Follow Me Down (6 page)

212 DAYS BEFORE

OCTOBER

Today I got my first assignment for the
Disraeli
. It wasn’t much, I was just asked to cover the Crofton/Cheltenham hockey match, but it was something. The trouble was, Dominic was the photographer assigned to work with me and that was never going to end well, was it? It didn’t help that I was still prickly after what he had said at the social last week, and when he showed up an hour late – sauntering with no trace of urgency towards the door to the girls’ changing rooms where I’d been waiting for him – I had to fight the urge to club him with a hockey stick.

‘I’ve already done the interview with Chloe,’ I told him, arms crossed.

‘Fine,’ he grinned, holding up his camera, ‘I’ll just take some shots.’

I grabbed him by the sleeve of his coat and tugged him back. ‘Like hell you’re taking photos in the girls’ changing rooms. This article is for the
Disraeli
, not
FHM
.’

‘I love cross Adamma. She’s my favourite.’ The skin around his mouth creased as his smile widened, but I ignored him.

‘Let’s just head over to the pitch, the match is about to start.’

‘Is that what you’re wearing?’ He frowned and I had to take a deep breath; I hate it when guys think they can comment on what I’m wearing. He must have known I was pissed, because he held his hand up. ‘Not that you don’t look ravishing, as always, but you do know that it’s October and this match is outside, right?’ He pointed up at the ominous black clouds.

‘This is waterproof.’ I ran my hands down my Burberry trench coat. My Lois Lane trench coat purchased especially for my
Disraeli
assignments.

He didn’t look convinced. ‘If you say so, Miss Okomma.’

He stopped to talk to so many people on the way to the pitch – mostly girls whose hands lingered on his shoulders when he leaned down to kiss them on both cheeks – that I went on without him. I was nearing the pitch when I felt the first drop of rain, as it hit the top of my ear with a cold splash that made my shoulders jump up. I shivered and turned the collar of my coat up, wondering if there was enough time to head back to Burnham for an umbrella, but when I looked back at the changing rooms to see the players jogging out, I settled for a spot on the edge of the pitch next to a kind man with a big umbrella.

By the time the match started with a roar, the rain was biblical. To make matters worse, there was no sign of Dominic, so when Crofton scored early, I was livid and took some photos on my phone so I had
something
to include with my story.

Luckily, the shower was fierce but quick and after about fifteen minutes, it stopped. People began to close their umbrellas and that’s when I saw Dominic, the hood of his Crofton sweatshirt up as he weaved through the crowd, taking photos of the game and the mothers pacing the sidelines in their Hunter wellies, their hands balled into fists.

When he worked his way around to me, he grinned and said, ‘Let’s go.’

‘Dominic!’ I stopped to grab his coat as he turned to walk away. My fingers were so cold I thought they were going to snap. ‘The match has just started.’

‘Don’t worry.’ He held up his camera. ‘I have everything and you know what you’re going to write, right? Chloe Poole, scholarship girl done good. What more do you need?’

‘The score might be useful.’

‘Someone will tell you that!’ he shouted as the crowd cheered.

I looked at the pitch to see who’d scored and when I turned back to him, he was walking away. I went after him and snatched the camera out of his hands.

‘You’ve been taking photos for all of fifteen minutes, Dominic,’ I hissed, wiping the raindrops from the screen with the pad of my thumb. ‘You can’t have enough.’

As I scrolled through them, I was surprised to find that he did. There were dozens of the players, some great ones of Chloe and one of a little girl in a Cheltenham sweatshirt looking forlorn as the girl in the Crofton scarf next to her cheered. I probably should have stopped there, but when I saw the other ones he’d taken, I kept going. I expected to find a series of pictures of him and Sam with a parade of pink-lipped girls holding champagne glasses, but there was one of a farmer stopping outside a newsagent to frown at a poster in the window advertising pints of milk for 40p and another of a Google logo stuck to the door of a boarded-up library, and I was impressed. Then I got to one of Scarlett and stopped. She had her eyes closed and one hand covering her face as she laughed, but I knew it was her. When I realised that her shoulders were bare and saw her dark hair spilling across the pillow under her head, I almost dropped the camera.

The photograph was taken in the last week because Scarlett had bangs in it, but I had no idea when. She hadn’t mentioned it, yet there she was, in bed, laughing, and I felt like an idiot, not just because I didn’t know, but because she didn’t tell me. Did she think that I was going to judge her?

Would I judge her?

‘OK. You have enough.’ I handed him back the camera.

‘This way,’ he called out to me when I started to head towards Burnham.

‘What way?’

‘I have to show you something.’ He nodded towards the car park.

‘I can’t just leave, Dominic. I need to go back to Burnham and get a pass—’

‘We’ll go through the car park,’ he interrupted. ‘No one will see.’

‘Forget it, Dominic. I’m cold and wet and I just want to go back to my room,’ I muttered. The rain may have stopped, but I was still shaking, my breath puffing out in front of me as I crossed my arms and told him that I’d see him on Monday.

But before I turned away again he said, ‘Fine. But you were at that dinner last week, Adamma. Do you think this –’ he nodded at the hockey players charging across the pitch – ‘is going to be enough to get Hannah and Mr Lucas’s attention?’

‘What can we do, Dominic? This is what we were assigned,’ I told him with a defeated shrug. But I can’t lie, I’d wondered the same thing.

‘Did you know that there are only two spots on the
Disraeli
for sixth formers?’ I didn’t. ‘One Senior Features Writer and one Senior Photographer. I’m up against someone who won Young Photographer of the Year. This face can get me pretty much anything I want –’ he sighed theatrically – ‘but I don’t think it can compete with
actual talent
.’

I sighed too and glanced at the pitch. Earlier, when I’d been looking for him in the crowd, I’d recognised some of the faces, but was too pissed at him to think much more about it. I still didn’t know everyone’s names, so I’d assumed I knew them from class or had seen them around school. But then I saw her, the girl whose short story was published in
Granta
, holding out a Dictaphone to Orla Roberts, who didn’t play today because she’d sprained her knee, and realised what Hannah had done: she’d assigned us all the same story.

I turned back to Dominic with another sigh. ‘Fine. What’ve you got?’

He licked his lips, then grinned. ‘Fuck this shitty hockey game. I have a story.’

It had stopped raining, but I still wanted to cry. I wanted to be in Lagos. I find myself missing home at the strangest times – not just when I’m frowning at a plate of shepherd’s pie in the dining hall or laughing at my grandmother on Skype because she won’t talk to me until she’s changed out of her old boubou – but on days like today, after the rain, when my limbs suddenly felt heavier as I followed Dominic away from the hockey pitch. It was probably because my hair was wet and I could smell my mango shampoo and it made me think of Comfort’s mango cake, of sneaking slices of it with my father when she’d gone to bed. I even began to miss New York. At least there autumn is lazy and golden. As my shoes squelched in the muddy grass, I thought of the colours changing in Central Park – green to red to gold – and wondered if Ostley would be as beautiful, if the leaves would fall from the trees like brown paper butterflies.

‘I love this weather,’ Dominic told me as we took the short cut to the car park.

When we approached the top of the hill, he held out his hand and I refused, until the sole of my shoe skidded in the mud, and I took it. At least he wasn’t offering to carry me.

‘You love rain?’ I muttered, horrified.

‘When it’s fierce like that.’ When we got to the bottom of the hill, he started unbuttoning his coat, then he shrugged it off. ‘It feels like the world is about to end.’

I looked up at the grey sky as we walked through the car park. ‘I think it might be.’

His eyes lit up. ‘We should probably do it in case it is.’ I sighed wearily, but when he tugged off his sweatshirt, the black T-shirt underneath riding up to expose a strip of skin and the waistband of his underwear, I tensed, sure that he meant it. But then he handed me the sweatshirt. ‘Put this on, Miss Okomma. Your magical waterproof trench coat has failed you and I don’t want you to catch pneumonia.’

I stuck my nose up at it. ‘I’ll be fine.’

‘Stop being a princess.’

‘I’m not. I just don’t get why I can’t go back to Burnham and change.’

‘Because it might be raining again in ten minutes. We won’t be able to see anything if it’s raining.’

‘See what?’

‘Patience, little one. Now take it. Quick, before the heavens open again.’

I glanced at the grey sweatshirt. It looked so tempting – all soft and warm and fluffy – that my disdain dissolved. ‘Fine,’ I muttered, peeling off my trench coat.

‘You should probably take that off too.’ He nodded at my sweater. ‘It looks soaked.’ It was, but I had no intention of removing any more clothing in front of him. ‘Fine. I won’t look,’ he said, turning his back and putting his coat over his head. I considered leaving him like that, but instead ducked behind the Range Rover we were standing beside and tore off my sweater, then tugged on his sweatshirt so quickly that I banged my elbow against the window.

‘That sounded like it hurt,’ he said from under his coat.

‘Let’s get this over with,’ I said, emerging from behind the Range Rover.

He pulled his coat away and grinned. ‘That’s the spirit!’

‘This had better be worth it.’

He put his coat back on with a laugh and I thought it was at me, until he told me that he’d never seen me like that before.

‘Like what?’

‘I dunno. Like
you
, I suppose. You’re so quiet when you’re with Scarlett.’

‘Am I?’

‘Yeah. You never say anything.
This
,’ he pointed at me, ‘is the Adamma I met outside English lit last month. I’ve missed her.’ He turned to me with a loose smile. ‘I know Scarlett’s a human tornado, but you shouldn’t let her overpower you.’

I didn’t realise I did.

‘I’m about to say a whole lot more if you don’t tell me where we’re going,’ I warned, as I stopped to check my make-up in the wing mirror of a car, licking my thumb and wiping away the black smudges of mascara from under my eyes before we carried on.

‘You’ll see.’

When we passed his car, I frowned. ‘Aren’t we driving?’

‘Don’t worry, it’s only a few minutes’ walk.’

I knew where we were going then. ‘So what’s in Savernake Forest?’

He shot me a look, gaze narrowing as I smiled smugly. ‘How did you know?’

‘You don’t walk anywhere, Dominic, so we have to be going to Savernake Forest because you don’t want to damage your precious car.’

‘That,’ he thumbed over his shoulder, ‘is a 1964 Aston Martin DB5 and the road through Savernake Forest is barely a road. It’s some gravel held together with tree sap and the tears of drunk Crofton girls.’

I knew what he meant, it was fine to run on, but if I had a car, I’d think twice about driving on it, too. That didn’t mean I couldn’t tease him about it, though.

‘It’s just a car.’

‘Sssh!’ he said theatrically, waving his hands about. ‘She’ll hear you.’

‘How come you even have a car? Don’t you have to be seventeen to drive here?’

‘I’m driving it illegally.’

‘No you’re not.’

‘Scarlett drives The Old Dear all the time.’

‘Not
all the time
and definitely not to school. You love that car, if you were driving it illegally, you wouldn’t risk parking it at Crofton. Security would notice.’

‘OK, Nancy Drew.’ He shrugged. ‘Maybe I’m a bit older than you think I am.’

‘How much older?’

‘Forty-two. That’s my car. My wife drives the Volvo.’ I raised an eyebrow at him and he sighed dramatically. ‘Fine. I’m already seventeen.’

‘How come?’

‘I lost a year.’

‘How do you lose a year, Dominic?’

‘I’m quite the scatterbrain, Miss Okomma.’ He smiled, but when I didn’t smile back, he turned away and shook his head. ‘It’s a long story.’

‘Give me the CliffsNotes, then.’

‘Harrow. The Headmaster’s daughter.’

I sighed and shook my head. ‘Jesus, Dominic.’

‘What?’ He feigned innocence. ‘I loved her.’

‘Of course you did.’

‘I love them all,’ he said with an unrepentant smile, then kicked at a particularly large piece of gravel. ‘I was blacklisted after that. If Scarlett and her parents hadn’t sweet-talked Mr Lucas into giving me a reference to Eton I would have ended up at school in Alaska. They still made me retake the year, though.’

‘I had no idea.’

‘There are lots of things you don’t know about me, Miss Okomma,’ he said with a lascivious wink and I realised that he still hadn’t answered my question.

‘So what’s in Savernake Forest?’

‘You’ll see.’

‘I’m guessing a hot shower is out of the question?’ I asked with a shiver.

‘It can be arranged.’ He waggled his eyebrows.

‘Hands up who’s not going to get punched in the face in a minute.’ I put my hand up and looked around at the neat rows of cars still dripping with rain.

He laughed, nudging me with his hip.

‘Face. Punched,’ I reminded him with a scowl.

He went quiet and I wondered if he thought I was being serious. But then he said, ‘You’ve seen the photo, then.’

‘Which photo?’

‘You know which photo.’

I feigned nonchalance, waving a hand at him. ‘I don’t care.’

‘Clearly. You’ve only threatened to punch me twice in the last five minutes.’