Chapter 29
Emma
We’re frozen to the bone by the time we get back to school. Wet through and caked with mud. Dark-brown water disappears down the drain as I rinse our running clothes in my shower. Then I stay under the hot water for several minutes.
Henry’s eyes are still red as we lie in my bed with wet hair, but for the first time, it feels like he’s really here again. Something must have happened in the woods just now, and even if I don’t completely understand it, I’m happy that he’s let emotions in again. And he’s talking. Especially that.
When he speaks, between minutes of a not-uncomfortable silence, his words are so genuine, it hurts.
“I don’t know what I should do,” he whispers, his head on my belly. “It feels like nothing exists anymore.”
“I understand it feels like that.” His hair is almost dry as I run my fingers through his dark curls. “It’s not true, though. There’s still so much, even if you can’t see it right now.”
“You’ll never get to meet.” Henry gulps. “It’s not fair, Em.”
“No. It’s not.”
Henry says nothing. The raindrops still rattling against my window are the only sound as he runs his index finger over my knee.
“Do you think we’d have got on?” I ask.
Henry nods without a second’s hesitation.
“You might have found her a bit overpowering, but Maeve would have loved you. And then she’d have spent the whole time sending you these weird memes that no one but her really finds funny.
” Henry pauses, but there’s something else he wants to say.
I can sense it, so I say nothing. “Nobody messages our family group anymore,” he says in the end.
“It’s horrible. Mum and Dad only text me individually.
And Theo . . .” He doesn’t need to spell it out; I get the idea. Theo doesn’t message at all.
I roll onto my side so that I can put both arms around Henry. “I’m sorry,” I whisper into his hoodie. It’s the one I might just have stolen from him and hidden in my wardrobe. “But I’m sure it has nothing to do with you.”
Henry doesn’t answer right away. “I know,” he mumbles in the end.
“Next week is the open day at St. Andrews.” Henry tenses almost imperceptibly. “Are you coming?” I feel him shrug. “I’m sure Mrs. Sinclair would understand if we asked not to go,” I say.
“Yeah. Maybe. I don’t know.”
I sense that I’m overburdening him, so I don’t ask again. It’s not a decision he has to make right now.
“But you have to go,” Henry says.
“I don’t want to go if you don’t go.”
“OK. Well, we’ll see.” He’s trying to sound lighthearted, and it’s tugging at my heart a bit.
“Just decide on the day, if you like.”
“Thanks, Em,” he says sometime later.
“Stop that,” I reply at once.
“No, really. Thank you. For being so understanding, even when I was being a jerk. It—it’s just all so bloody hard.”
“It won’t be the same forever,” I say. “Someday, it’ll be better. A tiny bit. And then another tiny bit.”
Henry doesn’t say anything, but at least he doesn’t contradict me.
“I’m scared I’ll screw up in maths too,” he says eventually. “In English that was . . . I just couldn’t think straight. I couldn’t do it.”
My stomach clenches, but I try not to let it show. “Maths will be different. I’m sure of it. We can study together if you like.”
Henry nods vaguely, and I know that right now revising for some mock exam is the last thing he ought to be doing. But he still has to pass his A levels and get into uni.
Henry needs good predicted grades. Even if he doesn’t want to study at St. Andrews, given what’s happened. Not many good universities are going to have lower entry requirements. But it definitely isn’t the time to talk about that to Henry. All that matters now is for him to find himself again.
Henry
They said I didn’t have to come to the St. Andrews open day.
I’m already regretting having turned down the offer to stay at school when we step off the bus after a ninety-minute drive.
My stomach knots. Maybe I’ll throw up on the university’s perfectly manicured lawn, or maybe I just won’t allow any emotions to stir.
It’s bad enough feeling Emma, Sinclair, and Tori looking anxiously at me as Mr. Ringling, who’s in charge today, introduces us to the students who will show us around.
There are three girls and three boys, and I can hardly look them in the face.
When they introduce themselves, I don’t recognize their names, so it’s unlikely they were friends of Maeve’s.
This isn’t Dunbridge Academy; it’s bigger, more impersonal.
They might have heard that a fellow student had died, they might have felt sad, but they’d have been too busy to dwell on it, with the new semester and catching up with their friends.
I hate how bitter I am. And I hate that my throat’s tight and my mouth’s dry as we’re divided into three groups, each of which is allocated two student guides.
Mr. Ringling likes me and feels sorry for me, so I’m sure it’s no coincidence that I’m in a group with Emma, Tori, and Sinclair.
Liam and Felicity are second-year undergraduates, studying psychology and economics.
They’re nice, making jokes and answering questions as they show us a lecture theater followed by the halls of residence.
The building we’re walking into isn’t the one where Maeve lived, but being close to it is enough to stop me from feeling anything.
I’m simply numb. My head is dizzy, my fingers are cold.
I jump when I feel Emma’s hand on my arm.
She looks at me, and an almost uncontrollable urge to shake off her hand rises inside me.
Because I’m afraid of what would happen if I told her how I’m really feeling.
The others follow Felicity into the flat she shares with two other students. I stay in the hallway because I know what these rooms look like. “Don’t you want to . . .” I begin as Emma waits beside me.
“Did she live here too?” she asks instead of answering. There’s no sympathy in her voice, just empathy. Until recently, I hadn’t really known the difference.
“No. She was in the next building.” I have to clear my throat because my voice suddenly sounds husky.
“Have you been back since?”
I don’t want to think about it. I almost stayed in Cheshire because I was too scared to clear out her flat with Theo, Mum, and Dad.
It took us a whole day, and I cried the whole time.
But I suppose it was important. A way of at least starting to get to grips, to grasp what’s happened.
Because grasp and grip have to do with touching things.
Holding things with your own hands, handling them.
Maeve’s clothes, her uni hoodie, which I wore in Cheshire until it stopped smelling of her.
Her books, her pens. Her cold hand, before the coffin was shut.
“Henry?”
I jump. Emma’s gazing at me. “Hm?”
“Want to go somewhere else?”
I nod.
“OK.” Emma walks over to Liam, who’s in the middle of chatting to Omar and Inés about his first semester here. “Excuse me, is there a toilet here somewhere?”
“Yeah, sure,” he says at once, pointing. “At the end of the hall, on the right.”
“Super, thanks.” Emma smiles and glances at me.
Liam doesn’t notice that we move away from the group. Emma waits until we’re out of sight, then takes my hand. It’s only a small gesture, but it says it all. I’m here, you don’t have to do this alone.
We don’t speak as we leave the building. The air is cool—there’s no denying that winter’s on its way. We follow a group of students down the cobbled path. Their voices mingle with the squawking of the gulls as they sail over our heads.
“Did you often visit her here?” Emma asks as we walk side by side.
“Only a couple of times. She came to see me at school more often.”
“The atmosphere’s similar to school,” Emma says. “I see why people want to study here.”
“St. Andrews is much smaller than Oxford or Cambridge, but there’s everything you need here.
And we’re right by the sea.” I stop, but then I carry on.
“There’s this tradition called the May Dip.
On the first of May, hundreds of students run into the cold sea at sunrise.
It’s supposed to bring you luck in your exams and cleanse you of your academic sins. ”
Emma smiles. “Sounds like we need something like that at Dunbridge.”
“The first time Maeve heard about it, she immediately went and suggested it to Mrs. Sinclair.”
“Wasn’t she keen?”
“She pointed out that there wasn’t any sea nearby. Maeve said she ought to run buses to take us to the coast.”
“I love it!”
I have to smile. “I could ask her about it again.”
“You really should. Turn on your school-captain charm—it’s bound to work. And Maeve’s prepared the ground for you.”
“She really has. She was full of ideas like that. In the upper sixth, she organized a strike in protest against the rule about wearing uniform on Mondays.”
“Didn’t she like the uniform?” Emma asks.
“Sure. But she thought it was unfair that girls have to wear skirts and boys have to wear trousers.”
“Well, she’s right there. Everyone should be able to wear what they like,” says Emma.
She’s not talking about Maeve in the past tense, and I don’t suppose she has any idea how much that means to me right now.
“So did Mrs. Sinclair see things differently?” she persists.
“I think she’d have been ready to listen, but somehow the plan never came to anything. It was just before the summer holidays, and after that, everyone had other issues, and Maeve was at St. Andrews.”
“Well, we ought to take it up again. Does Tori know? I bet she’d be in.” Emma pulls her phone from her jacket pocket. “Oh, there’s a text from Sinclair. They’re heading over to the library. Should we . . . ?”
“Do you think anyone would notice if we didn’t?”
“Probably not,” says Emma as she puts her phone away again. She slips her hand into mine inside my coat pocket as we walk on and asks, “Can you picture it?”
“What?”
“Us, studying here together.”
Lately, it’s been hard for me to imagine anything to do with the future. It’s hard enough to bear the present. “It would be lovely,” I say, all the same.
“Are you meeting Theo today?”
I fight back the urge to shut my eyes as I shrug. “Probably not. He’s in seminars all day.”
Emma doesn’t speak.
“We don’t talk that much.”
“Would you like to talk to him?”
“I don’t know what I’d have to say to him.”
Emma kicks away a pebble with the tip of her shoe. “Maybe the stuff you’d have talked to Maeve about.”
“I don’t know. I think it would be weird.”
“You’re not as close to him as to her,” says Emma, but it sounds more like a question.
“Maybe it’s the age difference,” I say, although I know that’s not the reason.
Theo’s only a year older than Maeve. It’s not the age difference; it’s the character difference.
I’m not like Theo, and I’ve never tried to be.
As the third child, it’s hard to establish an identity of your own that’s not based on copying the others.
Theo and I have nothing to say to each other.
And that used to be OK, because there was always Maeve to act as a go-between when I had the impression, yet again, that we were speaking different languages.
“I’m sometimes scared that I haven’t just lost Maeve,” I say, “but Theo too. We were never that close, but now . . . I always thought something like this would bring you closer together, but apparently, the opposite is possible too.”
“Maybe you need more time just the two of you, so you can get close again.”
More time, just the two of us. It’s a shame we don’t have any. Because we’re always busy—Theo’s learning to be a doctor, and I’m working on not going out of my mind.
“Sometimes I think he’s not half as bothered as me that she’s gone.”
They’re words I never wanted to say out loud. Because they’re so awful, I’m immediately ashamed of even having thought them. I can’t tell if things are less bad for Theo. And even if they are, who am I to judge whether the way he’s grieving for Maeve is right or wrong?
“Maybe he just has a different way of dealing with it,” says Emma. I don’t answer as we walk on. “Maybe you have very similar emotions, but they show up differently. You could find out if you talked to each other.”
Maybe Emma’s right. I should try, at least. Even if that isn’t the case, and it turns out that Theo and I are just too different, at least I’d have tried. And that probably couldn’t feel any worse than the fear that I’ve lost both my siblings.