by Katy Cannon
I didn’t deserve them. But I knew I needed them in my life.
Mabel… I didn’t know what would happen when she learned the truth. Probably I’d never see her again, and that hurt a lot.
But Hal… I still had time to apologize to him, to mend our friendship. A friendship I hadn’t realized was so important to me until I’d lost it.
If I had to force my dad to spend time with me when he didn’t want to, was it really worth it?
“Hey, where are you going?” the girl next to me asked, as I got to my feet.
“Somewhere more important,” I said. Then I left my script and my number on the front desk, and walked right out into the London sunshine, smiling.
This felt right.
Borough Market was bustling when I arrived there. I picked up some gourmet fudge in case my apologies weren’t enough, then wound my way through tiny streets, taking the long way round as I thought about what I’d say to Hal, until I reached the Old Operating Theatre. I paid my three pounds fifty to get in, then made my way through the museum to what was apparently Europe’s oldest operating theatre. I was early, but I had a feeling that I might not be the only one.
And I was right. There, already sitting in the gallery, staring down at the operating table, was Hal.
“Thinking of chopping off your own leg?” I asked. OK, not my best opener, but I had to say something, right?
“I was surprised to get your message.” He turned slowly to look at me. “Don’t you have somewhere else to be today?”
“Maybe I figured making things right with you was more important.” I handed him the fudge. It looked like we were going to need it.
“More important than your audition?” he said, sceptically.
“Yes, actually.” I could have left it there, but I was trying a new thing. Being honest. “But … that’s not the whole of it. I went to the audition, then I left before it was my turn.”
“Why?”
“I… I decided I don’t want the part on Heatherside. Or maybe any show.”
That seemed to surprise him. “Why not? Wasn’t that the whole reason for this ridiculous summer swap thing with … with Alice.” He looked down as he said her name, and I realized again how badly I’d hurt him by letting him believe she had feelings for him.
Alice was right. Crushes suck.
Suddenly, the main doors opened and more visitors started pouring in, ready for the historical demonstration. “Come on,” Hal said, his mouth full of fudge. “Let’s get out of here. You won’t like this bit anyway.”
Outside, the sun blazed down on the river, and we sat on the wall alongside the Thames and watched the boats pass.
Hal offered the bag of fudge to me and I took a piece. “So why did you decide not to audition?”
I sighed. “Two reasons, really. Firstly… I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m not very good at letting other people tell me what to do.”
Hal laughed around his fudge at that one.
“I realized that what I really loved about my theatre course wasn’t the acting at all. It was bringing the whole show together. Working with the actors to make their pieces the best they could be.”
“I can definitely see you bossing everyone around as a director,” Hal agreed. “But you said there were two reasons?”
This was the big one. I twisted the paper bag around the fudge as I searched for the right words. “I guess I… I realized I was doing it for the wrong reasons. I only really wanted the part to make my dad notice me again. But I don’t want to chase him for attention any more. He’s my dad. If he loves me, he should want to spend time with me, right?”
“He should. But parents can be rubbish sometimes.”
“I know. And neither of mine wanted me around this summer.” I gave him a sideways look. “But you did. You hung out with me this summer, even though you didn’t have to. So I figured I’d rather have that sort of friendship than chase after attention from other people.”
Hal shook his head. “I don’t get it. I mean, I know I was just a convenience to you. An alibi when you needed one. And I know now that you were just stringing me along, pretending that Alice might actually like me when you knew she didn’t. I should have known that all along.”
“I really do think you two would make a great match,” I said, and he glared at me. “Really! But I know I shouldn’t have led you on like that without checking with Alice first. That was wrong. And I’m really sorry. Mabel told me you texted her every half-hour last night to find out if I was home yet,” I said. “You were worried about that, after everything I did?”
Hal shrugged. “I guess I feel a little responsible for you somehow. Not because I’d promised Mabel I’d look after you while you were in London, or because I know Alice. Because you’re my friend, and I wanted you to be safe. That was all.”
“Oh.” I didn’t know what to say to that. “Um, thank you? And sorry. Again.”
Friends. I’d thought I’d had friends before. But none of them had ever felt like the friendships I’d built with Alice and Hal this summer.
We ate fudge in silence for a while. Then, when the bag was gone, Hal said, “I accept your apology.”
A weight I didn’t know had been sitting on my shoulders suddenly lifted. “Good. Because however this started, we are friends, OK? And that matters to me.”
“It matters to me too,” he admitted.
I tilted my head back and stared up at the blue sky, peeking out between the buildings.
Sitting there with Hal, it was difficult to even remember quite how this summer had started. Alice and I had swapped places, figuring that no one would notice, or care.
They hadn’t noticed. But I was pretty sure they were all going to care. Mabel, Aunt Sofia and all the friends Alice had made in Italy. Somehow, while Alice and I were trying to prove a point … we’d gained new people who cared about us. More importantly, who wanted to help take care of us.
How would Mabel feel when she realized I wasn’t the person she thought I was?
A horrible feeling started in my chest and began growing outwards, like the tendrils of some awful plant. The guilt plant.
Later, we packed all our things back into our bags and walked along the waterline to buy gelato from a stand on the other side of the beach.
Walking back, I let the waves wash over my feet as I licked my pistachio gelato. Rose had skipped ahead, but Luca walked beside me, the waves barely reaching him.
“Next summer, we should head up to one of the beaches further up the coast,” he said suddenly.
I froze, my lips cold against the ice. “Next summer?”
“Well, yeah.” He gave me a look – one of those ‘Are you crazy?’ looks that I was used to from my friends. But not from Luca. “I mean, if we’re still staying with Sofia and Mattias, of course. Now you’ve got to know them, you’ll be coming back to visit, yeah?”
“I… Yeah, I guess so.”
By next summer, Dad would know the truth, I could feel it. Once he found out, he’d probably never let me out of his sight again.
But Willa … she’d be expected to visit again. Luca was right. How was she going to get around that one? Had she even thought about it? Or just figured that something would show up to work it out?
“We could visit Naples too,” Luca went on. “Maybe I could come with Sofia to meet you at the airport in London next time. That would be cool.”
“Very cool,” I said, my voice faint.
We hadn’t thought this through at all, I realized. Neither Willa nor I had thought a moment beyond the end of summer, for all our grand plans.
“I guess my grandparents being useless wasn’t the worst thing,” Luca said, looking out at the sea, rather than at me. “If it means we get to spend the holidays together again.”
“I guess so.” My throat felt swollen, in the way it always did before I was about to cry.
Because I wanted that too. But it wasn’t mine to have.
I didn’t
talk much on the way back from the beach. Rosa had Luca playing some weird variation on I-Spy, mostly in Italian, so it wasn’t like I had much to add, anyway, despite my lessons with Rosa.
When we reached the farmhouse, there was bunting hanging across the front windows, and tiny fairy lights strung through the olive and bay trees that Sofia had planted outside. And over the door hung a home-made banner.
One that said: Benvenuti a Casa.
Welcome home.
Rosa gasped, and raced forwards to where Sofia was waiting for her in the doorway, and threw her arms round her waist.
“We’re staying?” Luca asked, still hanging back a bit. “For good?”
Mattias, standing beside Sofia, nodded. “Your grandparents confirmed it today, and the authorities too. We are officially your long-term foster parents now.”
“You’re stuck with us,” Sofia said, beaming. “And the animals.”
“Just as well,” I said, trying to keep my smile authentic. “Achilles and Hercules would miss you terribly.”
“I’ve made lasagne,” Sofia said, moving aside to let us in. “My traditional homecoming meal.”
“Which just happens to be Luca’s favourite too,” Mattias added.
“And mine!” Rosa said. “Where’s Antonio? Can I go and tell him?”
The three of them disappeared into the house. But Luca stayed outside, staring up at the banner and the lights and the bunting and the whole higgledy-piggledy house.
“Are you glad?” I asked softly. “That you’re staying?”
“It just doesn’t feel real yet,” Luca said. “I mean … everywhere has always been temporary. But long-term fostering … that’s the real thing. I guess I thought that this place was too good to be true. That any day now we’d be told it was time to leave again.”
I sat down on the stone step in front of the door, and patted the ground beside me until he sat too. “But this afternoon you were talking about next summer.”
Luca gave me a sad sort of half-smile. “We always do that. I mean, Antonio used to, when we were little. And now I do it for Rosa. We talk about the place we are now like it’s our real home. Like we’ll always be there. It helps her not to be so scared.” His smile fell away entirely. “Except for when we were places we really didn’t want to stay. Then we’d talk about how we’d be home again soon – with Mama, maybe. Or even Dad. Or our grandparents. We didn’t remember Dad or Grandma and Granddad so well, but sometimes that made them a better daydream, anyway.”
My heart hurt for him, hearing him talk so plainly about his childhood so far.
“Well, I’m glad you get to stay here,” I said.
“Because it means we can hang out again next summer for definite?” Luca asked, looking up at me.
I shook my head, glancing away. “Because I think you’ll be happy here. And not just until you’re eighteen. I think that with Sofia and Mattias … once you’re family, they don’t let you go.”
We both stared out over the olive groves, towards the village on the hill, the sound of donkeys braying in the background.
This wasn’t my place. And it never could be. Especially when they learned that I’d been lying to them all summer.
Unless… Unless I could explain. Make them understand, somehow. Beg for their forgiveness. If I told them the truth – rather than them finding out from Willa, or her family … maybe they could forgive me. Maybe they wouldn’t hate me completely.
I needed to talk to Willa. Tonight.
“You know the same goes for you, right?” Luca said suddenly. “I mean, I know you only just met your aunt this summer. But you’re family, and Sofia loves you. She’ll always give you a home here, if you need it.”
“I hope so,” I said quietly. And I’d never meant anything more.
Mabel was cooking. Like, actual food.
In the whole time I’d been staying with her, we’d either eaten out, got takeaway, or made sandwiches from stuff she picked up from the deli.
But tonight, she was cooking a real, from scratch, proper meal.
“I didn’t know you knew how to do that,” I blurted out, as I saw her at the stove.
Mabel flashed me a smile. “I might be making it up a bit as I go along,” she admitted. “But I wanted to make you at least one home-cooked meal while you were staying with me.”
I didn’t say that if she was that out of practice at cooking, I’d have preferred another takeaway from the Chinese across the street.
Out in the hallway, a phone rang – the landline, I realized. Weird that she still had one of those, really.
“Can you get that?” Mabel asked, as she poured something into the pan she was stirring constantly.
“Sure.” I nipped out and grabbed the phone.
“Hello?”
“Alice?” a voice I’d never heard before said. “Hi, sweetheart. I just tried to Skype you again, but you weren’t answering.”
Oh God. It was Alice’s dad. Now what was I supposed to do?
Try to sound like Alice, I supposed. I closed my eyes and tried to hear her voice in my head, then copy it, accent and all.
“Uh, hi. Dad.” Oh, that felt really weird. “Um, sorry. I didn’t hear it. My laptop’s in my room.”
“Are you feeling OK, sweetheart? You sound a bit … different from yesterday. Maybe a bit cold-y.”
“Probably the pollen from the florist’s downstairs,” I improvised. “Maybe I’m developing hay fever.”
Well, it was a better reason than ‘because I’m not your daughter,’ anyway.
“Are you sure that’s all?”
Oh, he really wasn’t buying this. Fooling people who didn’t know Alice was one thing. But her actual own father? No way even I could pull this off.
“I’m…” I faked a coughing fit, holding the phone away from my mouth. “Fine,” I finished hoarsely. “Just … need water.” More coughing.
“Alice?” Mabel asked, coming out into the hallway. “Are you OK?”
I pointed at my throat and coughed again for good measure. “Need water,” I repeated croakily, and handed her the phone before racing for the kitchen.
“I think she’s fine, Jon,” I heard Mabel saying, as I drank. “Just a frog in her throat. So, how’s the data looking today?”
With them safely talking science, I escaped back up to my room until dinner was ready, my heart still racing.
That was too close. It was all getting too close, too real.
And I knew, even before I saw the text from Alice waiting on my phone, that it was time. In fact, I think I’d known since my conversation with Hal that morning – the call from Alice’s dad just sealed the deal.
The great summer swap was over.
It was time to tell the truth.
ALICE: OK, you’re not talking me out of it this time. We have to tell people the truth.
WILLA: I know.
ALICE: I mean it. Even if you don’t, I’m going to. And then you’ll have to. If you see what I mean.
WILLA: Alice, I was agreeing with you.
ALICE: Really?
ALICE: I thought I’d have to fight you on this one.
WILLA: Yeah, so did I. But that was before I had to pretend to be you to your dad.
ALICE: You had to do what?!
WILLA: It was fine, I faked a coughing fit and handed the phone to Mabel.
WILLA: The point is, you’re right. It’s time.
WILLA: But how do we do it?
ALICE: We have to do it at exactly the same time. Otherwise there’ll be phone calls and chaos and stuff. So, we need to synchronise watches.
WILLA: We need to do what now?
ALICE: It’s just something my dad says. I mean, we need to make sure we get our times right.
ALICE: Let’s say we both do it at midday tomorrow – my time. So 11 tomorrow morning for you.
WILLA: That works. Mabel’s usually back from her run by then.
ALICE: Great, then. It’s a plan.
WILLA: U
m.
WILLA: Alice?
WILLA: What happens *after* we tell them?
ALICE: I have absolutely no idea.
I felt a strange mixture of relief and anxiety that night when I went to bed – and I still felt exactly the same way when I woke up the next morning.
I hadn’t slept particularly well. I’d written in my journal for a while, then it had taken me ages to drop off, and I had all sorts of weird dreams, about Sofia and Willa and Luca and Dad and even a shadowy blond figure I somehow knew was Mabel. None of them made any sense, but there seemed to be a lot of shouting, all the same.
I just hoped it wasn’t a premonition.
My nerves were still jangling as I made my way down the stairs to breakfast. Only a few hours to go. Four hours, and the truth would be out – here and in London.
“What’s up with you?” Luca asked, as I focused too hard on spreading jam on my roll.
“Nothing.” Except that I kept thinking every moment, This will be the last time I do this. The last breakfast, the last conversation, the last smile.
Because whatever came after twelve o’clock that afternoon, it wouldn’t be the same as before.
I’d never done anything like this before. Never broken the rules. Never jumped without looking. Never acted so completely without a plan.
And I’d loved every moment of it.
OK. Maybe not every moment. But if you averaged out all my moments, the results were still pretty stellar.
And I just didn’t know what would happen next.
It was … terrifying. But also kind of exhilarating. Freeing, maybe.
Like shouting into a waterfall.
I added more jam to my roll for good measure, and looked slowly around Sofia’s kitchen as I committed everything firmly to memory.
The knock on the door made us all jump.
Mattias got up to answer it and, as we waited to see who it was, the nervous, spinning feeling in my stomach grew. It took a moment for me to figure out why.