Chapter 8 #2
“Whose son?” I ask, although there’s a vague bell ringing in the back of my mind.
“Late Night with Ava Fantino,” Tori explains. “The American talk show. You know.”
“As if.”
“Her son’s called Colin,” Tori insists.
“There’s probably more than one Colin Fantino in New York.”
“Aye, right.” Tori laughs.
“How d’you even know that?”
“No clue. I must have read it somewhere.” Tori shrugs. “Wild,” she continues. “Reckon he’s met loads of celebs? I heard that Hayes Chamberlain is going on her show soon. That would be his first public appearance since he left the band. Imagine Colin seeing him there. I’d die.”
“Tori.” I sigh.
“Yeah, sorry. Sorry.” She pulls herself together again but then bursts out: “OK, so let me get this straight—Colin Fantino smashed the swimming-team trophy cabinet?”
“Could you speak up a bit?” I suggest warningly. The door might be shut, but everyone knows how thin the walls here are.
“Sorry.” She claps a hand to her mouth. “Crazy,” she whispers. “But why did he?”
If Fantino wasn’t such an arse, I’d have said he did it to help me. On Sunday night, I genuinely thought that. But apparently he was only interested in causing me trouble. “He’s threatening to tell Mrs. Sinclair it was me.”
“You? But it was him, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah, but he’s got a photo. Of me by the display case. And I might have kind of raised my fist, and . . . I’d never have done it, I just wanted to know what it felt like.”
“And then he did it?” Tori asks. “How romantic, Livy,” she breathes, when I nod. “He smashed it for you.”
“Aye, very romantic. Especially the moment he showed me the photo and blackmailed me.”
“But why would he do that?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “Because he’s an arsehole?”
“Is he a Scorpio too?” Tori asks, and now I want to leave. “Let’s google him.”
“God, Tori . . .” I groan.
But she’s already pulled out her phone and typed in his name. “You could always ask him when his birthday is.”
“I’m not speaking another word to him.”
“That could get tricky. Yes, here it is. Scorpio, I knew it. That’s funny. His birthday’s the day before yours, Livy.”
“And that interests me why?”
“It doesn’t, I know. But I could tell right away that he’s another misunderstood water sign. And he’s hot, right?”
I jump, feeling seen.
“Don’t you think so?” Tori goes on. “Yeah, I knew it. He’s just your type.”
“He’s not my type at all,” I contradict.
“No?” Tori raises her eyebrows at me. “He kind of reminds me of Ludwig, who used to be on the swimming team.”
“Let’s not talk about him,” I mumble. The time when I had a fierce crush on the Swiss boy two classes above me was definitely not my finest hour.
I sometimes get the shivers right out of nowhere if I remember the one slippery kiss we had after a training session.
And not in a good way. Luckily, that was just before the summer holidays at the end of the fourth form, and by the next term, he was back in the Alps.
“Ludwig,” says Tori, shaking her head slightly. “Those were the days. But Colin’s on another level.”
“Tori, I really don’t want to talk about Fantino.”
My best friend sighs. “Fine. What do you want to talk about, then? We’ve got about fifteen minutes.”
“You sound like a therapist,” I say, immediately regretting it. Because now I can feel Tori’s eyes resting heavily on me.
“Have you ever considered—”
“No,” I shoot back.
“You don’t even know what I was going to ask.”
“Yes, I do.”
“Fine.” Tori sits up a little straighter. “So why not?”
“I’m fine,” I say, and it’s amazing how easily some lies slip over your lips. You could think it was the truth.
“You can still see a therapist when you’re doing fine.”
“I know, Tori.” I cough. “And I can chat to Ms. Vail any time I feel the need.”
“OK,” she says. But I can tell we haven’t finished with the tricky issues. “How are things with your mum now?”
I remember my last conversation with her.
You haven’t said anything to your dad, have you?
Fuck it, I should’ve told him. Not to give Mum away but because it’s the right thing to do.
The older I get, though, the more often I’m afraid there’s never just one right thing.
You can only weigh up which is the lesser evil.
“She says she’s not seeing the guy anymore.” My voice is so flat, it makes even me shudder.
“OK,” says Tori, but it sounds more like a question.
I rest my head on her legs and stare at Tori’s desk. “That’s good, right?”
“Even so, it was such an arsehole move,” says Tori, and I’m reminded yet again of why she’s my best friend.
Last term, I forgot that for a while: The business about Mum and her affair was messing with my head so much that I was convinced I couldn’t speak to anyone in the whole world.
I seriously hurt Tori. I regret that, and that I didn’t know whether I was coming or going is no excuse.
Maybe it was a learning experience I had to go through.
A mistake that almost cost me our friendship: I was raging, yet felt so powerless I just pushed away everyone who was worried about me.
I’m trying to see it as progress that I’m not doing it anymore, even though I still feel the same. Raging and powerless—for the same reasons as before, plus a whole set of new ones.
“You’re right,” I say.
“Not just cheating on your dad, but pulling you into the whole thing too.”
I just pull a face. There’s nothing more to say.
“Are you going to tell him anyway?” she asks in the end.
I gulp. “I think so. But he’ll ask questions, and then he’ll find out how long I’ve known and . . . Tori, I can’t deal with that. It’ll really break him.”
“You don’t know that, Livy.”
“I do,” I whisper. After all, I’ve seen it with my own eyes in Grace. She was more in love with Henry than he was with her, and now she’s broken when he didn’t even cheat on her like my mum did on my dad.
“But don’t you think it’ll just make everything even more complicated if you wait any longer?”
Not saying anything won’t solve the problem, that’s true.
But part of me—an incredibly weak, cringeworthy part—still hopes that everything could turn out OK.
That my family will survive this. That one day we’ll be able to sit down to breakfast together at the weekend and not have to weigh up exactly what is and isn’t safe to say.
Tori looks at me. “Do you think she’s really dumped the guy?”
“She said she had.” Even as I say the words, I notice how pathetic they sound.
“Do you believe her?”
I straighten up. “Tori, she said she wants to rescue our family.”
“Do you think she meant it?”
I can’t nod or say yes with any conviction, and that should make me think. Which it does, but I can’t change the fact that I’m seventeen and, given everything else is in chaos, I’m wishing hard for my family not to break up too.
“I hope so,” I say quietly.
“I hope so, too, for you all.”
“How’s your mum?” I ask, after a while.
Tori gives a weak smile. “She’s got through withdrawal. I think she really wants to kick the booze this time.”
“It’s OK for you still to be scared.”
Tori kind of twitches. “I’m afraid we’ll always be scared.”
I nod slowly. “I’m afraid I will too.”
“OK, but you really don’t want to talk about Colin . . . ?” Tori’s voice fades away as I glare at her.
“I couldn’t be less interested in Fantino,” I say.
But Tori just gives that knowing grin of hers.