“Not a girlfriend, then?” Mr. Goldfish asks. “Well, I’m glad that weirdness is over.”
I am too, because it’s a lot simpler to know where I stand, which is firmly by the side of my new brother I say to myself, trying to erase the kiss from my mind. It was for show, very much a closed-lipped sort of kiss. A sisterly kiss, full of tenderness and support because he needs me, and I need him, two broken individuals who are totally and utterly screwed without each other.
“You’re pretty intense, you know that,” Henry says, looking at me looking at him with no doubt the warm eyes of a loving sister. I just about refrain from touching his arm in a gesture of sibling solidarity. He feels it though, I’m sure of it, glancing at me and glancing at me and glancing at me as we drive down a black road. “Will you quit staring?” He lets out an odd bark of laughter. “Don’t worry. I do it too, according to Mother dearest. She’s always telling me to lighten up.”
“From heaven?” Mr. Goldfish asks slowly.
I wait for Henry to correct himself with a sob of anguish, to change his last sentence to the past tense, however hard it is. I have to face up to the fact that she’s gone, says the Henry in my mind as he grips the steering wheel in torment. I have to face up to the fact that she’s dead and not coming back.
The Henry on the driver’s seat says nothing of the sort, however. “My dad, too. They’re always going on about it. I’m a little”—he pauses—“dark for their tastes. They find my conversation around the dinner table rather gloomy. But it goes both ways. They’re far too sunny for my liking.”
He pulls up outside my house, but I don’t get out. Mr. Richardson is married, but he can’t be married, but he is married, but he can’t be married, and these two things clash in my mind until my head hurts and I have to turn off my brain, just for a minute, and sit.
That’s all I do. I sit and Henry sits, cutting the engine with a twist of the key. There’s still some fog, but it’s thinner, and there’s a breeze now, pushing broken wisps of cloud past the frowning surface of the moon. The universe is sad and angry, clouds escaping I don’t know what, hurrying madly to I don’t know where, but there’s a sense of bailing out. Letting go. Giving up.
All is lost, that’s how it feels as I undo my seat belt with fingers that barely function on an arm more weary than it has ever been in its life. He is married, but he can’t be married, but he is married, but he can’t be married and around and around it goes until I close my eyes, dizzy with it all.
I see Mr. Richardson and Miss Gilbert and the auburn-haired woman from the photo in the wallet.
I open my eyes to find Henry offering me his hand.
“Well, this has been fun.” Another odd bark of laughter echoes round the car. I take him in—his forlorn brown eyes and tragic face that a thousand girls will definitely fall in love with. But not this one. I grab his hand and we shake solemnly. “Actually, it’s been more interesting than my usual Saturday night. At least I got to escape that bar nice and early. And I won’t tell them—my mates, or Anna. We don’t have to lie, but they don’t need to know that I ate a hot dog I didn’t want, spouted some bullshit about the decaying heart of humanity, and drove here in silence. Let them think that we had sex. In the car. And that it was awesome.” He grins and shrugs. “Only if you want to, that is. I’m just saying. I won’t contradict whatever story they happen to believe.”
He shivers. Without the engine to work the heater the temperature has plummeted. He blows into his hands, and I blow into my hands, and the windows steam up all around us. My house fades, and my street, and there is just this car and this peculiar boy and this peculiar moment of calm before quite possibly a storm.
33
“So there isn’t going to be a storm?” Mr. Goldfish clarifies as I lie in bed on Monday morning, preparing to be struck down by a sudden bout of flu.
I hold out my hand as if I’m checking for rain. “Nope. No storm. I was wrong.”
“Are you sure about that?”
“Absolutely positive.” I shine Mr. Goldfish at my math textbook that just so happens to be sitting at the very top of a pile of homework. Of course I still did it yesterday to the best of my ability, pages thirty-one and thirty-two, just like Mr. Richardson instructed.
“You’re deluding yourself, Tess.”
I fling him to one side. We’ve been having this argument ever since I traipsed through the front door on Saturday evening. Jack shuffled along the sofa, patting the emerging space with a hand that just for once I hadn’t the energy to disobey. I sat down next to him, leaning back against the cushion still warm from his body. It felt good after the chill of the car. My goose bumps faded, the temperature of my blood rising a few degrees as I came back to life—to my life, in my house, with this family and this Jack, maybe not quite as bad as I once thought.
Mum held my left hand and Jack squeezed my right, crushing my thumb with his wedding ring. His wedding ring. His WEDDING RING. A jolt shot through me, almost making me leap off the sofa. I studied the ring, marveling at its presence, its undeniable existence, its unmistakable thereness because Jack is unmistakably married. Mr. Richardson doesn’t wear one, and if I could have sung then I would have sung that glorious realization from the rooftops.
I twist Mr. Goldfish around to look him in the eye. “Henry was lying, or maybe he’s crazy with grief, but Mr. Richardson isn’t married.”
“You don’t have to wear a wedding ring to be a husband. And you don’t have to be a husband to be someone’s partner. You’re being ridiculous.”
“I’ll prove it to you. I’ll go to Henry’s today and we’ll see who’s right.”
“You should be going to school!” I pull the duvet over my head but Mr. Goldfish wiggles beneath it. “You can’t avoid Anna forever.”
“She pulled up my dress in a bar. What’s she going to do at school?”
Mr. Goldfish glows brightly as he puffs out his orange chest. “The only way to conquer your fears is to face them.”
“Or hide from them beneath a duvet until they go away. Isn’t that a quote?”
“True courage is—”
But I never find out what true courage is because Mum pokes her head around my door and I start to cough, right on cue.
“Tess, are you okay?” She turns on the light, hurrying to my bed as the spluttering lump beneath the duvet hacks up a lung or two. “I thought you were coming down with something when you went to bed so early last night. Aren’t you feeling very well?”
“She’s fine,” Mr. Goldfish mutters as Mum pulls down the duvet.
“New pajamas.” Actually, they’re old ones—an old black T-shirt and an old pair of black jogging bottoms and two odd socks that I put on yesterday afternoon to pledge allegiance to Mr. Richardson. “This is for you, darling.” She puts the pig mug on my bedside table. “Is it your throat? Let me take a look.” She grabs Mr. Goldfish, whose eyes bulge in shock. “Open wide.”
“Arrrrrrgggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhh.”
“Not you,” I snap before doing as Mum asked.
“It doesn’t look sore, to be honest. There’s no redness, but that cough does sound nasty. I don’t know.” She beats the flashlight in her hand.
“Ow, ow, ow,” Mr. Goldfish says in time with the tap, tap, tap of his head against Mum’s palm. She turns him off and drops him on my bedside table. It’s strange seeing him like this, an inanimate object next to my sudoku book. It makes me feel strange for talking to him.
“I’ll have a quick touch, shall I?” Mum feels my neck, finding my tonsils quickly because her fingers have done this a hundred times before. I’m familiar territory, a landscape she knows well. She leans over me, the ends of her long hair brushing against my cheeks. It scares me how nice it feels, how easy it would be to say something in the voice she misses so much. I’m here, Mum. I’m still here. I’d tell her about Anna and she’d march into school to put a stop to it.
Our eyes meet in the brown cocoon. She strokes my forehead and smiles.
br />
“I think you are a little out of sorts. There’s a nasty flu going around my school. Loads of kids have come down with it. Better to be on the safe side, that’s what I say. I know just what you need.”
She dashes off, clattering around the spare room then racing downstairs to boil the kettle. She’s back a couple of minutes later, holding something behind her back. I’m curious. I don’t want to be, but I am, watching the smile on her face double in size as she reveals the hidden object.
“My heart is your heart,” she whispers, and wow that takes my breath away, this line from my childhood that she always used to say whenever she handed me the hot water bottle. It’s small and red with a distinct smell of rubber that I want to hate but sort of love with all this Confuse in my nostrils. She nudges my elbow and nods down at the bottle, holding it out a bit, and then a lot more when I don’t move. She looks so vulnerable, standing there with maybe her actual heart quivering in her outstretched hands, and I really want to take it, which is the precise reason that I don’t.
34
There are four letters scattered on the WELCOME doormat but only one of them stops me in my tracks. Attn: The parents or guardians of Miss Tess Turner. Well, I know what this is, all right, so I slip the letter in my pocket then pull on my boots and step out the front door, relieved to be leaving because Jack’s at home, working on his script.
I chuck the letter from CAMHS into a bin outside the grocery store, and in no time at all I’m on Reeves Road. It’s freezing so I pull up my hood then hurry to Henry’s house on feet that feel as if they’re being pulled. It’s irresistible, and I’m on the driveway before I know it, moving toward the kitchen without stopping to check if the coast is clear. Mr. Richardson will be at work and Henry will be at school so the house will be empty, I am certain of that fact, so I get the shock of my life when I peep through the window to see a woman with auburn hair making a cup of coffee.
I gasp, flattening myself against the wall as Mr. Goldfish coughs smugly.
“I don’t want to say I told you so but—I definitely did tell you so.”
“She could be their housekeeper or something.”
I peer back over the windowsill to look more closely at the woman who’s grabbing the milk from the fridge, taking a sip out of the bottle.
“I don’t think that’s the housekeeper, Tess. At least I hope not. No. That’s Mr. Richardson’s wife. She’s the woman from the photo. And she has a ring on her finger.”
It glints as the woman stirs the coffee. She returns the milk to the fridge then drops the spoon in the sink where my face is hovering above the fruit bowl. She screams as Mr. Goldfish yells, “Hide!” and I do my best, like I sort of duck behind a bunch of bananas, but I’ve already been seen.
“At least pull down your hood and smile,” Mr. Goldfish hisses as the woman looks all around, definitely for a weapon to defend herself against the hooded hooligan staring blankly over the top of a menacingly bruised banana. “You look mental.”
I feel it too. I have a terrible moment of clarity, gazing down at myself dressed in black with my nose pressed against Mr. Richardson’s window as I skip school to avoid a girl who’s angry with me for kissing a boy who could be my half brother. I feel odd. Not here. Dizzy and distant as I float into the sky. The woman opens the window so I dive into the blue with Mr. Goldfish, doing a furious front crawl all the way to the other side of Manchester.
On this side of Manchester, the woman peers out of a cautious crack.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
I pull down my hood to show that, hey, I’m just a girl with dyed black hair, bad roots, and three zits on my forehead because I’m not even grown-up yet. I’m fifteen and stupid and struggling I suddenly realize with tears that prick my eyes.
“Can I help you?”
“She’s here to see me,” comes a voice from somewhere on the driveway. “We hooked up on Saturday night. Not like that.” Henry sighs as his mum goes pale. “Honestly, Mother. One-track mind. We’re friends.” I like how he says that. “You coming in?”
He doesn’t ask how I know where he lives or why I’ve turned up unannounced, just strolls to the front door as if he expects me to follow. And so I do.
Mr. Richardson’s hall is full of ordinary things—a pile of clothes at the bottom of the stairs, pictures on the wall, a radiator, a thermostat, a table with a phone on it—but they seem special, imbued with meaning, sort of hallowed with a halo-like glow. He’s worn those clothes. Taken those pictures. Turned down that thermostat. And made calls on that phone quite possibly to the HFEA in London to inquire about his long-lost daughter.
“Or to ring Miss Gilbert when his wife’s away,” Mr. Goldfish says.
“They’re just friends.”
“So why were you so keen for Mr. Richardson to be single?”
The question swirls around my mind as Henry beckons me into the kitchen.
“Mother—Tess. Tess—Mother. Julie, if you prefer.”
“Lovely to meet you.” Now that she knows I’m friends with her son, Julie’s eyes are warm and welcoming with flecks of gold brought out by an unusual necklace with a large amber stone. “Are you at the same school as Henry?”
“News flash, Mother: Tess doesn’t talk, which, you know, is pretty out there.” He grins at me. “There is already too much bullshit in the world, right, Tess?”
I say nothing, but I feel eloquent, like maybe I’m communicating something pretty damn impressive just by standing here in silence.
“I wish you wouldn’t talk like that, Henry. It’s crass.”
“The world’s crass, Mother. Filthy and shallow and meaningless. I’m simply reflecting the quagmire that is society in my own dirty diatribe.”
“Are you, dear? That’s nice,” Julie says, half-smiling into her coffee. “Given that you’re battling an existentialist sense of ennui, I suppose you won’t want a piece of that?” She points at a chocolate cake. “Pity. It’s your favorite.”
“It was my favorite when I was ten,” Henry says, but he sits down at the table and gestures at a chair, telling me to do the same. It’s incredible, the fact I’m here at ten past one on a Monday afternoon when I should be in school. It’s so absurd, I almost laugh.
“How was school today, then?” Julie asks as Henry shoves his finger into the top of the cake then licks off the icing. She taps his wrist. “And where are your manners?”
“The same place as everyone else’s. Lost forever in our dog-eat-dog world.”
“And school? I asked about school, didn’t I? Can you at least give me a straight answer to that? Did you hand in your statistics project?”
“Yes,” Henry says, in a mock-serious voice. “I handed in my statistics project.”
“Good boy.”
“I’m not a boy,” he replies, but there is warmth between them, even if Henry doesn’t say what his mum wants to hear. He’s a Pluto, unashamedly different, and Julie gets that. Likes it, even.
“Cake, Tess?” she asks, and I take a piece feeling more at home in this house than I have done in my own for weeks.
35
It isn’t even odd being in Henry’s room. He holds up a vinyl record, black except for a white bird trapped inside a silver cage. He grins at me, his blond hair falling into his brown eyes, and how can a boy look so mainstream but be so unconventional is the question I am asking myself in wonder. The two opposite charges meet with an explosive power, static crackling and sparks flying whenever Henry moves or talks.
“Careful, Tess,” Mr. Goldfish whispers.
“I’m comforted by him, that’s all,” I reply, and it’s true, because this strange boy makes me feel less strange, and more strange, and generally at ease with the whole idea of being strange, same way Isabel does. She would love Henry, no doubt about it. She belongs here, with us.
Music drifts from the record player.
My heart is crying, my lips are burning, desire going up in smoke…
I ch
oke, on all the things I want to say and do and change, I choke…
“It’s about you, right?” Henry’s eyes are closed, his fingers interlinked behind his head as he lies on the carpet. “Cahill’s a genius. He makes every song feel personal.” He opens one eye. “In this case though, oh silent one, the lyrics do seem particularly pertinent.”
I want to ask what the song is called, and Henry must sense the question in the way I glance at the record player that whirs and clicks and plays something else.
“‘Settle for Less.’ Good title, don’t you think? That’s what life is, if you ask me. Settling. Trying not to settle. A battle between the two.” He leans up on one elbow and looks at me through his bangs. “Did you have that thing when you were a child? Yeah, you must’ve, because everyone did, right?”
I have no idea what he’s talking about, but his weary tone has disappeared, his bored demeanor replaced by something more agitated and real. He sits up, locking his hands around his knees, the sinews of his forearms tense beneath the skin.
“Six, seven, maybe all the way up to ten or even eleven, you think you can do anything, don’t you? People tell you regularly. You can do anything. Be anything. Rule the world. What do you want to be? That’s what you’re asked, over and over again, and I bought into it, you know? The myth. The idea that anything was possible. But it’s bullshit.” He shakes his head and laughs, though it’s clear he’s not finding it funny. “It’s even happening now. Same at your school too, I bet. Like last week, there was a talk by some guy who works behind the scenes for Formula One. I’m not into cars but his job was objectively impressive, like I could see that, right—the fancy hotels and the girls and the money, all that sort of thing. At the end, he looked at us, a hundred seventeen-year-olds sitting on those deeply uncomfortable green school chairs, and says, This could be you in ten years’ time. Even points at the spot where he’s standing, like it’s going to be easy to step into his shoes. Follow his path. It was irresponsible, and that’s what I told Miss Baynard, who organized the talk, and then I get into trouble for speaking the truth.”