Lying About Last Summer Read online

  Everyone’s eyes are on the tower. Watching the latest jumpee. Brandon’s face in profile is beautiful. He’d score highly if he was measured for symmetry. When the holiday ends, we might keep in touch online for a bit, but I doubt I’ll sit next to him again like this.

  He turns to me. “Fay made it down, then.”

  I look towards the tower. At the figure touching down on the ground. Yes, it’s Fay.

  “Joe must have persuaded her,” I say.

  The group is hollering at her. Calling her over to our little group on the grass. She comes slowly. Dazed, as if she can’t believe what she’s just done.

  “I was so scared,” she says, kneeling at the edge of the group, her voice shaky. “I did it though. I did it, didn’t I?”

  “You certainly did,” says Brandon. “Get the official photo from the website later. As proof.”

  “What made you do it?” I ask. I follow Fay’s gaze and glance up at the ledge at the top of the tower. The figure up there is Joe. I bet he wants us all to admire him.

  “I did it for him,” she says.

  On the minibus back to the centre, Fay sits with Joe, her eyes closed and her head against his arm like a sleeping child against an adult. Joe received a massive cheer when he jumped, and again when he touched down. All of us were on our feet by then. All twelve of us had made it, but it was more than that. Joe finished it in style, waving at us, like some singer descending on stage at a concert. Pippa came down in the lift with people’s cameras and other possessions and made a point of thanking him for helping Fay get over her nerves. He brushed it off, mumbled something about being proud of her, then caught my eye. Held it and nodded ever so slightly.

  “Joe makes me uncomfortable,” I say to Brandon, turning back round after a quick stare at him and Fay.

  “He thinks he knows it all,” says Brandon. I wonder if he’s aware that one of his legs is millimetres away from mine. “Perhaps he’s, like, compensating because of his girlfriend committing suicide. Making himself into something important, you know, to feel better about himself?”

  “Maybe,” I say, but I think Brandon is simply a nicer person than me and is making excuses for him.

  “Bereavement does weird things to people,” he says. “Look at my dad. He used to be this easy-going family man, and then after my brother died he did a runner to the States and became a workaholic. Both times I went to visit him, he didn’t bother to take a single day off work. I know he has to work hard, but I’m his only kid now. You know what I’m saying?”

  I nod. I think of Mum and Dad, who blame themselves for not noticing what Luisa was up to because they were so busy watching over their child with the heart condition and worrying about Dad’s business. Now they want to set up some campaign to educate people about drugs, like there aren’t enough already. As if they’re scared we won’t remember Luisa in a positive way unless they do that. Maybe the person to tell them it’s not necessary is going to have to be me.

  “My dad keeps saying he’s going to come over here for a holiday but it’s never happened. He sends me designer shirts and thinks Job done.”

  “I’ve noticed your shirts…” I say.

  He holds out the bottom of the checked shirt he’s wearing and frowns. It has a hedgehog symbol embroidered on the sleeve and collar. “They’re bad, aren’t they? But I figured it wouldn’t matter if they got ripped or ruined during the activities. I should have brought a few of my real T-shirts. They are awesome.”

  I raise an eyebrow.

  “Awesome because I’ve chosen them. They’re waaay scruffier.”

  The minibus turns in to Morley Hill’s drive and parks outside the reception building. As we wait for Pippa to open the sliding door from the outside, I ask around for nail varnish remover. No one has any but Alice says she has some blue nail varnish in her washbag that I can borrow.

  The nail varnish is the blue of a well-maintained swimming pool. Bright and flawless.

  Wedging my foot securely against the wooden frame of the bed, I apply it to my toenails, over the top of the red and pink. Ten minutes behind Fay, Danielle goes off to the pool, banging the door behind her.

  All I can hear are the distant shouts of people outside. I lie back on my bed to let the nail varnish dry.

  The loud knocking at the door is a shock. “Who is it?” I shout.

  “Brandon. I’ve got my phone. I thought you might want to text your mum.”

  I appraise my toes. They’re still glistening. Not yet dry. “Hang on.” I hobble to the door on my heels so the toenails don’t touch each other, and open the door. “Excuse the smell of nail varnish.”

  Brandon hands me the phone and walks in. He hovers until I point him towards Danielle’s bed. Being a boy, he’s not supposed to be in D block, let alone my room, but I don’t let that worry me if it doesn’t worry him.

  I sit on my bed, check my toes, then begin to type my text message to Mum. I keep it short.

  “Thanks.” I prepare to shuffle over to Fay’s bed and hand him back the phone. “Hope she doesn’t text you back a load of nonsense.”

  “No problem.” He stands up to collect his phone. “I was thinking. Everyone’s going to be pissed off if I practise my bombing in the pool. I’ll come to Pitford with you. If you’re OK with that?” He nods towards my toes. “When the nail varnish is dry.”

  My heart spins. “Yes. Sure,” I say.

  twenty-six

  We go the back way, over the gate. At the narrow lane, we turn left, towards the village. It doesn’t take long to work out that the only bus stop is on the main road.

  When the bus arrives, it’s already packed with old people, and we have to stand and be stared at. At Hoathley, we wait for the next bus outside the United Reformed Church, which has a low wall outside it. I sat here with Luisa countless times, before she passed her driving test. Today I stay hunched next to Brandon, my eyes on the pavement, hoping that no one will recognize me.

  On the bus to Pitford I tell Brandon about the messages. I speak hesitantly; it’s been so long since I properly confided in someone.

  “Anyone who pretends to be a dead person online has got to be a psycho,” says Brandon. His shocked expression comforts me because he recognizes how horrible this has been. “Why didn’t you tell me earlier?”

  I could lie, but there doesn’t seem any point. “You were one of my suspects. But I know it couldn’t have been you because of the timing of one of the messages.”

  “Okaaay,” says Brandon. He looks upset.

  I say gently, “I didn’t want it to be you, but I couldn’t trust anybody.”

  He nods slowly, as if he’s still thinking about it, and says, “I’m glad I’ve been eliminated. You should tell Pippa about this when we get back though.”

  “Maybe,” I say. “But I’d rather handle this myself.” As soon as an adult gets involved, it’ll be blown up into an even worse thing, and Mum and Dad will probably ban me from any form of messaging for ever.

  Brandon places his arm along the top of the bus seat, almost round my shoulder, and asks me who I think might be responsible.

  “Anyone at Morley Hill, basically,” I say. “It’s possible someone from my old life might have recognized me when I was wearing my tartan shirt in the village, but I think it’s Joe. I just need proof.”

  He nods. “Yeah, my money would be on him too.”

  “I hate how he’s got Fay sucked into his little world,” I say. Discussing this out loud, trusting Brandon enough to reveal some of the thoughts in my head, gives me a sense of calm. Being away from the claustrophobic atmosphere of Morley Hill helps too. I close my eyes and prepare myself to see my old home, the only one I’d known until nine months ago. I picture each part of the house, starting with Luisa’s bedroom, so I can practise keeping my panic under control. I sweep through each room and into the garden, where I force myself to remember the pool that I once loved so much.

  The big DIY store where we have to get off appears soone
r than I’m ready for it. We step down from the bus, into familiar territory that feels foreign. Like I’ve returned after a war.

  We cross at the lights, and turn into the road signed to Pitford. We pass the discount pine furniture warehouse where Luisa’s friend used to work on Saturdays, the Crown pub, and houses set back from the road with high glossy hedges to block out the main road. In between the whoosh of cars going by, we hear the shouts of kids playing in gardens and the whine of electrical garden equipment. If we kept going, through the centre of the village, towards the play-park, we’d come to Annika’s road.

  I’m happier after we’ve turned right and right again, and there’s less chance of running into her or anyone from my old school. Here the houses are much further apart, and some have horseboxes in the drive. There’s still a low table outside the bungalow where the road bends. For sale: runner beans, radishes with earth on them, bumpy cucumbers, and punnets of raspberries. One jar of berry jam. There’s a wooden honesty box. Brandon swipes a radish, wipes it on his shorts and crunches it. I smile at his contorted face when the bitterness kicks in. He shudders theatrically. I envy him his clear conscience. Did he feel the same piercing anxiety when he returned to his old house where he’d lived with his brother as I do now? The fear that he would unravel?

  The signs are visible now. The first one says FARM SHOP. FREE PARKING. There’s an arrow. The second sign says LOWER ROAD FARM AND YEW TREE HOUSE. My insides tighten.

  There’s never been a proper road here. Just a track with potholes and big lumps of grey-white stone. Smaller stones too, some of them sharp. Luisa and I would challenge ourselves when we were younger to walk barefoot down the track to see who could bear the pain best.

  The steep, grassy banks have their July colour – white, yellow, and a few pink flowers, and the drone of insects is loud in the hush of the afternoon. The dark-stained wooden fence marking the boundary of Yew Tree House begins near the bottom of the track, but the house itself isn’t visible through the leafy trees until a little further up. Brandon asks if there are any yew trees in the garden and I tell him there’s one big one at the end of the garden that is supposed to be hundreds of years old. I don’t know if he’s distracting me on purpose, but it helps.

  “Yew Tree House is huge,” he says, when the top part of the back of the house is visible.

  “It was the old farmhouse,” I say. “The new farmhouse is a bungalow at the top of the track, behind the farm shop.”

  “Your family has money, then?” asks Brandon.

  “We used to. My dad made a load, and then his business crashed,” I say. The word crash is misleading. I make it sound as if it happened suddenly, rather than something which hovered over us for a long time.

  We carry on past the bit of Yew Tree House garden where you can glimpse the low roof of the pool building that has the changing room, shower, toilet and heating equipment in it, but I don’t point it out to Brandon. I keep walking.

  No one’s in the pool or we’d be able to hear them. Brandon’s wearing a hoody, but it’s definitely outdoor swimming weather. Dad told me the house had been sold to a family with young children. Max Tomkins told me that the family must be from out of the area or they’d never have bought the house if they’d known that a teenager had died there. Either that or they’d bought it for way less than it was worth.

  We stayed in the house while Oscar recovered from his operation, then we moved in October half-term. Lots of our furniture had to be sold or go into storage because it wouldn’t fit in the rented flat.

  The big metal gate is shut across the driveway. I’ve never seen it closed before. When we’re nearer I read the new rectangular sign on it.

  Yew Tree House

  Private property

  Press buzzer for entry

  I lean against the gate, and feel an intense longing to be back in this house, pre-Nico. It’s inconceivable that Luisa no longer exists. That she’s not gone out in Mum’s car, or isn’t lying on a sofa in the long living room on her mobile, a nearly finished packet of salt and vinegar crisps on the low table next to her. That I’ll never see her again.

  My stomach liquefies and there’s the horrifying possibility that I’m going to be sick, here by the gate post.

  Brandon grasps my arm lightly. “Are you OK?” He steers me across the track to the grassy verge. “Why don’t you sit for a moment?”

  We sit with our legs sticking out on to the track, pale dust from the stones rising in the growing heat and clinging to them. Familiar farm noises. The faint scent of the wild flowers. Brandon talks, his words a reassuring rumble. I fix my eyes on my old house. It’s been done up a little. Paint. New plants. Same but different. Indifferent. I feel lost, anchorless. Further from Luisa than ever.

  “I’m guessing you don’t want me to buzz the buzzer and ask if you can go in?” says Brandon.

  My are-you-mad face gives him my answer. The family would be horrified by my grim pilgrimage. “I’m ready to head back,” I tell Brandon. I need to go before my composure slips. Before I’m spotted by anyone from my previous life.

  “Would you mind if I went to the farm shop?” asks Brandon as we stand up. “Got something to eat?” He sees my reluctance. “I’ll be really quick and you can stay here.”

  “No, I’ll come with you,” I say.

  If Toby’s there, it’ll be awkward, but part of me wants to see the farm shop one last time. As part of this goodbye process. Toby and I spoke at Luisa’s funeral, the bit afterwards that was in a hotel in Hoathley, but already it was stiff and formal, as if we hardly knew each other. He called round a few times after Luisa died, but all he did was go on about how he couldn’t believe she was gone, so I stopped answering the doorbell, and let Mum do the polite-chat thing at the door.

  During our last few weeks here my stomach hurt every time I glanced out of my bedroom window and saw the pool, sometimes so badly I’d double over with the pain. Dad owed so much money that we hardly bought anything from the farm shop any more, and Oscar was scared to be in the house unless all the doors and windows were locked.

  “They do cakes here, right?” asks Brandon, and I nod.

  There are three cars, including the battered old farm-shop Volvo, parked in front of the shop. Customers. Anyone for the farm itself would have gone through the gateway to the left and parked in the farmyard. The silver metal buckets of flowers outside the shop are new. So is the black sandwich board with special offers written on it in chalk, but everything else is achingly familiar. An oldish woman and someone who might be her daughter come out of the shop, and the daughter holds the door for us. Brandon runs ahead to take it from her, and I’ve stepped through the door before I’m fully prepared.

  I scan the shop to see who’s working today, hoping for Wendy or Carol from the village, but almost immediately I see Toby. Stacking a chiller cabinet with clear plastic tubs of olives. He thinks the clanking of the bell attached to the door is because of the customers leaving, not us arriving. I’m aware of a tall man with a grey beard selecting fruit super carefully, but he’s on the edge of my vision, and I can’t take my eyes off Toby. He still has the same chunky build, but his shoulders are more drooped and his face is stubbly, though it’s not edgy stubble. His thick brown hair is flatter and thinner. He’s lost his energy. I can’t imagine him challenging anyone to a race to the cowshed any more.

  “I’ll check out the cakes,” says Brandon, and Toby looks up. Shock flashes across his face.

  “Skye? What are you doing here?”

  I’m not ready to speak yet. My brain is recalibrating, trying to work out how to cope with being here again. Before last summer, Toby would be flicking an olive at me by now. Today he stares at me as if I’ve returned from the dead.

  “I’m staying at Morley Hill,” I say eventually. “The other side of Hoathley. An activity camp. I thought I’d come over to Pitford, seeing as it wasn’t that far away.” It’s Mum’s over-cheery voice again.

  “Right.”
/>   Hugging doesn’t seem appropriate. I’ve been in the same bed as him, had snowball fights, been close, but we’ve never hugged.

  “They use your chilli sauce there.”

  “Yeah?” he says, and moves away from the chiller cabinet. The man with the grey beard wants to pay for his fruit. I join Brandon by the cakes and hold a cardboard cake box open for him as he picks up an enormous slice of lemon drizzle cake with the tongs. I shake my head when he goes to pick up a second slice for me.

  “This is Brandon, by the way,” I say when it’s our turn to be served.

  Toby nods and takes Brandon’s money, his attention still on the man striding out of the shop, who calls “Cheerio” at the door.

  “You finally thought you’d get in touch?” says Toby, pushing the till drawer shut and handing back change.

  This isn’t how I wanted the conversation to go. “I—”

  “You didn’t come and say goodbye when you moved. I didn’t even know you’d gone until Mum told me.” Toby walks towards the stable-type door that leads out to the farmyard. As if he needs fresh air. The top half of it is open, and I can see the barn where the tractors are housed.

  “It happened quickly,” I say. A blush spreads up from my neck.

  “I noticed you defriended me.”

  You were too needy.

  “It’s OK,” he says. “You don’t have to explain.” He switches his gaze to Brandon. “She’s told you what happened at her house last summer?”

  It hadn’t occurred to me that Toby might want to talk about what happened.

  “Yes,” says Brandon. “I know about her sister.”

  “It’s still a big story round here,” says Toby. “Drugs and manslaughter.”

  Brandon’s momentarily startled.

  Don’t say any more. I lean against the counter to take some weight off my wobbly legs. It’s smooth and solid, made from an old tree that came down in a storm when Toby’s dad was a boy.

  “Luisa and I went out together for a couple of years,” says Toby to Brandon. “We were really close. She got in with a bad crowd at uni. She was the last person you’d think would be involved with drugs.” The aggressive tone to Toby’s voice is new. He used to be a much softer person.