The Last Summer of Us (5 page)

The two of them argued about the car keys while I threw everything in the boot of the Rust Bucket. Picture that, if you will. Them: rugby players. Me: picking up all the bags and loading the car. And they say chivalry's dead. I could hear them, although they were both trying to keep their voices down. Steffan was all disbelief and a filthy temper. Jared was quieter, calmer. He shrugged a lot. That's Jared all over: always watching, waiting, reacting to everyone else (usually Steffan). As they came back over to the car, all I heard was the tail end of their conversation: Steffan saying, “You have no idea what you've just done,” and Jared replying with: “It's not like he's not lost his keys before, is it?”

Car keys at the bottom of the pond, or Steffan hurling the shiny speedy car around the B-roads for a couple of days with us in the back. I think we all know which is the lesser of those two evils.

“He'll kill you a lot
less
than he would if you called him from a recovery truck while he's playing golf.”

“You think I'd tell him? Christ. No way.” Steffan leans into the steering wheel and looks up and down the road, holding the car at a junction as a tractor rumbles past, scattering hay behind it.

“So what, then?” Jared's seat creaks as he slides further down into it, settling in for the journey.

“I'd tell him someone nicked it, wouldn't I?” There's a jerk, and the tyres snicker against the hot tarmac as the car leaps forward and we're away.

You get used to Steffan's driving. It's not that he's bad, exactly – it's that he's…energetic. He throws his car around corners and into bends with complete conviction, and that's probably all well and good if you're up front. But back here? Not so much. The first sharp bend we take, his violin case skids across the back seat and slams into my thigh. It – sorry,
she
(he's adamant she's a she) – is an antique. She cost a small fortune, which came out of his inheritance from his mother. Most of it's locked away until he's twenty-one, but the violin's different. Apart from that, he can't touch it. He doesn't like the phrase “trust fund” but…

Anyway, wherever Steff goes, the violin goes. Even here, even now. And if she keeps bashing into me every time Steffan turns the wheel,
she
and I are going to have a little talk.

It's another unexpected thing about Steffan. You wouldn't think it to look at him: he's a solid-looking guy and he's a flanker on the rugby team, so you'd probably take him for one of nature's brass-players. A trombonist or something. Maybe handy with a tuba. Unfortunately, nature forgot to mention that to Steffan, so he carried right on being a flanker and a violinist. And he's good (at the violin, at least – the rugby's a bit more questionable…). He's really good. The first time I heard him, I wanted to tease him the way you tease friends for being good at things you couldn't ever imagine being able to do – but I couldn't. He's
that
good: he's make-you-stop-and-listen, takes-your-breath-away, too-good-to-take-the-piss-out-of good.

Fortunately, Steffan being Steffan, there's always something else to take the piss out of him for. What'd be the fun in knowing him otherwise?

Jared has wound down his window as far as it will go and slouched down in his seat. He has his knees pressed against the glovebox and one arm draped out of the car, and he's drumming his thumb and the heel of his hand against the outside of the door in time to the radio, watching the world go by from behind his sunglasses. With a double-tap of his hand, he stops and leans across to whisper something in Steffan's ear. It's the glance back at me that gives it away: he's just realized which road we're on. Steffan's fingers tighten around the steering wheel as he gives himself a mental kicking, but the simple fact of the matter is that the easiest road out of town, the quickest road, the most sensible road, leads right past the graveyard. We're already at the near end of it; I can see the red brick wall and the giant sequoia trees ahead of us and it's as if the last twenty-four hours never happened. In my head, I'm sitting in the back of another car, my black dress creasing in the heat. One glimpse of the gate and I'm transformed into yesterday's me, the one following a coffin.

I can't take my eyes off it. I've driven past this graveyard a hundred – a thousand – times before now, and it's never mattered. Now, though, it's like a black hole with a fresh grave at its heart, and it's sucking me in. My hands are shaking and the back seat of the car is hot and cold all at once and I can't breathe…

“Limpet.” Steffan's voice pulls me back to the car, to today, to now, and his eyes meet mine in the rear-view mirror. “You're alright.”

“Am I?”

“Sure you are.” He glances at the road, then back to me. “You want me to pull over?”

“No! Leave me alone and watch the road, will you?” It comes out louder than I meant it to. More desperate. The last thing I want is for him to stop the car. As long as we're driving, we're moving. I have to keep moving. A single word I overheard Amy say comes back to me – “Treatment…” – and I tell myself that as long as I'm moving, I'll be okay. I'm not running away, after all. I'm running
towards
.

Towards what? Towards something. Anything. Tomorrow. The day after. The day after that. Anything that puts some past between me and yesterday. We're all running, aren't we? Towards, away…it doesn't really matter which.

The red boundary wall is already receding into the distance – although I can't quite stop myself from turning in my seat and craning my neck to watch it disappear around the corner. And before I know it, the wall's gone. The graveyard's gone and it's like the sun has come out from behind a cloud… And the car stinks of cheese and onion.

“You're eating again? Already?”

Jared has a fistful of crisps halfway to his mouth.

“You ate, like, ten minutes ago!”

“Whaf? Mm hungry.” Even through a mouthful of dried potato he manages to sound offended.

“You're always hungry, fat boy.” Steffan's shaking his head – but he's still looking longingly at the packet of crisps Jared's devouring. “Chuck us one, will you?”

“Not you as well? Seriously?” I slump back in my seat and look for my sunglasses. Last time I saw them, they were disappearing somewhere under the violin case.

There's a crackle of foil as Jared throws a fresh packet of crisps across to Steffan. It lands in his lap. Meanwhile, I'm sure I just spotted the frame of my glasses underneath a magazine on the back seat…

Just as I reach across for them, there's a blast from another vehicle's horn and our car lurches to the right. I'm thrown back into my seat and the side of my head catches the seat-belt bracket. My ear throbs. Steffan's swearing under his breath, eyes wide…and Jared's leaning across the car, one steady hand on the wheel.

“Mate.” It's all he says.

Steffan passes the pack of crisps back to him guiltily. “Not such a good idea, maybe.”

“No point letting them go to waste…” Jared starts crunching again.

Steffan looks indignant. “How does that work? If I ate as much as you, I'd be the size of a rhino.”

“You want to make the horn joke, or shall I?” Jared pulls his sunglasses halfway down his nose and peers over them. But it's not Steffan he's looking at. His eyes meet mine in the rear-view, and he holds my gaze for a second too long…then grins and disappears back behind his shades again. Steffan's too busy focusing on the road to notice, and I'm not sure what just happened.

We turn off the main road and onto a much smaller one, weaving through fields and hedges and woods, and my heart sinks ever so slightly. I know Steffan well enough to know where he's going. Jared shifts uncomfortably in his seat, because he's thinking exactly the same thing. We're headed for the bridge. And on a day like this, with the sun burning a hole in the sky and school a couple of weeks away, we won't be the only ones there.

I don't like the bridge. Well, I say I don't like the bridge, but actually, as a
structure
, as a great lump of stone in the middle of the river, I'm ambivalent about it. It's not what it
is
that bothers me. It's what it
becomes
. Because while it's a bog-standard means of getting from one side of the river to the other for ten months of the year, for the other two it's the centre of what passes for the social whirl round here. It's where everyone goes. Everyone except us.

There's a reason for that.

Steffan likes them more than I do. He certainly likes them more than Jared does. He likes the bridge too. Just like the river is my safe place, I think the bridge is Steff's. It's where his mother used to bring him when he was little. They used to look for conkers round here in the autumn, and in the spring they would lean over the parapet and watch the fish jumping in the water below. Of course he wants to come here on the way to see her. I just wish we didn't have to put up with the company.

As Steffan parks the car up at the side of the road, I can already hear them. God, I can hear Becca's
laugh
. Suddenly, the thought of reliving the funeral is almost appealing. I'd relive it every minute of every day for ever if it meant I'd never have to look at her smug little face again. Maybe it could be
her
funeral? I picture myself reading
her
eulogy. I reckon I could handle that. (Correction: I reckon I could more than handle it. I reckon I could do it with a smile on my face and a song in my heart.)

“Yeah, alright. We're not stopping.” Steffan slams his door, and the Rust Bucket vibrates gently. He already knows what we're thinking.

“Not stopping. Because with the parking and the getting out, it kind of looks like that's exactly what we're doing.” I clamber out of the back.

“You don't have to talk to her, do you?”

“Shame she doesn't seem to feel the same about me then, isn't it?” I don't need to say who I mean. Steffan already knows that too.

“Just…play nice.” He has his hands in his pockets as he saunters over to them.

They're sitting on the rocks in the near side of the water, right by the steps down from the bridge. The water's low enough to walk out to the middle without even getting your knees wet – and that's what they've done. There's a couple of empty beer cans in the hollow of one rock, and a pile of cigarette stubs in another. Becca, with her god-awful laugh, is leaning back against Simon, a bottle of something fizzy and neon pink and alcoholic in her hand. And to think I was mocking Jared and his crisps at this time of the morning. Still – that's Becca for you. As if they're trying to prove my point, Simon takes a deep drag on his cigarette, then leans around Becca's shoulder and blows the smoke into her mouth. Jared's eyebrow shoots up, and Steffan makes a loud retching sound. Simon looks up – the cigarette still hanging from his lip – and nods at them. Steff and Jared can get away with doing and saying what they want around him – Simon's another one on the team, so it all falls under the category of “team bonding”, I guess – but Becca's less than impressed. She scowls at them…and then she sees me, and her piggy little eyes light up. She flicks her hair back (only avoiding setting it on fire with Simon's cigarette because he rocks out of the way) and stands up. She's swaying just a touch and I find myself looking at the bottle in her hand. What the hell
is
that, anyway? Even from where I'm standing, I can smell it. It smells of lollipops; of booze and candyfloss and a total lack of self-respect.

Her eyes slide over me as Simon unfolds himself from the rock and dusts himself down, throwing his dog-end into the river. He hops across the rocks to the bank, grinning at Steffan and Jared. “Alright?” They both nod and make manly noises back. But Becca…she's watching Jared. She's followed her boyfriend and she's standing right next to him, but she's eyeing up Jared, flicking her hair like a demented horse. Unbelievable.

My feelings towards Becca aren't exactly friendly, as you might have guessed, and haven't been since the third day of Year Eight, when she got Rhodri and Mark to empty my bag onto the middle of the school field and spend the next ten minutes kicking my books around. Where was I? I was right there, learning the hard way that people lie and that not everyone who claims to be your friend stays that way. And how did I know it was her, that she was the one behind it? Easy. She was the one holding me back as they did it, laughing as my stuff got covered in mud.

She sniffs and takes another swig from her bottle of what I fervently hope is a new and exciting poison as she steps towards me. “I saw your dad in the shop last week. He looked kind of shit.”

“Yeah, well. His wife had just died, so there's that, isn't there?”

She's just that little bit too close to me for comfort, and I'd like to step back – to put more space between us – but I won't. Because that would be backing down.

“Still, on the plus side? At least there's fewer bottles to be carrying home now.” She smiles sweetly as she says it – so sweetly that it takes me precisely three seconds to decide that I'm going to punch her in the face. So I do.

I can't tell who's more shocked: her or me. She staggers backwards, squealing and clutching her hands to her cheek, dropping the bottle. Violently pink bubbles spill out of it, and I'm honestly surprised they don't start eating into the rock. My hand hurts, and there's a buzzing in my ears and I am going to take her to
pieces
. Not just for the crack about my mother. Not just for that day in Year Eight. Not just for the thousand and one snitty little comments made barely loud enough for me to hear over the last few years. But for every single time I've turned my back on her and walked away. And, boy, does
my hand hurt
.