Let's Get Lost (23 page)

Getting dressed seemed like the best option, even though it was freezing cold outside of the covers. I dragged on my jeans and assorted top layers as quickly as possible, then sunk back down on the bed in despair when I looked at the time. It was almost midnight.

I was just cobbling together a story about having a row with Dot that would explain my sudden appearance back home way after my curfew when there was a hesitant knock on the door.

If he’d got Molly, or God forbid, Jane, to come and have a girl-to-girl chat with me about the correct timetable for declarations of love, then I’d stab him through the eye with a fork before I made my excuses and left.

There was another knock, which made me wonder if I shouldn’t just hurl myself out of the window, when Smith’s head appeared around the door.

“Are you planning to throw anything at me?” he asked hesitantly.

“I was leaning toward blinding you with a fork,” I replied with a sour look, but he must have thought I was joking because he sidled in, a cup of tea in each hand like that was going to make everything miraculously better.

I folded my arms and decided that it was about time for me to play the silent card.

Smith placed the two mugs on the bedside table and then held up the family-sized bar of Dairy Milk he’d wedged under his arm. “Peace offering?”

“Might work if I was
normal
.”

“You couldn’t be normal if you tried,” Smith said gently, perching next to me on the bed and smiling faintly when I inched away from him. “And maybe that’s why I meant it when I said I liked you.” Smith brushed my forehead with his lips, while I tried to squirm away. Then he sighed so all my baby hairs lifted in the breeze. “I’ve only known you for a few weeks and I didn’t think either of us wanted to get into some heavy relationship. And yeah, I’m into Molly and I know that she doesn’t feel the same way, but it’s not up for discussion. Not ever.”

But before I could move seamlessly into my next monumental snit, he kissed the little patch of skin behind my ear, which has a gazillion nerve endings all waiting to go into sensory overload from a tiny smooch.

“I’m not in love with you,” he repeated to make sure I got the message. “But thank you for being brave enough to say it to me.”

“I already took it back.”

“You can’t take it back.”

“Says who?”

“There are rules and I made you tea and broke into the girls’ secret chocolate stash that they think I don’t know about, which is pretty damn lovable in anyone’s book,” he said, coaxing me out of my cardigan and under the covers in one movement.

Smith was the only person in the world who could chase away my woe-is-me mood with chunks of chocolate and silly jokes about my nose turning into an icicle. And I giggled and wriggled just like he wanted me to so we could simply pretend that this was just a casual, no-strings relationship/hookup/

whatever. But we both knew that he was in bed with the wrong girl.

20

I’d had to be annoyingly vague when Smith asked why I was getting up so early when I didn’t have a job or a place of higher learning to go to. I muttered something about a dentist’s appointment, and he got distracted by wondering out loud if I’d be the first person in the history of forever to be told off for brushing my teeth too much.

Still, as I slunk into school five minutes after Registration, I knew that I’d have to come up with some bulletproof explanation for what I actually did all day. He was pretty fond of the whole master spy theory so maybe I should go along with that.

My first lesson was Art, which suited me just fine because it meant I could hang out in the back of the studio with some paint and my headphones. Even better, the Trio of Evil didn’t take Art, so I had plenty of time to work on revenge tactics for making me get off with that delinquent lout—nothing like a little vengeance to take my mind off the sugar coma from all that chocolate last night.

I hadn’t taken one step inside the studio, though, before Miss Hansen was bearing down on me. Usually she doesn’t bear down, just gives me a vague smile and compliments me on what I’m wearing, so I was a little nonplussed.

“Isabel, there you are!” she exclaimed worriedly.

I gave a tiny shrug and tried to look apologetic. “Sorry, I’m late. My alarm clock didn’t go off and er, I seem to have forgotten all my books and stuff.”

She didn’t seem remotely bothered about that, because she was an art teacher and being all heavy about punctuality would have got her kicked out of the cool club.

“Mrs. Greenwood wanted to see you as soon as you arrived,” she informed me with a sympathetic smile.

“I’m not sure what it’s about but it would probably be best if you hurry along now.”

It could have been so many things. Maybe Claire had ratted me out for missing the last four care and share sessions. Or I’d given one of the juniors a funny look, and she was too scared to come back to school. Or, hey, maybe I wasn’t in trouble at all and she just wanted to thank me for being such a joy to have around the place.

The mystery was solved as soon as I walked into her secretary’s office and saw my father pacing agitatedly in front of the door that led to Mrs. Greenwood’s inner sanctum.

“What are you doing here? What’s wrong? Is it Felix? Has there been an accident?”

The moment he heard my voice, his head swiveled around like it was completely independent from his neck. Which wasn’t half as scary as the look on his face, which did nothing to reassure me that everything was AOK and he’d just happened to be passing and thought he’d pop in to see if I’d had a good time last night.

“We’re going home,” he said, each word carefully and precisely enunciated as if English was not his first language.

I wasn’t going anywhere with him, not when he was in an inexplicably filthy mood. “I’ve got Art and a French lit test after that, so maybe this can wait till this afternoon,” I said hopefully.

He was at my side before I could even blink. I didn’t know he could move that fast. “Tell Mrs.

Greenwood that I’ll give her a ring,” he barked at her secretary, who was cowering behind her computer.

“I have Art,” I reminded him again, because my survival instinct told me it would be safer to inhale noxious paint fumes than go anywhere with my father when he looked like he wanted to hang, draw, and quarter me as a preshow.

“Not bloody likely,” he gritted out, then he must have suspected that I was seriously thinking about doing a runner because he grabbed my upper arm in a circulation-crushing grip that didn’t ease off until he was pushing me into the car.

“I bet you’ve left bruises,” I started to say but was silenced by a skin-stripping look.

“Be quiet,” he said pleasantly. “And do up your seat belt.”

I’d barely clicked it into place before he rammed his foot down on the accelerator. I clutched onto the

dashboard with white-knuckled hands. “I guess you’re in a mood with me about something, but slow down,
please
!”

Either he didn’t hear me or he didn’t care. “I mean it, Dad! Slow down or I’m going to be sick!”

He huffed but eased off on the accelerator so I could breathe again.

“So what’s all this about?” I tried again. “Not like you to have no respect for the book learning. And I’ve behaved perfectly at school. Well, not perfectly, but I haven’t . . .”

“I thought I told you to shut up. I don’t want to hear another word until we get home.”

Unfortunately, it only took us ten minutes before we were pulling into the driveway and I willed myself to unbuckle my seat belt and get out of the car for my full-on yelling with surround sound for some dreadful crime I didn’t realize I’d committed.

I followed Dad’s stiffened back up the path and scampered through the door before he could yank me through it.

“I’ll put the kettle on, shall I?” I offered brightly . . . but no. Steely grip on my shoulder and I was being frog-marched to the study. Must be really serious, then.

He pushed me down onto one of the uncomfortable wooden chairs that he likes to use for these occasions and loomed over me. I squinted up at him and started taking in all sorts of telling details. Like, the fact that he didn’t get acquainted with his razor this morning and that was the shirt and tie that I’d ironed for him yesterday morning. Bloodshot eyes? Check. The same clothes that he’d worn yesterday?

Check. Empty wine bottle on the desk? Check.

“Did you even go to bed last night?” I asked him sullenly, and it was so easy to slip back into my role as Isabel, the worthless wretch of a daughter while he was already assuming his role of the tyrannical Victorian papa.

“I might ask you the same question,” he snapped. “Or I might rephrase it as exactly whose bed did you sleep in last night?”

I gasped at the unfairness of it all. “I told you! I phoned and left a message and said I was staying at Dot’s, so don’t blame me. You probably managed to wipe the message before you’d even listened to it because you do that . . .” I was working myself up into a really righteous indignation because I had told him where I was going. Okay, I wasn’t
actually
at Dot’s but . . .

“Ah yes, the famous message, which was then followed by approximately fifteen other messages from Dot, who seemed to be unaware that you were tucked up cozily at her house, and those other two ghastly girls that you insist on socializing with, all extremely concerned about your whereabouts.”

Those evil, scheming little bitches. Phoning and leaving incriminating messages on the family answerphone violated every rule of the friend code. But then, I kept forgetting—we weren’t friends.

And if I’d thought last night’s silence was bad, then the loaded menace of here and now when all I could hear was a rushing in my head, was going to make the final cut on the Worst Five Moments of My Life.

“You could have rung me,” I eventually said, peering down at my bag. Really bad idea. Because he stopped standing over me like the Wrath of God and snagged the handles between his thumb and index finger.

“Oh, really. I wonder why I didn’t think of that,” he said with a sneer. “Next time you’re trying to cover your deceitful tracks, I suggest you remember to switch your phone on.”

I had a dim recollection of switching my phone off after Smith had scared the life out of me (and how sorry I was that he hadn’t actually succeeded), but Dad was already finding that out for himself.

“Don’t go through my bag!” I yelped, leaping up as he rummaged inside and hauled out my phone, but it was too late, he was already upending my bag and spilling the contents out onto the desk.

Condoms. Cigarettes. A printout of the infamous blowjob picture. The strip of photos that Smith and I had taken when we went to Eastbourne. A flyer from the Duckie gig. It was all there. Every lie I’d told over the last few weeks spelled out in the debris from my bag.

I was looking and he was looking and muttering under his breath. I started trying to cram everything back, because if it wasn’t actually there, laid out before him, I could keep on pretending, but my hand hadn’t even curled around the cigarettes before he was snatching my shoulders and whirling me around so he could shake me hard enough so I bit my tongue.

“What have you been doing?” he screamed. “All these revolting things in your bag . . . I want some answers right now!”

“Get off me!” I shouted right back, trying to pry his fingers off me. “You don’t go through my personal stuff! I’m sixteen and I can do what I want, and it’s got fuck all to do with you!”

“It’s got everything to do with me. While you’re under my roof, I will . . .”

I got away from him by kicking him in the shin so he let go of me with a strangled yelp and I was free to run for the door and up the stairs before he’d stopped rubbing his leg.

Even with my five-second head start, I’d barely made it to my room before he was in the doorway and preventing all my attempts to slam the door in his face.

“Let go,” he said, all deadly calm and flaring nostrils. “Let go of the door this instant.”

But the calm voice just made the mist even redder. So even though he was a foot taller than me and, like, five stone heavier, I persisted in pushing and shoving at the door and screaming at him. It wasn’t even words, just these angry, high-pitched cries like an animal caught in a trap.

He soon got bored with the tug-of-war and flicked me out of the way with a really insulting ease, before striding into my room, eyes darting wildly around for even more evidence of my misdemeanors. I’m not sure what he was looking for in my wardrobe: my own little vodka distillery, or a crack den. Maybe even a brothel full of barely legal teenagers. But instead he was rifling through clothes rails, snatching up garments, knocking hangers onto the floor, and this was the worst thing of all.

“Stop it! Stop it! Stop making a mess, you’re mucking everything up,” I screeched, scooping up armfuls of clothes that were scrunching under his feet.

“How could you?” He said in a choked voice that was so fraught with emotion, I stopped frantically trying to calm the havoc he’d caused in my wardrobe and looked at him helplessly.

He was clutching the black dress I’d taken out of his room, a couple of jumpers, a pair of shoes that I still hadn’t worn because I couldn’t walk in really high heels.

“Her things, you’ve been going through her things,
stealing
them. How could you?” He sat down heavily on the bed, gazing unseeingly at the stuff I’d borrowed.

“They’re just clothes . . . I didn’t think you’d mind,” I ventured timidly, shocked out of my meltdown by the way he’d gone from furious to broken in five seconds. “Look, I’ll wash them and iron them and I’ll put them back and you’ll never even know . . .”

“I want you to tell me what happened, Isabel,” he said firmly, as if I hadn’t even spoken.

I shut my eyes and breathed out heavily. “I’ve been seeing this guy for a little while and . . .”

He gave me a look of utter loathing. I’m not being dramatic. It was so venomous and laden with hate that I stumbled backward, bumping my hip bone against the edge of the dressing table. “I couldn’t care less about the sordid details of how you’ve been spending your time. I want to know what happened that day, when she—I want to know what you were doing that made it happen.” His face twisted up and he brushed the back of his hand across his eyes, and when he took it away, his face was damp. “It’s not your secret to keep. She was my wife, she was my everything, and I have a right to know why she isn’t here anymore.”