Chapter Sixteen Sixteen Years Earlier
Chapter Sixteen
Sixteen Years Earlier
I could hear their car engine ticking over, even from here. I glanced at the upper branches wondering if I dared climb even higher up the sycamore tree to escape the sound. It was bad enough that he was leaving, I didn’t need to hear the final slam of their car door or witness the moment when the Bakers drove away.
I’d spent the last six weeks trying to pretend this day wasn’t coming, but it just kept creeping inexorably closer.
‘But why do you have to leave?’ I’d asked Josh when he’d first broken the news to me. His face had been paler than usual and there had been a resigned expression in his eyes that I’d never seen before.
‘Janette’s mum has had a really bad fall. The doctors say she can’t live alone anymore, and she has this big old house up in Yorkshire, so . . .’ He gave a shrug that was probably supposed to be nonchalant, but his shoulders looked bowed down by the weight of events he couldn’t control. ‘So, it looks like we’re moving to Yorkshire.’
‘That’s ridiculous,’ I retorted, trying to hide my despair beneath a cloak of indignation. ‘Why can’t her mum move down here? That would work,’ I said, nodding enthusiastically at my own idea. ‘Perhaps I could offer to help look after her? Do you think that would make them change their minds?’
Josh’s smile was gentle, taking the sting out of the way he sadly shook his head. ‘I think it’s a done deal.’
Panic clutched at my stomach, making me feel physically sick as I realised that in less than two months Josh was going to move away.
‘I guess now Gordon has retired, they don’t have anything that ties them to this area,’ Josh said on a sigh.
But you do , I silently screamed. You have me. You just don’t know it. But that one was down to me, not him, because despite a thousand opportunities, I’d never once told Josh how I felt about him. It had always been easier to let everyone – including him – believe my feelings had never ventured any deeper than teenage friendship. But they had . . . for a long, long time.
‘Can’t you just tell them you don’t want to go?’
Josh’s smile was heartbreaking. ‘Tried that. It didn’t work.’
‘But they can’t force you to go. Maybe if you tell them you have to stay here for school. I could ask my parents if you could come and live with us.’ We exchanged a look that at any other time would have made us laugh. I didn’t think either of us could see my dad ever agreeing to that one. But I was clutching at straws, feeling the razor-like sting of their sharp edges as they slipped through my fingers.
‘The only other option I’d have would be to go back into the foster system, and I can’t do that again, Lily. I just can’t.’
I swallowed the lump that had formed in my throat, because I knew that was too much to ask of anyone, especially him. I’d seen the changes in Josh since he’d come to live with Gordon and Janette. He was calmer now, less rebellious, and more settled and at peace than he’d ever been before. The Bakers were more than just long-term foster parents; they were his family now. Of course he wouldn’t want to leave them. And yet, selfishly, part of me had secretly hoped he wouldn’t want to leave me either.
The six weeks had flown by. After that first day we’d scarcely spoken about him leaving. Like a pair of ostriches, we’d buried our heads in the sand, hoping that somehow it wouldn’t happen.
But now the moment I’d been dreading had finally come.
Over the last weeks we’d spent more time on the sycamore-tree platform than we had in years. Admittedly there was much less space for us now, with our gangly teenage limbs and Josh’s broad shoulders. It meant we had to sit much closer together, shoulder to shoulder, thigh against thigh. Not that I was complaining.
I’m not sure which one of us had suggested it might be easier if we said our final goodbye in the tree.
‘I don’t think I could stand there on the pavement with everyone else, waving you off,’ I’d told him. ‘It’d be too sad, like a scene from a movie.’
Josh seemed to consider my words for a moment and then slowly nodded. ‘Okay. I get that.’
I held my breath as I waited for him to look up from the piece of wood he was currently carving with his ever-present penknife.
‘I wouldn’t want you to see me cry.’
He laid down whatever it was he was whittling, and his dark brown eyes met mine.
‘Would you cry?’
I swallowed, and the sound resembled a gulp. ‘Of course I would. I’m going to be really sad when you’re gone. I . . . I’m really going to miss you.’
He chewed on his lip as though trying to prevent the words from escaping.
‘Gonna miss you too. You’ve been a good mate.’
Do not cry. Do not let him see you cry, especially not in this tree where you’ve shared so many happy moments. If you must be sad, do it later. That’s when your tears can fall. Just in case the pep talk didn’t work, I bit down hard on my inner cheek until I tasted blood on my tongue.
‘We can keep in touch on MSN and maybe even write to each other – that’d be retro,’ I said hopefully.
Josh shook his head. ‘I’ve never been very good at keeping in touch.’
Before he’d come to live with the Bakers, there had been a succession of temporary homes with impermanent family and friends in Josh’s life who he was forever having to leave behind. But surely this time it was different?
He must have seen something flash across my features because he put down his penknife and reached over to squeeze my hand.
‘But I guess I could try.’
He left the sycamore tree before me. ‘I’ve still got some packing up to do.’
I nodded sadly but made no move to follow him. ‘I think I’ll just stay up here for a bit longer.’
Josh swung easily off the platform, a manoeuvre I’d seen him do a thousand times before. He moved with a fluid grace, like he was made from mercury instead of flesh and bone. He began to descend the tree, his trainers instinctively finding the footholds Gordon had hammered into the sycamore’s trunk. His head had almost disappeared from sight when he paused, and then cleared his throat awkwardly. I looked up.
‘I’m going to really miss you too, Lily.’
‘Not coming out to wave the Bakers off?’ Mum had asked that morning, when I finally finished pushing my uneaten breakfast from one side of the plate to the other.
‘I don’t think so,’ I said, getting up from the table and scraping the wasted food into the pedal bin.
‘I thought you and that Josh lad were as thick as thieves. I felt sure you’d want to say goodbye to them,’ my father said, lowering his newspaper with unusual curiosity.
I could feel my eyes begin to sting, and looked down at my bare legs, bronzed from a summer spent outdoors, rather than meet his gaze.
‘Leave her be, Tony,’ my mum said, and shot me a look so full of love and understanding that it was all I could do not to catapult myself straight into her arms.
‘Think I’ll go and sit in the garden for a bit,’ I said, already halfway to the back door. ‘I don’t want to get in anyone’s way.’
No one saw me duck into the flower bed, to the spot where the loose fence panels between the properties had never been repaired. I squeezed through the gap, the boobs I’d finally acquired that year making it a tighter fit than it used to be. It had been years since I’d snuck into the Bakers’ garden this way, but this morning it felt totally appropriate.
The next-door neighbours were too busy with their final preparations to notice me slip into their garden or silently scale the old tree. It felt weird doing so without Josh beside me, leaning down to hoist me up on to the platform, but I got there in one piece.
I sat on the old wooden boards, knees drawn up to my chest, as I listened to the soundtrack of my teenage heart breaking. I heard the removals van rumble away and Claire’s piercing shout as she called out Josh’s name.
‘Come on, Josh. We have to leave.’
His voice came from somewhere below me, startling me, because I hadn’t known he was in the garden. Perhaps we’d both been drawn there by the same impulse. And yet already a chasm had opened between us.
‘Are you coming or not?’
I heard his mumbled reply, and then the creak of their garden gate that no one had ever got around to oiling. Perhaps the new owners would do it, I thought morosely.
There were voices I recognised coming from the street. Mum and Dad had obviously gone out to wish their neighbours one final farewell, and from the sound of it they weren’t the only ones who had done so. The Baker family were well liked and would be missed by the residents of Elm Close.
I steeled myself and counted the slamming of car doors, not allowing my tears to fall until the fourth one had been shut. The engine roared into life, and with a short salute on the car horn, the Bakers’ car began to pull away. A sob tore its way from my throat, so loud that I almost missed the sound of brakes being hastily applied.
The collection of voices rose a little louder, but my attention wasn’t on them, it was on the vibrations pounding through the sycamore’s trunk as someone began to rapidly climb the tree. Josh hauled himself on to the platform as though it was a piece of gym equipment.
I didn’t say anything. Nor did he. We just looked at each other for the longest moment and then suddenly he was in front of me, reaching for my hands and tugging me on to my knees. My heart was hammering so loudly in my chest I was sure he could hear it echoing through the canopy of leaves. He released my hands and brought his own up to my face. They stayed there for a moment before his fingers gently swept my hair back from my temple and then wound a pathway through the chestnut strands, as he drew me closer towards him.
Breathing was suddenly not just difficult, it was downright impossible. I had dreamt of this moment a thousand times, and in none of my fantasies had it ever felt this intense, exciting or terrifying. I’d never been kissed before. I had no idea how any of this worked. Practising which way to tilt my head and how to press my lips against someone in front of a mirror was a million miles away from everything I was experiencing right now.
I felt the warmth of his breath before his mouth touched mine. Somehow my head had gone the way it was meant to. There had been no embarrassing clashing of noses or teeth as his lips fleetingly grazed against mine. I gasped, and my eyes, that I hadn’t even realised were closed, flew open when I thought it was all over. I had just a moment to see something fiery in his gaze as his mouth re-joined mine in a first kiss that made me realise that every book I’d read or teen movie I’d watched had got it all wrong. His lips were firm, and although this was my first kiss I knew instinctively that it wasn’t his. He was too good at it. Too skilled at coaxing my lips to respond to his. His tongue slipped briefly into my mouth, and something really hot happened way down deep inside me.
A long low beeping sound broke us apart. I was panting slightly, and so was he. The car horn sounded again, even more impatiently this time.
‘Claire,’ he muttered, shaking his head in frustration. It wasn’t hard to imagine her leaning over from the back seat and pressing on the horn.
‘I have to go,’ he whispered.
I nodded.
Before turning to leave, Josh reached down for my right hand. Gently he unfurled my fingers before pressing something into my palm, and then curling my hand around it.
‘For good luck, and so you don’t forget me,’ he said, already swinging himself down from the tree.
I moved to the edge of the platform to watch him run across the lawn one last time, and seconds later heard the sound of his car door slam shut once again. This time when the car started up it didn’t come back.
I sat back on my heels, raising one hand to my newly kissed lips that could still feel the taste of Josh upon them. It was only then that I opened my hand and looked at the object he’d pressed into my palm.
I recognised it instantly as the piece he’d been working on the day before. Although twenty-four hours earlier I would have struggled to identify it, today a tiny, perfectly carved, wooden lily sat in the palm of my hand. I turned it around in the filtered sunlight and admired the miniature flower he’d crafted from a piece of driftwood. I brought the lily to my lips and rested them against the smooth wood. It was the closest I could get to kissing him, and for now it would have to be enough.