“Thanks for coming, Tess.” He is more than welcome. I go to sit down, but he says, “Don’t. We’ve got an appointment with your homeroom teacher. We need to let her know what’s going on.”
The tension in the air sags a bit. I love Miss Gilbert, but I don’t want to see her right now. I don’t want to see anyone, or go anywhere. I like being in here with Mr. Richardson.
“Tess?” he says, because I appear to be staring intently into his truly remarkable brown eyes. He chuckles. “You are funny. So intense. You remind me of my son.”
It’s a throwaway comment, but I pounce on it with the hunger of a wild scavenger. I am a fox, running off with that sentence. A vulture, spreading my black wings as I soar with his words into the white, white sky. I do a loop-the-loop, perch high on a branch, and crow with delight.
“Miss Gilbert will be waiting. After you.”
I step out of the classroom and start down the steps with all this Aware of his eyes on the back of my neck, prickling with goose bumps. I wait for him at the bottom. I’d wait for him forever, but he’s at my side two seconds later and we walk together to the art wing on feet perfectly in sync, no doubt precisely the same size. When I glance over my shoulder, I can see them, our identical footmarks stretching back down the hallway, back through the years and months of my life to the day of my conception.
“Well, hello there!” Miss Gilbert shouts over loud music, something with a lot of electric guitars. She’s working at an easel and she’s done a twisty thing with her hair, tying it in a messy red knot at the back of her head where it’s held in place with a paintbrush. I am not the only one gazing at it in admiration. Mr. Richardson can’t take his eyes off it, or the loose strands of scarlet at the base of her neck where the silver clasp of a necklace catches the light. She glitters. Even in the darkest room, she would glitter. “To what do I owe this great pleasure?”
I wait for Mr. Richardson to remind her of the appointment, but he says nothing. His eyes are still fixed on those soft red tendrils. Miss Gilbert rubs the back of her neck, like maybe goose bumps are prickling her skin too.
“Is everything okay?” Two crescent moons swing from her earlobes as she jumps off a stool. Her green Doc Martens squeak on the floor. A radio’s lying on its back among a pile of paper, its wire tangled with the leg of the easel. She bends down to turn it off. “With Tess, I mean?”
“That’s so dangerous.” He doesn’t sound annoyed at her disregard for safety, more amused by it if anything. “A radio down there. Beneath that. I’m guessing you have water on it?”
“On it? That’s my easel, I’ll have you know. My beloved easel. And yeah, I do have water on it as a matter of fact. But it’s cool. I’m careful.”
“I have never met anyone less careful in my life.”
She grins. “Ha. Okay. But you love it.”
If I could sigh then I would sigh as the clock in the classroom hits three thirty-seven. Miss Gilbert must sense my growing impatience because she says, “So, what can I do for you, Mr. Richardson? Something to do with Tess, I’m guessing?” She pulls up two stools then sits back down at her easel. “Make yourselves comfortable. And don’t judge me, dudes. It isn’t finished yet.”
We catch sight of the painting—a dolphin leaping out of an ocean as dawn breaks. There’s nothing cheesy about it though. The sea is choppy and the sun is the smallest pinprick of white. The beach is stark, an ordinary stretch of sand briefly transformed into something spectacular by the appearance of the dolphin.
“Wow,” Mr. Richardson says, and oh God I long for that type of reaction. Maybe if he could see how fast I can do a sudoku puzzle, he might shake his head at me in all that wonder. “That’s quite something.”
Miss Gilbert looks at him hopefully then pulls a face, a childish one, sticking out her tongue. “Not really. It’s rushed.”
“It’s incredible.”
“Dashed off in a double free period.”
“Even more impressive in that case, then.”
“Thanks,” Miss Gilbert says in a funny little voice. “That’s kind of you.”
They stare at each other with tingly eyes. Miss Gilbert blushes the same color as her hair. She turns to me quickly with the air of wanting to talk about something safer and definitely more boring.
“Why are you here, Tess? Not in trouble, I hope?”
Totally in trouble is what I shout with my eyes, very sulky and rebellious as I tilt my chin to the floor but look up at an extremely edgy angle. I am off the rails my rock star pout seems to say. Out of control.
Mr. Richardson waves a hand. “Oh, it’s nothing serious. A missed piece of homework.”
“Er, Tess? Did Mr. Richardson say you could leave?” Miss Gilbert asks because I’m standing up. I’ve had enough. I know when I’m not wanted.
“It’s fine. She’s done her time.”
I almost shout out in dismay. It isn’t true. There’s still five minutes of my detention left, three hundred precious seconds Mr. Richardson is willing to throw away. I hate him suddenly, all my love turned inside out to loathing. There’s a valley, plunging into darkness, where there used to be a mountain. But then he smiles at me—properly, fully—and the world shifts again, like I can actually feel it happen, the plates of the Earth moving beneath my feet.
“No need to come down on her too hard. She’s a good student.”
“I know she is,” Miss Gilbert replies.
“The best student in my class, actually. The others are quite chatty. It’s great to have someone so quiet and focused.”
I revel in my silence.
29
“Watch where you’re going!”
Connor sticks out his foot and I stumble, but just about manage to keep my balance. My bag’s not so lucky, clattering to the ground where it bursts open and spews out my stuff in a spectacular vomit. It’s not the schoolbooks I’m bothered about. It’s the sudoku one I filled in last night, every single page of it as I imagined Miss Gilbert walking down the aisle to marry Mr. Richardson. Obviously their favorite student was a bridesmaid, unconventionally beautiful in a big black dress and sparkly silver boots. We had champagne. Danced all night. And then we moved into our new home with a kennel for Jedi and a guest room for Gran.
Adam laughs. “Trip over them, did you? Are they affecting your balance now that they’ve dropped?”
“So, come on, Balls. Fill us in. Have you touched it yet?” Connor asks in a dirty whisper, moving closer to stand over me as I shove my books into my bag with frantic hands. “Bet you exploded all over your bedroom ceiling, didn’t you?”
“Bet you took the roof off your house.”
Connor snatches my bag. Before I can even process what’s happening, he’s pulled out the sudoku book.
“No!” Mr. Goldfish gasps.
If he flicks through the pages, he will see it, grid after grid filled with nothing but my teacher’s name because definitely Mr. Richardson is the answer to every question in the universe, let’s be clear about that.
“Puzzles? Who brings puzzles to school?”
“Someone with no friends, that’s who,” Adam says.
“You’re right about that, mate.” Connor shakes his head at the front cover then chucks the book on the floor. As I go to grab it, he kicks it out of my hands and it flies down the hallway and falls open. I lurch after it, doubled over. “Ad, get a picture of that! Amazing! Like a rhino or something!” Connor races past me and kicks the book again. There’s the click of a phone and a shout of laughter. “Get it up there now!”
“Maybe he’s Blaise,” Mr. Goldfish says, but I don’t have time to worry about that. The sudoku book has spun to a stop at a pair of black shoes.
I’d know them anywhere—and the left hand that picks up the book.
Two brown eyes widen in surprise. I must have written Mr. Richardson’s name over five hundred times.
Mr. Goldfish hides his face, writhing in agony. “I can’t watch. It’s excruciating.”
&n
bsp; I can’t either. Connor and Adam run off and then there is silence, ten seconds of silence that I feel in my throat, each tick like a thump of pulse.
“Well,” Mr. Richardson says, rubbing the back of his head. I watch his fingers pull awkwardly at his blond hair. “I think this is yours. A few of the answers are wrong, though.”
He’s smiling. My heavy pulse becomes a flutter, the lightest flutter of butterfly wings as I begin to emerge from the darkness. He can see me. He knows why I wrote his name. He’s been looking for me too, ever since he helped out Mum, the girl with the bright red hair and flower stud in her nose who bewitched him as a teenager. It all fits.
“Erm,” Mr. Goldfish says, but I turn him off because I don’t want to hear it.
“Want to get lunch, Tess?” Anna asks when she finds me wandering the hallway. “My treat to say thanks for the homework. It was good of you to man up and take the detention like that.”
Tara snorts and Anna glares and Tara regains her composure so quickly I might have imagined her losing it in the first place. I switch Mr. Goldfish back on, needing his support.
“What was that?”
“I need your support.”
“Yes, you do, because this is a terrible idea,” he says as I follow the girls, who float into the cafeteria in spectacular formation.
“Sit,” Anna says.
“Your name’s Tess, not Jedi,” Mr. Goldfish mutters, but I take my place at a large circular table in the very heart of the cafeteria. The girls chuck their coats and bags into the middle of it, chatting loudly. They own this space, that much is obvious, here at the center of the action beneath a light shining brighter than the sun. The heat of it is intense, beaming down on me because I am here too, slap-bang in the middle of things, a Mercury at last.
I try hard not to feel out of place, but I am red-faced and sweaty and uncomfortable in the glare.
“I’ll get you something,” Anna says. “You man the table.”
I wait for a laugh that doesn’t come. The girls join the lunch line and suddenly I’m alone in pretty much the most conspicuous spot in school. I feel ridiculous, painfully aware of the stares and the confused glances in my direction because I don’t belong in this room, never mind at this table. I tap my knees then fiddle with my phone then play with a napkin, but as it turns out I am hopeless at origami. The graceful white swan I was attempting looks more like a plump turkey, pretty much how I feel among this elegant flock.
I chuck the napkin to one side, trying not to worry where Anna has gone. She’s been a while.
“I bet I know.” Two suspicious black eyes peek out of my pocket. “You don’t think it’s a hoax, do you? Blaise strikes again?”
“I thought you said it was Connor.”
“I said it could be Connor. It’s more likely to be Anna. I bet she’s spying on you through a window or something. Taking photos to put on Twitter. Laughing her head off because you’re still waiting for her to return like hashtag-the-world’s-most-gullible-idiot.”
Just then, Anna comes back, handing me a plate of food.
“Thank you,” I say in my head for Mr. Goldfish’s benefit. “Thank you for doing exactly what you said you would.”
Anna sits down next to me. “Everyone loves a burger, right?”
It smells incredible. As the other girls glide back to the table, I lift it up, my mouth watering, my lips parting to take a big bite that never happens because—
“Yeah,” Mr. Goldfish whispers. “Your new friends are giggling.”
“Sorry!” Tara gasps. “It’s just this joke that Sarah told us earlier. We can’t get it out of our heads.” She collapses over her salad. I stare around the table. They’re all eating it—seven small plates of crisp, green lettuce. “That one about the er, the er, the—”
“—pig that crossed the road,” Sarah says as I go cold all over. “Yeah, it’s a good one.” They explode again then look back at me, still clutching the burger, meat juice dripping down my fingers.
“Shut up,” Anna says. “No one wants to hear about a pig crossing a road. Tess is trying to eat.” She nods at my huge plate of food. I’m wary now, chilled to the bone. “You’re hungry, aren’t you?” I don’t reply, but that doesn’t seem to matter. “I thought so. Come on, then, Tess. That burger won’t eat itself now, will it?” She smiles sweetly. “Have a bite. Go on.”
I am not going to do it.
Definitely not.
So I have no idea how it ends up in my mouth.
“Keep eating. Go on. Very good.” Anna pats my arm. “I thought you’d like it. So, Saturday night,” she says, and the feathers of her swanlike friends quiver in anticipation as the fat turkey tries not to keel over with painful indigestion. “Finn suggested the bar we went to before. The 312. Around eight.”
“Is Henry going to be there?” Tara asks, waggling her eyebrows, but Anna’s feathers will not be ruffled.
“I dunno. Probably. You fancy it, Tess?”
I keep my face impassive, but my heartburn rages out of control and sets fire to my cold bones.
30
Mum and Jack talk in the living room as I hover on the landing. The lamp-lit glow of their conversation travels up the stairs, brighter at the bottom and petering out toward the top where I stand in pretty much darkness.
“So it went well, then?” Mum asks as Jack sits down on the sofa. I picture it, same as every evening—Mum sprawled against the cushions, feet curled in Jack’s lap like a purring cat. “They liked the idea?”
“They seemed to.”
“I knew they would.”
“They haven’t seen the script yet.”
“It’s brilliant.”
“You haven’t even read it!” Jack laughs, and Mum does too. I turn my hands into puppets that guffaw on the wall.
“Call it blind faith.”
“Or blissful ignorance.”
“No,” Mum replies. “I’ve read some of your stuff before. You can write.” The puppets stiffen, waiting for some mention of the blog that doesn’t come. No doubt Jack is holding his finger to his lips and pointing upstairs as Mum cringes at the near-miss and nods. “So, are they going to do it? Mr. Darling and Nana, is it?”
“Yeah. Pete and Daniel. I think so, anyway—if it works around job and family, that sort of thing. But they seemed interested.”
“That’s good.” I can hear the smile in Mum’s voice.
“It’s such a relief, Hels. To be in control of the material. To be in control of my own destiny. I know we’ve talked about money but, I don’t know, I’ve been thinking. Now that I’ve finished at the Volvo place I might take some time off before getting another temp job. Focus on the script?”
“Okay,” Mum says simply. “If that’s what you want to do.”
“I’ll work hard, and it will only be up until Christmas while I get the first draft finalized. It’s just… I don’t want to tempt fate, or anything, but—oh, I don’t know.”
“Go on.”
“I’ve got a great feeling about it, that’s all. Like it could be the start of something big.”
“That’s brilliant, darling. We could use some good news, that’s for sure.” There’s a long pause. “A psychologist, Jack. How did we end up here? That letter still hasn’t arrived, you know.”
“I’ll follow up next week if we don’t hear anything.”
There’s silence again, and then Mum says, “What did we do wrong? Where did we mess up so badly? I miss her.”
“I know.”
“I miss her voice so much. Her laugh.”
“Her laugh most of all,” Jack says, and it sounds genuine, which takes me by surprise.
I miss them too, Mum and the dad I thought Jack was before I found out the truth. I move closer, but I haven’t done up the laces of my silver Doc Martens so my tiptoe turns into a tumble as I clatter down the stairs.
“For God’s sake, Tess. What are you—” Jack’s words die as I appear in the living room. The expression on his
face blows me away, like have I actually got my outfit right for once is what I am asking myself in wonder. “Tess!”
“You look gorgeous,” Mum says, leaping off the sofa with a glass of wine in her hand. She puts it down on the coffee table where a halo of red appears on the wood. It surrounds Mum too, this tipsy fuzz that makes her glow. “I can’t get over it. I love the dress. I absolutely love it.”
I bought it ages ago from a secondhand shop. It’s flattering, pulled in under my chest and flaring over my stomach in a dramatic A-line with sequins that glisten on the hem and the halter neck. It’s a vintage dress from the 1950s, and yeah it might smell a bit musty from the different cupboards it’s lived in for over half a century, but it makes me feel good, like the combined power and beauty of all the women who have ever worn it is embedded in the silky black material.
“You look stunning.”
“Door,” Jack says, unnecessarily, because we can hear it for ourselves—an unusual knock, just two slow taps.
“So you’re actually going to go through with this?” Mr. Goldfish asks, swimming about in my black handbag.
I steel myself. “It looks like it.”
I received a text from Anna yesterday afternoon when I was at Gran’s. Henry’s giving me a lift into Manchester so I’ll pick you up around seven thirty if you give me your address. Wear jeans, okay? It isn’t a dressy place. Well, I didn’t fall for that one now, did I, Googling The 312 to check it out myself.
A swirl of cool wind announces Anna’s arrival.
“Hi.”
“Hello,” Jack says, taken aback. She looks incredible—black shiny hair and purple vampy lips and a nose ring I could never pull off. She’s wearing tight leather trousers and a full-sleeved blue top with an asymmetric neckline, coolly off-kilter. She takes in my lack of jeans with a flicker of irritation that makes Mr. Goldfish whoop in triumph. “Sorry, I don’t think we’ve met.”