The Forever Girl

  “It’s very unfair.”

  “Of course it is.”

  She looked at him. “To be accused of doing something you haven’t done. That must be very hard.”

  He returned her gaze. “Yes. Certainly.” Then he said, “To be accused of doing something you have done – that must be hard as well, don’t you think?”

  She caught her breath. “Yes, I suppose so.”

  He was still watching her, and it was at that moment that she became certain that he knew.

  Clover said to Teddy: “Your dad was taken off to jail, Teddy. The police came. Is he still in jail?”

  The boy bit his lip. “They brought him back. They made a mistake.”

  “Really? Why did they take him anyway? Was he spying?”

  Teddy shook his head. “Don’t be stupid.”

  “It’s not stupid. We know there are spies here.”

  Teddy kicked at the ground in his frustration. “He hadn’t done anything. They said he’d sunk one of his boats, but he didn’t. You’d have to be stupid to sink one of your own boats.”

  She nodded. The world of adults was opaque and sometimes difficult to fathom; but the proposition that one would not normally sink one of one’s own boats seemed reasonable enough. “I’m sorry for you, Teddy,” she said. “It must be awful having your dad taken away by the police.”

  “Thank you. But he didn’t do anything.”

  Later, she talked to James about it. He agreed with her that the sinking of the boat might just be a cover for the real charge of spying. Now that the police had become involved, though, he thought there was no need to continue with their observations. “It’s in their hands now,” he pronounced. “We can stop.”

  He had lost interest, she sensed, and so the notebook, and the photographs they had collected, were filed away in a cupboard in James’s room. The photographs, of which there were about fifteen, had been printed on James’s computer and labelled with the date, time and place when they had been taken. At the tennis club, Saturday morning. Suspect 1 gets into the car with Suspect 2. And At the tennis club, Suspect 1 talks to Suspect 2. Details of conversation unknown.

  She sensed that he was more concerned with other things. She invited him to the tree-house, but he rarely came now, and when he did, he seemed detached, as if he wanted to be somewhere else. He never stayed long.

  She made suggestions. “We could fix the tree-house; I could get some wood. We could take more things up there. If you wanted, I could make you a shelf of your own for your stuff.”

  He shrugged. “Maybe.”

  She persisted. “We could take the walkie-talkies up there. I could leave one there and you could take the other to your house. We could speak to each other.”

  He looked bored. “Out of range,” he said. “You have to be able to see the other person, or they don’t work. Those are useless walkie-talkies.”

  He looked at his watch. “I can’t stay for long.”

  She said, “You’re always saying that. You’re always saying you have to go and do something else.”

  “I’m not.”

  “You are. You do it all the time.”

  He looked at his watch again.

  “Well, it’s true,” he said. “I’ve got stuff to do.”

  She felt frustrated at not being able to pin him down. She wanted to have his full attention, but he seemed now to be reluctant to give her that. It was as if he were holding back; as if he were away somewhere, in a different place – a place that she could not get to, or understand. And yet he was not rude to her. He was kind, and, unlike other boys, behaved gently, without any of the pushing or shoving that boys seemed to use. That was part of his appeal – that, and the way he looked. She thought nobody could ever look more beautiful. She had, hidden away, a photograph that she had taken of him without his knowledge.

  Amanda sensed her daughter’s unhappiness.

  “Something’s wrong, darling. I can tell.”

  “Nothing.”

  “No, you can’t just say nothing. If something’s wrong, you should tell me about it.”

  “I told you: everything’s fine.”

  Amanda put an arm about her. “James? Is that it? Has James been nasty to you?”

  She shook her head. The denial was genuine. “He’s never nasty. He’s too nice for that.”

  “Doesn’t want to play any more? Is that it?”

  This was greeted with silence, which was an answer in itself. Amanda gave Clover a hug. “My darling, here’s something that you’re going to have to get used to. Boys are different – they have things that keep them busy and sometimes they don’t seem interested in the things that girls want to do. Boys can ignore you when you really want them to take notice. That can be really hard. They break our hearts, you see. Do you know what I’m talking about? They make us girls feel sad because they don’t want to be with us. There may be no special reason for that – they might just want to be by themselves. You’re just beginning to see this now; when you’re a teenager – a bit older, maybe – you’re going to see it all much more clearly. And there’s no easy answer, no magic wand. I can’t make James want to spend time with you. I can’t make him be your friend. I wish I could, but I can’t.”

  She nestled into her mother. She just wanted to be James’s friend. She just wanted to be with him. He had been happy with that before, but now no longer.

  Amanda kissed Clover’s forehead. So precious, she thought. She tried to remember what it had been like at that age. The problem was that we so quickly forgot that even young children have intense feelings for others. Passionate adoration does not suddenly arrive, ready made, when one is fifteen or sixteen – the stage of the first fumbling romance. Falling head over heels for another can occur years earlier, and we would understand these things better if only we bothered to remember. That intensity of feeling for a friend was usually not expressed in any physical way, but it represented a yearning that was already knocking on the door.

  12

  Clover knew all along that there would come a day when she would have to go away to school. The Cayman Prep School took children up to thirteen before handing them over to the High School. Many children made the transition smoothly and completed their education in the senior division next door, but for a considerable proportion of expatriates the expense of sending children for their secondary education abroad was outweighed by the risks involved in staying. The island had a drug problem, as well as a problem of teenage pregnancy. Stories circulated of girls who had stayed being seen as an easy target by boys from West Bay. Sending children abroad might have its drawbacks, but at least the teenage years would be passed, for the most part, in the supervised conditions of a boarding school. There the day-to-day headaches of looking after adolescents were borne by people paid to bear them – and experienced in doing so.

  Clover knew, and accepted that boarding school awaited her. She was ready to go; several girls who had been in the year above her at the Prep School were already there and seemed to enjoy it. They came back each school holidays and were full of stories of a world that seemed to her to be unimaginably exciting and exotic. There were stories of school dances and trips to London. There were accounts of clandestine assignations with boys – meetings that took place under the threat of dire punishment if discovered. It all sounded to her like a rather exciting prison camp in which girls and boys pitted their wits against the guards. But unlike a prison camp, you could have your own pictures on the wall, perfectly good food, and outings, admittedly restricted, to the cinema and shops.

  Her parents talked to her about the choice of school. David wanted something in Scotland, and identified a school in Perthshire that seemed to offer everything they wanted. They showed her the pictures in the school brochure.

  “You see how attractive it is,” said David. “You’d be staying in one of those buildings over there. See? Those are the girls’ dormitories.”

  She looked at the photograph. It was of an alien lands
cape, all hills and soft colours, but it was a world that she had been brought up to believe was where she belonged. The Caribbean, with its dark greens and light blues, was temporary; this was permanent.

  “And that’s the pipe band,” said Amanda, pointing at one of the photographs. “You can learn the pipes if you like. Or the violin. Or any instrument, really. They have everything.”

  There were misgivings. “I won’t know anybody. Nobody I know is going there.”

  “You’ll make plenty of new friends. It’s a very friendly place.”

  Silence.

  “And if I’m sick?”

  “Why should you be sick? Anyway, they’ll have a sick room. There’ll be a nurse. Really, darling, you’ll be fine.”

  “I suppose so.”

  “What about James?” asked her mother. “He’s going off to school too, isn’t he?”

  James had not told her very much. “I think he’s going to a school in England. I don’t know what it’s called.” She looked at her mother. “Couldn’t you tell them about Strathearn? Couldn’t you show them this?” She pointed to the brochure.

  Amanda smiled. “It’s nothing to do with us,” she said. “They’re not Scottish, like Daddy. James’s father is English. He’ll want James to go somewhere in England. It’s only natural.”

  “But Scotland and England are close together, aren’t they? Aren’t they next door?”

  “They are. But the schools are different, I think. They want him to go to an English school.”

  “They could change their minds if they saw this brochure.”

  Amanda looked at her daughter fondly. “You’ll be able to see James in the holidays. He’ll be here, and so will you. You’ll still see him.”

  Clover became silent. She stared at the photographs of the school and imagined that it was her face in one of the pictures. And standing next to her was not that boy with ginger hair who was in the picture, but James. She wanted to share what lay ahead with him. She did not want to be with strangers.

  Her mother touched her arm lightly. “You’ll get over it,” she whispered.

  “Get over what?”

  “You’ll get over what you feel for James. I know right now he’s a very special friend, but we meet other people, you know. There’ll be plenty of boys at – different boys. You’ll get to know them and they’ll be your friends.”

  She stared at her mother. How could somebody as old as that understand what it was like? What did she know?

  That night, lying in her bed, she closed her eyes and imagined, for the first time, that James was with her. It made her feel warm to think of his being at her side, under the covers, as if they were lost children. His feet felt cold as she moved her own feet against his. She held his hand and she listened to his breathing. She told him about her school and he told her about his. They were together and they would stay together until morning. Nobody could take him away from her; no school in England could keep him from her. They would stay together forever. From now on. Forever.

  It was the day following the conversation about schools. Amanda and Clover went to the supermarket near the airport to stock up for the week. Outside in the car park, as they were unloading the trolley into the back of the car, a car drew up beside them. A woman got out. Amanda paid her no attention and was surprised when she suddenly realised that it was Alice Collins.

  Amanda moved to the side of the car to greet her. “Sorry. I didn’t recognise you behind those sunglasses.”

  Alice took off the sunglasses, folded them, and then placed them in her hip pocket. “Better?”

  “Yes. I wasn’t paying attention.”

  She saw that the other woman was not smiling. There was tension in her face.

  “Is something wrong?”

  Alice turned away; it was as if she had not heard the question. Then, without saying anything, she walked off. Amanda opened her mouth to say something, but Alice had walked round the side of another parked car and was lost to view. From within the car, she could hear Clover operating the electric window.

  “What did Mrs Collins say?”

  “She didn’t say anything,” said Amanda. “She’s in a rush, I think.”

  She finished the unpacking of her trolley. She felt quite weak with the shock of the deliberate snub. It was the feeling one has after some driving error on one’s part brings a snarl from another driver – a feeling of rawness, of surprise at the hostility of another.

  Clover was listening to music, her ear buds in place. Amanda drove off, her heart still racing after the encounter with Alice. She must know; but how? Had John said something? She was not confident that he could be trusted; it was not that he would gossip – there was a far greater possibility that he would speak about what he had seen on principle. But if he spoke to anybody, would it not be to David, rather than to Alice? She considered the possibilities. One was that John was friendly with Alice and felt that he had a duty to warn her. Or he could have spoken to David, who had told Alice in order to get her to warn George off. That was feasible only if David would want to warn George off, which was far from clear. Another possibility was that George had decided to make a clean breast of things and had told Alice that he had almost embarked on an affair but had not done so. He might have done that had he thought that news would leak out somehow – probably through John – and that it would be better to raise the matter himself rather than to protest innocence once his wife became aware of it.

  “Look out!”

  Clover had spotted the car making the dangerous attempt at overtaking. Amanda pulled over sharply, and the two vehicles that had been heading straight for one another avoided collision by a matter of a few inches.

  “Didn’t you see him?”

  Amanda looked in the mirror. The other car, now behind them, was being driven erratically – far too fast, and halfway into the other lane.

  “That was his fault. He shouldn’t have been overtaking there. The road’s clearly marked.”

  “Maybe he’s drunk.”

  “Could be.”

  They drove on in silence. As was always the case with such things, notions of what she should have done came after the event. She should have pursued Alice and asked her what was wrong. She should have said to her that whatever she had heard was not the real truth – the real truth was that there was nothing between her and George and there never had been; accepting the brush-off was tantamount to an admission of guilt.

  Clover switched off her music. She looked at her mother.

  “I hate this place,” she said.

  Amanda turned to look at her daughter. “What place?”

  “Here. This. This whole place. Cayman.”

  “I thought you liked it.”

  Clover shook her head vigorously. “There’s nothing to do. And I’ve got no friends.”

  Amanda’s gaze returned to the road ahead. The plane from Cayman Brac, a small twelve-seater, was coming in to land; its shadow passed across the road and the mangrove swamp on the other side.

  “You need to get away to school. That’s soon enough.” She paused. “And you have got friends. You’ve got Holly …”

  “She doesn’t like me any more. She spends most of her time with that American girl.”

  “You’ve got James.”

  This was greeted with silence.

  Amanda shot her a glance. “You still like James, don’t you?”

  Clover moved her head slightly.

  Amanda spoke gently. “He’s special to you, isn’t he? It’s good to have a special friend.”

  Suddenly Clover turned to her mother. “Do you think that when we’re both grown up …”

  “Yes? When you’re both grown up?”

  “That maybe James and I will get married? Do you think that might happen?”

  Amanda suppressed a smile. “Possibly, but it’s far too early to even think about that. You never know whom you’re going to marry. But what you really want to do is to marry somebody who’s kind. That’s t
he most important thing, you know. They don’t have to be good-looking or rich or anything like that – but they have to be kind.”

  “James is kind.”

  “Yes, I’m sure he is. But it’s very early to talk about what may or may not happen. You’re going to meet plenty of other boys, you know, and it’s highly likely that some of them will be every bit as nice as James. You’ve got years and years to meet other people, and so you shouldn’t make your mind up too early.”

  “But he’s the one I want.”

  “But that could change. You might think very differently when you’re … say, twenty-five, twenty-six. You may have very different ideas.”

  “I won’t.”

  “I think you’ll find that you will.”

  “No.”

  The conversation ended there. They had reached the turn-off to their house and Clover would shortly have to get out to open the gate.

  Over the next few weeks, James’s visits, which had become less frequent anyway, stopped altogether. Clover waited several days before summoning up her courage to call him on his phone. He sounded friendly enough when he answered, but when she asked if he would like to come round to listen to some music, he sounded wary.

  “Maybe I’d better not,” he said.

  “Why not? Just for half an hour?”

  “Because …”

  “Because what?”

  He did not reply immediately, but after a while he said, “Ted’s coming round.”

  She waited for him to invite her too, but he did not.

  “I could come too.”

  This was greeted with silence.

  She tried again. “I could come, if you’d like.”

  She heard his breathing. “Actually, Clover, it was just me and Ted. We were going to do some things.”

  “What things?”

  “Ted’s got a metal detector.”

  She persisted. “Couldn’t I …”

  “No, Clover, sorry. Maybe some other time.”

  There was silence.

  “Don’t you like me any more?” It was a wild gamble. He could easily say no, he did not, and that would be the end of the friendship. But he did not. “Of course I like you, it’s just that my mother says that you and I should … shouldn’t spend so much time together.”