Chapter 12 #2
I turn the pages. Look at the photos from the third, fourth, and fifth forms. In the lower sixth, they’re standing together, and my father’s hand is somewhere behind Mum’s back.
She’s not looking at the camera, she’s gazing at him.
He’s acting like he hasn’t noticed, but his smile tells a different story.
He knows exactly what he’s doing. It’s the first photo where he and Mr. Ward aren’t side by side.
Mr. Ward is a row back, behind them, and glancing in their direction.
He looks kind of jealous. My parents belong together in a strange way.
My mum looks like a model pupil. My dad looks like an adventurer, bold, like someone who wants more from life than scoring points and playing by rules dreamed up by other people.
He looks like the kind of person you can’t pin down.
The kind you can’t really predict, who’ll promise you the world one day and be off over the hills the next, because he comes and goes like the tide.
He was like that then, and Mum still fell for him.
My throat feels tight as I flick further on.
More pictures from the lower sixth and no Dad.
No Mr. Ward either. He doesn’t reappear until photos from the upper sixth.
Where did he get to in between? And why does he look so different now?
As if all the light had gone out from his eyes.
I stare at those photos as if they could give me answers, but I can’t find them.
I just peer at pictures from the start of the academic year, and then from the Leavers’ Ball.
Fancy gowns, beaming faces, hats thrown into the air.
Group photos. Mum holding her results and beaming.
No trace of my dad. Maybe he was up on some tiny stage at that moment, thinking he’d made it.
He’d struck lucky: He was living his dream; he’d beaten the system.
It was the first time he left her. I know that he did it again lots of times after that.
That he went back to Mum when she was at uni and he hadn’t got a record deal in London.
That they lived together for a few years, and he left again when she was pregnant.
That he came back, just before I was born.
That he moved to Germany with her, that there’d be times when things were good for a while, until they weren’t again.
That it seemed like everything suffocated him.
Their flat, their relationship, his daughter.
Me. I suffocated him, and now he hasn’t the faintest idea that I’m sitting here and that I want to find out who he was, who he is.
I’m not a step further on. What did I expect?
A noise makes me jump.
I slam the book shut, jump up, stand motionless, my ears pricked in the silence.
My heart is racing.
But it was just the wind.
Henry
It’s torture getting out of bed while the rest of the school’s asleep. The whole school apart from Emma and me. But maybe that’s also why I kind of like pulling on my running clothes, brushing my teeth, bleary eyed, while the first rays of the sun shine onto the school walls.
I drink half a bottle of water and pull on my running shoes, then walk downstairs.
I’m late. Emma’s already waiting for me in the courtyard. When I step outside and walk toward her, she’s got her left foot resting on one of the flower tubs as she stretches.
“Hi,” she says. I love it when her voice still sounds a bit rough and sleepy. “I thought we could jog to the track, then do some interval training until it’s time for the morning run. Is that all right?”
I groan and follow Emma as she starts moving. “Intervals, in the morning?”
“Yeah, it’s supereffective, trust me.”
“I’m sure it is.”
She doesn’t reply and her eyes flick up over the school walls. As I follow her gaze, I recognize the person standing up there at one of the windows. It’s Mr. Ward, and he’s staring down so fiercely at us, it’s like we’re doing something wrong. Emma seems thrown by it until she looks away.
“How did you sleep?” she asks hastily as we run through the gateway side by side.
The first birds are twittering, and as always in late summer, threads of mist are still hanging over the fields.
I decide not to talk about Mr. Ward. The morning run ought to be the time of the day when she can forget everything else and not have to worry about grumpy English teachers.
“Fine,” I say truthfully. “I’m dead by the time I fall into bed these days.”
“Are you making sure you get at least seven hours’ sleep?” she persists, and I have to smile.
“Is there any chance we could start a bit later if I’m not?”
Emma grins. “Not really.”
“Bummer.”
“But I could come round in the evening and take your phone away at ten at the latest.”
“There’s no need. I’m asleep by then.”
She laughs. “OK, very good.”
“How about you?” I ask. “Have you settled in a bit?”
“Yes, I think so.” The gravel crunches under our feet, and I feel my pulse starting to quicken. Not long ago, I’d have been out of breath already, and now it feels like I’m just getting warmed up. “My mum’s coming to visit at the weekend.”
That makes me smile, because she says it so casually, yet I can hear in her voice how much she’s looking forward to it. And that makes me happy, especially when I remember that nobody came with her on her first day here. “That’s nice.”
“Yes. I hope the weather’s good. We want to go and see the Highlands.”
“It’s more authentic in the rain, you know,” I say. “But I think you’ll be in luck.”
“So how are things with your parents?” she asks. “Do you only see them during the holidays?”
“Basically, yes,” I say. “Sometimes they come over to Edinburgh in between, but mostly we fly out to them. They save up their leave so that we can spend as much time together as possible.”
“You and your brother and sister?”
“Yes.” I nod. “It used to be easier when Theo, Maeve, and I had the same school holidays. It’s got a bit more complicated since they’ve been at university. They usually have to do placements during the vacations.”
“In hospital?”
“Exactly,” I say.
“You’re a real medical family then,” remarks Emma.
“Yes, my grandparents worked in the NHS too.” I shrug. “I’m the first to break with tradition.”
“You have to do what you’re passionate about,” she says. “That’s what matters.”
“Perhaps.”
“No, not ‘perhaps,’ Henry. Definitely.”
“Well, we’ll see. I think they’re all secretly hoping I’ll change my mind. I mean . . . most people who go to school here study medicine, law, or economics.”
“But do they enjoy it?” asks Emma. “Or are they just doing it because it’s expected of them?”
“That’s the question . . .” I pause as she smiles. “What?”
“I think I’ll have to up the pace. You’re managing more than three-word sentences.”
“Oh, no,” I say with a groan.
“Don’t worry, when we do the intervals, we’ll go to your maximum heart rate.”
“I can’t think of anything more delightful.”
“Me neither,” says Emma, and sadly, her tone doesn’t sound the least bit ironic.
She’s as good as her word, because we’ve barely reached the sports ground when she picks up the pace considerably. The first rays of sunshine are falling over the rugby pitch, but that’s not why the sweat’s burning in my eyes a few minutes later.
Emma’s idea of interval training is suicidal. And I don’t think she’s even running as fast as she can. It’s nuts, and she makes it look so easy. I’m running flat out, and she doesn’t let me slow down until I feel like my heart’s going to burst out of my chest any second.
“Make sure you keep your hips level,” she says as we’re running more slowly again after a couple of sprints.
You don’t stand still when you’re training with Emma.
I soon figured that much out. There’s only full speed and easy jogging.
Her cheeks are flushed and a few strands have worked loose from her plait as she comes alongside me.
She puts her hands on my hips and my heart skips a beat.
“You mustn’t let them tip forward. Imagine you’re carrying a full glass of water inside you, and it has to stay upright so that nothing spills over. ”
“Weird image,” I pant.
“I know, but it helps, right?”
It would help if she took her hands away.
But as soon as she does, I wish she hadn’t.
My skin is burning where she touched me.
Suddenly I think about last night, when I didn’t ask Grace to stay.
Her eyes, all those things that went unsaid between us.
I have to push it down—there’s no other way.
Otherwise, I’d have to face the fact that I spend too many hours a day thinking about Emma, and I owe it to Grace to be honest with her.
But I know what that would mean. And I can’t do it. I can’t do that to her.
“Three more intervals and that’s enough for today,” Emma decides.
“Three more?” I banish those thoughts to the furthest corner of my brain. “You’re insane.”
“No, but we need to get into the anaerobic zone,” she explains as if she were the one doing A-level biology, not me.
At this moment, I twig that this is the thing she was born to do.
Study sports science at that specialist college in Germany.
And that I don’t want her to leave in a year’s time. I really don’t.
“I’ve been in the anaerobic zone for the last hour,” I say.
“I doubt that.” She glances at her running watch. “So, in fifteen seconds, back to full intensity.”
I groan, but what can I do? When Emma runs, I run.
“How . . .” I gasp as she relaxes the speed after a minute and a half, “. . . the hell can you be so fast?”