Sworn Secret (22 page)

‘What?’ whispered Lizzie. He hesitated; there was definitely something there, something he wanted to say. ‘What?’ she asked again.

But he closed his mouth and shook his head.

She stood and held out her hand for his. He took it and hauled himself up, and as he did, her body, her fingers and toes, her insides, everything, began to tingle madly. She stood on her tiptoes to kiss him. She tasted the tears on his lips and was hit with a sudden lust, so intense she imagined her body might burst into flame. She pulled his T-shirt free of his jeans and ran her hands up underneath it. The feel of his skin was warm and smooth. His sandpaper hands were on her cheeks and neck. She lost herself to him. Pushed him backwards against a parked car. Brought his hands to her chest. She wanted him to touch between her legs. She ached all over, possessed by white-hot desire. Anna hadn’t had him like this.

He was all hers.

In the void outside her lust she heard a group of people laughing as they walked past.
Get a fucking room
, a voice said. Then more laughing. She drew back from him. His cheeks were red, her need mirrored in his glazed eyes.

‘Let’s go somewhere,’ she rasped. Her heart thumped; all she wanted was him, but the exhilaration, the nerves and the fear of what she was feeling, of what was about to come, threatened to overwhelm her.

‘Your house?’

Lizzie imagined her mum finding Haydn in her room. Just the thought of Lizzie laying eyes on Haydn had been enough to make her angry. If she walked in on them kissing and more she’d go nuts.

She shook her head. ‘I know where, though.’

‘Where?’

‘Wait and see.’

They burst into excited giggles, the trauma of earlier forgotten as easily as a bad novel. They broke into a run, hand in hand, weaving in and out of people, dogs, kids on scooters, whole families Sunday-strolling to the park or river. Not running to have sex!

They stopped outside the small gate that led to her grandparents’ garden, out of breath, their desire still raging. There was a code pad. She tapped the numbers in, barely able to think, panting and giggling nervously, gripping his hand as if letting go would mean death. The gate creaked open and she grinned at him. Then their faces fell serious with the realization of what they were about to do. Haydn tucked some hair behind her ear and she leant against his hand, turning her face to softly kiss his palm.

They crept in, and Lizzie pulled the gate shut behind them. They heard voices further away in the garden and both of them froze.

‘My parents are having lunch here,’ she whispered. ‘But the shed behind this bush is mine and Anna’s; my grandparents gave it to us. They never use it because they’re both too old. Nobody ever comes up here now. Only me.’ She bent down and crept forward a couple of steps to peer through the leaves that shielded them from the terrace. Her heart was pounding. She could see her mum and dad talking with Uncle Daniel, though she wasn’t close enough to hear what they were saying. Her dad was standing on the grass, and her mum and uncle were sitting at the table.

‘What is it?’ Haydn whispered.

Lizzie flapped a hand to quieten him. He put his hand on her bottom and she stifled a giggle.

‘They definitely won’t come up here,’ she whispered, watching her parents go into the house. She waited. Her uncle got up and followed them in. ‘They’ve gone inside. Come on,’ she said to Haydn over her shoulder. ‘I’ll show you.’

‘What if they get home and you’re not there? You’ll get grief, won’t you?’

‘Ohmigod,’ she said. ‘
So
don’t care!’ She grinned and pushed open the door. It was such a familiar place, with the upturned crate, its stub of candle glued to it with old wax, the ancient tins of soup, the box of toys, the postcards nailed to the walls like paintings, but it had a different feel right then, a frisson, the air molecules within it fizzing with a startling energy.

‘This place is mad!’ laughed Haydn.

Lizzie pushed the crate and box of toys to the side and tried to ignore the vivid memories of playing happily with Anna. She sat on the dusty floor with her arms linked around her knees and smiled up at him. He dropped down beside her, then took her face in his hands and kissed her. Her heart thumped and her stomach pitched with nerves. She lifted her shirt over her head and lay back, suddenly painfully aware of how small her breasts were, how unsexy her plain white bra was, of how many dark moles and freckles splattered her pale skinny body.

Haydn drew in a breath. He stretched out his hand and trailed his fingers from her neck to her tummy button. Then he pulled his own shirt over his head. There wasn’t an ounce of fat on his body and she could see every one of his muscles, defined and toned, not big like a body-builder, more like a long-distance runner, or maybe a tennis player. His skin was clear, but then she noticed his arms. She’d never seen them before, covered as they were with long sleeves, and she gasped in alarm. The skin between his wrists and elbows was laced with scars that criss-crossed like cobweb. Some were raised and white, while others were fresher with rough scabs of brown. Some had been opened up with fresh blood seeping from the edges, no doubt from before in the street when he’d scratched against them, so upset by thoughts of Anna’s death that he obviously hadn’t felt it. There were some really thick ones, but then others that were no more than scratches, the kind you might get from an overly playful kitten. She lifted her hand and ran her fingers over them.

‘What are they?’

‘They’re nothing,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to talk about anything. I just want to kiss you.’ His lust-filled eyes burrowed into her and the cuts and scarring were forgotten. She let her hand drop from his arm to rest on the waistband of his jeans.

‘You know,’ she said, ‘we’ll probably get splinters.’

‘I don’t care.’

Then they kissed again and the passion from the street relit in moments, his hands on her, hers on him, their lips together. Her hands fumbled for the zipper on his jeans. His tore at the catch on her bra. Shiver after shiver of lust. Then he lifted his face from hers.

‘Are you sure?’ he said. His voice was throaty and gruff. His eyes were glazed again. The skin around his lips was red from kissing.

She nodded.

‘Hang on then,’ he said, and reached for his jacket. He rummaged in the pockets.

Lizzie’s stomach churned with nerves. This was it. Losing her virginity; she was suddenly terrified. Was this how she imagined it? Certainly she’d imagined it with Haydn, almost from the memorial onwards, but in all those imagined times it was never in years of dirt on the hard floor of the shed in her grandparents’ garden, toys and memories surrounding them on every side.
No
, she told herself firmly.
This is what you want. This is your new beginning
. She took a deep breath and tried to relax.

Haydn threw his jacket back on the floor and she saw he held a condom in one hand and his iPod in the other. He put the condom on the floor beside them and then he put one headphone into her ear and one into his.

‘I made us a playlist.’

He pressed play, and she recognized the first song immediately. It was the Chris Isaak song that Anna loved. The one they’d talked about in the cemetery. Lizzie remembered Anna singing it in her room at the top of her voice, Lizzie sitting and watching her sister dancing around in her underwear, her womanly hips pushing through white lace knickers, her arms moving gracefully above her head, twisting and twirling, full of music, full of life.

Lizzie smiled, then closed her eyes and waited for him to kiss her.

The song and Haydn engulfed her. Were those really psychedelic lights when he kissed her? Electricity when he touched her? He kissed her breasts, sending blissful quivers through her so that she arched herself up to him, desperate for more.

‘I love you,’ he said. The words floated over the song and settled on Lizzie like three strands of drifting gossamer.

‘I love you, too,’ she whispered.

‘Say it again.’

Lizzie almost burst. ‘Oh Haydn, I love you so much. To the moon and back. I will love you for ever.’

Then he was inside her with a flash of pain.

Afterwards they lay in each other’s arms, their hair full of leaf bits and dirt, her body tingling up and down.

‘Do you think she could see us?’ Lizzie asked him quietly.

‘Yes.’

‘Do you think she was happy for us?’

‘Yes.’

‘I miss her, Haydn.’

He leant up on one elbow and picked a piece of something out of her hair. ‘I meant it when I said I loved you.’

‘Really?’

‘We share something.’

‘Maybe it’s Anna.’

‘No.’ He lay back down with his hands behind his head and closed his eyes. ‘We were meant for each other. She brought us together. This is what was meant to happen. Life is one great plan, one way through it, and sometimes things you can’t explain, get explained.’ He turned his head and smiled at her. ‘Tell me you love me again.’

‘I love you.’ Lizzie lay her head on him and stroked the flat of her hand across his hairless chest. ‘I love you so much I can’t breathe.’

The Witching Hour

Kate’s eyes stung as she stared at the computer screen. The light from the monitor lit the room with an electric white-blue glow and the computer hummed loud against the night-time still of the house. It was very late, into the small hours, when the only thing that moved in silence was the minute hand on the kitchen clock. She’d seen this time of night a lot since Anna died. Sleep was one of those luxuries that had become elusive. Sleep and sex and laughing, luxuries she’d previously taken for granted. If she could sit her young self down and have a chat, she’d tell her to treasure every moment of laughing and making love and sleeping as if they were one-carat diamonds; life without them was arduous.

Kate double-clicked the mouse and the printer whirred into action. She waited for it to spit out the printed page and then bent to pick up the warm piece of paper and added it to her pile.

‘I made you some milk.’

Kate turned to see Jon in his dressing gown, his hair sticking up. He held out a mug.

‘That’s kind of you,’ she said. She turned back to the computer. ‘Did I wake you?’

‘No.’

‘I’m sorry if I did.’

‘You didn’t.’ He pulled up a chair and sat next to her, placing the mug beside the keyboard. ‘I thought you were painting.’

‘No.’ She bit her lip and stared at the screen.

They were silent. When the screensaver flicked on, the room was plunged into darkness. She stared at the Microsoft logo twisting randomly around the black screen.

‘Will you come to bed? It’s past four.’

‘We need to go to the police.’

Jon’s head sank forward and he sighed, then rubbed his eyes.

‘You saw his face, Jon. He did it. It was him.’

‘He’ll deny it,’ said Jon, after a weary pause.

‘So? We’ll prove it.’

‘How? You heard them. He said it wasn’t him. It’s his word against Rebecca’s.’

‘And the film.’

Jon was quiet.

‘He can’t get away with it. He just can’t.’ Her voice was strained and desperate.

Jon took her hand and stroked it. ‘I know he’s guilty too,’ he said. ‘But I can’t see what good it will do anyone to fight a nasty battle. What good will it do us? Or Anna? Her memory. Everyone will be talking about her. My parents, people at school, strangers. It’ll be in the newspapers. We’ll have journalists hanging around.’ He paused. ‘And even if we put ourselves through all of that and he’s found guilty, he’ll only get a year, maybe six months.’

‘No,’ she said, grabbing at her pile of printed papers and thrusting them under Jon’s nose. ‘It’s all here, in the Sexual Offences Act. Here . . .’ She frantically leafed through the paper and snatched at a piece. Then she grabbed the mouse and shook it against the table to get rid of the screensaver and turn the monitor light on. She leant close to the screen to read. ‘Abuse of Position of Trust. If a person in a position of trust – that’s a teacher – over eighteen touches a person
under
eighteen, and that touch is sexual, and that person knows the other is under eighteen, it’s an offence. She was
fifteen
, and he knew that, Jon. At age fifteen, there’s no question . . .’ She rifled for another page. ‘See . . . here. Penetration of a child of fifteen carries a prison sentence of up to fourteen years. Jesus, he’d get ten years just for having Rebecca watch. This isn’t games, Jon. It’s not some minor indiscretion; it’s deadly, deadly serious. You should read this stuff. You should. Even if he wasn’t a headmaster and she wasn’t one of his pupils, having sex with a fifteen-year-old isn’t something wishy-washy. He’s committed an offence and it needs to be handed over to the police.’ She paused. ‘What if this isn’t the first time? What if he does it again? To an eleven-year-old? How would we live with ourselves?’

Jon nodded faintly and took the printouts. He cast an eye over them for a moment or two while Kate sat quietly and watched for his reaction.

‘The look on his face made me sick,’ he whispered, his eyes still reading. ‘The way he denied it. I wanted to kill him.’

Kate leant forward and laid her head on Jon’s shoulder. ‘Why is this happening to us?’

He wrapped his arms around her and rested his cheek against her head. ‘I don’t know. But gunning for Stephen, striking up a lengthy court battle, it’s not going to make it any easier.’

She sat back from him and turned her head to the screen. ‘I must be a very bad person.’

‘You’re not.’

She knew differently, though. She had none of Jon’s control, none of his Herculean ability to turn the other cheek; she wanted Stephen to suffer. Like she was suffering.

‘Jon?’ she whispered.

‘Yes?’

‘What if he killed her?’

Jon tensed.

‘What if she didn’t fall by accident?’ She drew back from him, waiting for an answer, but he said nothing. ‘What if she wasn’t dead when he got to the school?’

Kate didn’t go to bed that night. Jon left her at the computer. Eventually, she moved to the sofa and pulled the throw around her shoulders and laid her head down, stared into the dark, her mind racing helter-skelter over everything that had happened that day.