Chapter Thirty-Four #2
‘My diaries. T-the ones me and Mum shared. The Lake Dock.’
‘Me?!’ She looks totally flabbergasted. Like someone’s just whacked her across the face with a badminton racket. ‘Allie, are you serious? Of course I didn’t leak it. I can’t believe you thought that.’
‘But you’d read them all,’ I say. ‘The day it happened, you already knew everything.’
Sian crosses her arms and cocks an eyebrow. ‘For someone as clever as you, you really can be a bit dim. I’d never be able to read all of them in a morning. I haven’t read a book since, like, year two. I’m the slowest reader ever.’
I stare at her across the table.
‘You messed around on an old iPad, moved everything over to another drive one night. Don’t you remember, I came downstairs and you were sitting there, pissing about with it?’
‘Yes. I . . . I do.’
I remember.
Gosh, I remember.
I’d talked to Milo on video chat for hours, and he confided about a lot.
About Day Falls and his ex. About making bad decisions.
And, in turn, so had I. I’d told him about Dad, about Sian and us not speaking, and I’d told him about the diary.
I then remembered there was a file linking to it on my phone, which Milo had.
When we hung up, my mind was reeling. I thought, back then, it was gut feeling or something, but I was suddenly preoccupied by the idea they might be erased or read or compromised or something.
So I jumped up out of bed and moved everything to a new drive.
‘You made them public,’ Sian says, trying to stifle it, but letting out, eventually, a grimace that turns into girlish giggle.
‘I was reading them way before the leak. You’re pretty haphazard with technology, Allie.
I mean, your drive has your full name in.
And like, setting up two-factor authentication and not having anything other than your phone as backup?
’ She makes a pfft sound. ‘Anyway, it was 4 a.m. when you decided to play spies and move everything. You just clicked the wrong thing. You were probably panicked and knackered.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ I asked.
‘I didn’t realise straight away. It was only while snooping that it landed for me.
And I wanted to read it. Remotely. On my own phone.
’ She shrugs. ‘Plus, I was angry at you.’ She looks downcast then, ashamed.
‘I always felt like I wasn’t privy to what you and Mum had.
Your little club. Your diaries. You were her favourite. ’
‘Sian, that isn’t true.’
‘Maybe not, but . . . she thought the sun shone out of your arse, Allie. And . . . it was all so unfair, because Dad was mine. Not for long, I know, and not regularly. So not regularly. But when he wasn’t awful, we had football matches together.
We loved Star Wars, laughed at the same things.
You and Mum, you were all about the world and nature and I just never really got that.
Still don’t to be honest.’ Sian shakes her head, swallows hard.
I reach over to touch her arm. ‘Sian, Mum loved you.’
‘Oh, I know.’
‘But I’m sorry if you ever like you weren’t important. It wasn’t that we had a club. We just tried to protect you from all the horrible stuff. And maybe we went about it the wrong way. But it was always our club. The three of us. You just never wanted to join.’
Sian nods, smiles over at me, tearfully. ‘Well, that’s because it was all boring science stuff,’ she says. ‘No Camp Rock,’ and both of us start to laugh.
And while I feel such relief, I can barely eat another thing on my plate. Because now I know the truth. It wasn’t Sian, it wasn’t Milo, it wasn’t some journalist.
It was me. I leaked my diaries. I made them findable.
All internet sleuths needed was my name and to know what they were looking for.
I exposed them not because I couldn’t trust Milo, but because for the first time, I realised I was vulnerable.
It wasn’t gut feeling. It was fear. I’d shown myself to him – my true self – and it had scared me so much that I’d leapt to protect myself.
But ended up hurting myself. In trying not to be exposed, I exposed myself.
Iris is right. It ends up harming you. Too much armour will eventually suffocate you.
Sian talks about her plans for June House, for getting it back. ‘Do you want to see? I’m thinking we go with Mum’s vision. A place for women and children, like we were once . . .’
I listen, pleased for her, but Milo keeps barging his way into my mind.
He was right. I said I trusted him, but I never did.
He said he trusted me, but he never did.
He concealed things from me, and I concealed things from him.
All because we were afraid of being exposed in our own way – because people always leave.
Right? And I see now that we didn’t trust each other, because we didn’t trust ourselves to be loved as we are.
‘I think I need to go to New York,’ I say suddenly.
Sian pauses. A Pinterest board open on her palm. She laughs, a fork hovering above her plate in her other hand. ‘Is that, like, weird slang for the toilet or something?’
‘No. I need to go to New York. City. I have an awards ceremony to go to.’
‘Really?’ she asks. ‘When?’
‘Tonight,’ I say. ‘I need to get to New York by tonight.’