Skin Deep (34 page)

When we broke up from school for the Christmas holidays, Beth’s parents let her throw a party for her friends. Not a big affair, about fifteen of us including Max. Food and soft drinks and silly party games, the kind you can only play at our age at Christmas because it’d be too uncool at any other time.

Safe and secure with people who were used to my face, I could forget and get as much into it as they did. Except I could always see Ryan’s ghost in the corner of my eye, lounging on the sofa and laughing at me as I lost another round of Pin the Tail on Rudolph. And missing him made the breath tight in my chest.

‘Are you thinking about him again?’ Beth asked as I helped her plate up the profiteroles in the kitchen. She didn’t say his name; it wasn’t necessary.

‘All the time.’

‘You’ve coped really well,’ she said. ‘Most people think you’re totally over him.’

But missing Ryan was my private thing. I didn’t want that on display for others. So I didn’t cry over him, except sometimes in the solitude of my own room on bad nights. He wouldn’t want me to anyway. But a little piece of me was never there with the rest, like a smashed china vase where the last chip can’t be found.

I never let anyone see how many times a day I checked my phone at first, hoping he’d text even though he’d said that would only make it worse. How often I sat there wondering whether to ignore what he’d said and call anyway. How, as the weeks went on and he didn’t get in touch, I imagined him finding some other girl and what they might be doing together – I hated her so much, whoever she was. I wanted to shred her face with my nails. At other times I was scared for him that his mum was ill and he was alone, having to cope with that in a strange place. That he needed a hug and there was no one to do that now.

He’d told me to forget him. There was no chance. Every day the wound opened fresh when he wasn’t there to tell some funny thing to, or to make me laugh with his stupid random comments.

After we opened the presents on Christmas morning, I was sitting in the kitchen helping Mum with the vegetables when I heard the text tone on my phone. I didn’t pick it up immediately. It’d been going off all morning with messages from Beth and Max and the crowd at school. When I did look at it after I put the sprouts in the pan, I stopped breathing for a moment.

One missed message.

Ryan.

My thumbs shook as I texted back.

For the rest of the day I kept the phone in my pocket, hoping he’d call, but he didn’t and the missing-him wound cracked open again.

Late in January, Cole and I sat in the snug of a canalside pub.
We’d left Mum on the boat. He wanted to talk to me alone.

‘Got some news for you, kiddo, and I want you to be honest with me about how it sits with you.’

‘You leaving again?’

He laughed, nervously for Cole. ‘No, the opposite.’

‘You’re sticking around then?’

‘Yeah. That all right with you?’

I took a mouthful of my pint. ‘Yeah, I guess.’

He watched me carefully. ‘Sure?’

I grinned and shoved him. ‘Course I am, you stupid git.’

He chuckled and shoved me back. ‘Got some other news for you too then. Me and Karen have been talking. About us, about you. Kaz has kind of come round to my way of thinking.’

‘Yeah?’

‘She’s fed up with watching you prowling round the place like a caged bear so we’re gonna look for a house and make a base for ourselves. It’ll take a while. We’ve got to find the right spot, get jobs, sell the boat for a deposit –’

I burst out laughing. ‘Are you telling me you two are getting a mortgage?’

He grimaced. ‘Guess so. It comes to us all, growing up. Just took me and her a bit longer.’

‘You really want this?’

‘It’s time. Long past time. And you can get another job then. Make some mates of your own. She does see that, you know, that you hate the moving on. Or she does now.’

Pity she saw it too late.

‘So what do you reckon?’ he asked.

I raised my glass to him. ‘I reckon we celebrate.’

Valentine’s Day shouldn’t be in February, I’ve always thought.
Not in a month with ice on the wind and stinging rain. It should be in green spring or hot, lazy summer. But what do I know? When other girls were getting cards and cuddly bears, I didn’t even bother to check the post.

I sat slumped in front of the TV with Charlie watching midmorning cartoons.

‘Jenna,’ Mum called. ‘Something here for you.’

I went through to the hall. ‘What?’

‘A letter,’ she said, passing me an envelope and going back to the kitchen.

The name and address on the envelope were mine, but there was no postcode.

I opened it.

A card with a teddy bear holding a big red heart in its hands, no words in the card, just one X.

I turned the envelope over. The postmark was smudged and I couldn’t make out where it was from.

Ryan?

Who else?

But he wouldn’t know our postcode . . .

I went up to my bedroom to think. If it wasn’t him and I texted him . . .

But what if it was?

It took me an hour to decide and hold my breath and send him a single kiss in return.

He didn’t reply.

When the roses began to flower again after Easter, I went to the white Iceberg in Lindsay’s garden to cut a rose to take to the bridge, and I sat and talked to her for a while.

‘I want to tell you something, Lindz. I don’t think back when you were alive that I’d have had the courage to say this to you. Or that I even knew it myself. You were always the one who drew people to you. The pretty one. So confident. So sure of yourself. Like the sun, and I always felt bleached out trailing behind you.’

I paused and fingered a perfect bud.

‘But you weren’t always nice, Lindz. Or kind. The stuff you used to say about Beth and people like her. How you ripped them because they weren’t as pretty or popular as you. You never looked beyond that. Never looked at what’s great about people inside. If the wrapper didn’t look right, you weren’t interested.’

I took a deep breath.

‘So what I want to say to you is this. Ugly people do have feelings too, Lindz. We’re just like the rest of you, and I think everyone should know that.’

Fast-forward

The sun wakes me up early.
I smile at the view through the window – wisps of mist clearing to blue sky. It’s Saturday and the whole weekend stretches before me.

For now, I have the house to myself, listening to the quiet disturbed only by the birds chirping outside. In half an hour I’ll get up and let Raggs out and make breakfast. I’ll take him for a walk and then maybe go for a long ride on Scrabble. Until then I sit and listen to the morning.

When I get back from riding, Mum wants me to go into Whitmere with her. We’re halfway there when my phone buzzes.

I stare and stare at the phone screen. At the caller ID display. Then I text

I stare and stare again. Are they passing through on their way to somewhere? I can’t believe they could be coming back to stay. I can’t let myself because if I do and they’re not, that would kill me all over again.

I text him back

And suddenly it’s a whole different day, charged with expectation and the torture of waiting.

When it’s finally time and I walk down to the canal, I stop just short of the towpath and peek out from the branches. But there’s no boat, just a long expanse of orange as far as I can see.

I check my watch. Three o’clock and the sun is heavy and lazy in the blue. I know now how fast narrowboats travel and I should be able to see them if they’re coming.

I sit on the towpath with my back against an alder tree and I wait, and wait.

The minute hand on my watch crawls round, but there’s still no sign of the boat in the distance.

I wonder if it’s a joke. Could he have changed so much that he’d do that to me? It’s over six months since I saw him. He could have grown into someone else entirely, got harder, lost that side that makes him care about the people who need him.

My watch reads three-thirty after what feels like hours of waiting. I look up and down the canal again. It’s as boat-free as it’s been since I got here.

They could be stuck at a lock. But wouldn’t he have called?

The hum of insects on the water and the birdsong from the trees are drowned out by the thrum of a motorbike. I notice the new noise half-heartedly. It’s a familiar sound, one of those small bikes that the farm lads ride. Probably someone on his way to milking.

The bike stops on the bridge and the rider kills the engine.

I look round in surprise.

A figure comes down the steps. Jeans, heavy boots, a motorcycle jacket under one arm and a helmet under the other. I can’t see his face – the sun dazzles it out. But I recognise the walk.

He comes closer. He’s a little taller, I think, and broader in the shoulders. As he steps under the shade of the trees, I see that the fairer tints are back in his hair now and he’s got that honey tan back.

I can’t move.

‘Hey,’ he says and I see he’s nervous. His eyes greet me and flicker away. He reminds me of those moorland ponies again, ready to shy and bolt.

My mouth feels like I’m chewing cotton wool.

He sits next to me, a few inches separating us. My skin tingles and I want to touch him, but I can’t move and I don’t know if he wants me to.

‘I missed you,’ he says, looking at his boots. The toe caps are scuffed. Work boots, I think. ‘How are you?’

‘I missed you too,’ I say and my voice is stilted and sticks in my claggy throat.

He turns his face to me and a smile grows there. Slow at first, but it spreads. Infectious, because I feel the corners of my frozen mouth lift.

‘What’ve you been up to?’ he asks.

‘You first.’

My eyes flit away because his don’t leave my face and it’s too much and not enough.

‘Been busy. A lot’s changed. Mum’s better, for now at least. Her and Cole are back together.’

I find a smile for that news. It comes unbidden.

‘They sold the boat and bought a house.’

My jaw drops.

He gives a little laugh. ‘Yeah, I know. I couldn’t believe it when they told me either. It’s only a small place, but it’s got a garden and a real kitchen. Mum’s got herself a shop in a craft centre. She rents one out to sell her jewellery and Cole got a job at a garden centre doing the deliveries. Hey, we’ve even got a TV now.’

So why are you here? To tell me you’re never coming back?

‘What about you? Your turn.’

I found enough voice to answer. ‘Oh, exams. Just finished.’

‘They go OK?’

‘I think so.’

‘Anything else?’ His eyes search my face and I don’t know why.

‘I suppose I’ve been getting into the loop again. Getting out more. I made some new friends and I see a lot of Beth and Max.’

‘They still together?’

I nod.

So does he. ‘That’s good. They’re all right, those two.’ He pauses and watches a mallard flap out of the water and waddle along the opposite bank. ‘And you? You seeing anyone?’

I shake my head, but he’s still staring at the duck and he doesn’t see me. ‘No.’

‘Oh.’ And he keeps looking at that duck. ‘You got my card, didn’t you?’

‘Yes.’ I want to ask . . . it takes me a while, but . . . ‘What about you? Are you?’

‘Nope. Haven’t wanted to.’

A dragonfly buzzes low over the water and it’s my turn to stare out over the canal.

‘I got my job back,’ he says, facing me again now I’m not looking at him. ‘At the marina. Once we got our new place, I went down there. Pete took me on and he’s got me on a day-release thing at college to learn the electrical stuff. Bill’s getting a bit stiff with arthritis and they could do with another pair of hands for the heavy work. It’s a bit of a trek – our house is about twenty miles from here – but Cole bought me the bike. I started back there last week.’

I draw my breath in.

‘Oh, and I forgot. Mum and Cole are trying for a baby. She reckons it might not happen. Says she’s probably too old, but Cole says you never know and it’s worth a shot. Be good if they do have a kid. He’s a great dad.’

Ryan touches my hand like a cat pats for attention, light, a brush and no more. I drag my eyes back to him.

‘When I said goodbye, there was something I wanted to say, but I didn’t. Because I didn’t think it could happen and it wouldn’t have been fair.’