The Last Summer of Us (2 page)

“It's a tree, Jar. It's, y'know…round?” I edge sideways, keeping my back against the tree. Making a full circuit of it, I slide all the way round and back to the front so I'm next to him again, on the other side to where I started. He doesn't seem impressed.

“Jokes? Today?”

“Piss off.” I was doing so well.

We stand there, neither of us speaking for a while. And then he says: “Dad's back.”

“That was quick. I thought he had another year before he got out?”

“Good behaviour, wasn't it?” Jared sticks his hands in his pockets. “Bet you a tenner he gave them the speech.”

“He's got a speech?”

“Probably. He's had enough practice by now, hasn't he?”

“Are you okay?”

“Don't have much choice, do I?”

“What does your mum think?”

You'd have to be standing as close to him as I am to notice the way his jaw sets and his shoulders tighten before he answers. “Mum's moving in with Marcus.”

Marcus is Jared's mum's boyfriend – the latest in a long line. The first time they met, Marcus took the time to sit Jared down and tell him, man to man, that he had absolutely no interest in building a relationship with him; that his mother was the only part of this package he was interested in. That he already had enough kids of his own and wasn't interested in raising someone else's, let alone some
scumbag convict's boy
, thank you very much.

We don't like him a whole lot. Jared's Jared, so he'll tell you it isn't a big deal…but wow. I mean,
wow
.

So Jared's father is back from his latest stay at Her Majesty's pleasure just in time to see his estranged wife move in with the latest loser, and as usual Jared's stuck in the middle and watching the whole show from his grandparents' place, which is where he spends most of his time these days.

And I thought I had problems.

The car ride is uncomfortable. Prickly. Silent. My father stares out of one window, I stare out of another. Never on the same side: why break the habit?

I never realized how big the space my mother filled was. You could put your arms around it and your hands wouldn't meet on the other side. And without her, without something solid in that space, my father and I are absolute strangers. Strangers with the same last name, and the same nose, sitting beside each other in the same car and mourning the loss of the same soul… But strangers.

A five-minute car journey has never, in the history of mankind, taken so long.

I picked the pub for the wake. It has roses round the door, rusty-red against the white paint, like blood on sheets.

I can't go in.

I was never going to.

Instead, I walk out of the car park, and turn right into the road. It's quiet – it always is round here – and even though I can hear traffic on the bypass, there's not a car to be seen. So I walk in the road, and I walk, and suddenly, without quite knowing when it happened, I'm running. Running in the stupid black shoes and the stupid black dress, away from the stupid pub and the stupid wake and the stupid, stupid people, right down the middle of the road.

I'm running to the bridge. To the river.

Thanks to the hot summer, the river's low and the ground on the other side of the wooden stile is dry, cracked and dusty soil instead of ankle-deep mud like it is in winter. There are potholes in the path where there are normally puddles, and pebbles big enough to turn your ankle over if you're not watching where you put your feet; forks branch off into the trees on either side, with the river close enough for you to land in if you don't know where you're going. But I do. I've spent my whole life here – here, or wishing I was here – and when I come to the tree with the twisted branch and the old nail sticking out of it, I know I'm almost safe and I step off the path and into the undergrowth.

It's cool in the trees, out of the sun. The shadows have kept the moss damp, and it's green and soft. There are ferns everywhere, and the heels of my shoes keep catching in tangles of ivy – so I take them off, and just hope no one's been chucking bottles about again. I trod on a roll of barbed wire here once when I was a kid. It's not an experience I'm keen to repeat, I'll be honest. But treading on the moss is like treading on pillows, and it tickles. Something pulls on the hem of my dress and I don't care. I don't care if it gets torn to shreds. Instead, I pick up my shoes and push through the branches, sliding down a steep grassy bank that smells like summer should…and there they are.

Steffan and Jared, waiting at the river's edge. With beer.

They've taken off their ties and their jackets and hung them on a tree. Jared's shirt is hanging open and he's sitting on a rock in the sun with his head tipped back and his eyes shut. Steffan (less movie star and a bit more…movie-set builder – and as self-conscious about it as ever) has his sleeves rolled up and is standing right by the water, poking at the bottles they've stashed in there to cool. It feels like there's half a conversation hanging in the air – bitten off and swallowed the second I appeared. I have enough grossed-out experience to realize that I probably don't want to know what they were talking about. Steffan takes one look at me and laughs.

“Come through the hedge backwards, did you?”

I'm not rising to it. Nope. Not me. But that's not because it's today, and it's not because I need to be someone else any longer. It's because I'm safe and I'm home and they were waiting for me.

And there's just one thing I have to do right now.

I pick my way down to the water…and standing right on the edge alongside Steffan, I throw my shoes as far into the river as I can.

Jared opens his eyes when he hears the splash and sits up. Steffan's mouth drops open.

I give them both my best smile and grab Steffan's open bottle of beer out of his hand, take the biggest swig I can manage, and throw myself down onto the bank.

“You're welcome,” says Steffan, pointedly. He's not that bothered. There's more beer in the river. Besides, he's had plenty of time before now to get used to me, and today isn't the day he's going to have a strop. People who don't know any better usually think we're brother and sister when they see us together. Might as well be, I suppose – although I'm pretty sure my chin is nowhere near the size of his.

Neither of them tries to talk to me. Neither of them asks me how I'm feeling; if I'm alright, if there's anything they can do. Thank god for that. One more apology, one more lie, one more well-meaning sympathetic face and I'm going to smack someone. But Jared and Steffan, they wouldn't. Not here, not now. They know what I need more than anything.

Beer and the river and my friends.

Maybe not in that order.

So we're silent, and Steffan gets himself another beer from the collection they've wedged in the water with a pile of stones and opens it, and the current hurries on past us like we don't matter and that's just how it should be.

When we've been there long enough for the sun to have moved all the way round, and for there to be more empty bottles in the plastic bag beside Jared's rock than there are in the water, Steffan looks up from the label he's peeling off his bottle and says: “You know what we should do? Road trip.”

Jared raises an eyebrow.

And I've had just about enough beer to say yes.

Beeping. There's a beeping sound. Somewhere.

Somewhere in my room.

It's annoying.

Beep-beep-beep-beep-bloody-beep.

Being the genius that I am, I have forgotten to switch off my alarm clock and it's now jingling merrily away at me from the other side of the room, telling me it's funeral o'clock. Which it's not.

I'm still going to have to get out of bed, just to shut it up. I resent this. A lot.

Seven thirty in the morning is an ungodly time to be out of bed in the summer holidays. Until yesterday, I wasn't entirely sure there
was
a seven thirty in the morning in the summer holidays; I just sort of assumed the clocks skipped from somewhere around one a.m. through to nine o'clock or so. To punish my alarm clock for spoiling this illusion, I stick it in my cupboard. That'll teach it.

Seven thirty. The only way I can possibly cope with this is coffee.

In the kitchen, I find my Aunt Amy. Or most of her, at least: she's perched on the window sill and has somehow managed to contort most of her upper body out through the open window. When I walk in, she twitches violently enough to almost fall out completely – but she catches her balance and comes back inside…along with a plume of cigarette smoke.

“Subtle,” I say, filling the kettle.

“Don't.” She shakes her head, looking embarrassed. There are dark circles under her eyes and she looks like she's aged five years overnight. Well. Maybe not overnight. Maybe over two weeks.

“You could just go out in the garden, you know.”

“It's too early to be sensible. Are you putting the kettle on?”

I like my aunt. She's stupidly disorganized and is always late for everything, which makes her a lot like me. I haven't seen her smoke since I was little – she gave up years ago – but she just lost her big sister, so I guess it's not exactly shocking. Even so…

There's a pile of bin bags in the corner of the kitchen which definitely wasn't there when I went to bed. I shoot a look at Amy – who's taken the mug I passed her and is apparently trying to inhale her coffee – and she shoots one back.

“What's that?” I ask, pointing to the pile.

There's a second's pause. The look that crosses her face is complicated and I don't really understand it.

“I thought it might be an idea to…get rid of some old things.” She sets the mug down on the table, and her hands are shaking.

“Mum's things?” I nudge the bottom bag with my toe. There's something heavy and solid inside it;
lots
of heavy, solid things, and they clank as they shift in the bag. I recognize the sound. Bottles. Lots of bottles. Bottles from where? Everywhere. Bottles from under the sink, from under the stairs. From the airing cupboard or the garden shed.

She pretends she didn't hear the sound. “No, not that. That's not what I meant. It's too soon, and I wouldn't do that without you. Or your dad.” She adds him like he's an afterthought, which I guess he is, still asleep in the living room with the door closed. His world has shrunk to just that one room. He won't sleep in their…his…bedroom. It took him a week to even set foot in there afterwards. I changed the bed, picking up all the sheets off the mattress and the floor where they'd fallen and throwing them straight into the outside bin. What else was I supposed to do?

“Listen…” She pulls a chair out from the table and sits down, rubbing the bridge of her nose. “I'm going to ask you something, and I don't want you to take it the wrong way. So can you, I don't know, try not to be a teenager for a minute?”

“Charming!”

“You know what I mean.”

“What is it?”

“I think you might want to…not be here for a few days. Can you go stay with a friend, maybe?”

“Can't I stay with you?”

“I'm going to be here.”

“Oh.”

I should have picked up on it when I saw the cigarette. I sit down at the table with her. “You're going to be here? And you're asking me not to be? What's going on?”

“Look, your dad… He needs something. Some help. You know that, don't you?” She pauses, obviously not sure whether she should wait for me to answer. She decides to hedge her bets.

“He can't cope and I'm worried that—” ­I cut across her. “You know what? I can't hear this right now. I'm sorry. I just…can't.”

A look of pain crosses her face and I regret it. I regret everything she's having to deal with and I regret the words that just came out of my mouth, the ones that sound like I don't care. I do care. That's the thing. I couldn't care
more
, not less. She bites her lip and her face smoothes itself out, the lines and the creases disappearing behind a mask. “There's someone coming to see him later. A doctor.”

“And?”

“And I don't know what happens after that. A lot of it will depend on your dad, I suppose. How he wants to take things forward, what he wants to do.”

“Oh.” I stare into the bottom of my mug. The last few drops of coffee have started to dry into rings. Can you read coffee rings like tea leaves? I wonder. Will they tell me the future if I look hard enough? Will I like it?

Amy's watching me, waiting. She's treating me like a bomb carved out of crystal: one jolt and it's over for everyone in a twenty-mile radius. Maybe twenty-five. Her eyes are red. She's been crying, and I should say something – anything – but I've had almost two weeks of everybody else's feelings, and I don't think I can handle any more. So I don't. And when she asks me again whether there's anyone I can stay with, I say: “There's Steffan…”

There's always Steffan. Solid. Dependable. My Steffan. Ever since I fell down the steps on my first day of secondary school, and found myself being picked up again and set back on my feet by a boy with hair that stuck out in fifteen different directions and a school tie that had been cut off so short he could barely even tie it. He was an impossibly confident Year Eight compared to me, lost and bruised and embarrassed on my first day and scrambling to pick everything up and shove it back into my bag. And that was it. He was always around after that; like I say, I was the kid sister he never had.

It was me he called when his mum's cancer came back two years ago. I spent the whole of that Christmas in the family room at the hospital with him, while, across the hall, drips pumped poison into her in the hope of saving her life. They hit it hard, but it hit back harder and by the next Easter she was gone, and it's still the only time I've ever seen Steffan cry.