Hurt (24 page)

‘You don’t want to talk to me?’ He hears the hurt in her voice.

‘It’s – it’s not that. There’s just nothing to say. I’m not saying I definitely want to give up diving for good. Maybe I just need a break, and a new coach.’

‘OK, that’s your decision. But why now? And what have you suddenly got against Perez?’

‘He’s just a fucking maniac, OK? He knew I wasn’t ready to attempt that dive, but he kept pushing and pushing!’ His voice rises abruptly and he sees his mother flinch in surprise.

‘But he’s been your coach for nearly six years now. Everyone says he’s the best in the country. That’s why we sent you to him. He says you’re like the son he never had. He really cares about you, Mathéo. He’s confident you could do really well in the Olympics – that’s why he always gives you so much extra time, much more than to the others on the team—’

‘Well, maybe I don’t want the extra time!’ Mathéo finds himself shouting.

His mother just looks bemused. ‘Have you and Perez fallen out?’

‘No . . . I don’t know. I’m just sick of constantly being told what to do.’

His mother sits back, inhales deeply. He can tell she is just longing for another glass of wine and a cigarette.

‘Maybe what you need is a break,’ she suggests finally. ‘A holiday. Go away for a while.’

Suddenly she has his attention. Maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad idea. Get away from here – from the people, the memories. Get away from this house, his father, Perez. He wishes he could leave and never come back. Run away from this life – the sordid mess of that one night, the broken, pathetic shell of the person he has become – and start anew.

‘Maybe you could spend a week or so with that friend of yours – the one whose father works in the City.’

‘Hugo?’ He looks at her in astonishment. ‘Go to the South of France with Hugo and the others?’

‘Yes, you’ve always enjoyed it there in the past. Go and spend the week with them,
chéri
. Have a proper break this time.’

‘But Dad—’

‘I’ll speak to Dad. He’s worried about you too, you know. He was really quite shaken by your accident.’

‘But a whole week? Perez will go nuts.’

‘It’s not up to Perez. We’re your parents. We make the decisions.’ She stops for a moment, reaches out and touches his cheek. ‘You need a break,
mon amour
. Speak to Hugo and arrange it tomorrow, OK?’

He nods, something akin to relief finally spreading through his body. ‘Thanks.’

The day of departure dawns clear and bright. Sometime during the night, a sense of immense relief has crept into Mathéo’s veins. Relief that he can finally get away from all this – from his father, from Perez, from the treadmill of training. For a few moments he just lies there, watching the sun knife in through the gaps in the curtain. He feels as if he has been waiting for this day, this moment, pearling on the horizon like a mirage, always just out of reach. And now that it’s here, nothing can take it away from him: the only way is forward, life’s velocity only ever sweeps in one direction and for that he is infinitely grateful. He will move on with his life, put all that sordid mess behind him. He stretches and yawns and closes his eyes and opens them again. Splayed out across the bed, he gazes sleepily around at his book-laden desk, his clothes-horse chair, the framed Van Gogh prints hanging from the white walls and his open rucksack on the shag-pile carpet. He will go to the sea, wash himself clean, wash away the past month and come back a new person.

After showering and shaving and inspecting his face for signs of spots, he dresses in his favourite jeans – the faded, stonewashed ones his mother always complains about because they are so old and worn, the denim thin and soft from years of use, the ends scruffy with loose threads and rips in both knees. Although they are slightly long in the leg and the bottoms have always crumpled over his ankles, like the others they feel looser than usual, and he has to thread a belt through the loops in order to keep them from slipping down past his hips. He pulls on a faded grey T-shirt and realizes that it too seems to have stretched, the short sleeves baggy round his biceps, the thin material revealing the outline of his collarbone. Faced with his reflection in the full-length mirror of his room, he cannot deny that he has indeed lost a great deal of weight; his skin is pale and anaemic, the only colour in his face emanating from the scarlet crack in his chapped lips and the violet shading beneath his eyes. He looks frail, sickly almost, and badly in need of a tan. Slipping his feet into Birkenstock sandals, he exchanges his expensive, heavy silver watch for a plain waterproof one and fastens the leather friendship bracelet from Lola around his other wrist. His shaggy mop of dark blond hair, hanging down over his eyes, is so overgrown it is beginning to curl, lending him, he notes briefly, a somewhat bohemian look that his parents will hate. The knowledge gives him an odd sense of satisfaction.

He finishes packing, performs a quick scan of his room and then heads downstairs with his large rucksack. The kitchen, with its gleaming chrome, smells of disinfectant – empty and sterile like a showroom. Consuela hasn’t arrived yet and the others are all still in bed. He glances around for a note from his parents but there is none, though the holiday cash they gave him last night was generous. So he goes in search of a piece of paper and starts writing a message to Loïc:

Hey buddy
,

See you in a couple of weeks. Give me a call whenever. Hope tennis camp is a blast. Don’t get too good cos I don’t want you to embarrass me when I get back. Try to chat to some of the other kids even if you don’t feel like it. I know it can be tricky, but you’re such an ace player I bet everyone will want to be your mate. And at least you’ll be getting away from CERTAIN PEOPLE and can do what you want for a change. Here’s £10 for snacks, etc. Don’t tell Mum and Dad – that way you’ll get more. Left iPad and charger on my desk for you but remember to sneak them into your bag at the last minute. Gimme a call sometime if you’re not too busy with your new friends. Will miss you loads but look forward to thrashing the new tennis champ when I get home. Don’t worry about anything, I’m fine now.

M

Clambering out of the cab at Heathrow Airport, he and Lola make their way quickly to the prearranged meeting point in the main hall, where squeals from both girls and a cheer from Hugo cause a group of Japanese tourists to look round in mild alarm. In the absence of any vacant chairs, the four of them sit down on the floor together, forming a little island in the sea of passengers eddying back and forth. The departure hall is brightly lit, the walls so bleached out with artificial whiteness that it feels to Mathéo like he has stepped into another world. A homeless man dozes in a corner. A janitor, shrunk down by the flickering departure screens above, creates a glistening path with his broom. Most of the columns on the screens are black and silent, but two are ablaze with green neon letters and numbers. Lola and Isabel are both talking at once, fuelling their own excitement, their voices shrilling in the giant atrium that surrounds them. Dropping his rucksack, Mathéo hugs Isabel, gives Hugo a slap on the back, their excitement contagious, and for a moment he feels almost normal again. Lola and Isabel continue their high-pitched chatter until finally, exhausted, they flop back against rucksacks and rolled-up jackets as makeshift pillows.

‘I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t sleep!’ Lola informs them, her face glowing, eyes wide with elation. ‘Dad insisted I went to bed at ten but I couldn’t lie still, and every time I got up he sent me back to bed again until I thought I was going to go crazy, just lying there, staring at the clock and counting down the minutes and—’

‘Me too, me too!’ Isabel thumps Lola’s arm. ‘I tried to sneak out of the house but Mum caught me—’

‘And so she kept me awake all night by texting me every five minutes!’ Hugo puts in with an exaggerated sigh. ‘And she kept on sending me the links to all these places on YouTube which she suddenly decided she had to visit!’

‘Yeah, and then we ended up on Skype,’ says Isabel. ‘And Hugo kept saying we had to go here and here, and finding all these new places!’

‘I tried texting you, Mattie, but you never answered!’ Lola adds in mock outrage. ‘How did you actually manage to sleep?’

Despite being relieved by her tone and demeanour, Mathéo cannot ignore the strain of forced ebullience in her behaviour, her desperate effort to act as if nothing has happened or changed between them.

‘I was wiped out!’ he admits, forcing a laugh, playing his part. ‘But I kept having these horrible dreams where I woke up and found I’d overslept and you’d all left without me.’

‘Aw, we’d never do that!’ Lola slings an arm around him and pulls him into a hug, almost tipping him backwards. ‘We’d drag you from your bed if we had to and put you in a giant rucksack and—’

‘Ow!’ he exclaims, laughing at the same time as a strand of his hair gets caught in Lola’s watch. ‘But seriously, guys, it was horrible. I kept waking up with a jolt and hurling myself out of bed!’ He exaggerates for the benefit of a good story and they all laugh, far more loudly than necessary.

‘I can just imagine Matt going like this . . .’ Hugo impersonates him springing in and out of bed, and Mathéo realizes they are all completely high on adrenalin, drunk with excitement, their conversation ricocheting from peak to peak as they talk to one another, past one another, over one another with so much energy they appear about to combust. It is a monumental effort to keep up and only gradually do they slow to a more acceptable pace, ratcheting their voices down a level to turn to more practical matters, such as checking in and making their way through the long queues at security.

‘Gate twelve, gate twelve!’ Isabel suddenly squeals excitedly.

All eyes swing to the board.

‘Shit, that’s all the way down at the bottom. Hurry up!’ Hugo shouts.

A massive scramble to retrieve jumpers, jackets, bags and rucksacks ensues. They race down the long carpeted corridors in an attempt to avoid the boarding queues, but Isabel drops her sunglasses. Then Lola nearly loses her sandal and ploughs, headfirst, into Hugo’s rucksack as he stops dead.

‘It’s this one, it’s this one!’

‘No, that’s gate eleven!’

‘On this side it’s twelve – are you blind?’

‘Oh, shut up, you!’

‘Come on, come on!’

‘Shit! Where’s my boarding pass?’

Amidst much laughter and hysteria, they finally locate the right gate, manage to get to the front of the queue and follow the suspended tunnel into the mouth of the plane.

Hugo almost knocks himself out as he tries to heave Isabel’s rucksack into the overhead lockers.

‘Jesus, what have you got in here? Rocks?’

Mathéo reaches across to give Lola a hand.

Eventually the rucksacks are stored and they collapse into their seats – Mathéo and Lola on one side of the narrow aisle, Isabel and Hugo on the other.

As the plane begins to fill up with more and more passengers searching for their seats, squeezing and jostling and struggling to load hand luggage into the lockers, Mathéo falls quiet, staring out of the window. Beside him, Lola is watching him anxiously out of the corner of her eye. Even though he is painfully conscious of her scrutiny, he pretends not to notice, trying to keep his expression as neutral as possible. Since telling her about Brighton four days ago, he has managed to make her promise to leave the subject alone so that he doesn’t have to think about it – at least for the duration of the holiday. But as both the excitement and adrenalin begin to ebb, it’s a monumental effort to keep hold of the laid-back, cheerful expression. Elbow propped up against the window ledge, he chews his thumbnail in an attempt to calm his nerves, eyes trained on the small porthole of grey runway, long, low buildings stretched out along the morning skyline. On the other side of the aisle, Hugo and Isabel’s rambunctious enthusiasm shows little sign of waning as they tease, joke and chatter animatedly. Glancing across at them for a moment, Mathéo is painfully aware of the contrast between their two states of being, his and theirs, and how hard it is to transmute back from the outer darkness.

‘Aren’t you excited?’ As the other passengers begin to settle down, Isabel glances across at him under the thin braids she is plaiting into her overgrown fringe. She is chewing her gum with great gusto, snapping it with her tongue, making an irritating sound. But the tone of her voice holds a faintly resentful edge, as if suggesting he is not making sufficient effort.

‘Of course!’ Dragging his eyes away from the window, he forces himself to engage, shooting her a bright smile and raising his eyebrows in an attempt to reinforce the words. ‘How about you?’

‘What do you think?’ She laughs. She seems louder than usual, tanned and busty, her tight red top barely concealing her bra, her short skirt adorned with tiny beads sewn on in the shape of hearts. Looking away, Mathéo’s gaze meets Lola’s, and her lips twitch upwards, almost like a question mark, as if asking him if he is all right. He manages a reassuring smile in return.

As their plane slowly begins to move, taxiing towards the runway, the airport buildings fading into the morning mist, he feels his precarious veneer splinter for a moment, and has to take a long deep breath, fixing on the trail of runway lights that smear and blur beneath the window. Drawing his bottom lip between his teeth, he bites down hard and keeps his head turned away, sensing Lola’s eyes still lingering on his face. She’s about to say something when, across the aisle, Hugo interrupts with, ‘Hey, come on, you two, we’re on holiday! School is out for good! We’ll never have to sit through one of Croaky’s assemblies again!’

‘Unless I have to re-sit my history A-level!’ Lola quickly switches on her smile and pulls a face. ‘I can’t believe our results are coming out in less than a month!’

‘OK, no exam talk for the duration of the holiday,’ Hugo declares triumphantly. ‘We’re not even going to think about results – OK?’

‘Definitely!’ Isabel chimes in.

As the air hostesses go through the safety demonstrations, Mathéo lets his breath out slowly, grateful to Lola for diverting Hugo’s attention, and soon the noise of the engines becomes too loud for conversation. It’s a relief to be moving and, even though they haven’t left the ground yet, Mathéo is thankful the journey has begun. As the announcements finish and the seatbelt lights go on, the roar inside the cabin intensifies. The plane begins to gather speed, preparing for takeoff. Beneath the window, the runway blurs and bumps and rattles. With every passing second he is putting more distance between himself and home, between himself and everyone back in London; with every passing minute, he is sloughing off more of his old skin, leaving the damaged Mathéo behind.