Isla
Isla
‘What time will you be home?’
Isla folded the items she would need for training after school and packed them into her bag: swimming costume, goggles, swim hat, towel, deodorant. ‘I’m not sure. Ten, maybe?’
‘And it’ll just be you and Callum at his this evening?’
There was a clear, pointed edge to her mum’s voice, and Isla pulled her face into a reassuring smile. ‘I’m only going there to study, Mum. Callum’s going to help me prep for my chemistry test, and I’m going to help him with his application for summer school. That’s all.’ She could hear the ellipsis at the end of her sentence: We’re not going to have rampant sex. It’s not like that. You can trust me to be sensible.
‘Wouldn’t Callum rather come here? We’ve got more space. It would be better for studying. I can order in food for you – whatever you like. Pizza, Thai?’
‘Honestly, we’ll be fine. Callum’s always coming here.’
Isla watched a pleat of concern fold across her mum’s forehead. Three months since she’d started dating Callum and her mum still didn’t seem to like him any more than the day Isla first brought him home.
‘I’m just worried about you getting... distracted. You know what an important year this is for you. Your A levels aren’t that far away. And if you’re serious about making the national swim squad, it’s going to take up a huge amount of time.’
Her mum didn’t need to complete the speech for Isla to know what she was thinking. You haven’t got time for a relationship. You’re only seventeen. Boyfriends can wait until you’re older. Sometimes Isla wondered whether it was having a boyfriend per se that bothered her mum, or whether it was Callum specifically. Whether, had Isla brought home one of her classmates that her mum had known for years – someone who lived in a house like theirs rather than a rented flat in an ex-council block – her mum might have been more accepting. But her mum hadn’t really got to know Callum yet; she hadn’t allowed herself to see Callum’s kindness, his sense of humour, his incredible drive.
Stymieing her frustration at her mum’s disapproval, Isla could only hope that, in time, her mum would look beyond her preconceptions to see that Callum was actually really good for her.
‘Honestly, Mum, I’m fine.’ Isla checked her school bag for her biology, chemistry and maths textbooks. ‘I’m not getting distracted, and I’m not letting anything slide. Callum works even harder than I do.’
‘Jesus, is that even possible?’
Isla looked over her shoulder to where Clio had appeared in the doorway, arms folded across her chest.
‘What do you mean?’
Clio regarded Isla with an air of derision. ‘I can’t imagine anyone finding more hours in the day to study than you.’
Their mum sighed. ‘There’s nothing wrong with wanting to do well, Clio. It wouldn’t hurt you to take a leaf out of your sister’s book occasionally.’
Isla watched as Clio’s face tightened like a fist.
‘Yeah, well, we can’t all be as perfect as Isla, can we?’
Isla baulked at her sister’s barbed tone. ‘Clee, don’t be like that.’
‘Like what?’ Clio glared at her.
Isla allowed herself a breath. Sometimes, only by closing her eyes and forcing herself to remember, could she believe that once, not so very long ago, she and Clio had been close.
‘Clio, can you please finish getting ready for school? You don’t want to be late again.’
There was a moment’s hesitation before Clio scowled, turned, and thumped down the stairs. Isla listened to her retreating footsteps, wondering if there was anything she could do to re-ingratiate herself with her sister; to help make Clio less resentful, less awash with a sense that the world was against her. Ever since their dad died, Clio had been like a coiled spring, her feelings tightly wound, as though restraining her grief was an act of self-preservation. It didn’t matter how many ways Isla tried to reach out to her, or how endlessly patient their mum was with her outbursts; Clio’s anger was now like a fourth member of their family, to be considered, managed and placated at all times.
Glancing at the photo on her bedside table – Isla and her dad standing in front of the Great Geysir in Iceland not long before he died – she was aware of a familiar cramping in her chest; the loss of him, the love for him that she did not know what to do with now he was gone. The disbelief, even after all this time, that she would never see him again. Sometimes, she could not help feeling that if her dad had not suffered a stroke at the age of forty-one, her and Clio’s lives would be different beyond all comprehension; his death marked a bifurcation in the road that sent them both on different paths, and they would never know how their experiences may have been different – better – had he lived.
‘How will you get home? I’m happy to come and collect you.’
Isla shook her head. ‘It’s fine. I’ll jump in an Uber. Callum will probably come with me and get the bus back.’
‘Callum doesn’t want to be traipsing back all that way at night. It’ll be arctic out there.’
‘Honestly, Mum, it’s okay. Callum doesn’t mind.’ Glancing at the clock beside her bed, she saw the time. ‘I’d better go. I said I’d meet Meera in the library before school.’ Grabbing her swim bag and rucksack, she slung them over her shoulder, leaned forwards, kissed her mum goodbye. ‘I’ll see you later.’
Running down the stairs, Isla became aware of something fluttering in her chest, like the beating wings of a caged bird, a feeling she’d first noticed soon after her dad died. A sense of responsibility and expectation, and a need to keep paddling furiously beneath the surface so that nobody – not even her mum – knew quite how much effort it took to maintain the perception everyone had of her: the perfect student, the perfect daughter, the perfect athlete. People seemed to think it came effortlessly to her, that she was blessed with the ability to hold all this together without stress, anxiety and inordinate, Herculean effort. Ever since her dad died, she’d felt a pressure to mature overnight, to morph from a twelve-year-old girl into an adult; to be there to look after her mum, keep an eye on her sister, and be the teenager nobody had to worry about because they already had enough worries of their own. For the past five years, she felt as though she’d been trying to become the person other people wanted her to be – the person other people needed her to be – and now, sometimes, she was not quite sure what the true version of herself was any more.
‘Forty-eight out of fifty. You’re totally going to nail that chemistry test.’
Isla turned onto her side, where she was lying on Callum’s narrow, single bed, and propped her head on her arm. ‘Which ones did I get wrong?’
Callum’s eyes skimmed over the pages of the textbook. ‘One on hydrocarbons and one on aldehydes.’
Isla frowned. ‘Are you sure? We revised aldehydes in class today. I shouldn’t have got that wrong.’ Taking the book from Callum’s hands, she scanned the page, saw that Callum was right. Anxiety flickered inside her like a faulty lightbulb, and she wondered whether she could feasibly cram in any more revision before Tuesday’s test. Earlier today, Mr Vyleta told her she’d got one hundred per cent on a mock paper they’d sat in class last week. But now she was only pulling ninety-six per cent on a stupid class test and there wasn’t really any excuse for it.
‘Stop looking so worried. It’s just one practice test. It’s not a big deal.’ Callum kissed her, reached for his study folder, and Isla tried to convince herself that he was right; she still had time to improve before next week’s test.
Looking around Callum’s bedroom, Isla noted the slim wardrobe, the melamine bedside cabinet, the thin curtains that failed to block out sufficient light from the single-paned window. No chest of drawers, no chair, no desk to work at. Callum usually did his homework at the fold-out table in the kitchen or in the library at school. Sometimes, when the two of them hung out at her house, Isla felt an urge to apologise, to say she knew it was absurd, her having a bedroom almost as large as Callum’s entire flat, complete with double bed and built-in wardrobes, two chests of drawers, a solid oak desk, a sofa beneath the window overlooking the garden. But she couldn’t find the right words – the right tone – without running the risk of sounding patronising.
As Isla watched Callum read through his summer school application, she tried to imagine how the next eighteen months might play out: whether they’d both get the grades they needed for Oxford, her to read medicine, Callum to read PPE. Whether he would still, in a year and a half’s time, be as keen as he was now for them to study at the same university. The prospect of them having to go their separate ways felt unthinkable. She had never been interested in dating anyone before Callum, but now – three months into their relationship – he already felt such an important part of her life. The possibility of them not being together at university felt too big, too unwieldy, and she pushed it to a corner of her mind before it took up too much space.
From the top of the bedside cabinet, Isla’s phone bleeped. Reaching across Callum, she picked it up, found a message from her mum.
How was swimming? Just checking you definitely don’t want me to collect you from Callum’s? It’s freezing out there! Xx
She was about to tap out a reply, tell her mum she’d be home around ten, just as she’d promised, when an image slipped into her head: her mum at home alone, at nine o’clock on a Friday night, no doubt worrying about Clio’s whereabouts, an unread novel beside her on the sofa, the house throbbing with silence.
Before she was aware of her thoughts coalescing into words, she turned to Callum. ‘Do you mind if we do your application on Sunday? I think I should get home, check my mum’s okay.’
Stepping out of an Uber at the end of her street where she’d asked the driver to drop them, Isla slipped a hand beneath Callum’s coat, wrapped an arm around his waist.
In the artificial light, her breath snaked in the air before evaporating like a puff of smoke in a magic trick. The darkness was illuminated only by streetlamps and a faint glow that stole around the edges of closed curtains from the large bay windows of detached Victorian houses identical to her own.
An image of her dad appeared suddenly in Isla’s mind: him cupping her hands inside his on a cold winter’s day, breathing hot air onto them, rubbing them until the numbness subsided.
There were still so many moments when Isla was seized by grief. Moments when it felt physical, tangible, oppressive. Moments when it seemed incomprehensible that the rest of her life lay ahead and her dad would share in none of it. He had not been there to witness her clean sweep of top GCSE grades, had not been sitting by the side of the pool when she’d won a gold medal at the county championships. He would not be there to find out her A-level results, or drive her to her first day at university. He would not watch her graduate, secure her first job, move into her first home, get married, have children, maybe. It seemed surreal to her that all those milestones would occur without her dad being there to witness them.
‘You okay? You’re shivering.’
Isla tilted her head up towards Callum’s face. ‘I’m fine.’
As they neared her house, Isla spotted a silhouetted figure leaning against her garden wall, hood pulled up over his head. Instinctively, her arm tightened around Callum’s waist. But then the person turned around, and she saw it was just Nathaniel.
‘Hi.’
‘Hey. What are you doing here?’
‘Hey bro.’ Callum reached out a hand, fist-bumped Nathaniel.
‘I was just passing. Thought I could pick up those maths notes.’
‘At nine-thirty on a Friday night?’ Isla heard a note of mild mockery in her voice. She saw colour bleed into Nathaniel’s cheeks, felt a rush of guilt. Nathaniel had never liked being teased, even when they were little, and she knew he would resent it even more with Callum to witness it. ‘Sorry, I haven’t finished going through them yet. I can email them over on Sunday morning?’
‘Great, thanks.’
For a few moments, none of them spoke. A security light clicked on outside a neighbouring house, and Isla watched as a fox slunk past a garden wall and disappeared through a gate.
‘Right, well I’d better get indoors. It’s freezing.’ Isla shivered.
Nathaniel looked down at the ground, scraped his trainer against the edge of an uneven paving slab. ‘Can I talk to you about something?’ He paused. ‘In private?’
Isla felt herself falter, glanced at Callum.
‘No worries. I’ll head off. Call me tomorrow, after training?’
‘Yep. I should be finished by lunchtime.’
Leaning forward, Callum slipped a hand gently around the back of her neck, kissed her lips. Isla tried to relax but it was difficult when she could sense Nathaniel’s eyes boring into the side of her head.
‘Don’t stay out here too long – you’ll freeze.’
Isla watched Callum leave before turning back to Nathaniel. ‘What did you want to talk to me about?’
Nathaniel peered into the darkness, where Callum had disappeared. ‘I don’t get what you see in him. You could do so much better.’
An icy breeze weaved its way around Isla’s neck, and she pulled her scarf tighter. ‘You’ve made it clear you don’t like him, Nate. But no one’s asking you to hang out with him.’ Her tone was harsher than she’d intended, but his repeated jibes about Callum were becoming tiresome, and it wasn’t any of Nathaniel’s business who she dated anyway.
Thrusting his hands deep into his pockets, Nathaniel kept his eyes trained on Isla’s face. ‘I’m just looking out for you. There’s no need to bite my head off.’
Isla averted her gaze from Nathaniel’s scrutiny. It was no secret between her and her friends that Nathaniel liked her. It had become obvious in Year 11 with the endless excuses to pop round to her house, the blushing whenever she spoke to him, the stream of extraneous questions in the common room about homework, lesson notes, deadlines. At first, Isla had brushed it off, assumed it was just a phase he was going through, that he’d get over it soon enough. She couldn’t think about Nathaniel like that. She’d known him all her life; their families were entwined, their personal histories inextricably linked. The only guise in which she could think about Nathaniel was fraternal. An annoying brother sometimes, but fraternal nonetheless.
But now, over a year since it began, Nathaniel’s crush showed no signs of abating, and Isla was beginning to feel that he was making their lifelong friendship almost impossible. Every conversation seemed loaded with a subtext she’d rather not acknowledge, and their former childhood ease had been replaced by an awkward, uncomfortable sense of expectation. Sometimes Isla wished Nathaniel would strike out on his own, make some new friends.
‘What did you want to speak to me about anyway?’
‘I just wanted to check you were okay. You seemed a bit... preoccupied in maths today.’
Isla shook her head, tried not to betray her impatience. ‘I’m fine. Just got a lot on.’ She paused, saw a light click on in the hallway of her house, wondered what her mum was doing. ‘My feet are starting to go numb. I’m going to head in. I’ll email those notes to you on Sunday, okay?’
For a few seconds, Nathaniel studied her face, the air between them charged with hope or disappointment, Isla couldn’t quite tell. And then he gave a brief nod. ‘Sure, thanks.’
Turning and walking along the garden path, Isla retrieved her key from her bag, slotted it into the lock. As she stepped inside the house and closed the door behind her, she caught a glimpse of Nathaniel standing on the pavement, lurking in the shadows, and she could not escape the feeling that should she open the door in an hour’s time, he would still be there, watching and waiting in the darkness.