Lying About Last Summer Page 16

  I can’t breathe.

  twenty-eight

  Yew Tree House, last summer

  I’m swimming lengths, most of them underwater and in one breath, my favourite kind. As I lift my head at the end of a length and face the house, I see Luisa running across the grass towards me. She’s trying to get my attention.

  Afterwards, when the only sounds are the birds, a dog barking in the distance, and the thumping in my head, I stay hidden. I push my face into my knees and breathe in fumes of chlorine from my skin. It seeps into every part of my body.

  I stay there but I don’t know for how long. My brain is sludge and I can’t process anything.

  When I unfold myself and go outside, and see the red water and the lifeless body and the floating hair, Mum’s there. She kicks off her sandals and jumps into the pool fully clothed and pulls Luisa to the side.

  “Why didn’t you do something?” she screams at me from the red water. There are soon police and other people. I see the gash on the side of Luisa’s head, the way it looks like raw meat. Her puffy face. I know she’s dead, but it’s too big a thing to know. So I scream at her to wake up, and I can’t stop.

  twenty-nine

  Now

  I’m half out of the pool. Head on folded arms. Beached. My lungs are starved of oxygen and my heart’s beating way too fast. The stuff that drips from my forehead is sweat, not water.

  “Skye. Give me your hand.”

  I let Brandon pull me out of the pool, and I sit, trembling, letting the fear drain from me. I don’t have the energy to care that he sees me this way or that I’m wearing mismatched old underwear.

  “Was it a panic attack?” He wriggles out of his hoody and places it round me. “You’ll warm up in a minute.” He rubs my back vigorously and sits so close that he’s in the patch of wetness that I’ve created around me.

  We stay like that for what seems a long time. I let my body relax, bit by bit. Then he says, “There was a boy in the sixth form at my school who drowned on holiday in the hotel pool after taking a load of drugs.”

  He’s trying to tell me he understands. “My sister wasn’t into taking drugs,” I say. “She started dealing at uni. Her boyfriend, Nico, was a supplier. It was about the money. She knew Dad had borrowed loads and couldn’t pay it back. We were about to lose the house. She was about to lose her allowance … she liked nice things.” The truth is a series of threads that have to be woven together to be understood. I’ve never tried to explain it this carefully to anyone before. “I think she liked the excitement of the dealing too. Perhaps in the beginning it was a laugh. She thought she could handle it. She was used to being in charge and things going her way. It was how she was.”

  My mouth is dry and my lips taste of chlorine. I huddle into my knees, like I did that day. “I told you I wasn’t here when Luisa drowned, but I was. I was hiding in there.” I point in the direction of the changing room. “She and Nico had got on the wrong side of a dealer in Hoathley because they were selling drugs on his turf. He came to the house to … talk to her.” My stomach is folding in on itself. “It was my fault. I told him where we lived and I led him straight to her.”

  Afterwards, when I was interviewed by the police, I realized I’d blurted our address to the dealer about a week before Luisa died. I was proud to be part of what I thought was Luisa’s nutrition business, handing over envelopes a few times. I was supposed to be handing over a pink envelope to a woman sitting on her own on a certain bench in a park, but when I got there, she was with someone else, a man. He asked me where Luisa ran her business from. I wasn’t supposed to talk to clients, but Luisa was in the car park, on her mobile, and I knew I’d have to wait for her call to be over. I told him Pitford. He said, “Near the farm shop?” He was smiley, polite, so I said Next door. Yew Tree House. As I said it I thought Yew Tree House Nutrition had a good ring to it, but when I returned to the car, Luisa was still on the phone and I forgot to suggest it to her.

  “You didn’t know what you were doing,” says Brandon.

  I shake my head. I didn’t, but I was so, so stupid. Too trusting. The hoody is soft against my skin, and it smells of Brandon. I could stop talking now, but it wouldn’t be the whole truth.

  “Luisa and the Hoathley dealer had an argument,” I say. “I was watching from a crack in the doorway.”

  Keep going, I tell myself. Get to the end.

  “The police told me that he punched her. I was hiding by then but I heard her scream.” I shudder as I remember the scream that sliced through my brain, how the breath caught in my throat. “She lost her balance from the punch and tripped. Hit her head and fell into the pool unconscious. She drowned in the water.” I allow a split-second pause before I irrevocably change Brandon’s view of me. “She drowned because I didn’t save her. I was there and I didn’t save her.” My voice shakes. “Luisa had told me to hide and I didn’t know if the man had gone or not, but those are excuses. I was paralysed by shock … fear. I sort of froze and I don’t know why.”

  “Oh,” says Brandon, or that’s what it sounds like. A startled oh. We sit in silence while I imagine what’s going on in his head.

  “There are always things people wish they’d done or not done,” he says at last. “My dad got all this stuff in his head about living too near pylons, and my mum said they should have taken my brother for treatment somewhere else.”

  It’s as if he’s deliberately misheard everything I’ve just told him, too embarrassed to confront the reality. “But you don’t get it,” I say. “There is something I could have done which would have a hundred per cent saved my sister.” I stand up. “What you’re talking about is different. Why are you pretending it’s the same?”

  “I was just—”

  I can’t bear his placatory tone. “Don’t. I don’t need anyone feeling sorry for me.”

  “Skye, you’re—”

  “What?” I’m almost shouting. I want to hear what he’s really saying under all his don’t-worry chat. “I’m what?”

  Brandon’s forehead creases. “You’re getting it out of proportion.”

  But I know what I saw. I saw shock in his eyes when I told him. He doesn’t want to upset me – it’s easier to soothe me until he’s safely away from me. “So answer this,” I say. “If you could have saved your brother with some sort of transplant even though there was a relatively big risk to your own health, would you have gone through with it?” I ask.

  “Course,” says Brandon. “I’d have done everything I could to save him.”

  “You see,” I say. “That’s what I’m talking about.”

  “But—”

  “You said it. You’d have done everything you could to save him.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” says Brandon. He shakes his head and stands up. Looks towards the gate. I bet he wishes he could walk away and leave me here. I’ve disappointed him. Disgusted him.

  At least he knows the real me now. There’s a relief in being open.

  I take off his hoody and hand it to him. “We should go.”

  He takes the hoody. “Aren’t you cold?”

  “I’m OK,” I say, and I will be. I just need to get back to Morley Hill, survive one more night and go home. I’ve had enough of teams and talking, and being Yellow. I reach down to pick up my clothes, and I ache all over. Weariness has infiltrated every cell of my body. Yanking my clothes on takes some time because the material sticks to my damp skin. When I look down, I see I have embarrassing wet patches on my shorts and T-shirt from my pants and bra. I wish I still had Brandon’s hoody to cover them up, but I’m not going to ask for it back again. Brandon has his socks and trainers on already, and is waiting by the gate. I squeeze the excess water from my hair and shove my feet into my canvas shoes. I walk a few paces before stopping to tie the laces. It takes ages because my fingers are stiff.

  We walk through the pool gate in silence and I close it firmly so it click-clacks loudly. The noise reverberates round the garden and in my head.
/>
  When we reach the wall, Brandon says, “Are we going to leave the gate unbolted?” He’s quiet, already detached from me.

  I shake my head. The family will freak if they see someone’s opened the gate from the inside, but it’s set within the wall, which makes it too difficult to climb over. I look up at the closest tree. “I think I can swing on to the wall and jump off it into the field,” I say.

  Brandon looks surprised but says, “OK.” He squeezes through to the field and disappears.

  I do the bolts and return the wheelbarrow to where it was, up against the gate. Moving slowly, I heave myself up to the first fork in the tree. My body isn’t back to normal and my clothes are uncomfortable but I can’t think about them. Or Brandon.

  Keep climbing. Up. Up.

  I seize the branch that should help me reach the wall. One. Two. Three. Swing. My balance is off but it’s enough to propel myself from the wall into the field. I land on both feet in the tufty grass, crouching. Shocked I made it without hurting myself.

  Brandon’s there. “All right?”

  I nod, and he says, “Good. Let’s go.”

  There are cows in this field, but neither of us feels like joking about them as we make our way back to the track.

  “So it’s over, then,” says Brandon at the bus stop, when we see the bus in the distance. I know he’s talking about the messages, and maybe he’s referring to my swimming phobia too, but I’m sure he’s including us in there somewhere.

  “Yes,” I say. “Toby didn’t set out to properly frighten me. He got carried away.”

  Brandon nods, but I wonder if he’s really listening. He looks out at the hedges and fences, the estates of newly built houses. Kids on bikes. While we wait for the second bus in Hoathley, he plays with his phone. I think about the long shower that I’ll have when I get back to my room. Removing the smell of chlorine takes time and loads of shower gel.

  As we walk through the fields, I say, “Thanks for coming with me. I’m sorry it was so intense.”

  “You’re welcome,” says Brandon. He’s being formal with me now. I don’t blame him.

  By tomorrow evening I’ll be home again. I won’t wind Mum up, I’ll answer Dad’s endless questions about the activities, and I’ll pretend to be interested and wildly jealous of all the things that Oscar’s been doing while I haven’t been there. And all the time, I’ll be trying to forget about Brandon.

  We climb over the final gate, into the campfire area, and say a hurried goodbye before he peels off to his accommodation block.

  I continue to my room. The others aren’t there but, typically, Fay’s already packed her things. She’s moved her suitcase from the shelf on to her bed. The biohazard of a rabbit lies on her pillow. Danielle’s stuff, like mine, is all over the place. Still cold from the pool, I climb under the duvet and pull the pillow over my head for five minutes before I have a shower.

  The door bursts open and I hear Danielle say, “Skye, where’ve you been? Are you ill?”

  I pull the pillow from my head and roll on to my side. “Out and about. Just having a nap.”

  “Have you seen Fay?”

  “No. Why?”

  “She’s missing. I need to find her.”

  I flop on to my stomach again, and press my forehead against my folded arms. “She’s probably gone off somewhere with Joe, and will be back for dinner.”

  “Joe says he hasn’t seen her for ages.”

  Lifting my head slightly so that Danielle can hear me, I say, “What’s the big fuss? Why d’you need her?”

  “My tablets are missing too.”

  thirty

  The little hinged tin is missing, along with its contents: white chalky tablets and the cylindrical pills with the pale blue coating.

  “I had them this morning,” says Danielle. “Someone has definitely come in here and taken them.” She fixes me with an accusing look. “You didn’t tell anyone about them, did you?”

  I’m sitting up against my pillow. I should have gone straight to the shower when I came back. My clothes are rank, and my hair is stiff and knotty.

  “No.”

  “You and Fay are the only people who knew I had them. Fay asked me what I kept in the tin, and I told her the tablets were for my migraines.”

  Seriously? Migraine medication would come in bubble packs, not loose in little tins. Fay, aspiring medic, would know that.

  “Why would Fay take them? Maybe a cleaner found them and handed them in.”

  Danielle bites her lip. “Fay’s going to get me into trouble, I know she is. And does this room look as if it’s been cleaned since we’ve been here?”

  The last time I saw Fay was on the minibus, coming back from the tower, where she was cosied up to Joe. “Perhaps she told Joe and he’s behind it. Teaching you a lesson. You know what he’s like.”

  “I’ve spoken to Joe. Said I was looking for Fay but not what it was about. He said she told him that she wanted some time on her own this afternoon to pack. I’ve been searching for ages. Will you come with me one last time before dinner? I need to do a circuit round the village too.”

  “Can I have a shower first?”

  “No. You look fine. Wait. Have you been swimming? Your hair’s damp. I thought you had a phobia.”

  “I…” It’s too complicated. I grab some dry clothes from my suitcase and go into the bathroom. “Give me a few seconds to get changed into something else.”

  I trail after Danielle as we look in the common room, the hall where the Reds do their music, reception, the main dining room, the yellow dining room, the games room and the swimming pool. As I sense her growing panic about the missing tablets, I suggest we walk down the paths in the grounds, including the one round the lake.

  We stop by the boathouse for her to light a cigarette. The boating sessions are over for the day, so there are no instructors there. “I’m going to be in massive trouble,” says Danielle. She leans against the wall, next to the big closed wooden doors that face on to the lake, and shuts her eyes.

  I push open the side door to the boathouse and step inside. The only two windows it has are semi-covered in wet green mould and the light doesn’t work, so it’s gloomy and not the sort of place you’d want to hang around in. I walk past the rail of life jackets and the open wire cubbyholes for people to leave their shoes in. The kayaks are in their racking slots, by the big wooden doors. To the other side, there’s a desktop with boat parts and repair equipment on it, a bashed metal filing cabinet, and right at the back, a kitchen area with gross stains on the wall. There’s a laminated hygiene certificate propped up on the work surface and someone has scrawled in marker pen You must be joking.

  “She’s not in here,” I shout.

  When Danielle’s finished her cigarette and tossed the end into the lake, we carry on. The other buildings are locked. We try to remember what we last saw Fay wearing and decide it was a T-shirt with a koala on the front and shorts, possibly pink, and we ask a few Reds who are dotted about, practising their multiple-part harmonies, if they’ve seen her. No one has.

  “We have to try the village,” says Danielle. “Before dinner.”

  “What’s the time?”

  Danielle looks at her phone but doesn’t tell me. “We’ll be five minutes.”

  “Let’s wait until dinner. See if she turns up.” I’m thinking of a five-minute shower. Of clean hair and skin that doesn’t remind me of the pool at Yew Tree House.

  Danielle drags me by the arm. “Come on.” She hauls me along the path towards the reception building. “We’re going to find her sitting on a bench by the war memorial.” She says it without conviction.

  “Reception are never going to let us out at this time,” I say. “We’ll have to go the back way, over the fields.”

  “Have you done this before – with Brandon?” She winks. I hate that wink.

  “That orienteering thing – remember?” I head towards the gate.

  “This is a really long way round,” Danie
lle grumbles as we reach the stile at the other side of the first field. “Hey, you don’t have Fay’s mobile number, do you?”

  “No, and she’s probably already packed her phone.” I think of the suitcase on the neatly made bed. The rabbit on the pillow. How when I went to into the bathroom to change clothes, none of her washbag stuff was there. She must have packed that too. Why did she do that? Surely she’d need it for tonight and tomorrow morning. Why does that make me uneasy?

  “Danielle, we have to go back to the room.”

  “What?”

  “We have to check Fay’s suitcase.” I turn and jog back along the footpath, gesturing for Danielle to follow. “Hurry,” I shout as I break into a run. “I’ll explain when we get there.”

  The quietness of our room is unnerving. My unease balloons into dread. I touch the tough meshed surface of the burgundy-coloured suitcase, feel for the zip, and trace it to the end. “Fay packed as if she’d already left,” I say. “That’s a bad sign.”

  The zip makes a brisk whirring sound as I undo it. Slowly, I lift the lid. There, on top of folded clothes, is a sheet of folded white paper.

  Unfolding the note, I scan its contents before I read it properly. My legs weaken. Danielle peers over my shoulder and I hold it out for her so she can see it better. It’s not the sort of letter you read out loud.

  Mum,

  I can’t live with the shame.

  I’m sorry for everything.

  Fay x

  Danielle buries her face into her hands.

  My mind floods with an image of Luisa floating face down in the pool. “We have to find Pippa,” I say.

  In the yellow dining room, most people have already served themselves and sat down. Pippa is at the back of the queue. From the way we’ve burst in, she can see that something is wrong. I hand her the letter, and let Danielle explain about the tablets. A hush comes over the dining room, followed by frenzied speculation from everyone, especially when they see Danielle sobbing. I sense Brandon looking at me, wanting to know what’s going on, but when Pippa asks me and Danielle to go with her, I follow without catching his eye.

  “We’ll go to the main office in the reception building,” says Pippa as soon as we’re in the corridor with the door closed behind us. “We have a set procedure for this sort of thing. I’ll contact the police and our centre director. All the instructors will come in and help in the search. Please don’t worry.”