Sworn Secret (17 page)

‘No,’ she said. ‘I have plans.’ The strength of her voice surprised her and she could tell by the look on her mum’s face that it surprised her too.

‘Excuse me?’ Her mum crossed her arms, and for a moment or two Lizzie considered apologizing. She remembered the fights her mum used to have with Anna. Blazing rows, screaming, things thrown, doors slammed, her mum muttering under her breath as she paced around shaking her head, referring to Anna as
your daughter
when she later filled her dad in on the row. Lizzie loathed listening to them. Confrontation of any sort terrified her. But this wasn’t fair. She wanted to be kissing Haydn, not staying in to play perfect niece to some uncle who couldn’t pick her out in a line-up. Lizzie was starting to fume. She knew
exactly
what seeing him would be like: a pathetic state-the-obvious comment on how much she’d grown, followed by a handful of uncomfortable pauses when Anna was inadvertently alluded to, then pointless questions about school, which GCSEs she was taking, do-you-know-what-you-want-to-do-afterwards, then lastly silence, and she would end up sitting in the living room trying not to look at the spot on the mantelpiece where Anna’s urn had sat, listening to boring adult rubbish. She was nearly sixteen. That was nearly old enough to get married and live in a completely different house. She should be allowed to go to the library whenever she wanted.

‘You know, you can’t tell me what to do all the time. I’m nearly sixteen.’ Lizzie felt a slight buzz as a shot of adrenalin hit her system.

‘No, Lizzie, you’re only just fifteen,’ said her mum, as if she were talking to a three-year-old. ‘You were fifteen in April and it’s only June. But sixteen, four, twenty-seven, it doesn’t change the fact that your dad’s brother is arriving from America and he’s coming here before he goes to your grandparents and you should be here to see him.’ She turned her back on Lizzie and began to peel carrots as if her life depended on it.

‘Well, he’ll have to see me some other time. I’ve. Got.
Plans
!’

Her mum whipped around and pointed the peeler at Lizzie. ‘Don’t you dare raise your voice to me!’ she shouted. ‘I don’t get you. It’s the library! You can go tomorrow. You’re usually so reasonable. Why on earth are you choosing today to be like this? Honestly, Lizzie, I thought you were above all this childish nonsense.’

‘But, you don’t—’

‘Lizzie!’ she shrieked as loud as a gunshot. ‘I can’t talk about this anymore!’

Then she seemed to collapse from the stomach as if she’d been popped. The back of her hand went up to her mouth, and she dropped her head forward. ‘Please, Lizzie,’ she whispered. ‘Please don’t do this.’ Her eyes welled with a fresh batch of tears and Lizzie knew she wasn’t going to see Haydn that day.

Her mum turned and went back to the carrots, the noise of her peeling too faint to crack the angry sadness around them. As Lizzie made to leave the kitchen they heard the sound of the car pulling up outside, then a misplaced cheery hoot of the horn. Lizzie looked back at her mother, who silently swore under her breath, then dragged her sleeve across her eyes and smoothed the front of her shirt. Lizzie ran upstairs before her dad and Uncle Daniel came in. She shut her door and fell on to her bed. What on earth would she say to Haydn: I’m staying in because my mum told me I had to? How pathetic. She felt sick. She sent a text so she wouldn’t have to hear the scorn in his voice.

mums freaking out :s i cant see you sorry xx
:((

Then she stared at the phone in her hand and waited. It bleeped back.

:L all parents are twats . . . talk to you later bye sexxy

She couldn’t help her smile.

bye sexxy

He thought she was sexy!

All the frustration pooled from the argument with her mum evaporated. She collapsed back on her pillow, clutching her phone to her chest and imagined kissing him. Then she lifted the phone and reread the text. Could she brave a call? She chewed on her lower lip as she considered it. Then she dialled, her fingers hesitant, her tummy turning over and over.

‘Hey,’ he drawled.

‘I’m sorry about today.’

‘Your mum wouldn’t let you out?’

‘No, I can’t believe it.’

‘What a total bitch.’

Lizzie flinched with the shock of hearing him call her mum a bitch, and in an instant went from hating her to being fiercely protective of her. ‘My uncle’s arrived from abroad, so, actually, it’s right that I stay in.’

‘You’re going to be bored shitless.’

‘He’s OK. In fact, he’s quite cool.’

‘Oh yeah?’ Haydn sounded like he didn’t believe her.

‘Yeah, he’s, like, this famous artist. He went to art school with my mum and he lives in New York, and he’s really different, with this American accent on some words, and he swears and smokes and stuff. And he wears clothes like leather jackets and beaten-up baseball caps.’

‘He sounds like a prick.’

Lizzie didn’t want to talk to Haydn any more. ‘Well, he’s not.’

‘Hey,’ said Haydn. ‘No need to get pissed off at me. I’m on your side, remember? It was you who was grounded and can’t come out with me, not the other way round.’

‘I know. Sorry.’ Lizzie looked at the ceiling and sighed. ‘Can I see you in the morning?’

‘Sure. Come by my house when you can get out.’

She hung up and lay back on her pillow. She pushed Haydn calling her mum a bitch out of her mind and concentrated on the
bye sexxy.

The following morning she jumped out of bed as soon as she woke and got dressed into Anna’s clothes and her long coat. Haydn annoying her was forgotten; all she could think about was touching and kissing him. She crept down to the silent kitchen and made toast and tea, enough for three, ate and drank hers while she set a tray for her parents. Then she carefully carried the tray upstairs. Her dad wasn’t in bed and her mum was fast asleep. Lizzie stared at her. She thought she looked like an angel. Her face was soft and untroubled; there was even the shadow of a smile across her mouth. Lizzie could see she was dreaming beautiful, happy things and decided to leave her sleeping, but left the tray of tea and toast by the bed so that when she woke up, even though it would be cold, she’d know she’d thought of her.

She went back downstairs and met her father coming in through the front door.

‘Hey Dad,’ she said. He looked dreadful. His hair was scruffed, his clothes crumpled, and his skin grey and puffy with his eyes rimmed red. He was holding a blanket and a pillow.

‘I made you tea,’ she said. ‘It’s upstairs on a tray next to Mum.’

He smiled, but then the smile turned into the saddest face she’d ever seen. ‘Dad?’ She walked over to him and gently touched the top of his arm. ‘Are you OK?’

He didn’t say anything.

‘Where have you been?’

He hesitated and looked at the floor. ‘The car,’ he said finally.

‘You slept in the car? Why?’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said. ‘Thanks for the tea.’

Lizzie told Haydn about her dad sleeping in the car.

‘I mean,’ she said, ‘what’s the point of getting married if you can’t talk your problems through and one of you ends up spending the night in a car?’ She leaned back against his wall and picked at the corner of a Dennis the Menace sticker on the headboard. ‘Like, I could understand if it was a camper van with a bed in it and stuff, but a Ford Focus? How rubbish is that?’

‘My parents never talk to each other,’ Haydn said.

‘Really?’ Lizzie was surprised. ‘But I’ve seen how your mum looks at your dad when he’s doing assembly. She’s always smiling, as if she’s the proudest wife on earth.’

‘It’s an act. He’s a twat. Mum hates him.’

‘He seems OK.’

Haydn shook his head. ‘He’s a total loser. I wish she’d left him when I was a kid; that way I’d never have known him.’

Lizzie couldn’t believe what Haydn was saying. It was awful to hear him talk like this about his dad. Lizzie couldn’t imagine hating her dad. She couldn’t even imagine hating Dr Howe. Mrs Howe, maybe – she could be scary, especially if she caught someone running in the corridors or copying homework.

‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘all parents hate each other. That’s just what happens. Too much stuff gets said and done, stuff you can’t take back and you can’t make better. It’s shit.’

Lizzie wanted to tell him her parents were different. That before Anna they were always laughing and hugging and exchanging whispered words. It was only when one of their daughters died that things went pear-shaped. But Haydn didn’t seem too interested in the conversation any more. He was standing at his desk shovelling tobacco, papers and lighter, some small change and his travel card into his pockets.

‘Let’s get out of here,’ he said.

Haydn’s mum was standing at the bottom of the stairs with her arms crossed. She stared up at them. ‘Are you going out?’ she asked.

Haydn didn’t say anything. When Mrs Howe turned to Lizzie, Lizzie in turn looked at Haydn. But his eyes were on the floor. He looked nervous and about five years old.

‘Haydn? I asked you a question.’

Haydn managed to nod, but still he didn’t speak.

‘We thought we’d go for a walk,’ Lizzie said, quietly.

Mrs Howe’s eyes narrowed and Lizzie wondered if she was going to tell them off for something. ‘I thought you had some work to do for college.’

‘I finished it,’ he mumbled.

‘You said you’d wash the car.’

‘I will.’

Lizzie suddenly got the horrible feeling that they were going to be kept apart for a second time. ‘It’s just a quick walk,’ she blurted. Mrs Howe glared at her. Lizzie felt herself flush. ‘If that’s OK.’

‘I’ll be back in an hour,’ Haydn said. ‘I’ll do the car then, inside too.’

Then he turned and walked past her towards the front door, his eyes fixed on his feet.

‘You know, I’m just not sure you two should be spending time together, Haydn.’

Mrs Howe stared at him, direct and penetrating, like she was trying to talk to him telepathically. Lizzie felt uneasy. The atmosphere between them was charged with something peculiar, like they’d had some awful row before she arrived.

‘We’re just walking, Mrs Howe.’ Lizzie couldn’t believe she’d just spoken so forcefully; it was as if the words had jumped out by accident. Mrs Howe flipped round to look at her. They held each other’s gaze for a few seconds. Then Mrs Howe nodded.

‘Fine,’ she said. ‘But not long, Haydn. There’s something we need to talk about. Go for your walk and come straight home.’ She waited for a response from Haydn, but he didn’t say anything. ‘Did you hear me?’

At last he nodded, but still didn’t look up. Lizzie willed him to get out of the house. Finally he opened the door and went out. Lizzie moved to follow him.

‘So, a walk?’ Mrs Howe said.

Lizzie stopped and nodded.

‘Are you sure, Elizabeth?’

‘Sorry?’

Mrs Howe forced a smile. ‘Going for a walk. With Haydn.’ She paused. ‘Given his and your sister’s relationship.’

Lizzie’s heart stopped.

‘Please don’t look like that; I’m not trying to upset you. It just seems odd, that’s all. I mean, you’re a bright girl; I would have thought you might consider the ramifications of what you’re doing a little more thoroughly. Personally speaking, I don’t think it’s healthy.’ The smile slipped off her face. Lizzie dropped her head and walked past Mrs Howe towards the door.

‘It’s just a walk,’ she mumbled.

‘Fine,’ said Mrs Howe. ‘Oh, and Elizabeth?’

Lizzie stopped and turned to face her.

‘Anna’s scarf suits you, by the way.’

Stress, Lies and Videophone

‘I think we’re making a mistake,’ said Jon.

They stood on the front doorstep. Kate shivered as if it were February, her stomach churning.

‘We have to,’ she said. ‘I can’t sleep. Or eat. I can’t think. You and I are fighting. I have to talk to him.’

‘What on earth are you going to say?’

Kate had no idea. She lifted her hand to ring the bell.

‘Please, Kate,’ he whispered. ‘Let’s go. We haven’t thought this through. We need to be absolutely straight—’

‘Kate, Jon, are you all right?’ asked Angela, interrupting Jon as she opened the door. ‘You sounded so upset on the phone.’

Kate couldn’t look her in the eyes. Every muscle had frozen solid and, standing on the doorstep of the man she hated more than any other in the world, under the searching eyes of his wife, she suddenly worried that Jon was right. That this was totally the wrong thing to do, that the right thing to do, the only thing to do, was to leave the putrid business buried. The night before, when they’d fought so fiercely, she’d been certain, but now she was anxious and terrified, unsure of what to say, and wondering if she’d dug her heels in too quickly. She’d got so blind angry. That was the problem, like always. Her anger erupted too fast to let reason get a look-in and the things he’d said last night made her so furious she’d have argued the weight of a kilo. He called the sewage on the phone an affair, for God’s sake!

‘It’s not an
affair
! An
affair
is what people have when they fall in love! When they’re both adults. Anna was a child! It was fucking abuse, Jon. He fucking abused your daughter.’

‘You saw the film. It wasn’t rape. She looked like she was—’

‘Don’t!’ Kate had screamed, blocking her ears with her hands like a child.

‘For crying out loud, what do you want him to say to us? There’s nothing he can say that will make any of it any easier. It will only make things worse, Kate. Please don’t do this to us. Don’t do this to Anna, don’t drag her name through the dirt like this.’

‘So what do
you
want to do?’ she retorted. ‘Stick your head in the sand like a bloody ostrich? Cross your fucking fingers and hope it goes away? It’s not going away! This vileness will be with us for ever. That man needs to be brought to justice. He needs to be held accountable. He’s a headmaster and he had sex with a pupil. An underage one.
Our
daughter. They should lock him up and throw away the key. He shouldn’t be allowed near children again.’