The Last Summer of Us (19 page)

I wonder if it did.

I'm different, I think. I didn't feel it happen, didn't see it – but something in me has changed. Amy's text about my father might have broken the me of two days ago: the Funeral Limpet, who was pretending so hard to be something she was not. She was the thin ice over the winter river; the single glass sheet that covers the deepest well. I am…something else. Someone else.

There are no ghosts. Nothing looming over me; not now. And somewhere in the distance, far ahead of me in the dark, I can see a light.

A single lantern, with a little flame that flickers and then steadies.

Cracked and crazed I may still be, but maybe – just maybe – the cracks are showing signs of growing smaller. Not by much, not yet, but give them time.

Perhaps I'm not made of glass after all. Perhaps I'm made of something stronger.

I know. I'm as shocked by that thought as you are.

“My hand? Oh, yeah, it's fine,” I mumble, rubbing at my knuckles. And it is, which presumably proves that I hit like a girl. What were you expecting?

“You could've broken something.”

“Yeah, Becca's face. What a loss
that
would've been.”

He doesn't answer, but when I look round, he's watching me. His eyes are searching my face; taking in every part of it. Drinking me in. He's still sitting there, silent, watching me, when Steffan reappears.

“How the hell can you see anything?” he says, setting down a small round metal tray with glasses on it. “Twinkly bloody lanterns, my arse. It's too dark.”

“It's called night, Steff. You see, when the sun goes to bed…”

“Alright, Limpet. Don't get smart or I won't tell you what just happened.”

“You went in to order food and got lost? You had to go and hunt down the cow for your pie all by yourself?”

Jared joins in. “Cow? Don't know why you bothered – there's a whole load of ostriches up on the hill…”

We dissolve into giggles. Steffan tries to scowl – but his frown breaks and he starts shaking his head and laughing. “And I suppose we'll be using you as bait, will we?”

“At least they like
me
,” Jared laughs.

“Let's see you being smug about it when they're eating you, right?”

“Are you planning on throwing me to them whole, or just feeding them my dismembered limbs?”

“Not sure yet.” Steffan takes a swig of his drink and wags a finger across me at Jared. “Sleep with one eye open, boyo.”

“Enough!” I hold up my hands in surrender. “What's this amazing thing that you were threatening to not tell us?” I nudge Steffan, who lurches sideways in an attempt not to spill his drink. Jared – automatically forgiven, as always – reaches across me and clicks his fingers impatiently until Steff passes him a glass.

“So you know how Gethin has a band?”

“How could we forget?” I finally get my drink.

The saga of Gethin's Band is an epic, sprawling tale of love, betrayal and a crashing inability to find a drummer who can keep time…reaching as far back as the days when Steffan and Jared were in football club with him. Since then, Gethin's band has been through good times (their demo getting played by one of the new music DJs in Cardiff) and bad (pretty much all the rest of it). Lately, though, they appear to have got themselves together and have even been playing
in public
. Once or twice, members of said public have even
paid for the privilege of hearing them
– which I'm sure is as much of a shock to Gethin and company as it is to the rest of us.

The long and the short of Steff's news is that somehow (I suspect massive bribery on the part of Gethin's father), the band have found themselves on the bill of a not-insignificant local music festival, tomorrow night… The catch being that, technically, said festival is supposed to be vaguely folk-flavoured. Gethin, in his wisdom, has decided that the way around this is to have someone play the violin onstage with them.

Guess who he's asked?

Even after a heavy dose of pub pie and beer, Steffan's still feeling far too hyped up and sociable to even think about sleeping. So while I would happily have voted for bed (a bed! Even a crappy hostel bed!) instead, we're watching the surfers build a beach bonfire. Well, I tell a lie. Jared and I are watching them, sitting in an old fibreglass dinghy a little way along the beach, while Steffan buzzes about being the life and soul of the party. Maybe he just doesn't want to go to bed, because if he goes to bed and closes his eyes, when he opens them it'll be tomorrow, and however exciting this festival thing might be, however hard he's trying not to think about it, there's the minor matter of his mother's grave to think about first – not a million miles along the road from here.

The surfers are – as you'd expect from a bunch of show-off lifestylers, as opposed to proper surfers (I'll stop now, honest) – pretty bloody useless, and burning logs keep falling off the top of the pile they've built, only to be kicked back in by whoever happens to be closest to them. Predictably, they're all wearing sandals, so I'm figuring there's a lot of burned toes happening. Jared snorts with amusement every now and again – I think he's hoping one of them falls in.

Occasionally, I catch a glimpse of Steffan, beer in hand, the firelight flickering across his face. He looks happy enough for now, and I'm glad.

Jared's sitting at the other end of the dinghy, with the glow of the fire catching the curve of his brow, his nose, his cheekbones. His legs are stretched out along the inside of the boat, his feet almost touching mine. Whoever the dinghy belongs to, they're lucky it hasn't rained in a while: most summers, a boat left the right way up on the beach would be full of water in a couple of days. It would sit there, going gently green inside. As it is, it's full of sand and shells; someone's even tried to build a tiny sandcastle between the narrow plastic planks that serve as seats. One tower remains, slumped sideways across itself. A tiny paper flag is still sticking out of the ramparts at a wacky angle. Go home, castle, you're drunk.

There's a shuffling sound in the sand nearby and we both look over – just in time to see Surfer Dude Number Four throwing up emphatically behind an abandoned windbreak. At least, I really hope it's abandoned – or there's a family in for a nasty surprise when they toddle on down to the beach tomorrow. Surfer Dude surveys his handiwork, wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and sets off back towards the bonfire. It's a circuitous route, given he can't even walk in a straight line, and he stops every few steps to take a swig from the bottle he's still holding.

Closer to the fire, there are raised voices. A scuffle. Sound and fury; fists. Always the same. Bruises and regret.

The sound of breaking glass somewhere close by makes me jump – and suddenly Jared's hand is on my shoulder.

“Hey…” It's all he says.

The bottle of beer I was holding lies smashed at my feet; the remains of my drink bubble away into the base of the boat and around the sad little sandcastle, forming a frothing white moat.

“Why do they do it?” I ask. “What's it for? Like that guy…” I wave in the direction of Surfer Dude – who, after an epic journey, has almost made it back to the safety of the firelight. As we watch, he slumps onto the sand, still waving his bottle.

“Because.” The boat creaks as Jared shifts his weight. “They do it because.”

“Because? That's it?”

“I'm not the one to ask, am I? And besides, you're not really asking why
they
drink, are you?”

“I guess not.”

I picture Becca, sneering at me. I picture us, the three of us, sitting up on the hill by the pillbox. I picture Jared, carrying a lantern and setting it down between us and I figure it's okay.

“You know about my mother, right?”

And I tell him. I tell him about the drink. I tell him about the slurring and the forgetting and the falling down stairs. I tell him about the nights I had to put her to bed because she couldn't do it herself. I tell him about all the times I was the parent and she was the child. I tell him about the bottles hidden around the house: in wardrobes and cupboards and tucked into corners. I tell him the truth of it – because what's the point in pretending? I tell him all the things I've carried with me, quiet and close, the things I couldn't bear to think about, let alone say out loud; the things I didn't even realize I had words for – and I know I can, because of the pillbox and the shower block and Barley Vale; because of the lantern; because of the bonfire and the night and the sound of the waves on the beach. The fire burns it and the darkness smothers it and the waves wash it all away.

He sits and listens and I talk and I talk and I talk and it's all pouring out of me suddenly. Things I've never told anyone; not Amy, not Steff. No one. And now I'm telling Jared and I can't stop. Might as well try to stop the tide going out. Might as well try and hold the whole beach in my hands.

I tell him about the fights. About the time I came home and found both my parents drunk and bruised and my father telling me to pick a side. I tell him how my dad locked all the doors and sat down at the table; how he hid my phone and pulled the landline out of the wall and how my mother just sat on the floor and stared into space. How I climbed out of the window and ran to our neighbours, and how he's never forgiven me yet. Did I pick the right side? I wonder. Was there ever going to be one? I couldn't say, because
this
doesn't feel like winning.

I tell him how I know everyone in town knows about the drinking. How they probably knew long before me. How it's unfair that a town which thinks it's fun to go out on a Friday night and get collectively hammered can stand and point fingers on a Monday morning. The sheer injustice of the comments behind my back. The whispers I didn't pick up on until it was too late, and I can't decide if I wish I had noticed them sooner. Because you shouldn't wish for things you wouldn't like. But what would I rather: that people in our stupid little town, where everyone knows everybody else's business before they know it themselves, were laughing at my mother, or at me? Which is worse? To be the one at fault or the one tainted by someone else's mistakes?

And when the flood subsides and I don't have the words any more, I stop. I have to. The light from the bonfire casts long, distorted shadows and if I squint I can just about make out Steffan with his arm slung around the shoulder of one of the surfer dudes. He's still laughing, and I'm sure I can smell cigars. He's obviously been making friends and handing out the rest of the box. Good riddance, I say. They're vile things, and not nearly as cool as he thinks they are (although naturally the surfers think they're The Best Thing Ever). Every now and again, the fire flares blue and green, shooting up sparks from the salt in the burning driftwood.

Jared waits the longest time, and then I hear him sigh. He rolls his empty bottle between the palms of his hands. The glass catches the light from the bonfire and glitters between his fingers. Grains of sand fall to the floor of the boat like stardust. “Can I tell you something?” he says, and it's not really a question. It's a plea; a prayer for absolution. Jared's opening the shutters, unlocking the doors. Letting the mask drop – even if it's only by a fraction.

“Sure.”

“You won't like it.”

“Oh.”

What's he going to tell me? He's already with someone. He's with Becca. Ha! No. Not that. But what if…what if he tells me that he's had enough and he's leaving too? That Steffan leaving, that his mother and her newly-planned life without him, they're all it takes for him to shrug and pack his bags and disappear. What if he's leaving too? What if, what if – what if I lose them both?

He's watching me. Waiting for me to put my listening face on. I'm sure I have one; I've always used it in chemistry, even when I haven't got a clue what the hell is going on around me. Maybe it's not my Listening Face so much as my…
actual
face. Just my face. Still. It'll have to do. I arrange my face into what I hope looks like the kind of face someone who's listening would wear, and I listen. After all, he's listened to me, hasn't he?

“It was at the funeral. Your mum's,” he adds – just in case I don't know which one he means. “At the funeral, in the church. I was thinking about you…”

(Oh really? No. Stop it.
Listening Face
.)

“…and I was thinking about Steff…”

(Ah. Bugger. Stand down, soldier.)

“…and about his mum's funeral…”

(Well. That escalated quickly…)

“…and about how life would go if mine wasn't here any more either.”

(Don't wish for things you wouldn't like, Jared. Sound advice there. I even gave it to myself about three minutes ago.)

“I know it sounds bad. It's just…I don't know.”

“‘Bad' is one way of putting it, yes.”

“Forget it. Forget I said anything, alright?” He's still rolling the bottle between his hands – faster now, back and forth, back and forth. Listening Face didn't do the trick, obviously. My hands have gone cold and hot at the same time, and there's a lump in my throat. I swallow it back down and I curl my fingers into fists because
look at him
. Rolling the bottle between his hands, his head down and looking like he's all alone in the world. There's a reason he's telling me this and not Steffan – and much as I'd love to think it's because he felt the same thing I did earlier on the wall, I know he's telling me because he doesn't think he can tell Steffan.

Why doesn't he think he can tell Steffan?

He feels like he's all alone, and he needs someone to show him that's not true.

“It's not just my mum,” he says, and thank god the Listening Face seems to be holding up. “It's my dad too. If they were gone – just gone – then there wouldn't be all this. I'd be free, wouldn't I? I wouldn't be their kid. I'd just be me. Whoever that's supposed to be.” He says the last part with a laugh; tries to hide it behind his hand as he rubs his jaw.