Follow Me Down (19 page)

I only got a few minutes’ peace before someone else approached. I almost barked at them, but managed to stop myself when I looked up to find Dominic standing over me with a brown leather holdall in his hand.

‘Dominic.’ I looked around, half expecting a security guard to come charging after him, shouting at him to get out.

He smiled smoothly. ‘Fancy meeting you here, Miss Okomma.’

I watched as he dropped the holdall onto the floor by my feet and sank into the leather chair opposite mine. ‘What are you doing here, Dominic?’

‘Just off to see a friend in Dubai.’

‘Dubai?’

‘Yeah, for the night.’

‘The night?’

‘Stop repeating everything I say, Miss Okomma,’ he said, tugging off his black leather gloves. ‘It’s very annoying.’

‘What are you doing?’ I sat forward, suddenly livid that he was doing something so foolish, every emotion I was feeling piling on top of one another, all at once until I was breathless. ‘You can’t just go to Dubai for the night! What about school? You’ll be kicked out!’ I hissed but then he tilted his head and smiled and with that, I realised. Fresh tears pooled in my eyes and his face went out of focus. I had to take a breath before I could speak again. ‘You’re here to be with me.’

My chin trembled and his face softened when it did. Usually, I would have been furious that he’d seen that moment of vulnerability, but I didn’t care and found myself resisting the urge to climb over the table between us and hug him.

‘You gonna eat those?’

‘They’ll make you fly to Dubai, you know.’

‘Good,’ he said, stopping to reach for a chip. ‘I haven’t done anything to piss my father off this week. At least I’ll get a holiday out of it.’

I tried not to laugh, because it wasn’t funny. ‘Ballard will kill you.’

He didn’t seem bothered and gestured at a woman in a red suit, who came over with a bright smile. ‘Two Diet Cokes, please.’ He held up two fingers. ‘And a menu. Miss Okomma needs to eat something more substantial than a bowl of crisps.’

‘Of course, Mr Sim.’

He watched her walk away and when he turned to look at me again, I arched an eyebrow at him. ‘How does she know your name?’

He licked his lips and sat back with a slow smile. ‘They all know my name.’

I rolled my eyes and sat back too. ‘How did you know I was here?’

‘Mrs Delaney.’

I was impressed. ‘I thought she was beyond being charmed.’

‘It seems the lady is for turning.’

I bit down on my lip to stop myself smiling. ‘I’m surprised she told you. I didn’t think they gave out that sort of information. I thought it was private.’

‘It is.’ He stopped to lick the salt from his fingers, then reached for another chip. ‘But she’s worried about you. She doesn’t want you to be here on your own.’

‘
She’s
worried?’

His gaze dipped to the bowl of chips. ‘Are you OK?’

‘Changing the subject. Duly noted, Mr Sim.’

He didn’t let me get away with it, either. ‘You’ve been crying.’

He looked up at me again and it was my turn to stare at the bowl of chips. Luckily, I was saved by the waitress who brought our drinks and menus. I opened mine, avoiding his gaze. ‘I’m tired.’

‘So how’s your dad? Any news?’

Before I could respond, my cellphone rang. It was my mother and then my heart was beating too hard for another reason. ‘
Nne m, keekwanu?
’

She was about to board her flight to Lagos and sounded much calmer. She must have been, because she responded in English. She usually only broke into Igbo in public when she was saying something she didn’t want anyone to hear. ‘I have no news. Papa is still in surgery. I just wanted to call to let you know that I’m boarding. Are you at Heathrow yet?’

‘Yes, I’m in the Virgin lounge now.’

‘Are you on your own?’

I considered responding in Igbo so Dominic wouldn’t understand, but knew it would make her suspicious. ‘No,’ I said, looking at my nails. I’d forgotten to take off my blue nail polish and had already been told off about it in History, and I knew that my father would tease me mercilessly.
Kedu, sisi
? he’d say when he saw it. Then I realised that he might not be able to and felt a fresh wave of tears.

I waited until I’d caught my breath and said, ‘I’m with Scarlett.’

I knew Dominic was looking at me, but I just stared at my nails as I heard my mother’s breathing relax. I could have said I was alone, I suppose, but the lie was for her, not me. I didn’t want her thinking I was stuck in an airport by myself. And she liked Scarlett, I mean, she wasn’t as fond of her after the New York thing, but she still liked her.

For a horrible moment, I thought she was going to ask to speak to her, but then I heard them calling her flight. ‘I’ll call you as soon as I land.
Ahuru m gi n’anya
.’

I told her that I loved her too and blew some kisses down the phone. When I hung up, I looked up to find Dominic smiling at me. ‘How’s your dad?’

I put my cellphone down on the table between us. ‘Still in surgery.’

There was a moment of silence as I waited for him to say something, but when he didn’t, I sighed with defeat. ‘Go on. Say it.’

His licked his lips, then crossed his legs, sitting back in his chair with a smug smile. ‘Lying to your mother about me already. This bodes well.’

I rolled my eyes. ‘I love my mother. She thinks she’s super liberal, but if she heard I was alone at an airport with a boy, she’d flip out.’

I opened my menu again so I wouldn’t have to look at him, neglecting to mention that his reputation – the fight he had with Sam the day Scarlett ran off to New York, the rumours about why he got kicked out of Eton – had reached her and she’d be furious if she knew I’d even
spoken
to him. Lord knows what she’d do if she knew he was at the airport with me. I couldn’t tell her. She was stressed enough about my father, she didn’t need to spend the flight to Lagos worrying that Dominic was getting me knocked up, too.

‘Have you heard from her, by the way?’ I tried to sound nonchalant.

He knew exactly who I was talking about, but still said, ‘Who?’

‘Scarlett.’

I heard him sigh. ‘She’s done another runner.’

‘What?’ I snapped the menu shut. ‘When?’

‘This morning. She’s fine, she just texted Olivia to tell her she’s in London auditioning for a summer school at RADA, or something. She’ll be back tonight.’

‘Why didn’t she tell anyone?’

‘She didn’t want to jinx it.’

I put the menu on the table between us, no longer hungry. ‘Unbelievable.’

‘I don’t want to talk about her.’ He leaned forward to pick up his glass and took a long sip, then licked his lips and sat back again. ‘Tell me about your dad.’

I felt a sudden stab in my stomach. ‘Why?’ I asked, fidgeting a little.

‘It’s called a conversation, Adamma.’

It felt more like he was trying to find a raw nerve. Mercifully, my phone buzzed and I reached for it, frowning at the screen so I wouldn’t have to look at him. It was a text message and I was sure it would be from Scarlett, but it was from Tara Salter. I realised then that Scarlett might not know about my father if she was in London and, as annoyed as I was with her for running off again, I felt myself soften. She would get in touch if she knew. Even Scarlett wasn’t that self-absorbed.

‘Shall I tell you about mine, then?’ he said when he realised that I was replying to the text and he wasn’t going to get a response from me about my father.

I didn’t look up from my screen. ‘If you want.’

‘I love him, but I wish he was a normal Asian dad sometimes. Dominic!’ he said, screwing up his face and talking like an old Korean man. ‘You so ungrateful. I come to this country with £1. Why you not a doctor?’ I pressed my lips together so I wouldn’t laugh. ‘At least then I’d have something to rebel against, but
no
.’ He shook his head. ‘He’s all, like, “I just want you to be happy, son.” What good is that?’

I put my phone on the table and reached for my glass. ‘It can’t be that bad.’

‘He invented a piece of code in his bedroom when he was fourteen. I don’t know what it does, but the Internet would burst into flames without it, apparently. By the time he was my age, he was a billionaire.’ He sat forward. ‘He didn’t go to college. He had a kid with a white girl, whom he wasn’t even married to, and is now married to someone who used to be in a band called The Weeping Vaginas. He’s given my grandfather two heart attacks. How am I supposed to compete with that?’

I couldn’t hold it in, and laughed. ‘Dominic!’

‘The only way I can rebel now is by becoming a doctor, but I can’t because I’m shit at maths.’

‘He sounds pretty awesome.’

‘I guess.’ He smiled loosely. ‘When I was at Eton, I got shitfaced one night, took all my clothes off and climbed onto the roof saying I wanted to make love not war. I got expelled and Dad wrote to them, threatening to sue them for obstructing my right to peaceful protest and they had to readmit me.’

I covered my mouth with my hand as I almost choked on my Diet Coke. He watched me with a smile. ‘So, yeah. He just wants me to be happy, but I don’t even know what I want.’ His gaze dipped away from mine, the corners of his mouth falling. ‘I just know it isn’t this.’ I sat forward, but before I could say anything, he caught himself, and sat back, opening his menu with a brighter smile. ‘So are we going to order something? I’m bloody starving.’

I humoured him, and reached for mine. ‘So what’s your mum like?’

‘Dead.’

I almost dropped my menu. ‘What?’

‘She died in childbirth with me.’

‘Dominic,’ I breathed. ‘I had no idea.’

He peered at me over his menu. ‘She didn’t tell you that, did she?’ I shook my head. ‘Bet she told you all about her parents’ apartment in Paris, though. All about their second-hand brass bed and her dad’s pots of basil on the balcony?’ I didn’t know what to say and just looked at him. He sighed and shook his head. ‘Of course. Why would she mention my dead mother? Such a minor detail.’

I felt an itch to defend her, tell him that perhaps she didn’t feel right telling me. After all, it wasn’t common knowledge at Crofton. But as he began flicking through the menu, I realised that he didn’t want to talk about it any more.

‘My father is very different,’ I said.

He closed his menu and looked at me again. ‘What’s he like?’

‘Tall,’ I said, closing my menu as well. ‘Solid, like a tree. He never changes. He always wears either a black or a grey suit, always has oatmeal with brown sugar for breakfast, which he has at the dining table while he’s reading the paper. If he’s in the country, he always comes home for dinner. Always. He’s just
there
, you know? He’s always there.’ When I looked at him, he was nodding. ‘I’ve never needed him and he’s not been there.’ My chin trembled again and I looked down.

‘Are you a daddy’s girl?’

‘Absolutely,’ I said with a small chuckle. ‘My mother says that when I was a baby, he carried me everywhere, couldn’t put me down. As soon as I could sit up, he would put me in a high chair next to him at the dining table and every morning we’d have oatmeal together and he’d read to me from the paper.’

‘Is that why you want to be a journalist?’

I nodded. ‘He says I notice everything. Even when I was little, I would walk into a room and know if the housekeeper had moved something or if my mother had bought a new cushion. He says that everything was a story. A car would drive past us too quickly and I’d say the driver was being chased, or if one of my friends didn’t come to school one day, I’d come up with an elaborate reason why.’

‘Does he want you to be a journalist?’

I tilted my head at him and smiled. ‘He just wants me to be happy.’ He rolled his eyes. ‘He says that’s all he wants. So much so that he can never give me bad news, he always makes my mother do it. He even made her tell me about Santa.’

Dominic raised an eyebrow. ‘And you didn’t take advantage of that at all.’

I giggled, covering my face with the menu for a second. When I looked at him again, his eyebrow was still arched. ‘When I was younger,’ I admitted, putting the menu back on the table, ‘and I didn’t want to go to school, I went to him before my mother, because he’d always let me have the day off. It used to drive my mother crazy. But by the time I was thirteen, he cottoned on and whenever I went to him, looking pathetic, he would pretend to be hysterical and holler at the housekeeper to call the dibia.’

‘The dibia?’

‘Like a medicine man.’ He nodded. ‘He’d call for Celine roaring, “Fetch the dibia for my only child!”’ I said, mimicking my father’s warm voice. ‘Then he’d shake me and tell the evil spirits to leave me alone. “Tell them it is not yet your time, Adamma!” he’d say. “
Gwa ha, kitaa!
” and I’d laugh so much, I couldn’t pretend to be sick.’

I chuckled again, but when I thought of my father in hospital, strung up to all of those monitors, like a marionette, something in me finally buckled and tears suddenly spilled out of me. ‘It’s not yet his time.’

I covered my face with my hands. A moment later, I was aware of Dominic next to me, rubbing my back with his hand. When I calmed down, I turned to look at him kneeling next to me, but when he started to say something, I shook my head.

‘Don’t, Dominic. I can’t bear it.’

He frowned. ‘Don’t what?’

‘Don’t say that you know it’ll be OK.’

He tucked my hair behind my ears and when he took my face in his hands and wiped the tears from under my eyes with the pads of his thumbs, I curled my fingers around his wrists. I could feel his pulse against my fingers, as quick as mine.

‘Promise me, Dominic.’

He looked at me, then smiled. ‘What the hell do I know?’

10 DAYS AFTER

MAY

I’ve only been to two funerals, my grandfather’s and my friend Mariya’s. My grandfather’s was more a celebration, because that’s how it is in Nigeria when people have lived long, happy lives – we honour that. Funerals are big.
Rowdy
. There are drums and trumpets. We sing, dance, eat. But Mariya was thirteen when she died of leukaemia, so her funeral was a suitably dour affair, all black suits and handkerchiefs. I just remember everyone in our class sitting in stunned silence in the church trying not to look at her coffin as the realisation crept over us that death wasn’t necessarily something that would happen when we were old. It could happen any time: when we were asleep, when we were crossing the street. It might already be there – like with Mariya – in our blood, our bones.

It’s not like I ever thought I’d live forever – or wanted to – but it had never occurred to me that I might die before I’d lived. Before I’d driven a car and drank red wine and worn a ball gown and had an argument in the street. Before I had loved and been loved back. Before I’d even had my braces taken off. And that scared me more than anything, more than the tears and the lilies and the coffin. I just wanted enough time to live.

That’s all I could think about this morning, before Scarlett’s funeral; how much she’d lived. Every moment was hers, she didn’t waste it on anyone else or anything she didn’t want to do. I only know a bit of what she did, and while it will never be enough – she should have gone to Yale, she should have had an apartment in Paris with a second-hand brass bed – she had loved, and when I looked around at everyone huddled outside Burnham as we waited for Mrs Delaney to lead us to the church, I knew that, as infuriating and distracting and selfish as she was sometimes, she was loved.

Mrs Delaney told us to wear our Crofton uniform, which was good because I had hardly slept so I was too tired to contemplate what to wear. I did sleep for long enough to have another dream about her, though. It was more of a memory of the last time we hugged, on the dance floor at Edith’s wedding. She was drunk on champagne and we were watching Edith and her husband dancing – so she was probably a little drunk on the promise of being loved like that one day, too – when she pulled me into a hug. Even in the dream her skin was sticky, her cheekbone digging into mine, and it was like we’d just met, when it was just her and me against the world. Before she ran away to New York, before my father was shot. Before. She even smelt like she did that night, of that perfume she bought at Selfridges during our last exeat weekend in London. Light. Sweet. Like she might float away if I didn’t hold on tight enough.

I woke with a gasp. It was 5 a.m. and my instinct was to go for a run. I kicked the duvet away and just for that tiny second, I forgot. But by the time my feet touched the floor, it came charging back at me – the smell of trampled bluebells, the blue and white police tape fluttering like bunting – and I had to lie down again.

A moment later, I heard my door open and lifted my duvet so that Orla could slide under it. I must have fallen asleep again because Mrs Delaney found us like that a couple of hours later. She said that we could have another ten minutes, but it wasn’t enough; it still took several attempts to button my shirt and tie back my hair. I lagged behind on the walk into Ostley, my limbs stiff as I tried to keep up. Orla looped her arm through mine when we passed the road to Savernake Forest. ‘Keep going,’ she whispered. ‘Keep going.’

When we approached the village, I shivered. It was too quiet. It was almost 11 a.m., the stores should have been open – the smell of bread wafting from the bakery – but they were closed. There were no baskets of vegetables outside the grocer, no newspapers in the rack outside the newsagent.

When we passed the telephone box, there was a MISSING poster still taped to it and Mrs Delaney marched over to it. ‘The cars will go past here,’ she muttered, ripping it off. ‘Her family shouldn’t have to see this.’

Until then, she’d been so composed, as though we were on a school trip. But then everyone was. There was no weeping, no wailing, as we walked through the village. I’d heard girls crying in their rooms this morning and seen them stopping in the corridor to hug before they went to bed last night, but that was it. I wanted to scream. Cry. Break something. In Nigeria, death isn’t something we speak of in hushed voices. We don’t cry behind closed doors. But in England, grief is wrapped up. Locked away. The only display of emotion Mrs Delaney allowed herself this morning was a huff as she ripped another MISSING poster off a lamp post.

As soon as she did, I heard a camera click and my heart stopped, sure that it was Dominic, but it was a man in a black T-shirt and jeans. ‘Go away!’ Mrs Delaney shooed at him with the posters in her hand, but he ignored her and continued taking photos of her.

When he turned the camera at us, Headmaster Ballard marched over to him. ‘Please stop.’ He held up his hand. ‘This is beyond inappropriate.’

The man shrugged. ‘I’m just taking photos. There’s no law against it.’

‘Well, I’m
asking
you to stop.’

‘Fine.’ He sniffed. ‘I got what I need.’

Headmaster Ballard walked back to us mumbling, ‘As if today isn’t difficult enough,’ then continued ushering us towards the church.

St Matthew’s is an old stone church that sits on the far side of Ostley in the middle of a graveyard. As we approached it, I could see that there was already a mess of people dressed in black outside. They looked like beetles, squirming in the sun, but as we got closer, I realised that they were hurrying up the path and into the church to avoid the pack of photographers squatting on the other side of the road. I saw them then, the news trucks parked further up, by the village green, and the men and women in tidy suits clutching microphones, and panic kicked at me.

‘Stay together, girls,’ Mrs Delaney said, corralling us past the photographers as quickly as she could and up the gravel path towards the church doors.

Cameras clickclickclicked as we passed and when I glanced at Molly, who was at the front near Headmaster Ballard, I saw that her head was up. But as soon as we got inside, she feigned nonchalance. ‘Why do they care?’ she asked, loud enough for me to hear at the back. I guess Mrs Delaney heard too, because she took her by the sleeve of her blazer and dragged her over to the candles, telling her to light one. I didn’t hear what she said to her after that, but when they came back to us, Molly was crying so much she was hiccupping.

The church was too small to hold everyone at Crofton plus everyone in the village so only the Lower Sixth went to the funeral. Headmaster Ballard told us to leave the pews for the other mourners and made us stand at the back. We were separated on either side of the church, so as not to get in anyone’s way. I looked for my parents in the crowd and found them quickly, sitting in the middle of one of the pews, looking around for me as well. My mother saw me first, and even in black she shone, her glossy curls the colour of paw paw seeds under the church lights, her familiar smile making my twitching nerves suddenly settle.

There’s a chapel at Crofton, so I haven’t been to St Matthew’s since Edith’s wedding. Today, it was just as packed and the faces were the same, but it was so quiet. There was no fidgeting on the crammed pews, no chatter like when we had waited to hear the Bridal March. One woman even tiptoed down the aisle when her heels starting clacking, as though we were in a library. But like Edith’s wedding, it was very elegant. There were candles everywhere and all the flowers were white. For one awful moment last night, I thought the flowers might be red, that someone would tell the florist it was her favourite colour and I’d walk in to find arrangements spilling over with blood-coloured roses. She would have hated that (‘So predictable,’ she would have said, rolling her eyes), but then she would have hated the white flowers, too.

We talked about her funeral once, when she asked me what they were like in Nigeria. When I told her, she said that that was what she wanted her funeral to be like: colour and sound and food. For everyone to get drunk afterwards and dance like no one was watching. But what she got was a church full of white flowers and people slumped in black suits reading a pink programme with her photo on it. As I saw her grandmother striding up and down the aisle, directing the ushers and fussing over the flowers, I realised that funerals aren’t always for the ones who are being buried.

I looked at the arrangement nearest me and when I noticed the white tulips poking out from between the roses and hydrangea heads, I wondered if they were from the farm. I pictured the gardeners cutting them, hands shaking as they remembered Scarlett in her yellow wellington boots, chasing Olivia down the neat rows of lettuces with a snail in her hand. Then I pictured her mother going from room to room in the house, her thin gold bangles clanging as she snatched the vases of tulips from each table and windowsill, leaving behind circles in the dust, and it made my heart ache.

Just as I leaned back against the door – the faint breeze a relief as I asked myself if my legs would survive the service – Mrs Delaney found me. ‘Follow me, Miss Okomma,’ she said, taking me by the hand and leading me through the knot of girls to the top of the aisle. I was sure my legs were going to betray me as we walked towards the altar and when we stopped by the first pew and I saw her family assembled in a row, each of them pale and creased with grief, I was glad Mrs Delaney was still holding my hand.

‘Adamma,’ Scarlett’s mother said, struggling to her feet then hugging me tightly. The last time I saw her, she didn’t see me. It was a couple of months ago and she was crossing the courtyard at school. Her dark hair was down and she was wearing a blue and white-striped Breton shirt and ballet pumps, her jeans rolled up to expose her ankles. If I’d just glanced at her, I might have assumed she was another pupil, but today she looked old –
exhausted
– in a dull black suit that she’d probably never wear again.

Her father hugged me, too, as did Edith, who thanked me for coming. But Olivia didn’t stand up and I wasn’t surprised – she hadn’t replied to any of my messages and wouldn’t let me near her when I helped her parents search Savernake Forest the afternoon I found The Old Dear – but it still stung when I sat next to her and she turned her face away.

‘I’m sorry,’ I breathed, but she didn’t flinch. It made the guilt dig in a little deeper, but before I could say anything else, the organ started, grim and throbbing, and everyone shuffled to their feet. I knew it was the coffin and I couldn’t look at it, so I squeezed my eyes shut, although that just seemed to amplify everything – the smell of the flowers, the soft scuff of the pallbearers’ shoes as the coffin approached – so I forced myself to open them again as the priest, a tall man with hair as dark as shoe polish, asked everyone to be seated.

‘“
‘I am the resurrection and the life,’ saith the Lord”,’ he began, pausing to smooth down his robes with his hands, before raising them again,
‘“
‘he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live, and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.
’”
’

When he began reading ‘The Lord is my Shepherd’, I looked at Olivia again, the pink programme fluttering in her hands as she stared at it. I waited for her to look up at me, but when she didn’t, I looked over my shoulder at the congregation instead, hoping to see him. Not that I could see much in the full church. He didn’t come with us, perhaps he was standing behind one of the pillars or standing at the back. Maybe he hadn’t come at all.

The thought jabbed at my ribs as I made myself look at the coffin, at the perfect wreath of white roses on top of it, studded with one red one, and my stomach turned. It turned again when the priest invited me up to the podium. There was a flurry of whispers and it knocked the bravado right out of me. I could feel the collar of my shirt sticking to my neck so I hooked a finger in it and tugged, then took a deep breath as I put the piece of paper I was holding on the podium and flattened it with my hand.

I took another deep breath and when I forced myself to look out over the miserable faces, I felt a flower of pain in my chest that seemed to
pop
open when I saw Olivia. I could see her face then, the skin around her eyes red raw from crying, as though someone had taken a brillo pad to it. I had to look away and it made me feel wretched because people must have been doing that all morning and it wasn’t fair; we got to look away while she had to live with it.

I had no intention of saying anything, not because I was scared of being crucified by Molly and everyone at Crofton for being a hypocrite, but because I didn’t want to upset her family. But then her father called last night and pleaded with me to say something. ‘You have to put it behind you, Adamma. You have to,’ he said and the way he said it made me think of the last time I saw him, the afternoon of Scarlett’s party, when he told me to come –
Buy her a present and she’ll forgive you anything!
– and I had to move my cellphone away so that he didn’t hear me heave and sob before I told him that I would.

I hope he wasn’t disappointed, but I read the lyrics to Leonard Cohen’s ‘Anthem’. I shouldn’t imagine it meant much to her family other than that it was pretty. They probably thought, after everything that had happened, that I was too embarrassed to say anything more personal. They probably thought I didn’t even know her any more, but I did. And that broke my heart all over again, because of all the people I wanted to be there to hear it, it was Scarlett. She would have loved it, loved that I was talking about her tattoo, the one no one knows about, the one on the patch of skin ‘where my heart should be’ she’d told me with a grin when she’d first showed it to me, her finger stroking the words. And just for that moment it felt like I was the only person in the world who knew her.

When I finished my reading, I couldn’t go back to my seat – to that pew – so I walked down the aisle and out of the church into the brilliant sun. I intended to keep going – back through the village, past the closed shops and the MISSING posters, past Savernake Forest, with the gas station carnations tied to its locked gates, back to Crofton – but as soon as I stepped outside, I heard cameras clicking and panicked, heading around the side of the church instead.