Chapter 17
Seventeen
THE NEXT MORNING, I pulled back the beaded curtain of the living room to find the four of them still asleep.
Obi and Stefano were on the floor in sleeping bags.
Jolly was sprawled beneath a beach towel on one sofa while Victoria was tucked beneath a patchwork quilt on the other.
I dared myself to creep closer to her. The floorboard creaked beneath my weight.
I froze. Her eyelashes fluttered and she turned her face away.
I inched backwards and, letting the beads fall, went through into the kitchen.
Grandma was frying eggs. I gave her a kiss.
‘You should take them for a walk later today. Shake off the cobwebs.’
I nodded and picked a slice of toast from the plate next to her. Engels, the black cat, slithered between my ankles.
She glanced up from the pan. ‘You look well today.’
I covered my mouth. ‘Do I?’
‘You look like you slept.’
It was true; I had slept, better than I had done in weeks, in fact. My head felt clear, my body light. For the first time in a while, it felt like the day ahead held some kind of possibility.
‘They’re nice,’ she continued.
‘Who?’
‘Your friends.’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s not every day you make good friends, you know,’ Grandma said, turning her cool blue eyes on me. ‘Hold on to them, won’t you?’
‘I will,’ I replied. And I meant it.
AFTER WOLFING DOWN A fry-up, we set out.
In the end, my soft southern friends (as Grandma affectionately termed them) were entirely unprepared and had to borrow coats.
Obi got Grandma’s mauve rain mac, Victoria her rose quilted jacket; Stefano insisted he didn’t feel the cold – but still tied a cagoule around his waist – and Jolly took great delight in a 1980s faux-fur number he found at the back of the wardrobe.
‘I feel like Elizabeth Taylor,’ he said, doing a twirl in the hallway mirror.
We set off up the hill. Toffee-coloured bracken lined the dry-stone walls.
Tendrils of grey cloud fingered the sky.
The wind slapped our skin. We chatted in pairs, sometimes keeping up, sometimes falling back.
Occasionally the sun broke through, piercing the gloom with needles of light.
We climbed higher and higher, tall heads of cotton grass urging us onward.
Stefano, Jolly and Victoria walked ahead, and I found myself next to Obi.
‘I’m sorry about your job.’
‘Thanks,’ Obi said, his eyes fixed on the horizon. ‘It’s fine. I’m doing OK. It was kind of getting in the way of school anyway. They said in my Crits that I should think about quitting.’
‘Really?’
‘Oh yeah.’ He laughed bitterly. ‘Obi, do you want to be an actor or do you want to stack shelves in Tesco? You must decide.’
‘That’s bullshit.’
‘Yeah. I mean, I wasn’t working there for the networking opportunities.’
‘No.’
Up ahead, Stefano said something and Victoria cackled with delight.
‘So’ – I lowered my voice to avoid anyone overhearing – ‘what will you do about money?’
‘Um.’ Obi cleared his throat. ‘V’s helped me out.’
‘Oh. Cool.’
‘Yeah – no – I mean, she’s helped me find a new job.’ He kicked a stone. It rolled into a ditch. ‘She got in touch with the school, actually. Sorted me out a job at the student union. Just some bar stuff, but still. It’ll help.’
‘That’s great,’ I said.
Victoria was helping Obi out. This was good. So why did it feel like there was something stuck in my throat? Something sharp and difficult to dislodge.
‘She’s a really good person,’ Obi said flatly, then, with more enthusiasm: ‘Like, one of the best.’
I nodded and we continued in silence.
THE SEASONS CHANGED AROUND us. The sky turned like a roll of parchment, a spinning zoetrope.
Light and dark. Wind and cold skin. Sun and sweat.
We climbed higher and higher, eventually reaching the pinnacle, the plateau, a gritstone cliff from where the valley spread out below us.
We stopped and caught our breath, staring at the great bowl of the land.
Purples, browns and greens. A patchwork quilt of heather, crowberry and bog.
‘I didn’t know England could look like this,’ Obi said.
‘Yeah, it’s bleak, man,’ Stefano added.
‘No.’ Victoria shivered. ‘It’s beautiful.’ She crossed her arms and pulled the pink jacket tight around herself. ‘But it kind of scares me.’
‘Yeah, it’s creepy up here,’ Jolly said.
As if on cue, the wind shushed and the ground rustled beneath our feet.
A bank of cloud loomed in the distance. We huddled closer.
Victoria took Obi’s arm. Jolly rested his chin on her shoulder.
Loath to forgo some imagined intimacy, Stefano put his arm around my waist. I flinched and pulled apart from him, stepping away from the group.
I walked forwards, putting a hand to my chest, feeling the knock of my heart.
I tipped my head back. A kestrel waited, suspended above us, then dived headfirst like a sycamore seed into the marsh.
I continued forwards until my soles found the edge of the plateau.
I curled my trainers over the boulder’s lip and peered down into oblivion.
What would it be like, I wondered, to let go? To fall. Or leap? To dive, like a kestrel.
The drop wasn’t so far. You might survive. Or you might not. There were always two ways, always two endings.
The wind picked up again. I shut my eyes. I could feel them behind me, the four of them. Shannon’s friends. But then there was another, a fifth, some phantom self.
I felt a hand on my shoulder.
‘All right, daredevil,’ Victoria said. ‘Don’t get too close to the edge.’
She pulled me back and slipped her arm through my own.
We gazed out at the landscape for another few minutes, before Jolly, his teeth chattering, asked: ‘Is anyone else fucking freezing?’
WE MADE OUR WAY down the hill. Victoria and I walked arm in arm at the head of the group while the boys wandered a few paces behind. She leaned into me.
‘You know you can talk to me about anything, don’t you?’
‘I know.’
‘Because, like, all that stuff about your sister, you could’ve told me. I would’ve understood.’
‘I know you would, V.’
She pulled me closer and whispered sincerely. ‘Like, you can trust me.’
‘Of course,’ I said, not quite knowing if I could.
‘Good. Because no one should have to hold on to something like that.’
I shook my head. ‘It’s not like I was holding on to it. I just never found the right moment to tell you guys,’ I said, my voice sounding artificially bright. ‘Honestly, I don’t even think about it most of the time. It doesn’t really feel like something that happened to me. I was so young.’
‘Sure, sure. But you know, like, if there’s anything else you want to tell me, then you totally can.’
‘I know.’
The path crunched unsteadily beneath our feet. Black clouds threatened overhead.
‘You’re such a closed book,’ she said, sighing wistfully.
‘I don’t mean to be.’
‘It’s not a criticism. It’s just that you know everything about me.’
I frowned. Was that true? It felt like, despite my dedication to studying Victoria, I still hadn’t got past the first page.
She pulled me closer. ‘Like, are there any guys you like in our class?’
I hesitated. ‘No.’
‘No?’
‘No.’
Victoria pursed her lips. She glanced over her shoulder at the boys, then back at me. ‘Are you sure about that?’
I laughed. ‘What do you want me to say?’
‘Nothing.’ The hint of an eye-roll. ‘You don’t have to say anything. I just don’t want you to feel like you have to keep secrets from me.’
‘I don’t, V,’ I replied. My voice sounded small, insubstantial.
‘OK.’ She separated herself from me and put her hands in her pockets. ‘We don’t have to talk about it any more.’
Something in the set of her jaw told me I’d upset her. I racked my brain for what to say, how to make her like me again, to thaw her chilly demeanour. But I was interrupted. Behind us, Jolly let out a yelp of pain.
‘FUCK!’
We turned around. Jolly lay on the ground, rubble skittering in his wake.
‘My ankle, my fucking ankle!’
We rushed towards him.
‘Oh fuckety-fuck, that hurts.’
‘Stay calm. Can you move it?’ Obi said, crouching beside him.
‘Shit – ah – bollocks – no, I can’t move it – shit.’ He winced and pulled down his sock. I looked away.
‘Here.’ Stefano put Jolly’s arm across his shoulder. Obi came around the other side of him, and together the two of them hoisted him up onto his feet.
The sky rumbled ominously.
‘Can you make it down?’ Victoria asked.
Jolly winced again. ‘I don’t know. Shit. Where the fuck are we anyway?’
OBI AND STEFANO CARRIED Jolly down the moor.
Luckily for them, he weighed practically nothing, and luckily for Jolly, even if he had, neither one of them wanted to lose face in front of Victoria.
Halfway down, the clouds burst. We made the rest of the journey beneath a thick blanket of rain.
When we arrived back at the house, it was nearly dark and we were soaked.
We dragged Jolly inside and Grandma gave him the once-over. She pulled up the damp hem of his jeans and tssked at the purplish swollen flesh.
‘I’m afraid it’s A&E for you, lad.’
The boys hoisted him into the back of Grandma’s car, and I said a silent prayer that she’d take the roads carefully. At the last moment Victoria offered to go too, but Jolly shooed her away.
‘No, no. I’ve already ballsed up your New Year enough. You lot get the Monopoly out or something. Mary and I will be fine.’
We stood on the front step and waved them off. The car disappeared around the corner, its brake lights dimming from view, swallowed up by the bleak winter night.