Chapter Eight
W e were sitting in the canteen, talking over the backdrop of scraping cutlery and chattering students when Kira reached into her bag, took out a large cuddly tarantula and plonked it on the table, almost upsetting my water glass.
‘What the fuck?’ Freddy scooted away from the table, his chair screeching against the floor.
‘Look at its eyes,’ Ethan said calmly. Ever since that day on the beach, he’d been hanging out with us at lunchtimes, sometimes meeting up after school too. ‘They’re so red.’
‘It’s my birthday soon,’ Kira announced, ‘and Mum won’t let me have a party.
’ Kira’s mum was a wedding planner, their house was showroom perfect, and whenever I went there she seemed to follow us around, picking up glasses and bowls the second they were empty.
I was surprised she hadn’t tidied me away.
I was not surprised Kira wasn’t getting a party.
‘So you bought yourself a tarantula as a commiseration present?’ I asked.
‘He was pleading with me from the window of that trick shop in Truro, and I thought about putting him in Mum’s bed in protest. I want to do something for my birthday.’ She waggled the spider in Freddy’s face and he flinched away from it.
‘Beach trip?’ Orwell suggested.
‘Cinema?’ I tried.
‘We can go to the Sailor’s Rest,’ Freddy said. ‘You’re the last of us to turn eighteen, so it would be legit.’
‘I want to do something different.’ Kira threw the cuddly spider to Ethan and he caught it easily.
‘Is this our talking piece?’ he asked. ‘So, now I have it, it’s my turn to speak?’
‘Exactly,’ Kira said smugly, though I was sure she hadn’t thought of that.
‘OK then.’ He frowned at the demonic spider, then looked up, and we were treated to his half-smile, which did funny things to my insides when it was combined with his thigh pressed against mine under the table. ‘What about that house on the cliffs?’
‘Tyller Klos?’ I blurted.
‘It’s only called that in your romance books.’ Kira rolled her eyes. ‘What is that? “Secluded Place”?’
‘It’s not secluded,’ Orwell said. ‘It’s sitting on top of the cliffs like a big sore thumb.’
‘Creepy though.’ Freddy narrowed his eyes at Ethan. ‘What do you have in mind?’
‘Maybe we could get inside. It’s been abandoned for years, right?’
‘S. E. Artemis moved out over fifteen years ago, the same time she stopped writing books. It’s a really big house, and it’s at the top of that huge hill, so …’
‘You little fangirl.’ Kira squeezed my arm affectionately. ‘You really think we can get inside?’ she asked Ethan. ‘What if it’s all boarded up? Padlocked?’
Ethan shrugged. ‘We won’t know unless we try.’
Kira whooped, drawing looks from the girls further down the table. ‘We could take torches so we weren’t too terrified. Snacks, some drinks. It would be the best birthday.’
‘And Ethan can look at the structural integrity of the building,’ Orwell said. ‘Right, Ethan?’
Ethan stared steadily back. ‘I’m interested in buildings, but I’m not going to ruin Kira’s birthday by carrying out a full site survey. I can bring some gin or vodka – whatever you want.’
‘Yessssss Ethan,’ Kira said. ‘I knew there was a reason we let you into our group.’
‘Several reasons,’ I corrected. Ethan pressed his leg more firmly against mine, and I slid my hand down his thigh, felt his muscles tense beneath my palm. ‘He’s an expert in crisis situations – especially getting gravel out of cuts – so we definitely need him.’
‘Sure your mum will let you have the night off?’ Orwell asked me, mock serious.
Freddy whacked him on the arm. ‘Not cool, dude. Ignore him, Georgie. He’s being a dick.’
Ethan put his arm around my shoulders and threw the spider back to Kira, but she was staring at us, dumbfounded, and so were Freddy and Orwell. I felt a rush as I leaned into Ethan, enjoying the weight of his arm around me.
‘Georgie has to come,’ he said. ‘She’s Kira’s best friend, and she knows more about the house than the rest of us combined.’
‘Agreed.’ Kira leaned over the table so she could high-five Ethan.
‘Solid,’ Freddy said, and I saw Orwell throw Ethan a filthy look before he nodded along with the rest of us, and we started concocting our plan to get into the abandoned house for Kira’s birthday.
Later that day, once we’d said goodbye to Freddy, Kira and Orwell in the village, Ethan offered to walk me home. Sarah was silent beside us, hovering like a storm cloud ready to erupt.
‘I suppose I’ll go back by myself then,’ she said sullenly.
‘It’s five minutes that way,’ Ethan gestured patiently. Their house was a double-fronted semi-detached, set back behind a long driveway, so different to the terrace I lived in with Mum.
‘I’ll see you tomorrow, Sarah,’ I said, and got a glare in response.
‘Are you enjoying Ethan’s attention, Georgie?’ she asked, surprising me.
‘Sarah.’ Ethan’s voice was a low warning.
‘I like him a lot,’ I told her, refusing to be intimidated.
‘Don’t get used to it,’ she said. ‘Don’t think he’ll stick around.’
‘I’ll be home in ten minutes, OK?’ Ethan’s tone was sharper than I’d ever heard it, and Sarah strode off without another word. He sighed. ‘She doesn’t want me to crowd her or walk home with her, but when I try and do something else, she’s offended.’
‘You’re very protective.’
‘I want her to be OK. There was …’ He stopped talking, a muscle pulsing in his jaw.
‘What, Ethan?’
‘Before we came here, we lived in York. One night, she went to a party and called me around one a.m., asking me to come and get her. She woke me up, and I was angry, and stubborn about it.’ His laugh was humourless.
‘She sounded frantic, but she’d called me so many times before and it had never been an emergency.
Usually she just wanted me to pick her up.
So I said I’d come, but I took my time getting dressed, and I walked because she was in the centre of town.
’ He shook his head. ‘When I got there, she was bleeding – she had a cut on her head – and the police were there.’
‘Shit.’ I brushed my hand against his.
‘She’d got into an argument with another girl and her boyfriend, who were both older than her. Sarah had lashed out, the other girl had retaliated, and honestly, I was glad that the police were called – even though Sarah got in trouble. It stopped it escalating.’
‘You were there for her, though.’
‘I could have got there sooner and been less pissed off about it. I should have protected her better, so now I am, and she resents me for it.’
‘Hey.’ I squeezed his arm. ‘You’re doing all you can. I’m sorry it’s so difficult.’
‘Maybe it’ll get easier if we settle here.’
‘It’s bound to get easier.’ I nudged his shoulder. ‘Also, can I just say, especially now I know how responsible you are, that I would never have expected you to suggest breaking into an abandoned building.’
‘We might not be able to. Kira’s right, it’s likely to be padlocked and boarded up.’
‘What if it’s not, though?’
He smiled. ‘Then we can jimmy open the door and have a look around. You’d like to, right? Considering how important it is in those books you love?’
‘I would love to.’ I’d told him about the Cornish Sands series a few days ago, and was even toying with sharing some of my favourite passages with him. ‘But at night ?’ I shuddered theatrically.
‘There’s less chance of being caught in the dark.
’ We had reached the turning onto my road.
There was a shop on the corner, Alperwick Watchmaker’s, the name written in faded, elegant script above the door, though it had been empty for as long as I could remember.
It was glass-fronted and faced the beach, and I thought it would be perfect as an ice-cream parlour or coffee shop, one of those community hubs where regulars got to try all the new specials for free.
‘We could practise, if you wanted?’ Ethan gestured to the door of the watchmaker’s. Its wooden frame was cracked and rotten, possibly infested with woodworm.
‘We can’t.’
‘Why not?’
I held up my index finger. ‘One, it’s broad daylight.’ I held up my middle finger. ‘Two, there are people everywhere.’
‘But this glass.’ He pressed his palm against it, fingers splayed. ‘It feels like picture glass to me. I bet I could break it with my elbow.’
‘Are you a secret rebel, Ethan?’
He raised an eyebrow and then, as if in answer to my question, took a cigarette out of his pocket.
He put it in his mouth and brought a silver Zippo up to light it, cupping his hand around the flame.
I was torn, because he looked like a golden age Hollywood film star, with his mess of hair and high cheekbones, a cigarette dangling from his mouth.
But I thought about the poison going into his lungs, and after his second drag I plucked it out of his fingers and ran up the road, my rucksack bouncing on my back.
‘Hey!’ I heard his footsteps behind me and swerved left, across the seafront road and onto the beach.
I dipped right, so I was running along the edge, where the cliffs rose up from sea level.
Little streams of water ran down the stone, through patches of moss, making trails on the sand.
It was damp from an earlier shower, squidgy beneath my feet, the sky still bustling with clouds.
I stubbed the cigarette out against the stone.
‘Hey!’ Ethan called again. His legs were longer, he could have caught up with me already, but for some reason he was holding off.
I kept going along the cliff line, the jagged rock rising above me until there was an overhang, a shallow recess that was close to but not quite a cave, and I risked glancing behind me.
He was on me immediately, his hands gripping my hips, lifting me slightly and then placing me back a step, so I was inches from the cliff face. I let my bag slip off my shoulders, heard the scrape as it met rough rock on the way down.
‘Hey, Georgie.’ Ethan stepped forwards, crowding me, his legs on either side of mine.
My head knocked gently into the overhang as I looked up at him.
‘You,’ he said through laboured breaths, ‘are a little thief.’ His eyes blazed, but he brought his hand up behind my head, a soft cushion to shield me from the rock.
‘Smoking’s bad for you,’ I said. ‘You’re only eighteen. What if it stunts your growth?’ I’d meant it as a joke, but it hadn’t come out that way.
He raised an eyebrow. ‘I don’t think …’
‘I don’t want you getting ill,’ I blurted, then flushed, embarrassed. I’d tried so hard to keep my fears about Mum away from this part of my life; it was a personal promise I’d renewed when I met Ethan, and this was only the odd cigarette: I was being ridiculous.
But his gaze softened, and he brushed my hair off my forehead. ‘I’m OK,’ he said, ‘but I will stop, if you want me to?’
His words hung in the air, the crash of the waves punctuating the quiet, and I realized what he was offering me, because how could I make him stop smoking if we were just friends, if we just hung out occasionally? Why would he do that for me?
‘I want you to stop,’ I said.
His gaze flickered, and then he smiled, wide and bright. When he leaned towards me, the smoke lingering on his breath, I parted my lips and invited him closer, closing my eyes when he brushed his mouth over mine.
I’d kissed a couple of other boys in school, but those encounters had been overeager and desperate, more about getting important milestones out of the way than the people I was with, and I hadn’t gone any further than that.
Ethan was patient, his lips exploring gently, his hand on my hip again, pulling me against him.
‘Is this OK?’ he whispered.
I nodded and tried to moan seductively, but it came out more like a squeak.
‘Good,’ he said. That one word reminded me of the first day we met, and then my mind went blank as he kissed me again, increasing the pressure. I slid my hands around his back, clinging to him like I never wanted to let go.
It felt unreal and reckless, kissing Ethan on the beach, in sight of the cold, raw ocean, the March wind twisting around us.
When he finally pulled away, his cheeks were pink. ‘Are you all right?’ he asked hoarsely.
I tried to catch my breath. ‘I’m …’ I didn’t know what else to say, so I pressed my fingers to my lips and grinned at him.
He puffed out a breath, as if he was relieved, then returned my smile. ‘I will stop smoking for you, Georgie.’ He picked up my rucksack and shrugged it onto his shoulder, then took my hand. ‘Can I walk you home?’
I nodded, helpless to do anything else. My world had changed in those few minutes, and I couldn’t wait to go to the clifftop mansion with him, no matter how dark it was, how many spiders or rats or ghosts there might be waiting to terrify us, because I knew he would make me feel safe.