Chapter 17
Henry
“God, this place really hasn’t changed.” Maeve spins on her heel before we leave the rear courtyard through one of the large gateways in the north wing. Her pale-green dress flies out around her calves as she does so; her hair’s shorter than the last time I saw her.
“It’s not that long since you left,” I say.
“True.” She looks up once we’re out on the gravel path that circles the buildings. Above the school’s dark-brick facade and pointed turrets, the sun is shining in a cloudless blue sky. “A year and a bit, but it feels like half a lifetime.”
I nod, because it feels like that to me too.
It seems ages since I started the fifth form, on the first day when it wasn’t just Theo who’d left but Maeve too.
I was no longer the youngest Bennington—I was the only Bennington.
Maeve’s well into her medicine degree now, while Theo is a year ahead of her.
I can barely remember what it was like when I saw my brother and sister here every day, around the school or in the dining room at mealtimes.
I knew I could go to them any time I needed them.
I didn’t realize how privileged that made me until later.
And I miss it. Because even if everything goes to plan and I get into St. Andrews too, I know it won’t be the same, that things will never be the way they were when we were all at Dunbridge Academy together.
Theo often talks about doing a semester in Canada, and Maeve’s hinted that she wants to travel.
They won’t stay in Scotland forever. In that respect, they’re completely different from me.
Even though I’m sure that they’ll look back on their time here with happy memories, they found it restricting to spend so long in one place.
I guess those are the logical outcomes of traveling more in your childhood than other people do in their whole lives. Either you long to arrive somewhere, or you’re constantly pulled to explore, to see the whole world. Theo and Maeve are definitely the second type.
“Do you miss it? Boarding-school life?”
“I miss being close to you,” she says, and I’m sure it’s still there, the invisible connection that meant we always knew what the other was thinking.
I’d been scared it might get lost if I spent such a long time apart from my big sister, but fortunately, that doesn’t seem to be the case.
“And I miss boarding-school life too,” she continues.
“Everything’s more anonymous somehow at uni.
I don’t even know my neighbors’ names, they change so fast. And I miss the morning runs.
” Maeve laughs. “Who’d have thought I’d ever say that? ”
“I can believe it,” I say, and her eyes rest suspiciously on me. “I’m actually quite enjoying them these days.”
“What have they done to you?”
“I had to put some effort into getting onto the rugby team.”
“Well, that’s nuts too,” Maeve says. “So did you make it?” She smiles. “Of course you did. You always manage anything you set your mind to.”
I walk next to her in silence.
“How’s Grace?” Maeve asks.
“Fine,” I say. “She sends her love.”
When Maeve doesn’t answer, I turn my head toward her. She’s a few steps away from me now, sitting on the wide wooden swing that hangs from a thick branch on one of the old lime trees that line the path to the stables.
“What?” I ask as she just looks at me.
“Nothing.” She pushes off and swings toward me. “No, there is something, isn’t there?”
“Maeve . . .” I groan.
“Have you two had a row?”
“No,” I say. We don’t see enough of each other for that. We only meet in lessons and in the dining room. Or for lunch with her family, which I feel worse about every time. Especially now when all I can think about is Emma’s sleeping body next to mine. That and her warm, soft skin.
“What is it, then?”
“Nothing,” I snap. “Everything’s fine, OK?”
Maeve doesn’t bat an eyelid, which makes me even angrier. There’s never been any point in trying to lie to my sister. I don’t know how she does it, but somehow, she always seems to know how I’m feeling better than I do myself.
“Got it.” Maeve looks up into the branches as she swings forward again. She sounds utterly unimpressed. And she isn’t even trying to get me to talk. She doesn’t say a thing. Not a word. Not one single . . .
“When you and Eliza . . .” I can’t stop myself. “Did you ever wonder if you were just still together out of habit?”
“Yeah, I’m afraid so.”
I gulp.
“Pretty shitty feeling, isn’t it?” Maeve lets the soles of her shoes scrape over the ground until the swing stops.
“Yeah.” Why’s my throat so dry?
“But I don’t think there’s anything wrong with thinking that kind of stuff.” Maeve looks at me. “It means you’re developing as a person.”
“It feels like there’s something wrong with it.”
“Why?”
I could roll my eyes. Because that’s how she always asks. It forces me to be brutally honest with myself, which I’d normally prefer to avoid.
There’s a small, dishonest I don’t know on the tip of my tongue. But I bite it back because I know we won’t get anywhere like that. So I just talk. No filters, no overthinking. Maeve’s the only person in the world I can do this with.
“Because we’ve grown apart from each other.”
“Why could that be?”
I think about Emma. I’m thinking about her and nothing else.
“What’s her name?” Maeve asks, and my first instinct is to deny everything. But suddenly I’m sick of it. Of lying to myself, lying to my friends. Lying to Emma. Because I don’t want to be just friends with her. I want more, I want everything, and I want it with her. “Or him?”
I shake my head. “Her.” My voice sounds suddenly rough. “Emma.”
“Is she new?”
I nod. “She’s German, just here for a year. We met at the airport when I changed in Frankfurt.”
Maeve smiles. “Cute, Henny.”
Henny . . . She’s the only person who still sometimes calls me that, from back when I couldn’t pronounce my name properly.
“Stop it, Maeve, it’s horrible, all of it.” I groan. “What am I even doing? None of this makes any sense . . .”
“You fancy her, of course it doesn’t.” Maeve says it like a totally self-explanatory fact.
But it’s not true. I know what a crush feels like. And this with Emma is more than that. It’s so much more than having a crush on her, and that scares me.
“I can’t do this. I can’t fall in love. I’m with Grace.” I swallow hard, and I don’t want to be this guy. Grace has always done everything right. She’s important to me, and I don’t want to lose her. If I listened to my feelings, instead of my mind, that would definitely happen.
“That’s true, but are you happy with her? Are you two happy together?” Maeve doesn’t take her eyes off me, and I just can’t speak.
I’m thinking about everything and nothing.
About weekends with Grace and her family, about our conversations, talking whole nights away, laughing till we can’t breathe, knowing there’s always someone there for me.
But then I think about rows over tiny things and silence about the stuff that’s so crucial and so big that it scares me.
About this feeling of having got used to Grace.
It’s almost like indifference, and I’m the worst human being in the whole world, but it’s true.
I like Grace, her presence, her sense of humor, our relationship.
I respect her. I want the very best for her.
But since that day a few weeks ago when I ran into this German girl at the airport and sat in an airplane feeling gray-blue eyes burning into the back of my neck, I haven’t been able to forget it.
Because nothing with Emma is enough. Because I want more.
And because I think I could have it with her.
I only remember Maeve’s question when I feel her eyes on me.
“We’re not unhappy,” I begin. “But . . . I think we’re not properly happy anymore either.”
“As happy as you are when you spend time with Emma?”
Why do I feel so guilty? I really wish it wasn’t this way, but whenever I’m with Emma, it seems like I feel everything twice as intensely. And that’s dangerous.
“There’s no point. She’s only here for a year. She’ll leave, and then I’ll have given Grace up. The whole year with her, it’s . . . How can I explain it to her when I don’t understand it myself?”
“Who says she’ll only stay a year?” asks Maeve, and I resist the urge to shut my eyes in despair.
“Emma says so, and she means it. She’s here to find out more about her dad.
Her parents met at Dunbridge, and she has no contact with him.
” I pause. These are Emma’s secrets. Things she told me in confidence, and only me.
But I promised to do whatever I could to help her in her search.
So I have to get Maeve involved. “His name is Jacob Wiley. He’s a musician, and he was born in Scotland.
” I tell her everything I’ve found about him on the internet.
“Do you know if Mum or Dad ever mentioned him? They must have been only a couple of years apart.”
“Hmm, I see.” Maeve rests her index finger against the tip of her nose, the way she always does when she’s thinking. “No, I don’t think I’ve ever heard of him, sorry.”
“No worries. It was a long shot.”
“If he was at school here, there’s bound to be someone who knew him.”
“Mr. Ward did. He’s made a few remarks.”
“Oh, God, he’s probably the only teacher I don’t miss.”
“He’s getting worse,” I say. I glance around unobtrusively. Luckily, there’s no one nearby who could have heard us.
“I think it annoys him to this day that I got an A star for A level,” Maeve muses cheerily.
“I bet it does. I really don’t know why he went into teaching. It really doesn’t seem like he wants anyone to learn anything.”
“You’ll make a way better teacher.”
I have to smile. “I hope so.”
“Have you started thinking about universities yet?”
I nod slowly. “Yeah, but I don’t have to decide anything for certain just now.”
“True. Well, you’ve got plenty of time. Does Grace have any plans for where she wants to go?”
“Oxford.”
“I see,” Maeve says, and I’m sure she knows what that means.
She doesn’t bother with pointless clichés.
That long-distance relationships and weekend visits can work out, can keep it going.
It didn’t work for her and Eliza, and they were only an hour and a half apart, in St. Andrews and Edinburgh.
So why would it work out for me and Grace if there were four hundred miles or so between our universities?
“When did you know you were going to have to split up?” I ask the question as if it were about no more than the weather. How can I sound so casual?
“I didn’t want to face up to it for ages,” she says.
“But really, I knew back when we started applying to universities. We spent the whole of the upper sixth pretending that everything wasn’t about to change between us.
” Maeve doesn’t look at me as she continues.
“I sometimes wish we’d ended it before we left school.
It might have been easier to settle in at St. Andrews if I hadn’t spent the whole time wondering how we could patch things up. ”
I sigh. “Sometimes I wonder how Theo and Harriett manage.”
“That’s Theo for you,” Maeve says. “He says hi, by the way. He’s still pretty much living in the library even though it’s still the vacation. He’s decided to revise last year’s work before next semester.”
“That’s Theo for you,” I repeat.
“He’s wondering if he can take a semester out next spring and do some volunteering with Mum and Dad on their project.”
“Oh. Seriously?”
Maeve just nods.
“When’s your flight?” I ask.
“Next week. I’ll be back just before term starts again.”
“Then I guess we won’t see each other before that?”
Maeve shakes her head with a smile. “But that’s why we’re seeing each other now.”
“You’ll be careful, though, won’t you?”
“I’m always careful, Henny.”
“Just saying,” I mumble.
“And when I get back, you can come and visit me again. Uni’s not so stressful at the start of term.”
“That would be nice,” I say.
“After all, you need a look around if you’re going to study there. And I’ve signed up as a volunteer for your open day after half-term. We’ll see each other then.” Maeve smiles. “And bring Emma. I’m just saying . . .”
I’ve just opened my mouth when I hear a voice.
“Maeve Bennington?” Ms. Barnett is walking toward us, and she smiles as we turn around. “I thought as much. How nice to see you! You look so grown-up.”