Lying About Last Summer Read online

  Since Morley Hill, I’ve had fewer nightmares. When I close my eyes, I don’t always see the pool of red water. I’ve had one panic attack. It was frightening while it lasted but it came and it went. I’m still keeping a record of them in my diary. Maybe one day I won’t remember the last time I had one. Maybe they’ll always be lurking. But I’m mostly calmer now, and that helps.

  When our lips are numb, we stop kissing. We lie side by side in the grass. Holding hands. I think about some of the people who’ve been part of my life this summer.

  About Joe, who I didn’t see again. We heard he was required to have an urgent psychiatric assessment, and there would be an investigation into the circumstances of Kyra and Fay’s overdoses.

  About Fay, who didn’t die. Whose life I saved. She wrote me a note to say thank you. On paper that had a border of yellow ducks. She said she’d made a mistake. She wanted to be alive. That she was going to change schools but she still wanted to be a doctor. That her mum had taken the rest of the summer off work.

  About Danielle, who showed me her video footage from the week while I was waiting to give my statement to the police, before her dad and his respite carer came to take her home. Some of it was arty. There was a panoramic sweep of the grounds that made me hit pause. She’d inadvertently caught Toby on camera, delivering crates of vegetables to the kitchen. He looked stooped. Isolated. When I returned home, I got in touch via the farm shop website. Just to say I felt able to be in contact with him again. Not super regularly or anything, but if he ever wanted to chat about Luisa I’d like that.

  About Annika, whose parents invited our whole family back to Pitford for a barbecue. On the way, we drove up the track to Yew Tree House and Mum cried, but it was OK. We called in at the farm shop and bought a couple of Lower Road Farm sauces, and Dad told Toby about his new job in an office on the fifteenth floor of an office block. Annika and I sat in her bedroom that I knew so well, and while everyone else was in the garden I told her exactly what happened last summer. I’m able to say it out loud now in a normal voice. Without totally shrivelling inside. I told her what happened at Morley Hill too, and it made me feel better about myself. On the drive home, I decided to try harder at my new school to make friends.

  About Brandon, who lives near enough to meet up with at weekends when term starts. He’s going to Skype or send me video messages during the week. When his hand is in mine, like now, I feel happy. As happy as it’s possible to be when you have a life with bruised parts in it. Which, surprisingly, is pretty darn happy.

  We pack up our picnic after a while, and walk to the shop to pick up my phone. It looks like new and actually works. A minor miracle. We carry on back to Brandon’s house. I lie under his white baby sister’s play gym for a bit with her, seeing things from her point of view. It’s a full-on experience of colour, noise and crinkly textures. His mum asks me about the running club I’ve joined. I tell her I like it. It helps to clear my head, and if I’m running with anyone annoying, I just plunk my earphones in, and drift into a separate world.

  Later, after being up in Brandon’s bedroom, where we sit on his bed and kiss some more, we save all the photos on my phone to several different places. He walks me to the train station and I take a selfie of us to start a new photo collection.

  I’m still on the train with two stations to go when I see the sunset. Red and pink. Striking and dramatic. The colours are reminiscent of Luisa’s nail varnish combo, and I realize there are reminders of people wherever you are if you look hard enough. I reach for my phone.

  I open up MessageHound and I write a last message. Goodbye Luisa. I love you. And I delete the app.

  acknowledgements

  A thousand thanks to Becky Bagnell for her brilliant agenting skills and kindness. Thank you to Lucy Rogers, Lena McCauley and Samantha Smith at Scholastic for loving my book, and giving it an audience, and to Sean Williams for designing the perfect cover.

  I’m very grateful to Catherine Johnson for steering me in the right direction when I started writing for teenagers, and Natalie Doherty for her thoughtful comments on this book.

  To my writer friends, Emma Rea, Elena Seymenliyska, Ruth Jenkins, Cath Howe and Janette Simpson, who walked the hard path to publication with me – thank you for your suggestions and support.

  To my parents, Robert and Elizabeth Franklin, thank you for teaching me to be true to myself, the importance of elevenses and for never censoring what I read as a child. I loved it, Mum, when you cried on hearing Lying About Last Summer was going to be published! Thank you to my siblings Clare and Nick for being on my side, and to so many other people who encouraged me along the way.

  Richard, soulmate and resident IT consultant, thanks for being there, especially when things were tough. And for the time you dried out my laptop.

  Phoebe, Maia and Sophie – thanks for generally being the Bee’s Knees.

  Scholastic Children’s Books

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  First published in the UK by Scholastic Ltd, 2016

  This electronic edition published by Scholastic Ltd, 2016

  Text copyright © Sue Wallman, 2016

  The right of Sue Wallman to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her.

  eISBN 978 1407 16678 0

  A CIP catalogue record for this work is available from the British Library.

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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, incidents and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

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