Chocolate Box Girls: Sweet Honey (22 page)

I take the bus home and call Mum from the
landline, and when I hear her voice I fall to pieces. Skye has shown her the spammed
SpiderWeb pages and told her what’s been happening, and she doesn’t
doubt or blame or criticize, she just listens quietly and lets me spill it all out.
I tell her everything, every sleazy detail, every spiteful status, every threatening
text. I cry until there are no more tears left, and Mum listens and makes soft,
soothing noises and tells me she loves me.

‘I want to come home, Mum,’
I whisper. ‘I’m scared, and I want to come home.’

‘It’s OK, Honeybee,’
Mum says. ‘I’ll sort it. I promise. Get packing.’

By the time Emma gets home from work,
I’m almost done, shorts and T-shirts and crumpled dresses all flung into the
case together.

‘Honey?’ Emma says, taking
in the scene. ‘What’s going on?’

I look at her face, bright and hopeful
and kind, and I wonder if she knows her whole life is a sham. My dad ruins
everything he touches, just like me.

‘Everything’s wrong,’
I say. ‘I’ve been trying to tell you for days. Someone’s hacking
my iPhone and my laptop, threatening me, stalking me, turning everyone against me,
even my own sisters! I have to go home, I want to go home … so I skipped
school and went into town to see Dad, only he was out to lunch and when I got
there …’

I shut my eyes, swallowing back more
tears because it turns out that I am not all cried out after all, not yet.

‘Oh, Emma,’ I sob. ‘He
was with a woman. I think he’s seeing her. I don’t know if I should be
telling you this … I don’t know what to do!’

Emma puts her arms round me and holds me
tight, stroking my hair as I cry, and we stay like that for a long time, until I am
calm.

‘Shhh,’ Emma says, taking
my hand and leading me through to the kitchen. ‘It’s not the end of the
world! We’ll get this sorted, I promise you. We’ll report the hacking,
tell the authorities, find the culprit. I feel awful. I could see you weren’t
yourself, but I thought it was a flu bug. I had no idea. I’ve been a little
preoccupied, and I should have seen … should have known something was
wrong. I let you down, Honey.’

I blink, amazed. ‘You didn’t
let me down, Emma,’ I say. ‘I should have trusted you, told you.
But … didn’t you hear what I said?’

‘Of course!’ she says, her
smile a little too bright. ‘If you want to go back to Somerset, then we can
sort that too. You’ve coped amazingly well, Honey, but fifteen is very young
to be apart from your mum and sisters.’

‘Mum’s going to sort a
ticket,’ I say. ‘But that’s not what I meant. Emma, what about
Dad? Don’t you understand? I saw him with another woman!’

Emma turns and strides into the kitchen,
filling the kettle and ransacking the cupboard for teabags. ‘Tea,’ she
says. ‘Hot, sweet tea makes everything better, doesn’t it?’

She sits down beside me, shoulders
slumping.

‘I know about Greg,’ she
says. ‘I’ve known for a while. The late nights, the phone calls. I know
the signs.’

My eyes open wide.
‘You … know the signs?’ I echo. ‘He’s done it
before?’

Emma laughs, but there’s no humour
in it. ‘It’s just Greg,’ she says. ‘It’s what
he’s like. He’s a good-looking man, and he thrives on attention.
He’s had flings before, but that’s all they are. He loves me; he comes
back to me. We have a good life here, a lovely house, nice holidays. It upsets me
sometimes, of course it does, but why rock the boat over something like
this?’

I can’t believe what I’m
hearing.

‘Thing is, I haven’t been a
hundred per cent honest with you,’ Emma says. ‘Truth is, I
did
start seeing Greg when he was still married to your mum. I’m not proud of
that, but Greg has a way of drawing people in, making them feel like they’re
the most important person in his universe …’

I nod. I know all about that. Dad reels
people in with his charm and they glow golden under his attention: friends, family,
business contacts, even shopkeepers, waiters, buskers in the street. He makes
everyone special, just for a moment or two, and then he moves on and we’re
left wondering what we did wrong.

Emma’s eyes shine with tears.
‘Your mum couldn’t handle it,’ she says. ‘She finished
things. But when Greg moved in with me, I knew what I was taking on. Men like Greg
are hopeless, always falling for the latest conquest. But it never lasts. Why make a
fuss? It’s easier to ignore it, wait for it to pass.’

Her hands are shaking as she dabs at her
eyes, leaving smudges of mascara across her perfectly powdered cheeks. The luxury
lifestyle she’s hanging on to looks thin and tawdry now, and Emma just seems
lost, trying to tell herself everything’s fine when clearly it isn’t. As
for Dad, he has let me down over and over; I can’t pretend any more that it
doesn’t hurt.

‘How
can
you forgive
him?’ I whisper. ‘I don’t understand! You say you don’t want
to rock the boat, but can’t you see? It’s all just lies!’

Emma is defensive now, distressed.
‘You think I’m wrong to turn a blind eye?’ she challenges.
‘You think I’m stupid, weak? Even Charlotte forgave him the first time.
She ignored his first fling, the one before me. Of course, she didn’t know how
serious it was, didn’t know about the baby –’

She stops short, aghast. Her hand flies
up to her mouth as if she can stop the words slipping out, but it’s too late,
of course. Way, way too late.

‘What baby?’ I say.

There’s a silence. I can see Emma
working out how to backtrack, but the secret is out and it can’t be buried
again, not now.

‘Tell me,’ I say, my voice
cold, determined. ‘You have to tell me everything.’

Emma bites her lip, then raises her chin
and begins the story. ‘It was a long time ago, back when you were a
toddler,’ she begins. ‘The twins would have been babies, I think. The
woman’s name was Alison Cooke – I know because I worked for your dad back then
and I helped to arrange a big financial pay-off for Alison, to look after the child
in the years ahead. Greg wanted it all hushed up – he didn’t want Charlotte to
know. She was pregnant with Coco, if I recall.’

‘This baby,’ I ask, my head
whirling with all of this information. ‘Was it a girl or a boy?’

‘I never knew the details,’
Emma admits. ‘Alison lived in London, that’s all I know. She started
trying to contact Greg again two years ago, and he panicked, thought she must be
looking for another payout. It was one of the reasons he took the Australian
contract. He didn’t want his past catching up with him.’

I’m stunned. This is Dad all over
– one big disappearing act. I just never guessed how many secrets he’s been
hiding. He loves me, sure; he just isn’t much of a father, or much of a man.
He leaves a trail of destruction behind him, just as I seem to do.

Emma is sobbing now, afraid that Dad
will be furious with her, and the roles reverse as I put my arms round her. I
didn’t want to share my dad with anyone, least of all the girlfriend who
triggered his divorce from Mum, but Emma has never been anything other than kind to
me. Right now, seeing her struggle to deny there’s any problem with
Dad’s latest affair, all I can feel for her is pity.

I promise Emma I won’t tell.
It’s an easy promise to make – right now, I don’t much care if I never
speak to Dad again.

I take my secret and go back to my
packing, still shell-shocked, feeling the impact of it all unfurling inside me.
Somehow it feels better to know the truth – it is easier to live with than a pipe
dream of a happy-ever-after that can never happen.

Somehow, amazingly, I have a brother or
sister, around the same age as Coco. As the idea settles, the initial shock and
horror fade, replaced by a mixture of awe and hope. Dad may not want anything to do
with this other family, but surely the rest of us have a right to know, maybe even
get the chance to meet our half-sibling?

It’s like finding a missing piece
of jigsaw, the bit I need to complete the picture. A few months ago I couldn’t
see the picture at all; now I know that being a family is about much more than the
names on a birth certificate. Maybe I can find Alison Cooke and trace my half-sister
or brother; I will try my best to repair some of the damage Dad has done.

I slip my paintings carefully into the
lid of the suitcase; the self-portraits are a visual diary of a girl in meltdown.
I’ve been breaking apart and putting myself together again over and over, but
finally I have stopped trying to re-make that perfect version of me that fell to
pieces when Dad walked away. It wasn’t so perfect anyway, I know that now.

I am changing the pattern, changing my
expectations, changing the story to make something new. It’s like shedding a
skin, and finding that the real me was there all the time.

I get to the beach cafe just as Ash is
handing over to the evening shift. His face lights up and I run into his arms and
hold on tight.

‘Where were you?’ he
demands. ‘I’ve been so worried! Tara and Bennie went to Miss Bird
anyway, and she’s going to investigate. She’s sending a letter to your
dad.’

‘Good old Tara and Bennie,’
I say.

Ash takes my hand and we walk out across
the boardwalk and on to the dunes, and after a while we flop down on the sand,
looking out towards the ocean.

‘So,’ Ash prompts,
‘did something else happen?’

‘I guess things stepped up a
level,’ I say. ‘My sisters’ SpiderWeb pages were spammed. I walked
into town to talk to Dad –’

‘Walked?’ he echoes.
‘It’s, like, ten miles to the city centre!’

‘I have blisters to prove
it,’ I say. ‘I was angry. Walking helped. When I got there, they said I
needed an appointment, but I blagged my way into the restaurant where Dad was having
lunch and found him smooching with his mistress. Nice, huh?’

‘Oh, Honey,’ Ash sighs.

I squeeze his hand. ‘I called Mum
and talked to her about the hacking, and I told Emma I’d seen Dad with another
woman. Emma got upset and told me some stuff she shouldn’t
have …’

‘Like?’

‘Like I have a half-brother or
sister somewhere back home,’ I say. ‘My head’s kind of all chewed
up, just thinking about it. It seems like all this happened when I was a toddler,
and Mum never knew. Dad just paid the woman off and hoped she’d go away. And
then a while ago she got back in touch, and Dad panicked and took the Sydney job. He
really is a great dad, huh?’

‘Almost as good as mine,’
Ash says. ‘Cheats and runaways, both of them. I’m going to pretend my
dad was some Hollywood star instead. Or a famous writer, or a rock star, or
something. What d’you reckon?’

I laugh, and Ash says he’ll take
Johnny Depp and I pick out David Tennant because he seems cool, kind and has
excellent time-travel skills.

‘He’d fix this hacking mess,
no problem,’ I tell Ash. ‘One zap of his Sonic Screwdriver and the troll
gets blasted halfway across the universe. I wish. Although to be fair, I’m not
as scared now people know about it. Mum and Paddy are on to it; so is Miss Bird, and
Emma was threatening to ring the police. Tara and Bennie have reported it to
SpiderWeb and my sisters are sleuthing away trying to work out who the stalker might
be.’

‘SpiderWeb will tell you, once
they’ve investigated,’ Ash says. ‘And if the police are involved,
I expect he’ll be prosecuted too. It’s probably just some random creep
who happened to hit on your SpiderWeb page by accident.’

‘Maybe.’ The thing is, I am
pretty sure that Surfie16 is not a stranger. He knows too much about me, right down
to exactly which images would freak out my sisters, and that means it’s almost
certainly someone back home. I think back to this morning’s threat.

I’m going to destroy you, just like you destroyed me …

Who would even say that? It’s not
like I’ve had a squeaky-clean past, but I have never set out to destroy
anyone. What if it wasn’t intentional, though? I feel dizzy for a moment as I
think about the trail of hurt I’ve left behind me. There is
someone … someone I hurt badly, used and threw away. The pieces fall into
place. I know with a chill certainty exactly who has done all of this.

‘You OK?’ Ash is asking.
‘You’re miles away.’

I sigh. Miles away … that kind
of sums it up.

‘There’s something I need to
tell you, Ash,’ I say. ‘Thing is … I’m going back to
England. Mum’s sorting a ticket for me, and I think it might be quite soon. I
am going to miss you so, so much.’

He folds his arms round me and holds me
so tight that all the hurts melt away and all the broken pieces of my past fit
together again. If only I could stay right here I’d be safe for always because
Ash is the only boy I’ve ever met who can see past the cool-girl mask to the
real me. He’s the only boy who isn’t afraid to stand up to me and tell
me when I’m wrong, the only boy I’d actually listen to. He is kind and
loyal and so drop-dead gorgeous he makes my insides melt, and I have to walk away
from him. It breaks my heart.

We kiss for a long time while the sun
goes down around us. My lips taste of salt, and I cannot tell if it’s from my
tears or his.