pulling out my sunglasses.
Given all the drama, the weather should have been grim, but today was perfect, the sky clear and the sun gilding all of Crofton’s edges. I hadn’t expected it to be so warm; last week everyone was wearing scarves and gloves. But that’s England; one day I’m wearing a sweater, the next I’m in sandals.
I think that’s what I love most about the English: as soon as there’s a hint of sun, everyone goes outside. The Green was cluttered with girls sitting on their blazers watching the boys play an impromptu game of rugby. As Olivia and I walked past, heads popped up from each huddle, eyes wide, like meerkats, and I knew what they were thinking: Why was I talking to Olivia Chiltern? I’d wondered the same thing as I weaved between the clumps of girls, stepping over piles of bags and discarded sweaters. I heard a roar and turned to look as a boy skidded across the grass, hugging the ball.
; ‘What are you working on now?’ Olivia asked, as we took the short cut to the car park through the trees.
I was startled by her attempt at polite conversation and answered robotically. ‘A profile on Mr Lucas,’ I told her, ducking under a particularly low branch.
‘A profile on a teacher? Wow.’ She shook her head and whistled. ‘That’s front page news, Adamma. That’ll get you that Pulitzer.’
I shot a look at her, but when I saw her red eyes and unwashed hair, I softened. I wanted to ask if she was OK, but she wouldn’t look at me. Her gaze was on the rows of cars below us at the bottom of the hill, their roofs glistening in the sun, and it was kind of beautiful; if you squinted hard enough it looked like the ocean.
‘It’s the Disraeli, Liv,’ I said, then caught myself; Liv sounded too much like we were friends. ‘It’s for the parents and governors. They only care about exam results and if we beat Cheltenham in the hockey.’
‘And teachers.’
‘He sold a collection of poems to Faber,’ I told her with a sigh. She knew that – everyone did, it was announced in the Disraeli last month – so I don’t know why she was giving me a hard time. ‘Ballard’s asked him to revive the Crofton Review.’
‘Because a lit mag is so much more important than my missing sister.’
So that’s why she was so upset.
‘Of course it isn’t, but parents don’t want to read about pupils running away.’
‘Scarlett didn’t run away.’
I was about to walk down the hill towards the car park when I realised that she’d stopped and walked back over to her. When she crossed her arms and glared at me, I had to resist the urge to roll my eyes because I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t want to lie and say I was sorry, that I was worried too, and it was suddenly so quiet that I could hear the trees trembling in the wind.
The sun was so bright, even though I had sunglasses on, that I had to shield my eyes with my hand to see her. I’m rarely warm enough to sweat in England – usually I’m the one in a coat while everyone else is in shorts – but my shirt was sticking to my back under my cardigan. I wondered if she’d noticed, if she’d seen the skin around my hairline glisten and asked herself if I was nervous, if I knew something that I wasn’t telling her. After all, I’d noticed how pale she looked, how she was holding on to the strap of her satchel with both hands.
Olivia has never been more than Scarlett’s sister to me, but I suddenly felt protective of her. She isn’t like her sisters. She isn’t as restless, as reckless. She doesn’t have Scarlett’s swagger or their older sister Edith’s charm. She’s named after her grandmother – a formidable woman who, when introduced to Winston Churchill at the age of seven, told him that she didn’t like him much – which isn’t as cool as Edith who’s named after Edith Piaf or Scarlett who’s named after that Scarlett and is just as stubborn as Miss O’Hara. So Olivia always describes herself as the boring one, even though she isn’t. She may be quieter than her sisters, more careful, but she’s the bravest one. She must be to come to me asking for help. Not that I was in any mood to give it to her.
‘She’s fine,’ I told her with a sour sigh. ‘It’s Scarlett. She’ll be back in a couple of days with another tattoo and an epic story about how she got it.’
‘She didn’t run away, Adamma.’
I shook my head as I remembered last October, the rolling boil of panic from the moment Olivia called to ask if I’d seen Scarlett until I tracked her down to the Bowrey Hotel and she answered with a bored Hello?
She’d laughed when she had realised it was me.
Even Dominic was out of his mind with worry and got into a fight with Sam on the Green when Sam said that she’d run off with another guy. It’s kind of funny because I know what everyone thinks – that she and I fell out because of Dominic – but all we ever talked about was Scarlett, so if she hadn’t run away that day, I would never have gone to him for help and we might never have become friends.
‘I know what you’re thinking,’ Olivia said, and when I saw the tears in her eyes, I had to look away. ‘But something’s happened to her. I know it has.’
I crossed my arms and made myself look at her. ‘Why?’
‘She didn’t take her passport this time.’
‘So?’ I shrugged. ‘That just means she didn’t leave the country.’
‘She didn’t take anything, her bag –’ she counted off each thing on her fingers – ‘her purse, her keys, her mobile. She just left, Adamma.’
That made me hesitate, but I tried not to show any concern. ‘Was she upset?’
‘She seemed fine. She just said that she’d be back for supper.’
‘Did she say where she was going?’
‘To see a friend.’
‘Who?’
‘She didn’t say.’
‘Did she walk?’
When Olivia crossed her arms and looked away, I realised that Scarlett had taken their Land Rover – a muddied, broken-down thing affectionately known in Ostley as The Old Dear because you heard it wheezing towards you ten minutes before you saw it – and I sighed. She always took The Old Dear, even though she knew her parents needed it for the farm.
The brat.
‘See? She’s fine, Olivia.’
‘But she didn’t take any clothes.’
‘Like you’d know if she took anything,’ I said with a bitter laugh. ‘Her room is a disaster. You need a shovel to find the bed.’
‘I just know, OK!’ She threw her hands up, her cheeks suddenly flushed. ‘She’s my twin sister and I know that something’s happened to her, Adamma!’
‘What do you want from me, Olivia?’ I said, trying not to lose my temper too.
‘I want you to believe me, Adamma.’
‘I don’t.’ I shook my head. ‘I’m sorry. I did this the last time, remember? I cried my heart out, sure that she was dead in a ditch, and she was in New York.’
She wouldn’t listen. ‘Why did she book theatre tickets then?’
A tear rolled down her cheek and she wiped it away with her sleeve before she opened her satchel and pulled out a piece of paper. She handed it to me and I realised it was a ticket confirmation from the Theatre Royal in Bath.
‘How the hell did you get into her email?’
‘It wasn’t hard.’ She shrugged. ‘Scarlett is impossible with passwords so she has the same one for everything: password. But don’t worry about that.’ She pointed at the confirmation. ‘The play was last night. Why hasn’t she come back?’
But I wasn’t looking at that, I was looking at how many tickets she’d bought – two – and I felt something in me finally snap. ‘Because she –’ I shook the confirmation at her – ‘and whoever this second ticket was for, probably stayed in a hotel last night,’ I said, trying to hide my disdain and failing.
‘She wouldn’t miss school.’
I tipped my head back and laughed.
‘She wouldn’t,’ she insisted a little sheepishly. ‘OK, she did when she went to New York, but that was the beginning of the year. Her first rehearsal for Pygmalion is this afternoon.’ She must have sensed that I wasn’t convinced, because her voice got higher. ‘Plus, she got a written warning the last time. Headmaster Ballard told her that if she did it again, she’d be suspended. Even Scarlett wouldn’t be so stupid.’
I didn’t know that. ‘Well, she’s an idiot. She’ll never get into Yale now.’
‘Adamma—’
‘Olivia, enough.’ I held a hand up. ‘I don’t care. I’ve left Planet Scarlett and I’m not going back. I don’t care where she is.’
She looked horrified. ‘You don’t mean that, Adamma.’
‘I do,’ I said, turning and continuing on down the hill to the car park.
‘No, you don’t,’ she called after me. �
��You wouldn’t have come to our birthday party on Saturday if you didn’t still care.’
‘I don’t,’ I said over my shoulder, but Goddamn Scarlett, because as soon as I was out of sight, I looked at the confirmation email again.
I was so angry that the words blurred together for a moment, but when they came back into focus, I saw that she had opted to collect the tickets from the box office. Every cell in my body screamed at me not to, not to let her suck me back into her drama, but I took my phone out of my pocket and called the theatre.
‘You’re the second person to call about these tickets today,’ the guy said when I got through to the box office. ‘Are you from Wiltshire Police as well?’
My heart stopped then started again, twice as fast. ‘Yes. Yes,’ I breathed, the lie rolling – too quick, too easy – off my tongue. ‘Did she collect the tickets?’
I hadn’t realised until that moment that Olivia was right – I did still care – not until I caught myself holding my breath as I heard a voice in my head saying, Please say yes. Please say yes. Please say yes.
‘No, she didn’t.’
224 DAYS BEFORE
SEPTEMBER
In Nigeria we have a saying: hold a true friend with both hands. Scarlett does this too, it seems, because it’s been three weeks since I started at Crofton and we’ve been inseparable. We have lunch by the canal every day and I spend almost every afternoon at her house, in that precious hour between classes finishing and co-curriculars starting, swapping clothes and eating whatever her father has made that day.
It’s nice, kind of like it used to be with Jumoke. Even her great, cake-coloured house is beginning to feel like home, despite me being completely overwhelmed by it the first time I went there. It’s not that I’m not used to houses like that; my parents are friends with families like the Chilterns, so I’ve been to parties on the Upper East Side and spent weekends in the Hamptons in vast white houses with porches dusty with sand. I mean, if I could pad around Jumoke’s East 82nd Street condo in sweats and that had been featured in House and Garden, I didn’t expect to be intimidated by Scarlett’s house.