By Any Other Name (32 page)

Katie takes us all aback after the trial. She suddenly starts sleeping without any trouble again, no more bad dreams. She must have overheard us talking or something because
when I tuck her in one night and say, ‘Sleep well, Pops,’ she answers, ‘I will because the bad men can’t get us now.’ We hadn’t explained to her about the trial
because we didn’t think she’d understand, but I guess we never will be able to predict what Katie will or won’t grasp. Then she smiles and makes me lie back on the bed with her
while she points out her star constellations on the ceiling above by name.

‘Love you, Boo-Boo,’ she says sleepily just before she drifts off. And I promise her that in the morning we’ll go to Joe’s and play on the swing. She holds my hand as she
falls asleep. I lie beside her for a long time, happy I still get to hold her hand and happier still that she’s smiling in her sleep.

I
visit Katya after the trial. It’s a special arrangement set up by Tim W-P after I beg and beg him. The nurse leaves me alone with her. I
sit by the bed on an orange plastic chair. Katya’s face is as pale as the last time I saw her, her cheekbones even more pronounced. Her beautiful hair is dull.

‘I want you to try to wake up, Katya,’ I say softly to her. ‘Come back to us. I’m so sorry you got hurt and I know you’re trapped inside somewhere, but I think you
can hear me. I hope so anyway.’

She breathes, attached to machines controlling that for her.

‘I hope it’s beautiful where you are, I hope that so much, but I came here to tell you something. Your mum and dad thought it might help if I did tell you. The man who did this to
you, he can’t get you now, Katya. He’s dead and his bosses are locked up for life. They’re never coming out.’

The machine breathes on.

‘So I want you to know that, even if it is beautiful where you are, it’s beautiful sometimes out here in this world too. Remember those sunsets over Treliske Cove, and the sea in the
dawn light? It’s safe for you here now. Those men can’t hurt you any more. Your mum and dad have a new name like me and my family, like you can have if you come back to us. A whole new
life, Katya, where you’ll be safe. Your mum and dad miss you so much. They want you back.’

They say it’ll take a miracle now for her to come out of the vegetative state after this length of time, but you have to hope, right? You have to try.

‘I’d like to hang out with you again. I’d like us to do stuff like we would have planned to do if we’d had the time. I’d like us to get to be best friends. Because
I think we would have been if you hadn’t got hurt. I’d want you to know what real friends are like. I didn’t know that when we first met, but I do now. Real friends are there for
you. They watch your back and save your skin when you need them. I’d like you to meet Joe and Matt – I think you’d like them. Katie would love to see you again too, I know she
would. I tried to make it better for you, Katya. I made sure they paid for what they did. Please come back to us. Please.’

There’s no flutter from her eyes. No answering miracle. I sit and watch her for a while.

‘I’m not going to give up on you, do you hear me? I’ve got to go now, but I found something out while you’ve been asleep and it’s that I’m really good at not
giving up. So you see, you have to wake up because I won’t give up until you do.’

I stand up and give her hand a last squeeze.

‘One day, you’re going to come back to us, you just remember that. And we’ll go swimming again together.’

I
t’s the fourth of September and Joe and I are lounging on a couple of easy chairs in the corner of the sixth form common room, filling in
our signing-up papers and arguing over subject choices. We’re taking French of course, and English Literature, but Joe’s rubbishing my choice of media.

‘You want to pick a proper subject like maths.’

‘Two things – first, I don’t even like maths, second, practically our whole lives are affected by the media. It’s the subject of the future.’

‘No, it’s a doss.’

‘Well, it could be my future career choice so suck it up.’

All over the room, people are chewing the ends of biros and agonising over making the decision that will influence the rest of their lives. Me, I’m just grateful I still have a life to
make decisions over. And one of the people responsible for that is sitting right next to me, sticking out his tongue – complete with new silver stud – and wiggling it in my face before
he grabs me and kisses me.

I kiss him back and I don’t care who is watching.

I still choose media though, whatever he says. Maybe I’ll be a TV journalist. That would be cool. Or a film producer. Or work in magazines, like Mum used to.

The thing is, I have so many choices. And every day I am thankful for that. I have a future. I have a past now too, just one that’s shorter than most. But it’s still a past.

Matt and Joe had a fight after the GCSE results came out and Joe got a string of A-stars. Matt told his dad how Joe really wanted to go to sixth form and uni, and Joe got mad at him for putting
pressure on his dad when he was needed on the farm. Apparently Matt told him very bluntly that he was not in any way needed now as
he
was there so to ‘get back to sixth form and stop
being a martyr’.

I didn’t take the fight part seriously, or Matt’s words. That’s just how those two are with each other over important things.

But Matt got his own way and Joe’s dad duly backed him up and told Joe to get his backside to sixth form too. Then Matt made us all laugh the day before we went back to school by saying he
had a plan too: he’d got hooked on watching the Paralympics. ‘I could do that,’ he said excitedly. ‘Four years’ time, I could be in Brazil!’

‘Doing what?’ Joe asked him.

‘Not exactly sure yet, but I called a few of the lads I met at Headley Court and we’re going to meet up and try a few things out when I’ve got some spare time. Got to be
focused though – only four years to get to national standard!’

Joe shook his head and laughed. ‘Crazy fool,’ he said to me. ‘He means it, you know. And I wouldn’t bet against him making it either.’

So here we are in the common room. I’ve got a violin case at my feet. My first lesson in ages is booked for today straight after school and my fingers are already itching to get back to
playing for real.

I look round the room again, at the now-familiar faces. Some I like and some I don’t. Some I ignore, like the Crudmilla Cronies. I look at the boy sitting next to me, flicking his tongue
stud as he debates whether he really should take further maths. And I smile.

My name is Holly Latham and I’m sixteen years and eight months old. My boyfriend is an Emo freak and he’s awesome. There are two things about me worth knowing: I’m happy now
and I’m a survivor.

Firstly thanks to my wonderful agent, Ariella Feiner, who gave me the idea of a story involving someone in the witness protection scheme and was my first reader, and who
continues to look after my career with consummate skill. Further thanks go to Jane Willis for representing me so well in the foreign rights market.

A very important thank you to my editor at Egmont UK, Stella Paskins, whose wise advice and skilful editing made
By Any Other Name
so much better than I could have made it alone. Thank
you for knowing where to cut when I didn’t! Additional thanks to all at Egmont UK and Australia.

Thanks to several members of Authonomy:

• To Dutch for his technical help with the kidnapping plot, and to T L Tyson for her support, and thanks to both of you for making me laugh on my writing breaks – the balaclavas are
there just for you!

• To Michael D Scott, for bouncing ideas around with me until I came up with Katie’s role in the book, and also for the advice on tracking IP addresses

• To Shoshanna Einfeld for all her support and common sense

• To Berni Stevens for her cheerleading and for giving me information on London locations, and for travelling up for my wedding x

Final thanks to Paul, for taking over everything else so I had time to write this book, for teaching me unarmed combat and practising the fight scenes with me, and for solving
my plot hole at the eleventh hour by having more common sense about communications devices than I do. Oh and, ‘Reader, I married him.’

Skin Deep

The stereo thumps out a drumbeat.
Lindsay yells and reaches into the front of the car to turn the volume up – it’s
her favourite song. The boys in the front laugh and Rob puts his feet up on the dash. I smile like I’m having a good time, squashed in the middle of the back seat with Lindsay dance-jigging
around on my knee and Charlotte and Sarah on either side of me. I wish Steven would slow down because the pitch of the car round the country lanes makes my stomach lurch and I don’t think he
should be driving this fast.

Charlotte’s giggling and rubbing Rob’s head over the back of the seat. She likes him, I can tell. He rolls a joint and takes a drag, then passes it to her. She inhales the smoke
right down. I shiver inside. Mum and Dad would go crazy if they knew I was in a car with people taking drugs, and if they saw me in Lindsay’s halter-neck top and short skirt. Charlotte passes
me the joint and I shake my head. She shrugs, her face scornful, and Lindsay grabs it and takes a few puffs before passing it on.

The car careers round another corner like we’re on a track ride at the funfair.

I sort of wish I was at home, tucked up on the sofa with Mum and Dad and Charlie watching TV. But when the bottle of cider goes round the car, I drink as much as the others so they don’t
laugh at me for being the youngest. For being a stupid little girl. My eyes feel funny and heavy with the mascara Lindsay brushed on them earlier. I don’t know who this girl is. It’s
not the me who stacks the dishwasher every night for Mum and helps Charlie paint his Warhammer figures at the kitchen table.