Forbidden Friends

  So did that mean Lizzie had taken my case home instead of hers? I knew she’d pulled my case off the carousel when we arrived in Spain, but surely she wouldn’t make the same mistake twice. I checked my phone, but there were no messages. I tried to call her number again, but it was still making that same strange noise. How was I supposed to let her know that I had her case? How were we supposed to sort it out if I couldn’t even get hold of her?

  It was weird having Lizzie’s stuff in my room; almost as if she was with me, but not really. It only made me miss her even more. I still didn’t know if she was okay. I couldn’t forget the way her dad had dragged her off to the lift when we were saying goodbye – that desperate look she’d given me – and now this. I slipped the necklace back into the case and pulled the lid down. I could tell Nan later, there was no rush. The first thing I needed to do was talk to Bailey.

  “Hang on a minute, Bee, start again. This sounds more like an episode of Sherlock than a holiday to Spain!”

  “Look, I’m not joking, Bailey. I really need your help.” I’d told him everything, right from the moment the first pink envelope arrived.

  He got up off his bed and grabbed a notebook and pen from his desk. I stared at him as he crossed the room. I could have sworn he’d grown taller since I’d last seen him. I blushed suddenly, remembering the way Lizzie had teased me about fancying him. It was crazy. How could I fancy Bailey? We were almost like family!

  “So let me get this straight,” he said, holding up the pen and notepad like a detective. “Your mum and dad had been fighting over a letter and then your dad saw the tickets to Spain in the kitchen and disappeared, although he’s actually at your Uncle Ron’s. And then you met a girl in Spain called Lizzie with an identical suitcase to yours and the day after you met her you noticed your mum had another letter in her bag, in exactly the same sort of envelope as the first one. Then on the last day of the holiday Lizzie told you that her brother died and that she was really scared of her dad. And on the same day, your mum bumped into a woman in the market from her past and totally freaked out and your nan has just told you that the woman was Lizzie’s mum. And now you’ve just discovered that you’ve brought Lizzie’s suitcase home instead of yours. Blimey, Bee!”

  “Okay, I know it sounds crazy when you say it like that, but...”

  “No, look, I’m taking notes. This is brilliant!” He scribbled something in his notebook. “So is your dad back from your uncle’s yet?”

  I shook my head.

  “And do you know what was in the first letter?”

  I shook my head again. “Uh-uh.”

  “But you’re pretty sure it was from Lizzie’s mum?”

  I nodded. “It had to be. That’s why there was one in Spain too.”

  “And you’ve got Lizzie’s suitcase in your room and you think she took yours on purpose so that you’d take hers by mistake.”

  “Maybe. I don’t know.” It sounded ridiculous, even to me.

  “So what I want to know,” said Bailey, still scribbling away in his notebook, “is have you looked through Lizzie’s suitcase to see if she’s left you some sort of message or a sign?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Honestly, Bee!” He rolled his eyes. “Have you thought this through at all? Lizzie didn’t take your suitcase home because she likes your clothes more than hers, did she? If Lizzie took your suitcase home so that you’d take hers, she must’ve done it for a reason. Have you tried calling her?”

  “Of course I have, but her phone’s dead.”

  “What about sending her an email?”

  “I can’t. My dad took the laptop with him to Uncle Ron’s. You know how precious his laptop is, with his project on it and everything!”

  Bailey waved at his desk. “Then use mine.”

  I looked at him and then over at the computer. Why hadn’t I thought of that? I’d memorized Lizzie’s email address as soon as she’d given it to me; it was so easy.

  I sat at the computer, nervous suddenly. What if her dad was reading her emails? I didn’t want to get her into trouble. In the end, I just wrote that I was worried about her and that she should call me. And then I pressed send.

  We both stared at the screen.

  “She might not even be at her computer,” I said. “It might be days before she logs on. She might even—”

  There was a ping and a new message popped up in Bailey’s mailbox.

  “Go on then,” he said.

  “It’s too quick. It’s probably not even from her.”

  “Just click on it, Bee, come on.”

  My hand was shaking. Something was wrong. I could feel it deep inside. Lizzie was in trouble. Bailey nudged me out of the way and clicked on his inbox.

  From: Lizzie Munroe

  To: Bailey Hunter

  Subject: Leave me alone

  Don’t contact me again. Don’t call me or email me. Just forget we ever met each other.

  Lizzie

  Tears stung my eyes. “She’d never say that.” I cleared my throat, blinking hard. I didn’t want to cry in front of Bailey. “I only saw her last night and she said, ‘Promise you won’t forget me, whatever happens’.”

  “What did she mean, whatever happens?”

  “I don’t know. But something’s wrong. Her dad must have forced her to write the email, he must have, that’s the only explanation.”

  I turned to Bailey. His face was serious for the first time since I’d arrived. “We need to check her case,” he said, jumping up and grabbing his phone and keys. “Come on, let’s go straight over to yours and look through it now.”

  I’m not exactly sure what Bailey expected to find; a note, or a letter or something. We took each piece of clothing out really carefully, checking in all the pockets. We felt around the lining of the case for hidden messages and shook her books, waiting for something to flutter down to the ground, but there was nothing.

  The bottom of the case was covered in her folded beach towel. I lifted it up and gave it a shake, a scattering of sand falling to the floor. “Well, that’s it,” I said, deflated. “It’s hopeless.” I dropped the towel back in the case and sank down onto my bed. “This is a total nightmare. I’ll probably never see her again in my life.”

  “No, wait a minute, what’s this?” Bailey fished something out from the bottom of the case and handed it to me. It was a small purple notebook with a purple and silver heart-shaped lock. It must’ve been wrapped up in the towel.

  “It’s her diary,” I whispered. “Lizzie said she wrote a diary.”

  “Bingo! Read it then, come on. What does it say?”

  “But it’s private, Bailey. Look, it’s got a lock on it and everything. What if there’s something in there she doesn’t want me to know?”

  “Are you for real, Bee? Don’t you see!” He was getting frustrated. “Lizzie took your case so you would take hers and find her diary. It’s so obvious.”

  “Really?” I said, still unsure.

  “Really,” he said firmly.

  There was a tiny silver key hanging on a piece of purple thread. I used it to open the lock and then turned to the last entry. If Lizzie had been trying to tell me something when we said goodbye in Spain, then surely it would be the last thing she’d written. I stared down at the page. Every line was filled with Lizzie’s messy handwriting, as if she couldn’t get the words out fast enough. But my eyes were drawn to the four big words right at the bottom.

  My heart started to bang in my chest. My breath was coming too fast, like Mum on the plane. I blinked and then blinked again as if I could magic the words away – but they were still there. My breath came faster. I felt dizzy. The room started to spin. Four terrible words that changed everything.

  BEE’S DAD KILLED LUKE!

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Luke’s bedroom had barely changed since he died. The bed was made and it was spotlessly clean, but apart from that, the same posters were up on the walls, the same football trophies proudly
displayed on the shelves. It was Luke’s room but there was no sense of Luke. It was difficult to believe he’d ever slept in the bed, or hung out listening to music with his mates.

  I sat on the edge of the bed, trying to conjure up something about my dead brother; some feeling or memory. Mum was always harping on about how much I worshipped him, how I would follow him around like a puppy. She says I used to cry when he went to school. How can I not remember that? And if it’s true, how did I cope when he died? How long did I wait for him to come home?

  I wanted to know what happened on the night he died, but even more than that, sitting on Luke’s bed, in his perfectly preserved bedroom, I wanted to know Luke. The holiday had changed everything. It wasn’t just meeting Bee. It was finding out that she’d known me before, when I was little; that our families had been close friends. It was like coming full circle – and the circle seemed to start and finish with Luke.

  I hated the way Mum talked about Luke as if he’d had a golden halo fixed permanently to his head – the perfect son who could do no wrong. Maybe he had been an angel when he was a little boy, like when he was two or three, but in the last year of his life, Luke had been trouble.

  I didn’t know all the details, but I knew he’d been kicked out of school. It wasn’t Luke’s fault of course, as Dad never tired of telling me – it was the school, the lack of discipline, the other boys who led him down the wrong path.

  And then once, a couple of years ago, we were over at my grandparents and my granddad said something about Luke being a bad penny. He said that just before Luke died he’d been running wild, totally out of control. It caused the most awful row; Mum said Granddad was a bitter old man and that she’d never speak to him again unless he apologized, but Granddad refused. He said it was high time she stopped burying her head in the sand and faced up to the truth.

  But what was the truth? Was Luke this perfect angel? Or was he totally out of control, like Granddad said? And even if he was, why should that have anything to with Bee’s dad? I’d always been told that Luke died in a car accident, but maybe it was Bee’s dad who was driving the car? Maybe that was why Dad blamed him? If only I could step back in time – rewind the years to that night in Spain; find out what really happened.

  The door swung open suddenly, making me jump. It was Mum.

  “What on earth are you doing? I heard the bed creaking from downstairs...” Her face was deathly white, as if she’d seen a ghost – or heard one, at any rate.

  “I was just sitting here, thinking about Luke.”

  Mum’s face softened. She walked across the room and sat next to me on the bed, taking my hand. “Hey, Lizzie, have I ever told you about the time Luke did this sponsored swim? I was listening to the radio just now and there was something on that reminded me.”

  I shook my head, although the last thing I wanted was to hear another, “my perfect son Luke” story.

  “He wasn’t even the strongest swimmer, to be honest,” Mum went on. “But this elderly man came up to the school, a veteran, to talk about his experiences in the Second World War. It was part of their history topic. I don’t know what he said to them exactly, but Luke came home determined to raise money for the victims of war. He swam 300 lengths over the course of a week and raised £300. We were so proud of him.”

  Her face was lit up, as if Luke had the power to reach down from wherever he was and flick a switch on inside her.

  “How old was he when he did it?”

  “Oh, younger than you are now. Ten, maybe eleven? It was during his last year at primary school.”

  Yes, but what about after that? I wanted to say. What was he like when he was twelve? Thirteen? Fourteen? When he got in with that bad crowd at school? Was he still doing sponsored swims or had he found other ways to fill his time?

  “I did a sponsored silence once, Mum, do you remember? For Children in Need. I didn’t speak for a whole day.”

  “Sorry, Lizzie, what did you say?”

  I shrugged, pulling my hand out of hers. “Nothing, it doesn’t matter.” I could do a sponsored silence for a whole year and she probably wouldn’t notice. She was miles away, lost in her memories of Luke. I was so sick of hearing about all his amazing accomplishments. Maybe Granddad was right and Mum was just incapable of facing up to the truth. Facing up to the Luke who was kicked out of school. The Luke who’d been out of control.

  Whenever she talked about Luke in that simpering, soppy way, I wanted to stick my fingers in my ears and go “la la la”. But I envied her in a way. At least she had memories. Whenever I tried to remember anything about my big brother, there was just this great gaping hole. It would be easy as anything to fill it up with Mum’s memories – to pretend I’d had the perfect brother – but I wanted to know the real Luke.

  Mum squeezed my hand and stood up. “I’ll just go and try the airport again, see if they’ve found your suitcase. Your dinner will be ice-cold by now.”

  “I’m really not hungry, Mum, sorry.”

  I waited until she’d gone back downstairs and then opened the drawer in Luke’s old bedside table. I don’t know why or what I expected to find – but even so, I found myself looking for clues. Clues about who Luke really was. The drawer was filled with a load of boring stuff. An old tube of superglue, a pack of cards, some grubby elastic bands and, lying at the bottom, a study guide to a Russian novel called The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy.

  I picked the guide up, just to see if there were any notes in there, actual words that Luke had written – I realized suddenly that I didn’t even know what his handwriting looked like. I flicked through, but it was clean, not a mark on it; the pages as crisp and fresh as if they’d come straight from the printers. I’d just decided that he’d probably never even touched it, when, right at the end, tucked inside the back cover, I found a photo.

  My heart started to beat a bit faster. It was of me and Luke. But it wasn’t any old photo. It was a photo of the day Mum had been talking about at the ceremony in Spain: the day Luke put a slice of orange in his mouth to make me laugh. The picture had been taken right there in the same shady, wooded area. There was a blue and white checked picnic blanket and I was sitting in the middle, clapping my hands and squealing in delight, and Luke was on all fours, like a huge, overgrown puppy, grinning at me with his orange-peel smile.

  I ran my hand over the photo. It was so vivid. I could almost hear myself shouting, Orange mouth again, Lukie! Orange mouth again! Luke looked warm and funny and playful and not out of control at all – and it was as obvious as anything from the expression on my face that he was the most important person in my entire universe.

  I’d been surrounded by pictures of Luke for as long as I could remember, but there was something different about this one. This wasn’t just a photo of me and Luke. It was a photo of Luke playing with me, making me laugh. The last photo of us together before he disappeared out of my life for ever. I wanted to slip inside the picture. Get to know him again. Find out what he was really like.

  I wondered if Mum had seen the photo, if she knew it was stuck in the back of the study guide. I was about to go down and ask her when I noticed there was something written on the back. I turned it over, the words hitting me between the eyes like a hammer. It didn’t make sense. Nothing made sense. I read it again, really slowly, trying to take it in.

  Hey Luke,

  Remember this? Well, anyway, I wanted you to have it.

  Sorry for everything.

  R.I.P.

  Aidan.

  Aidan? Aidan was Bee’s brother. She’d mentioned him a few times when we were in Spain. She said he’d left home years ago, that she hardly ever saw him. How could he even have had this photo? Was he in the woods with us that day? And what was he apologizing for? And if it really was taken the day before Luke died, in Spain, how did it end up here in Luke’s bedroom, hidden inside an old study guide?

  I lay back on Luke’s bed, missing him suddenly, with an awful hollow feeling deep inside. I des
perately needed to see Bee, to find out what she knew. Aidan had written R.I.P. on the back of the photo. But how was my big brother supposed to rest in peace when there seemed to be so many unanswered questions surrounding the night he died?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  BEE’S DAD KILLED LUKE!

  I held Lizzie’s diary up to show Bailey. I was so shocked I just stood there, not saying anything, while he scanned the page.

  “What’s going on, Bee? Luke is Lizzie’s brother, right? Her brother who died! How much do you really know about Lizzie and her family?”

  He took the diary out of my hand and started flicking through, reading other entries.

  “Did you know about the memorial service in the woods? And there’s stuff here about when her mum bumped into your mum at the market.”

  “I know about all of that,” I said weakly. “But...” I tried to get my head round those four awful words. My dad didn’t kill Luke. Lizzie’s dad was the one with the temper. My dad isn’t like that. He’s quiet and gentle. He likes to blend into the background. Disappear.

  “You really need to speak to your dad,” said Bailey. “Ask him about Lizzie’s brother and what happened.”

  “But what if Lizzie thinks it’s true? What if she actually thinks my dad killed her brother? I bet that’s why she sent the email. She thinks my dad killed Luke, so she wants to forget she ever met me. She must hate me so much, that’s why she’s not texting me back and—”

  “Woah, calm down, Bee. I know it says that your dad killed Luke, but she was just writing down what her dad told her. That doesn’t necessarily mean she thinks it’s true.”

  I grabbed the diary back and read right through the last page, screwing my eyes up to make sense of her messy handwriting. Maybe Bailey was right. Lizzie sounded just as shocked and upset as me. That was why she’d said, Promise you won’t forget me, whatever happens, when we’d said goodbye at the hotel. She must’ve known her dad was going to stop us from seeing each other again.