By Any Other Name (9 page)

He’s asking me out. He’s actually asking me out. I feel insanely pleased and I’m embarrassed by it. When did I get this sappy over a boy?

Since I moved here and lost myself
 
?

Whatever. He asked me out and I’m going, and I will have fun and I will feel like me again. Caution can go straight to hell on a quad bike.

‘Yeah, sounds OK. Thanks.’

He grins and I like how grateful he looks that I said yes. If that makes me a bitch, so be it. My ego has been in bits for too long – it needs a boost, and a Fraser-shaped boost will do
just fine.

Katie’s waiting for me when I get home from school, sitting on the doorstep and sucking a lolly.

‘How was school?’ I ask.

‘Poop.’

‘Is your teacher nice?’

‘Poop.’

I sigh; she’s in one of those moods.

‘Did you make any friends today?’

‘Boo-Boo is a poophead.’

I sit down next to her on the step.

‘You learned that word today, didn’t you? Who from?’

‘Sammy. Sammy told it to me. It’s a good word, isn’t it, Boo-Boo? I like it. Poooop!’

I have to laugh. She’s smiling and Katie’s smile always cheers me up. ‘So school wasn’t so bad after all? Who’s Sammy – a boy or a girl?’

‘Poooop! A boy. He’s funny. We played on the slide and in the ball pool.’

I put my arm round her shoulders and give her a hug. ‘Is Sammy your friend now?’

She nods and sucks furiously on the lolly. ‘Yes. Best friend.’

‘Hey, do you want me to take you to the swings before tea?’

‘Don’t you have homework?’ Mum says as she passes through the hall with a pile of washing.

‘I can find the time to take my sister to the park first.’

Katie’s already bouncing on the spot. ‘Swings! Swings!’

Mum shakes her head and walks off laughing. ‘Take her, please, and give us all some peace.’

I get her coat and we walk through the houses and across the main street. There are a few people I know by sight hanging around outside the post office, but we don’t meet anyone I talk to
at school. There’s a little playground on the playing fields and I take her there. A girl her age is on the climbing frame with what must be her younger sister as they look so alike, and
their mum sits on a bench half watching them and reading a book at the same time. Katie runs to the swings and perches on one.

‘Pushies, Boo-Boo! Pushies!’

I pull the swing back and shove hard, sending her soaring up in the air. She screams in excitement and I send her higher next time, and higher.

‘WHEEEEEEEEEEE!’

I push her and push her until my arms ache and her throat grows hoarse from squealing. The kids on the climbing frame go home and I’m still there making my sister fly.

‘More, Boo-Boo, more.’

Just me and her. It feels like none of it ever happened.

Until the car goes past.

It’s a white car with a rear spoiler and the exhaust roars as it goes down the lane by the playing fields. It’s the sound that attracts us; we see it at the same time. I can tell the
exact moment Katie notices the car because her ‘Wheeeeeeeeee’ changes to a shriek.

I stop pushing.

The swing slows as the car travels out of sight and Katie starts to howl.

My fingers, arms, legs, head all feel like they’ve turned to ice. I can’t move. I think my heart has stopped beating. I can’t even move to comfort Katie who’s now sitting
with her feet on the ground, bawling her eyes out.

I’m back there again, last summer . . . back where it all started . . .

I pushed Katie again and the swing whooshed skywards to the sound of her shouting, ‘Higher, higher, Boo-Boo.’ I gave a nervous glance at the tree branch the swing
was tied to, but it seemed to be holding strong, so I gave her an extra hard shove when she flew back my way.

‘Wooooo-hooooo!’ she yelled.

I turned my face up to catch the hot August sun in between pushes. The smell of dinner cooking from the white cottage behind us wafted out of the open window and mixed with the scent of drying
seaweed on the rocks at the bottom of the cliff. This had been our favourite holiday location since forever. No matter where else we went, no matter how exotic, if we didn’t come here at
least once a year, to this tiny bay buried deep in Cornwall, we all felt cheated.

Even the name, Treliske Cove, could make me excited on a grey winter’s day at home in London. Being here in the afternoon sunshine, with a warm breeze stirring my hair and the seagulls
diving from the cliffs to the glinting sea, that was paradise. And tucking up tight under the handmade quilt in the little bed under the eaves in my room in the cottage, all snug and sleepy and
smelling of fresh air and sea – that was the very best feeling in the world. Or was that waking in the morning when the sun came up, and snatching up a swimsuit to pad my way down the steep
cliff steps to the bay, where I’d swim in the sea and hope to see a dolphin offshore?

Katie finally got tired of swinging and hopped off the old tyre to play on her trike. I took her place and swung lazily, letting my feet trail through the long grass. The cotton curtains
fluttered in the open casement window of Katie’s room and there was a bird perched on the windowsill of mine, something tiny like a chaffinch. The cottage was painted stone with bright green
windows and doors. It looked like the definition of happiness to me.

The chaffinch took to the air and I followed its path over the field of grass mixed with wild flowers to the cottage on the other side of the fence, a twin of ours, but rented out whereas we
owned ours. At the moment, it was occupied by another family from London. Mum had spoken to them; I hadn’t. She went over to welcome them when they arrived a couple of hours after us.
Apparently they owned a place in Hampstead, which meant they were worth serious megabucks. Mum said there was a woman about her age and her daughter, who looked a year or so older than me, but her
husband was joining them later – he was dealing with a problem at work. The woman – Natalia, said with a Russian accent that was hardly noticeable until she told Mum her name –
looked weary, as if that happened a lot.

The daughter’s name was Katya, but Mum said she seemed very quiet. I could see she was working up to sending me round there to be sociable with her so I’d made a hasty exit. I took
my violin to the bottom of the orchard to practise so I missed the rest of the gossip. But playing under the old apple trees was another piece in the paradise jigsaw of this place.

As I gazed across the field to their cottage, I could see a face in the window. It was the girl. Pretty, with long, light brown hair and a pale oval face. Her Russian heritage showed, I thought,
in the set of her eyes and cheekbones. She looked what Mum would call ‘quietly expensive’.

Katie and I had been out here in the sunshine for most of the day; the Russian girl hadn’t set a toe outside. How could you come on holiday to a place like this and stay cooped up in the
house? I thought about waving to her, but something about her expression stopped me and I looked away.

When I turned back, she was gone. I shrugged and watched Katie playing race tracks on her tricycle along the lines I’d flattened in the long grass for her that morning.

The roasting chicken smell from the kitchen was making my mouth water. ‘Katie,’ I called, ‘last time round now. It’s nearly time for dinner.’

‘
Rrrroooommmm-rrrooommmm
,’ she called as she pedalled past furiously.

I laughed and got up to cut off her path if she tried to go round again, holding her discarded cardigan out as a flag for the finish line. She leaned in on the corners like she’d seen the
racing drivers do on TV when she and Dad watched motor sport, making her
rroommm
-ing noises on the straight stretches where she could accelerate, her little legs whirring round until finally
she was on the home stretch speeding towards me.

I give the commentary. ‘And it’s Katie Drummond in pole position . . . can she hold on? She’s nearly there . . . it doesn’t look like anyone can beat her now . . . and .
. . and . . . YES, YES, YES . . . it’s Katie Drummond finishing first . . . the WINNER!’

Katie pulled her trike up and clapped and giggled, her face red-flushed and happy. That was how I loved to see my sister best.

She got off the trike and came to get her cardigan.

‘Aren’t you too warm for that? You don’t have to put it on if you are.’ I hated the flash of anxiety in her face when I said that, when I made her question what would
have been an automatic action, but fortunately something distracted her from my mistake.

Katie frowned and I turned to see a white car drive slowly down the lane. I didn’t see anything unusual about that myself – driving slowly was sensible on these twisty lanes, even if
it did seem maybe a bit overcautious to be crawling along that slowly. But Katie made a harrumphing noise and frowned harder. Why? The driver didn’t look unusual, just an average man you
wouldn’t have taken a second look at, youngish, driving a car with one of those stupid rear spoilers some guys think look good, but are actually cheap and tacky.

‘What’s up?’ I asked her. Later, I would wish a thousand times over and more that I had left that question unasked.

She pointed to the car. ‘He goes past lots.’

Did he? I shrugged. ‘Maybe he lives down the lane somewhere.’

Katie shook her head. ‘No.’

I didn’t question her. Katie knew every car in every house in the locale just from driving around with Dad. She could remember the makes, colours and often the number plates simply from
having driven past them while they were parked outside the houses. ‘It might just be one you haven’t seen –’

‘No. It only started the yesterday before yesterday. But he goes past lots. You should count, Boo-Boo. It’s lots and lots and lots.’

It was my turn to frown. OK, that did sound a bit weird. ‘Like how many lots?’

‘Ten times on the yesterday before yesterday, eight times yesterday and today nine times to now . . . there and back is one time.’

Yes, that did seem a lot in such a remote place. In the city, I’d have assumed he was just posing with his naff car, but out here? It didn’t make sense.

‘OK, you tell me when you see the car again and I’ll count too.’

Katie beamed and ran to hug me. ‘Boo-Boo counting too. Love you!’

I hugged her back. Sometimes she just wanted someone to join her in her world, I thought, when she couldn’t make it across into ours. That was the hardest thing about Katie’s autism
– the constant suspicion that she didn’t want to be marooned in her bubble of handicap and cut off from the rest of us. Some children in her therapy centre did seem to want that, but
Katie was different. ‘Love you too, Katie-pops.’

Mum stuck her head out of the door to call us in for dinner and I forgot all about the car. Until I was going to bed and I went to draw the curtains. In the fading light, I could just make out
the outline of a white car with a rear spoiler driving slowly past again.

T
he weekend goes by too quickly and I don’t seem to get a break from the pile of revision and catch-up coursework that I’ve set myself.
Being in a new school with different exam syllabuses is tough, especially having to make up for the several months I tried to teach myself from the revision guides while we moved from place to
place. Katie grumbles that I haven’t spent time playing with her and Mum tries to pacify her about that, but she doesn’t let up until Dad takes her for a drive and peace descends on the
house for a couple of hours. Mum naps in front of the TV and I sit on my bed revising maths and trying not to look out of the window because the view depresses me. By eight o’clock on Monday
morning, I’m tired from too much sitting around and concentrating, and grouchy from lack of down time. The only bonus is at least inside the house I don’t have to keep looking over my
shoulder to check no one is following me.

School’s a drag too, tests and timed coursework assessments all day. I have an important science piece in the afternoon so I grab a sandwich from the canteen, which tastes like margarine
on dough with some unidentifiable filling, and sit in the library preparing. When I get home, I’m so tired I crash out on the bed before tea and Mum has to wake me up.

Tuesday isn’t much better, except I do get to have a lunch break and I sit with Gemma and Lucy. The boys are off playing football in some team practice thing. Thankfully Gemma’s got
over droning about wedding dresses and she’s in the middle of a bitch-fest about a girl they both know. It’s quite entertaining listening to Gemma tear her to shreds, especially as I
don’t know the girl so I don’t have to take sides. Gemma’s vicious when she gets her claws out.

I see a little bit more of Fraser as the week goes on, but I don’t get much chance to speak to him alone. He stops me in the corridor once to check I’m still OK for the party at the
weekend and to sort out pick-up times but that’s mostly it. Except he does get my phone number and he texts me later to say he’s looking forward to it. I text to say ‘me
too’, but he doesn’t reply and neither do I after that. I’m not sure I am looking forward to it actually. It’s a funny feeling – more like stress than real excitement,
and not enjoyable but something to be endured and got through because I might feel better once I’ve done it. If I compare that to the last party I went to, and the buzz before that, getting
ready with Tasha . . . it’s just too depressing in a grey, shitty, hugely depressing week.