by Tanya Byrne
‘I can’t wait to see it.’
‘I want a photo of you in it,’ he breathed, his cheeks a little pinker, and when he kissed me again, I thought my heart was going to split open.
We got tipsy on red wine and fell asleep on the tartan blanket. I woke up before him, stretching blissfully, like a cat. I don’t know how long I watched him sleep – watched his eyelids flutter and the shadows of the leaves move across his face – but the sky was pink when he eventually woke up and checked his watch. He told me to leave first and I did, walking back to Crofton, dazed from too much sun – and him – smiling to myself as I picked a leaf out of my hair.
I heard The Old Dear before I saw it, wheezing off the road and turning into the forest. My heart stopped and I glanced over my shoulder, hoping that he wasn’t in his car. I pulled my cellphone out of the pocket of my blazer and fired off a text, telling him to stay where he was just as The Old Dear pulled up next to me. For an awful moment, I thought it was going to be her, but it was her father who wound down the window with a grin.
‘Kedu, Adamma.’
‘Kedu ka i mere, Tom?’
‘I haven’t said that in a while!’ he said, and I smiled.
Whatever I feel for her, her father really is the sweetest man. He’s always made an effort to speak Igbo with me or to look up Nigerian recipes on the Internet. He once made nkwobi and it was so good, even my father was impressed.
‘What are you doing here?’
I thumbed over my shoulder. ‘I just went for a walk.’
‘Perfect day, isn’t it?’
‘Yes. It’s lovely.’
‘I’m setting up for Scarlett and Olivia’s party.’ He nodded at the pile of boxes in the back seat, bunting and streamers spilling out of them. There was a tangle of fairy lights in one of them that looked beyond unravelling. ‘Are you coming?’
I shook my head. ‘I don’t think I’ll be able to.’
‘Why not?’ He didn’t wait for me to answer. ‘I don’t know what happened between you and Scarlett, but I can tell you this: it isn’t worth it, Adamma.’ I looked down at my feet and shrugged, but he pushed on. ‘Just put it behind you and come.’
‘I don’t think she’d want me there.’
‘She went to your seventeenth, didn’t she?’
‘I guess.’
‘There you go. Besides, it’s Scarlett.’ He winked. ‘Buy her a present and she’ll forgive you anything!’
I chuckled.
‘See you tonight, then!’ he said, waving at me again as he chugged off.
As I watched The Old Dear shudder up the road away from me, I thought about my birthday party, about how she had waited for me outside the washroom – Why can’t I forget? – and for the first time in a long time, I thought of her, not him.
So I went to her party. She crashed mine, it was only fair, right?
It was held under a tangle of trees near the gates. By the time I got there it was dark, so I expected to slip in unnoticed, but as I approached – following the sound of music from the road – the trees parted to reveal a room of light. I don’t know how her father did it, but it was stunning. Strings of light bulbs and Chinese lanterns were threaded between the trees, bright balls of light against the black, black sky.
As I got closer, I could see other things hanging from the branches – some low enough to touch – jam jars of tea lights and milk bottles filled with sunflowers, peonies and ginger-coloured tulips. Through the middle, over the heads of everyone dancing beneath it, was a washing line with photographs of Scarlett and Olivia pegged to it. I recognised some of them – Scarlett in her yellow wellington boots, Scarlett at her drum kit, Scarlett doing a star jump in front of the Eiffel Tower – and I lingered on one of a tiny Scarlett in her bridesmaid’s dress, obviously taken before Dominic pushed her in the pool. She looked adorable, all blue eyes and liquorice-coloured ringlets, and I found myself smiling.
I don’t remember the last time the thought of her made me smile.
I saw her then, standing next to Olivia by one of the tables, a glass urn of lemonade between them. Olivia saw me first, flicking a filthy look in my direction, before turning back to Scarlett, who seemed amused. She raised her glass – like she had at my party – and I smiled this time, feeling the burn of something familiar in my chest. I don’t know what it was, but as I watched her laugh, I smiled again and it felt a little like something repairing itself.
I could have stayed, I suppose, and got drunk on the spiked lemonade, but she looked so happy and I was tired of being the reason she wasn’t. I didn’t want to bicker, didn’t want to pretend not to care when she called me a name. So I added my present to the pile and left. But as I was making my way back to the road, I saw Dominic coming towards me, a champagne bottle in his hand. He was sucking a blackcurrant lollipop. I could smell it when he took it out of his mouth with a POP.
‘You look positively ambrosial this evening, Miss Okomma,’ he told me with a wicked smile. He looked just like he did my first day at Crofton, all eyelashes and cheekbones and that pink, pink mouth.
But I feigned indifference. ‘Ambrosial?’
‘It’s a word.’ He pointed the lollipop at me with an impish grin. ‘What are you doing here? You’ve got more front than Brighton.’ I must have looked confused, because he explained it: ‘Brighton? Seafront?’ He rolled his eyes. ‘Never mind.’
I countered with an arched eyebrow. ‘I could say the same to you, Mr Sim.’
‘True.’
When he tried to put the lollipop back in his mouth and missed, I giggled. ‘How long has Drunk Dominic been here?’
‘Not long. Not long,’ he said, swaying a little. ‘But he isn’t having any fun.’
‘Even with a lollipop?’
‘Even with a lollipop.’ He took it out and I saw that his tongue was purple.
Molly walked past us then. ‘Hello, Dominic. Hello, Adamma,’ she said with a rabid smile, before continuing on towards the party, a bottle in each hand.
I sighed and rolled my eyes. ‘Aren’t you sick of it?’
‘Of what?’
‘Of people talking about us?’
‘People are always talking about me.’
‘Yeah, but,’ I lifted my chin to look at him, ‘this is different.’
‘Is it?’
‘Of course it is. You don’t need to put up with it. You could tell everyone the truth.’
‘True, but honesty is overrated, Miss Okomma.’ He shrugged, then grinned. ‘Besides, she fucking hates it. I love that she hates it. It’s just another of our games.’
‘I suppose.’
He put the lollipop back in his mouth, then leaned a little closer, close enough for me to smell the blackcurrant on his breath. ‘Do you think she’ll ever forgive you?’
‘Jesus, Dominic.’ I stepped back, my cheeks stinging as though he’d reached across and slapped me. The guilt was sudden and cloying. ‘Where did that come from?’
‘I was just thinking.’
‘Well don’t,’ I snapped, crossing my arms.
‘But seriously, do you think she ever will?’
‘I don’t know,’ I snapped again, the guilt deepening as I remembered my party, her hanging off me, loose limbed and groggy. I turned to look back at the party, at her dancing – arms in the air, her fingers almost touching the string of Chinese lanterns over her head – and when I looked back at him, I shrugged. ‘I don’t know,’ I said again, more softly.
‘You’re gonna have to be the one, you know,’ he said, holding the champagne bottle to his chest. ‘She’s not as brave as you. You have to make the first move.’
‘I know,’ I admitted, thinking of my present. I hadn’t attached a card because I wanted her to keep it and perhaps that was cruel, letting her get excited,
letting her look at it every day and not know it was from me. But I guess some part of me still wanted to be there in her big, untidy room, with its piles of orange peel and dirty plates, even if she didn’t know I was.
‘She’ll forgive you. I know she will,’ he said and I don’t know if he really believed that, but I didn’t realise until that moment that I wanted her to.
I pressed a finger to the medal around my neck and nodded. ‘I hope so.’
12 DAYS AFTER
MAY
I didn’t say a word on the drive back to Crofton, just looked out the window at the fields rolling by. It felt so final, like the ride to the airport after a vacation, and I made myself memorise everything – every blade of grass, every dandelion, each break in the clouds that exposed the blue, blue sky – holding on to that last moment with both hands – with my fingernails – before I went back to Crofton and everything changed.
I guess Bones thought that was it, that I wasn’t going to say another word, because when he pulled up outside the main hall and I got out of the car, he didn’t follow. I turned back, stooping down to look at him before I closed the door.
‘Come on.’ I nodded at the doors.
He took off his seat belt. ‘Where are we going?’
‘What time is it?’
He checked his watch. ‘Almost four.’
‘I know where he is.’
When we got to the classroom, he was humming to himself, but when he glanced over to find me in the doorway, he shook his head.
‘Please, Adamma,’ he said with a weary sigh. ‘Not now.’
I guess he didn’t see Bones, because he turned back to the whiteboard and I felt an ache in my chest as I remembered our last social, him in the suit he wore to Edith’s wedding, me in a dress he told me later was the colour of Dundee marmalade. He made me wait until it was almost over before he approached me, just in passing, just for a moment, and I’d pretended to pout, asking if he’d even seen me. ‘You’re the only person I see when I walk into a room, Adamma,’ he had said with a slow smile.
For a moment it hurt too much to speak, as I stared at him, noting the scuff on his shoes, the missing button on the sleeve of his tweed blazer. I searched for some hardness in his jaw, some blackness in his eyes, but he looked as he always does, awkward and a little flustered, his hair in his eyes.
‘I think I made my feelings clear earlier,’ he said without looking at me, rubbing away the notes from his Year 10 class.
I stepped into the classroom. ‘Daniel, what did you do?’
His hand stilled for a second, but when he recovered, he shook his head and continued running the eraser over the whiteboard. ‘For goodness’ sake, Adamma, I thought we agreed that—’ He shot a look at me as Bones followed me in. ‘DS Bone.’ He put the eraser down and faced us, his chin up. ‘Is everything OK?’
I wanted to fly at him, yell at him, but all I could say was: ‘Daniel, what did you do?’ again, because they were the only words in my head, churning around and around and around. What did you do? What did you do? What did you do?
He looked genuinely bewildered. ‘Do? To whom?’
‘To Scarlett.’
There was a moment of silence, her name dropping like ink into water, bleeding – spreading – until the classroom suddenly felt darker. I watched him swallow, his Adam’s apple rising then falling again, before he paced over to the door and closed it behind Bones. I wasn’t sure what he was going to do, if he was going to turn into a pantomime villain and laugh in my face, grab me by the arm and call me a liar. But he just came and stood in front of me again, his cheeks suddenly too red as he looked at me through his hair. It was the same look he had given me outside the theatre when he had tugged my pashmina over my shoulders and, just like that – as always – we were the only people in the room. Bones wasn’t there, there were no desks, no chairs, and he looked so much like the Daniel I knew – my Daniel – young and awkward and unsure of what to do with his hands, that I wanted to press a kiss to his mouth and tell him that it would be OK.
But I took a step back.
‘Adamma, I can explain,’ he said, his hands shaking as he reached for me.
Even then, I still couldn’t believe it and I stepped back. ‘No!’
‘Adamma, please.’ When I wouldn’t let him touch me, he pressed his hands together as though he was praying. ‘Please. It’s me. Me. I love you so much.’
‘No you don’t.’
‘I do. I do.’ He reached for me again and I yanked my arm away.
‘No you don’t. You were going to leave.’ I shook my head and stared at him as I remembered the letter from Yale I’d seen in the glove compartment of his car. They must have discussed going together and he was just going to go without her.
‘Just for a year.’
‘No! You were running away!’
‘Adamma, please.’
Something in me gave way and I started crying. ‘Daniel, please.’ I sobbed and I wanted to reach for him so much, to touch his familiar arms and shoulders, to sweep his hair out of his face with my hand. ‘Please tell me you didn’t do it.’
‘It was an accident.’ He looked inconsolable, like a little boy. ‘She wouldn’t listen.’
‘No, Daniel.’ I shook my head and took a step back. ‘No.’
‘She was going to keep it. She wouldn’t listen. She was going to ruin everything.’
He tried to reach for my hand again, but I ran out of the classroom before he could.
42 MINUTES BEFORE
MAY
I shouldn’t have skipped swimming practice this afternoon, but when he texted, asking me to meet him in Savernake Forest, I didn’t hesitate. I should have – Coach told me that I’d be kicked off the team if I missed another practice – but I didn’t care. I don’t care about anything anymore: about swimming, about my parents getting another letter, about getting kicked out of Crofton. And it’s kind of scary, how much you’ll give of yourself without realising. Sometimes it feels like I’m not giving, but throwing, pieces away. All I want is him. Him. Him. Him. Everything else can burn. So as soon as I read his text, I didn’t think, I just left.
It’s moments like that that make me wonder if I have any control over this, that make me feel like an alcoholic hiding empty bottles at the back of closets. I can’t remember the last time I told a stammered lie, the last time I felt a sting of shame when my father called and I rejected the call because I was with him. If this is love, then I’m mad with it. Drunk on it. Like today. It was another perfect day, the sun out, high and bright in the sky as we lay on a tartan blanket, the trees arcing over us. I took his hand and counted the bones in his fingers, claiming each one as my own – distal phalanx, middle phalanx, proximal phalanx – while he laughed.
When I’m older, I’m sure I’ll think spending a Sunday lying around in the sun is a waste. But today wasn’t a waste. Today all we had was time: seconds, minutes, hours, floating around us like dandelion fluff as we looked up at the endless sky, the blanket scratching at our bare elbows as we watched the flimsy clouds float past, pretending each one was a country. (‘India! Let’s go there. Australia! Let’s go there.’)
We only stopped when we heard the distant chugchugchug of The Old Dear on the road, somewhere beyond the wall of trees. Usually, it would have ruined the afternoon, the thought of her reminding me of something nasty she had said in class or another rumour she’d tried to start, but I just lay back on the blanket with a sigh.
I think he was surprised. ‘So how was the party? You don’t have any bruises.’
‘Fine.’
He groaned, lying down next to me. ‘What did she do this time?’
‘Nothing. We didn’t even speak.’
He rolled onto his side, taking my hand. ‘Do you think that’s it?’
�
�Who knows with Scarlett.’ I threaded my fingers through his and looked up at the sky. ‘But it’s the happiest I’ve seen her in a long time.’
‘Was Dominic there?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Were they together?’ When I shrugged as if to say, Aren’t they always? he sighed. ‘I don’t know why he puts up with her. Why he puts up with any of this.’
‘He loves her, Daniel.’ I turned my head to smile at him. ‘You don’t know what you’ll do for love until you do it.’
He smiled back, then pressed a kiss to my forehead. ‘Did you talk to him?’
‘He told me I should apologise, make the first move.’
‘Did you?’
‘I took her a present.’
He chuckled. ‘Well played.’
‘I bought it ages ago. I was going to give it to her for Christmas, but then, you know.’ I shrugged again. ‘I didn’t attach a card so she won’t know it’s from me.’
‘What was it?’
‘Nothing. Just a picture frame I saw in a shop in Marlborough.’
I squeezed his hand as I thought about the white wooden frame, the red words: A ship is safe in harbor, but that’s not what ships are for.
‘It’s kind of funny. If I hadn’t met her, I don’t think I would have been brave enough to do this.’
He kissed me, but before I could kiss him back, his cellphone rang. He pulled it out of the pocket of his jeans and looked at the screen with a sigh. I asked him what was wrong, but he just rolled his eyes. ‘Crofton. They know not to ring me on a Sunday.’
I groaned before he said it – I have to go – rolling onto my stomach to watch him walk back to his car. He was only a few steps away before I felt the tug on the thread between us and I started missing him. I wonder if he knew, because he turned back to smile at me before he disappeared between the trees. When I lost sight of him, I rolled back onto my back with a lazy sigh, a hand on my chest.
Is this love?
I think it is.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
First, I must thank you, lovely reader. Whether you’ve bought or borrowed this, thank you for reading. I hope this is a story that you will want to read again or, if you’re one of those people who read the acknowledgements first, I hope that what I’m about to say will encourage you to go back to the beginning.