The Sound (10 page)

‘Pleasure to meet you, Ren, welcome,’ Mr Reed says, his eyes skirting me.

‘Hello, Carrie.’

I turn. A woman is embracing Carrie. She’s wearing a black high-necked dress with a pearl choker at her throat and her hair is swept up in an elegant chignon. Side on she’s about as
wide as my little finger. Her make-up is immaculate and she air-kisses Carrie and then glances my way and smiles wanly. Mr Reed puts his arm around her so I’m guessing it’s his wife,
AKA Tyler’s mother.

‘The den’s down there,’ Mrs Reed says to me, waving me away with her hand. ‘I think the children are somewhere around, why don’t you go and find them?’

I have been dismissed. I take Brodie’s hand and head for the den. We pass the hallway, a dining room that’s all shiny mahogany, a kitchen bigger than my school, a study lined with
bookshelves that seem to hold tomes and tomes of leather-bound books (probably Dickens, definitely not Dan Brown) and finally we come to a room at the end of the house which contains several sofas
and a widescreen TV for a wall.

I recognise Shrek and his donkey on the screen. A little girl suddenly appears, her head poking over the top of the sofa. She has dark hair in pigtails and a snub nose.

Brodie’s hand tightens instantly in mine.

‘Hey, Brodie!’ the girl says. ‘Is that your nanny?’

‘It’s Ren, she’s my friend,’ Brodie answers.

‘I’m watching
Shrek
,’ the girl says, bouncing back around to face the TV.

‘You want to watch too?’ I ask Brodie, who’s now clutching my leg as though it’s a life raft.

Brodie shakes her head mutely.

‘I’ll stay with you,’ I say, sensing her reluctance to be left alone.

‘OK,’ she mumbles and goes and perches on the edge of the sofa.

I place Braiden in his car seat in the corner of the room away from the speaker and check he’s still sleeping. After a few minutes, once Brodie is sitting back on the sofa laughing along
with the movie, I judge it’s safe to leave her and find somewhere I can warm Braiden’s bottle. If he doesn’t have it in his hand the minute he wakes up he goes postal.

Murmuring that I’ll be back in a minute I walk down the hallway towards the kitchen. The microwave takes a while to locate because it looks like a television. Once I’ve figured out
how to use it I set it to nuke and wait, glancing around at the stainless steel surfaces covered in tempting trays of canapés. I am eying the salmon blinis longingly and trying to figure out
how I might rearrange them on the plate to make it look like one isn’t missing (only solution I can see is eating an entire row), when I hear the low murmur of voices coming from somewhere
nearby. I tiptoe towards the French doors that lead out into the garden. One door is slightly ajar and when I peek through I see Tyler standing with his back to me. He’s talking to a girl but
because of the way he’s standing I can only see half of her face. She looks about thirteen, short, with long dark hair. She’s leaning against the wall looking up at him. Tyler lifts his
hand and strokes a strand of her dark hair out of her eyes and tucks it behind her ear. It’s a really tender gesture and the girl’s eyes seem to well up with the gentleness of it. She
smiles at him and I lean in closer, to see if I can hear what they’re saying, and just then the goddamn microwave pings.

I dart inside, fixing a look of studied boredom on my face. A second later I hear the French door slide open and turn my head, ready to act all surprised. The girl appears first. She looks like
she’s been crying. She casts a quick glance in my direction and I see her cheeks are flushed and her eyes look red but her gaze drops quickly to the floor and she hurries past me and out of
the kitchen. Tyler, on the other hand, strolls right over to me and kisses me on the cheek. Not an entirely expected move.

‘Hi, Ren, glad you could come,’ he says.

‘Well, I’m just here to look after the kids,’ I stutter. ‘I’m just warming up a bottle for Braiden.’ I point dumbly at the microwave television.

Leaning over me, with one hand resting right by my waist, Tyler opens the microwave door. He takes the bottle out and shakes it, tips it and drops some on the inside of his wrist and then hands
it to me. ‘Perfect temperature,’ he says.

I smile at him a little bemused. ‘I have a little sister,’ he says, seeing the question in my eyes. The pieces slot into place. That would be the little girl in the den.

‘That was Paige’s little sister, Lola,’ Tyler says as I screw the lid on the bottle. He jerks his head towards the patio door. ‘She’s a little upset – Paige
was horrible to her.’

I glance up at him. He has these eyes that sparkle when he smiles and he’s leaning against the counter beside me and I’m aware all of a sudden why Paige and Eliza are vying for him
and exactly why he’s also been labelled a player. He has charm – gallons of it (that would be the Robert Pattinson side and not the Buzz Lightyear side) – the kind of look in his
eyes that makes you feel as if he’s trying to see to the depths of your soul. It’s dangerous. Megan would quiver hard for this guy. But cocky has never been my thing.

‘You girls can be such bitches to each other,’ he says now, laughing and shaking his head.

‘You can say that again,’ I say, thinking of Eliza.

Just then Jeremy walks in. He smiles when he sees me – a genuine smile that makes my stomach flip – and then frowns as he sees how close Tyler is standing to me. He moves straight
away between us so Tyler has to back away from the counter. He does so slowly, a small smile playing on his lips.

‘Hey, Ren,’ Jeremy says, kissing me on the cheek. He says it to me but his eyes stay fixed on Tyler.

I smile at him. ‘I’ve got to go and feed Braiden,’ I say, ‘he’ll be awake in a sec.’

‘I’ll come with you,’ Jeremy says, and he stands back to let me pass. I catch the look he gives Tyler – a warning of some sort? Is he suggesting that Tyler was coming
onto me? Is that what it looked like?
Was
he coming onto me, I wonder as I walk down the corridor, but I don’t have time to consider it any further because suddenly my attention is
diverted.

Shrek
is no longer playing on the widescreen in the den. Gone is the green ogre and in his place a half-naked Rihanna is strutting around in a pair of leather chaps and not much else.
The little girl who I met before – who I now know is Tyler’s little sister – is standing in front of the television copying Rihanna move for move. She has the routine down so pat
she could probably audition successfully to be a backing dancer. If it wasn’t so disturbing to see a four-year-old gyrating like that it would be almost impressive.

Jeremy moves first, grabbing immediately for the remote. I scrabble to jump in front of the screen to block Rihanna’s writhing body. Jeremy finally hits the off button.

‘Hey!’ the little girl yells, turning towards Jeremy. ‘I was watching that.’

Brodie is sitting sunk back on the sofa, cross-armed and wide-eyed.

‘What happened to
Shrek
?’ I ask.

‘Noelle didn’t want to watch it anymore,’ Brodie answers, shrugging.

Noelle
– the penny drops. Noelle Reed. I can’t believe I didn’t figure it out before now. The skanktron comment girl from camp is Tyler’s sister.

‘OK,’ Jeremy says, taking charge as the penny takes a long time to spin to a stop. ‘How about we see what’s on Nickelodeon instead?’ he says, expertly flicking
through the channels until a cartoon comes on. Noelle huffs her annoyance, scowling at Jeremy, but she does climb onto the sofa beside Brodie and start watching, at which point Braiden wakes up as
if on cue and starts yelling for his bottle.

I go and unbuckle him from his car seat and take him over to the sofa. He grabs the bottle straight from my hands and I hold him while he guzzles like a little piglet against me.

‘You’re a natural,’ Jeremy says, perching on the arm of the sofa and watching.

‘Er, thanks, I think,’ I answer. ‘Feed them, change them, play them old Blondie hits and they love you.’

‘Blondie?’

‘Yeah, that’s the key, I’ve discovered.’

He raises his eyebrows at me in amusement and I wonder if he even knows who Blondie are.

‘So I guess the Reeds are pretty busy then?’ I ask. The inference in my question is that they’re obviously really,
really
busy because clearly MTV is their
daughter’s primary caregiver.

‘Mr Reed is a defence attorney,’ Jeremy says, picking up on my oh so subtle inference. ‘A really famous one. He defended this football player who allegedly murdered his wife.
Everyone knew he did it but he got away with it. That’s how good Mr Reed is.’

I’m about to ask him to clarify what he means exactly by
good
because enabling a murderer to walk free doesn’t seem like that’s necessarily a good thing to me, but
he’s moved on already.

‘And Tyler’s mom is a party planner or something like that. She does a lot of events at the Met and the White House – that kind of thing.’

I nod and we sit for a few minutes in silence. I wonder if he’s expecting me to be impressed by any of this. My mum is a teacher, who knows nobody famous, but I think she probably does a
lot more to be proud of than helping celebrities get away with murder and organising parties for rich people. I shake it off though. Mainly because I’m distracted by Jeremy’s arm which
is lying across the back of the sofa right behind my head – the heat of it tempting me to lie back and rest against it. I kick myself – I’m just out of one relationship, do I
really want to jump straight into another? Or would it just be a hook-up? Do I want just a hook-up? God, I don’t know what I want. I need to figure it out, that’s for sure.

‘You know,’ I say, looking around at Jeremy, ‘you don’t have to hang out with me. Where are the others?’

‘You mean everybody under the age of fifty?’

‘Yeah.’

‘They’re all out in the pool house playing Call of Duty. Not the girls. I’m not sure what the girls are doing . . .’

‘So you all hang out together like this every summer?’

‘Since we were in Kindergarten. Matt and I go to school with Parker. Our parents are all friends – they’ve been friends for years.’

‘Jeremy!’ We both turn around. Eliza is standing in the doorway. Her nose twitches when she sees me, as though a particularly bad smell has just assaulted her delicate nostrils.
‘Wanna come? We’re all going for a swim.’

He turns to me, a question in his eyes, I smile and shake my head. Have fun,’ I say.

‘Yeah,’ he answers, patting me on the arm. ‘I’ll see you later.’

As soon as Megan sees I am online a message pings on my screen.

So????? Did you pull him?

I haven’t updated her since the party on the beach the other day and I actually don’t know where to begin.

Did you pull him?
she asks again. Patience was never her strong point

Who?
I type back.

Who? Jeremy! Why? Who else is there? Is there someone else? Tell me everything, bitch.

Winking emoticons are almost as annoying as the smiley face version I think to myself as I type –
No, I didn’t pull him. There is nobody else. Just this guy Tyler.

Tyler? Tyler who?

Reed.

I wait, rolling my eyes for the inevitable, wondering if I should have told her. She is Facebook trawling for his profile pic. Then it comes . . .

Ooooh, Rob Pattinson! Hottie.

He’s a total player. Seriously.

I would still go there.

You would go there with anyone with the right parts.

That’s so not true! OK . . . maybe it’s partly true.

I don’t know. I don’t know if I should pull anyone. I hate boys. I hate anyone with a Y chromosome right now.

Look, if you want my advice, which you do because I’m your best friend, snog all of them. You’re only 17 once.

Slutbag.

You’re in America. There are hot boys who want you and Will is

She stops typing. I sit up straighter and type
? Will is what?

Look, I think it’s best you hear this from me . . . Did you see his profile pic?

No. I unfriended him.

Don’t look.

You can’t tell me that and NOT expect me to look.

My fingers are already tapping his name into the search box. And then his profile picture appears. Except it’s not of him. It’s of him AND Bex. Kissing.

He never had a photograph of us on his Facebook page – kissing or otherwise. I stare at it before slowly clicking back a page. The funny thing is, I expect to feel really mad or at least
sad. But I don’t feel either. I feel mainly like laughing. Maybe my mum is right and distance is a healer. Not that I’m about to admit that to her.

Forget him
, writes Megan.
Go and have fun with your hot American boys and post pictures all over Facebook and Twitter. That’s what I would do. Upload a picture of you in your
bikini draped over Tyler whatsisface.

I ponder this. I’ve never been on the rebound before as Will was my first boyfriend and first break-up so I’m not too sure how to behave. But rebound sluttery doesn’t sound
like my thing. Even before Will I was never good at the casual snog. I’ve only kissed about five people in my whole life compared to Megan’s five hundred and fifty.

Listen, do you like Jeremy?
she asks now.

Yeah. He’s really nice.

Nice? Nice does not sound hot.

No, he’s hot too. I think I like him.

So what’s stopping you?

It’s a good question. What is stopping me? For a start he hasn’t tried to kiss me – but I don’t want to tell Megan this as she’d give me some unsolicited advice for
the next hour on exactly what I should wear, what I should say and how I should say it in order to have him kiss me or she’d just tell me to man up, grab hold of him and stick my tongue down
his throat. So I change the topic.

A girl got murdered
, I type.