Chapter 33
Henry
There are heaps of things that scare me. Illness, death, losing someone close to me. Being alone. Downtime, having nothing major to do. And apparently, being kicked out of school is another.
Mrs. Sinclair’s face is serious as I slowly stand up. Her voice echoes in my head.
I have to suspend you from classes at Dunbridge Academy until further notice.
Go upstairs, pack, clear my room. I want to wake up from this nightmare.
“I’m sorry,” I say, although that isn’t actually what I mean. It absolutely isn’t. It’s capitulation of the worst kind, because I have no choice.
My voice has never sounded as flat. As if I didn’t care what this means right now, when the opposite is true. I do care. I care more than anything.
What have you done, what have you done, what have you done?
The right thing. It was the right thing. Wasn’t it? A moment ago, I’d been sure of that, but now I’m overcome by doubts.
I turn around. I grab the heavy black iron doorknob. I don’t know how my legs carry me. I don’t know how I push open the door and walk out of the head teacher’s office without losing my composure. I don’t know. I don’t know anything anymore.
I hear the voices in the corridor, the laughter that echoes off the high walls. The sounds of rapid footsteps on the old, uneven tiles in the arcaded walkways. Sunbeams fall through the panes of the lancet windows; dust glitters in the air.
Faces turn toward me, my fellow pupils smile at me, say hi, the same as ever, and I don’t reply because I can’t. I run blindly past them. I have to get away, but I don’t know where to go. I no longer have a home.
The thought hits me like a punch in the belly, but it’s true. For a moment, I feel the need to stop and curl up. But I keep on running.
My feet fly over the tiles, taking routes I could walk with my eyes shut.
Across the courtyard to my dorm wing, brown-brick facades covered with twining ivy.
High lattice windows, dark roofs, pointed towers.
I see it all but feel nothing. Coming toward me down the worn stairs from the first floor are the fourth-formers; they slow as they recognize me, then run all the faster once they’re past. The heavy, dark wooden door to our wing is shut.
I have to lean my whole weight against it as I reach for the key in my trouser pocket and open it, then my bedroom door.
Silence.
And then I pull my suitcase from beside the wardrobe and start packing.
Emma
I walk down the corridor, and everything is a grotesque repeat of that moment weeks ago now. When Henry had learned that his sister was dead, and he was in his room, packing. Just like he is now, according to his text. When the bell went for break, I immediately headed for the east wing.
“Henry?” I hammer on his door. I don’t give a shit about anything else.
I take a step back as he opens it, and I see the pain in his face. On the floor behind him is a half-filled suitcase; his stuff is everywhere. At least he hasn’t finished packing, so that’s one benefit of his stupid injured shoulder.
“Are you out of your mind?” I whisper.
“Emma,” he says quietly.
“Why did you do it? Why did you say it was you? Why did you still have those fucking photos on your phone?” Henry doesn’t flinch as I approach him. I want to pummel his chest with my fists. I want to hurt him. I want him to understand how badly he’s screwed up.
“There was no alternative.”
“Of course there was an alternative! They had no proof. I didn’t have the pictures anymore. Mrs. Sinclair was on my side. She would have believed me, she would have—”
“Emma,” he interrupts, and I want to burst into tears. “It’s no good, none of it. We’d have been found out sooner or later, and then things would have got even more complicated.”
“No, we wouldn’t. Don’t you get it?” I stare uncomprehendingly at him. “Have you been suspended?”
“Rules are rules,” he says. It makes me furious that he’s trying to stay so calm.
When he turns away now and runs his hand through his hair, it’s the first time since he walked into the office earlier that I’ve seen any emotion in him.
“Hell, I didn’t think she’d really do it.
I thought they’d take pity on me because of everything, but . . . It is what it is.”
“I can’t believe it! It’s all so utterly stupid, you could have—”
“I did it for you,” he says, and his words are like a punch in the guts. Because I remember them well. Except that last time, it was me saying them.
Henry blurs before my eyes. “And it’s not like I asked you to, for God’s sake,” I whisper.
“I know, Em.”
“So what happens now?” I wipe away my tears. “Suspended . . . Does that mean thrown out?”
“It means I can’t go to lessons until it’s all gone to the Council.” I don’t have to ask, because Henry carries on unprompted. “A committee of parent governors, former teachers, and major funders.”
A spark of hope glimmers within me. “So does that mean . . . ?”
“In my time here, there’ve been a handful of cases that have gone to the Council. Two of them were over cheating. Both people involved left the school voluntarily.”
“You’re school captain, they’ll . . .”
“Emma” is all he says.
“No.” I’m not prepared to accept that. This is Dunbridge Academy—Henry’s home and his future, all rolled into one, and I’ve fucked it up. I have to do something, I just have to.
“Theo’s picking me up soon,” says Henry. “I should finish my packing.”
Henry
Maeve always found it kind of funny that Theo and his girlfriend rent a nice terraced house in St. Andrews rather than a grungy student flat.
It sounds more upmarket than it really is.
The house is in serious need of renovation, but there’s a small back garden.
And it suits Theo and Harriett. They’re happy here.
Theo’s the oldest twenty-one-year-old in the world, Maeve said on his birthday at the start of last year.
I was sixteen and didn’t understand. In the meantime, I’ve turned eighteen, Theo’s almost twenty-three, and Maeve is no longer with us.
I hadn’t been expecting Theo to have a photo of us up in his living room.
It’s one of the three of us, no Mum and Dad; I think it’s from our Christmas holidays in Cape Town two years ago.
Maeve had just finished her first term at uni, where she’d discovered that nobody was fussed if you get your hair cut supershort and dye it gray.
The dye washed out relatively quickly and then she experimented with being a redhead.
When she died, her hair was its natural color. Dark brown, with a slight reddish tinge in certain lights. The same as Theo’s and mine.
“Excuse the mess,” Theo says behind me. “I never got round to tidying up properly after the last lot of exams.”
I eye the pile of papers on the dining table, which isn’t quite as organized as the rest of his house. Everything else looks immaculate.
“You can sleep on the sofa.”
I owe him my life. Seriously. Theo picked me up without a word after I rang him.
“Thanks.” I stop in the middle of the room.
I’ve never been alone here with him and Harriett before.
It’s really amazing how different a house can feel depending on who’s filling it.
It was kind of nicer when my parents were here, or Maeve, who could always find the right words so that Theo and I didn’t have to face up to the fact that we had nothing to say to each other.
On the drive away from school, he asked exactly what had happened. I told him the version of events that doesn’t involve Emma in any way, and he didn’t say a word. I’m sure that Theo is judging me. A school captain who cheats in an exam. He’d never have done such a thing. But I’m not like him.
“I’ll get your stuff from the car.”
“I can do it myself.” I turn around.
“Not with your shoulder,” he says curtly.
“I’ve got two arms.”
“Henry, just sit down. Do you need ice? You ought to be cooling that regularly if you’re in pain.”
“I know that,” I snap. Why am I like this? Theo studies me briefly before he turns around.
I let myself drop into a kitchen chair as he vanishes out to the car.
I rub my face with my right hand. I want to cry because everything’s so shit.
I’ve been suspended. I don’t know what will happen now.
Will it be just a few days before I have to face the Council?
Will they let me back to school? Would that be all right, even if they did?
“Are you OK?”
I jump. How can Theo be back so soon? He peers at me as he comes closer.
“Yes.” My head aches. I want to sleep. At least that way I won’t have to think about everything.
Theo sits on the chair next to mine, and then he gives me a hug. Just like that. I start to cry.
“I miss her too, Henry,” he says. “And I’m no good at talking about emotions, but I’m afraid we’ll lose each other now that she’s not here.”
I’m scared too. And I should tell him that. But I can’t. Why does talking get more and more complicated, the more you have to say? Maybe Theo could tell me that. He always was a man of few words.
“I always envied you two for being so close to each other,” he continues, to my surprise.
At that moment, I realize that maybe Theo and I aren’t quite so different after all.
That I was jealous of him and he was jealous of me.
Because it’s true. There were three of us, but Maeve and I were a unit.
Even though the age gap between us was bigger.
Or maybe because it was. “But I never meant to make you feel like I didn’t care about you.
The last few years have been so busy, I’ve always had stuff on, but now I regret not having spent more time with the two of you.
” He laughs cheerlessly. “I mean, when did we ever see each other once I left Dunbridge? During the holidays with Mum and Dad, but when else? Practically never, and we don’t even live far apart. ”
“I know,” I say. “I’m sorry, I . . .”
“No, Henry, I’m sorry. I don’t think things have always been easy for you, because of me.
At school especially. But I’m proud that you’re on the rugby team and that you’re going your own way.
I’m proud to be your brother. And I wish I’d told you sooner that you can always call me if you want to chat.
But I’m doing it now, and I hope it’s not too late. ”
My eyes sting. I shut them briefly. “For ages, I thought I had to be like you to make Mum and Dad proud.”
Theo shakes his head. “That’s bullshit and you know it. Look at you, you’re school captain.”
“I’m suspended,” I whisper. Theo falls quiet. For a moment, neither of us speaks, then I bury my face in my hands and can’t help laughing. Because it’s all so absurd.
“You didn’t do it for no reason,” says Theo. I raise my head. “Copying exam questions, it’s not like you. You’d never do a thing like that for your own advantage.”
I bite my lip and shrug.
“Was it because of this girl?”
“Emma,” I say at once, although I hadn’t wanted Theo to know how tangled up in this whole mess she is. But now I do want that. Because he clearly knows me a bit better than I thought.
“Emma,” Theo repeats. His voice is surprisingly gentle.
I sigh. “It’s complicated.”
“You don’t have to explain, but I wanted to tell you that I’ve always admired you.
Your selflessness when it comes to helping others.
” Theo gulps, hard. I can tell that it’s not easy for him to say this stuff.
When he looks at me, I get goose bumps. “You’re like Maeve.
And you always will be. There were days when I could hardly bear to look at you because I see so much of her in you. ”
“I see her in you too,” I say, without a second’s hesitation. “Her sense of purpose and passion. ‘What would Theo do?’ That’s what she always asked if we were stumped.”
A smile flits over his face.
“It’s not fair that she’s not here. It never will be.” The words taste bitter, but I carry on. “But Maeve would want us to go on. Together.”
“If you say so.”
“Maeve would have said so too.” I wipe the tears off my cheeks with my sleeve.
Theo smiles. “Yes, she would.”