Let's Get Lost (24 page)

He was properly crying now and it was awful. And I’m not made of stone, I’m made of flesh and blood and stupid, stupid emotions. There was no way I could make it better or turn back time so she’d still be here. It would have been a fair swap to have her back: on my case 24/7, nagging and bitching and letting me know what a deep disappointment I was, just so I didn’t have to look at him with his head in his hands, shaking with sobs.

I shook my head, even though he couldn’t see. “I can’t. I’m sorry, but I can’t.”

He lifted his head and clutched his little handful of memories tighter. “Get out,” he said quietly. “I don’t want you in this house for another second.”

It didn’t take me long to scurry back into the study and retrieve my bag and all the secrets it had spilled out. I grabbed a bunch of clothes from the ironing basket, but then I heard his heavy tread on the floor and there wasn’t time to fold them up neatly, just stuff them in a carrier bag, drop my keys on the hall table, and walk out.

Amazingly, it wasn’t even lunchtime. It should take longer for what’s left of your life to fall to pieces. I

switched my phone on and listened to its angry beeping, but there were no calls from the girls, all worried about my sudden disappearance, which proved my theory that they were staging their piss-poor version of a military coup. And I couldn’t bear to listen to the ten messages from Dad, each one of them probably a little more caustic and frantic than the next.

I cleared them all and then tried to call Smith, before I remembered that he always turned his phone off when he had lectures. I left him a plaintive message about needing somewhere to crash for a while, and then walked down to Western Road. Thankfully, I hadn’t even had time to take off my coat before World War Three had kicked off, but it was cold out. Or maybe I was cold inside. I wasn’t sure, but I wished I could stop shaking.

All the loose coins in my bag were probably still lying on the study floor and my ATM card was in my room, but I managed to find a two-pound coin tucked into a side pocket, which was enough for a bacon sandwich and a cup of tea in the Mad Hatter before heading to Topshop, so I could try on outfit after outfit because it was warm and it was something to do until the security guard asked me to leave.

My next destination was the pier, which might well have been the coldest place on earth after the Arctic Circle. I dived into the amusement arcade and surreptitiously poked my hands into the trays under the slot machines to see if anyone had left their winnings.

I scrounged up enough for another cup of tea and eked it out as I watched the seagulls swoop down onto the railings, scanning the wooden slats for discarded chips—and did I mention that during all these slow hours when I tried to kill time, I must have phoned Smith every ten minutes?

It was nearly 4 P.M. and I had no choice but to start heading for Dot’s house so I could throw myself on her not-so-tender mercies. Once I was inside, though, I could swap her toothpaste for foot cream or something, but my evil plans were quashed when my phone started ringing and Smith’s number flashed up.

“Finally!” I said by way of a greeting. “I’ve been calling and calling you.”

“Hey, Isabel. Yeah, I got every single one of your many messages.”

He sounded weird. Or maybe the whole day had been so horribly weird that it had leaked into everything. “I’m not stalking you or anything. I’ve just had a really bad day, like almost the worst day since records began, so do you want to hook up?”

“I’m not at home,” Smith said. “But yeah. We should meet. Do you know that little park with the swings near the marina?”

“By the closed-down kiddies train thing?”

“Yeah. I’m there now. Needed to get some fresh air, y’know?”

“Kinda.” I rolled my eyes at the irony. If I had any more fresh air today, it would fricking kill me. “I can be there in ten minutes.”

“Right, well, see you then.” He hung up abruptly enough that it gave me pause for thought. But not really.

All I could think about was how much I wanted to see Smith. Not just because of the shitty day, which I couldn’t tell him about, anyway. Just dying to see him because he was him and he might not love me, but he’d make everything all right just by holding my hand and giving me one of his crooked smiles.

Smith was already waiting for me on the swings, idly stretching his legs out and hanging onto the chains so he could sway gently in the breeze.

“Hey,” I called, as I got closer, but he didn’t say anything so I felt self-conscious and confused about how to put one foot in front of the other.

He fixed me with an unwavering stare. “How old are you?”

I expected the world to tilt off its axis. It felt like it had for a second, before it went right way up again and it was me that was wrong way around. “Eighteen,” I said, like there could ever be any doubt.

“C’mon, you know that.”

“Bullshit,” he snapped. “How old are you?”

I decided to fight fire with a flamethrower and a can of gasoline.

“I’m eighteen,” I spat. “Are you, like, deficient or something? Eighteen!”

He placed his feet on the floor and stilled the swing so he could freeze me with a look that NASA could have used if they were ever doing research into killer laser beams. “You’re sixteen.”

“I don’t know what this is all about, but you’re completely wrong because . . .”

His hands bit into my arms, settling on top of bruises that were already starting to blossom, and he yanked me close in a parody of all the embraces we’d had. So close that I could see the tiny flecks of green in his blue eyes; the smattering of freckles across the bridge of his nose; the tiny scar just above his top lip that I must have kissed a thousand times. “Stop it,” he whispered in my ear. “Just stop lying.”

Then he pushed me away from him, like he couldn’t bear to touch me, and I stood there, hands pushed into the pockets of my coat and I was on my own again.

“So how do you know what you think you know?” I asked him eventually, still clinging on to the vain hope that I could make him believe my version of the truth. Well, not the truth so much as the random sequence of stories I’d made up.

“Well, sweetheart, you’ve got mutiny in the ranks. I had a very interesting call from one of your friends this afternoon. Wasn’t sure who it was at first because she kept giggling so hard she couldn’t speak,” he said, wrinkling his face as if the memory was deeply disturbing. “How could you?”

I was getting really sick of people asking me that. “How could I what exactly?” I asked.

“She told me that you’ve been stringing me along for weeks, then going back to your mates to discuss all the gory details. I understand it wasn’t quite as good for you as it was for me?”

I covered my burning cheeks with my hands. “Oh, God,” I whimpered, and Smith shot me a flinty look.

“I was prepared to cut you some slack because she also told me about your mum, but then she got on to the fascinating topic of exactly how old you were and all my goodwill suddenly ran out.”

“It’s not true,” I insisted woodenly, because if I kept saying it then maybe he’d believe me. Well, it was worth a shot. “None of it is true.”

“Yeah, she said you’d deny everything. Probably why I found this under my windshield wiper when I came out of my lecture.

I guess the mystery of what you do all day has been solved. Your friends really don’t seem to like you that much, but I guess I can understand why,” he said bitterly, pulling a crumpled and slightly damp piece of paper out of his pocket and handing it to me. I took a minute to smooth down the creases, but I already recognized the school crest at the top. It was my timetable with a handy
DOB: 08/08/1989

underneath my name. Damn Mrs. Greenwood’s secretary and her attention to detail.

I was screwed. I kept going from hot to cold and then hot again, and the pinched set of Smith’s features was all I could see. “I never lied about how I felt. About what you mean to me,” I pleaded, but he turned his head away and my words were carried off by the wind.

“Just save it,” Smith said, collapsing back on the swing, like his legs didn’t want to hold him up. “I don’t care about how you feel. I mean, Is, it was fun when you were in one of your rare good moods or all over me like white on rice, but most of the time? You were a grade-A pain in the arse.”

He was just saying it to hurt me. He had to be. I grabbed the chains of the swing and tugged him close.

“Will you just look at me?” I pleaded. “You have to look at me, Smith, please.”

And finally he was looking at me and I had to force myself to stay still and meet his frostbitten eyes head on. “It got out of control,” I admitted. “And I wanted to tell you the truth, really I did, and there were so many things I wanted to share with you and I couldn’t because all the lies kept getting in the way. You’d kiss me and hold me and you did things to me that you’d never have done if I’d told you how old I was.

And even though I’d lied to you, I was glad because the way you made me feel was worth it. It was the better end of the deal.”

For one second, I thought I saw his face soften and his lips tremble, and I thought I’d reached him. Made him understand. But it was just a trick of the light.

“I don’t need any more of your bullshit. I never want to see you again,” he said, and I wished he would shout and scream and throw his hands in the air, but I just got this dull-eyed Smith-bot who waited for me to let go of the swing and step back, before he stood up and started to walk away.

I watched him go, his shoulders hunched against the wind, which was whipping up the waves and rattling through the boarded-up kiosks.

21

It got dark and I was still sitting on the ground, back propped up against the metal posts of the swing frame. Even I knew that I should be crying. Because Smith wasn’t mine anymore. Never had been. Or I should be plotting the most blood-curdling revenge I could think of on those so-called friends of mine.

But I couldn’t feel anything, bad or good.

I got to my feet, trying to ignore the cramp in my calves after huddling into a tiny ball for so long. I staggered back to Montpelier Villas on autopilot because if I stopped to think about it, I’d have ended up spending the night fighting crack-heads for a comfy cardboard box and a well-appointed spot under some bushes. And even I wasn’t
that
stupid.

Our house looked so homely and inviting. Chinks of light showed through the curtains in the front room and, if you walked past, you’d think that a normal family lived there. My fingers were doing a good impersonation of icicles, but I managed to stab at the doorbell and listened to the chime, listened for the sound of footsteps, the inner door opening, and his shadowy outline looming behind the frosted glass.

He had to let me in. It wasn’t like he could phone Social Services and tell them to take me away. Maybe he’d make me sleep in the porch or . . .

“Isabel,” he intoned in his most stentorian voice. That means loud, powerful, or declamatory. He managed all of them in the space of three syllables.

I opened my mouth to say something, God knows what, but he held up his hand warningly.

“Give me your phone,” he ordered, which was kinda random but I showed willing, rummaging in my bag and hoping that he wasn’t going to call Smith and bawl him out for deflowering me. But he just tucked it into his shirt pocket. “While you’re in this house, you will speak only when you’re spoken to. You’ll refrain from lying and swearing. You’ll stay in your room and be allowed down for half an hour in the evening to make yourself something to eat. In the morning, I will drive you to school and then you will come straight home and go upstairs. You will not see your friends or talk to them on the phone, and you’re absolutely forbidden from seeing that
boy
. Do I make myself clear?”

I nodded dumbly, staring at the polished tips of his black brogues and only forcing myself to look at his frigid face when he coughed. “Yes, that’s all clear,” I mumbled.

“Very well, you may come in,” he said magnanimously, holding the door open for me.

The central heating was going full blast and I allowed myself just the tiniest shiver as I connected with all that warm air. “I’ll go to my room, then.”

“Have you eaten?” He was standing there, arms folded as he watched me unbutton my coat with fingers that didn’t want to cooperate.

“I’m not hungry,” I said, because it would have killed me to be granted permission to shove two pieces of bread into the toaster. I was actually so starving it felt like my stomach was about to eat itself, but he tersely inclined his head in the direction of the stairs.

The first thing I noticed was that the lock had been taken off my door. Fine. What did he think I actually did in there? But whatever it was, I couldn’t do it anymore because he’d obviously whiled away the afternoon by removing the TV, the DVD player, and my stereo. The computer was still intact, but the DSL cable was missing. Must have had to get a man in for that complicated procedure.

Okay, all privileges had been taken away. Bet he’d stopped my allowance, too. None of it really mattered, anyway. The only thing that had meant anything to me had removed himself of his own free will.

I made an executive decision that having a bath didn’t involve getting any forms signed in triplicate, and after I’d scrubbed every inch of myself so my skin was practically raw, I dragged on my pajamas and crawled into bed.

It seemed like I’d never be warm again. And every time I shut my eyes, they’d snap open again because the voices would start . . .

“Grade-A pain in the arse . . .”

“I was prepared to cut you some slack because she also told me about your mum . . .”

“I never want to see you again . . .”

But it wasn’t enough just to have the audio, no, I had to replay that look on Smith’s face before he’d walked off. Like, he’d been smelling curdled milk or bad eggs. Like, I was a plate of food suddenly crawling with maggots. Like, I was, well, nothing good. And all because I’d stretched the truth so far out of shape that it didn’t even resemble the truth anymore.