Kiss in the Dark (11 page)

I SOUND LIKE LIZZIE LIVERMORE

I’ve been waiting for Jase to ring me for what seems like forever. My phone’s scorching hot from all the times I’ve picked it up and called his number, only to hear it click over onto the answering machine after five rings. I’ve practically been stalking him, to be honest. But I can’t give up. I need to talk to him.

I need to make sure he’s okay. That we’re okay.

Because after Plum stalked off and left us alone at the temple, things were awkward. Jase kept saying it was his fault that I’d been dragged into all this. No matter how much I tried to console him, nothing worked.

All that vulnerability, that closeness, that we’d shared when we curled up together on the bench had evaporated; we barely even kissed goodbye. I had to grab a library book and get back to Aunt Gwen’s—and Jase had to go and face the police. The weight of what had happened to his father lay on us so heavily it was hard to breathe, like it is before a storm, when the skies are low above you and the air is so thick with atmospheric disturbance that everything moves more slowly, waiting for the crash of thunder.

And by now, I’m torn between empathy and anger for Jase, because he hasn’t even let me know how everything went with the police yesterday. I haven’t heard from him since we parted at the temple. Over twenty-four hours. It’s not fair of him. I’m so worried, and he must know that! He should at least have sent me a text or something, anything, to let me know he was okay….

Finally! The phone’s ringing, and Jase’s photo has flashed on the screen. I scrabble for the Answer button, so eager that I’m all thumbs. For a moment I’m scared that I’ve cut him off by mistake.

“Jase?” I say, as breathless as if I just did a five-mile run with Taylor setting the pace.

“Hi,” he replies, his voice weary.

“Are you okay? How did things go with the police?”

There’s a long pause.

“I don’t really want to talk about it,” he mutters eventually.

I don’t quite believe what I’m hearing.

“You don’t want to talk about it?” I say, baffled. “But you have to tell me how it went with the police, at least.”

He sighs.

“They took me down to the station and asked me a ton of questions about Dad, what happened that night, did we have a fight … made me go over it again and again. I just told ’em I went out for a ride and when I got back he’d gone to bed already. Me and Gran didn’t hear him go out, but he wasn’t there for breakfast. I mean, we thought it was odd, but we weren’t exactly going to start a big manhunt just because he’d gone out before breakfast. And yeah, we’d had a fight, but me and Dad were always getting into it. That wasn’t exactly anything new.”

His words sound practiced, as if he’s simply reciting back to me what he’s already told the police. For the first time ever, I don’t feel a connection between us, and it panics me.

“So what happens now?” I ask nervously.

“Scarlett.” He sighs again. “I’m really tired. I couldn’t get much sleep. I’ve had the police on at me asking questions most of yesterday and again today. I just can’t cope with you asking me the same things they did. I’m sorry.”

But I’m not asking you the same things, I think desperately. That doesn’t even make sense.

“Jase, I wasn’t interrogating you, I was asking how you are.” I know this conversation is going horribly wrong, but I have no idea how to fix it. “I was worried about you.”

“I know, I know. I should have rung earlier,” he says, sounding even more tired.

It’s as if ringing me is an obligation, not what he actually wants to do. My panic is increasing.

“I just—” I start feebly, not even knowing what I’m going to say.

But he cuts me off.

“I need to be alone right now,” he says flatly. “I’m sorry, Scarlett. I have to go.”

“Wait—we can’t even talk?” I protest.

Ugh, I sound so clingy! Like one of those needy girls boys hate. Oh my God, I sound like bloody Lizzie Livermore.

But it’s impossible for me to be cool in this situation. Jase is pushing me away at what has to be the lowest point of his entire life. What does this say about our relationship? How can we be boyfriend and girlfriend still if he won’t even talk to me?

“My head’s so messed up,” Jase says helplessly. “I don’t know what to do or how to handle things. I just feel I’m spinning off somewhere … Ugh! Scarlett, look, I’ve got to go, okay? I’ll ring you soon, I promise.”

And that’s it. The line clicks off. I stare at my phone. His photo vanished when he hung up on me. I can’t believe what just happened. Twenty-four hours waiting to hear from him, and all I got was a couple of minutes that made me feel I was being a total nuisance to him.

I realize that I’m actually pacing my bedroom, back and forth, back and forth, like a caged animal, the phone feeling like a lead weight in my palm.

Sod it. I won’t let Jase push me away like this. I hurl the phone onto the bed and run downstairs, grabbing my leather jacket and dashing out of the cottage. Aunt Gwen isn’t back yet, so I lock the door and head out down the drive in the direction of the Barneses’ cottage. I’m worried and frustrated, but at this moment my primary emotion is anger with Jase for stranding me emotionally like this. If I manage to somehow winkle him out of his house, I’ll be more likely to yell at him than anything else.

The last thing we need is to get into a fight, I think. Maybe I should turn around before it’s too late.

But there’s no point telling myself anything. Nothing could make me turn back now.

As I emerge from the passageway by the side of the kitchen wing, I can’t see anything in the parking lot but an old blue van, pulled up in front of the cottage and blocking everything else from view. The closer I get, the more that I see it’s old, dirty, and dented from years of banging down country lanes.

And then I hear a voice I know too well already.

“You’re not welcome here!” it screeches, and something is pounded against the wooden step of the cottage, something that sounds like the rubber bottom of a cane. “You haven’t been welcome here since you walked out all those years ago, Dawn Merriweather!”

Ah, the dulcet tones of Jase’s grandmother. I’m perversely happy, for a moment, to realize that she’s as mean to other people as she is to me.

“But I need to see Jase,” says a woman’s voice pleadingly.

“He’s not here!” his grandmother snaps.

I don’t walk round the van. I’ve got absolutely no wish to have nasty old Mrs. Barnes brandishing her cane at me. Instead, I tiptoe up to it and squint gingerly through the dirty window of the driver’s side, getting a fairly decent view of the scene unfolding in front of the Barneses’ cottage.

Jase’s grandmother is standing on the step, looking predictably unfriendly. Facing her is a slender woman in a padded jacket, her legs skinny in tight jeans, her back to me. The woman’s hair is black and wiry, done in stubby twists not tidy enough to be called cornrows, tied loosely together at the back of her head in a thick bunch. As she gesticulates, I see her hand is the color of walnuts.

I’ve guessed her identity already by the time she says plaintively:

“But I’m his mother, Dorothy. That’s got to count for something!”

“Not in my book!” his grandmother retorts.

“And I know he’s here! His bike’s parked right out in front.”

“He’s gone for a walk,” his grandmother says triumphantly, and steps back, reaching for the door.

A split second later, Jase looms into view behind his grandmother, his wide shoulders and curly head clearly visible even through the grime on both van windows.

My pulse spikes at the sight of him, a bright white surge of excitement in my veins, even though I’m nervous about his reaction when he sees I’ve ignored what he said about wanting to be alone.

“Mum?” He sounds genuinely surprised, as if his mother’s the last person he might expect to show up on his doorstep. “I didn’t know you were here!”

“I tried ringing you, Jase, but you didn’t pick up,” says his mother plaintively. “It’s all around the village, what’s happened.”

“Those nosy parkers in Wakefield! They’ve got nothing better to do than flap their tongues over other people’s business,” interrupts old Mrs. Barnes angrily. “And you, Dawn Merriweather, don’t think you’re coming inside. This was my home before Kevin brought you back to it, and I never wanted you here, as you well know.”

“Gran, there’s no need for all this,” Jase says wearily. “Change the record, will you?”

He places his hands on his grandmother’s shoulders and moves her aside enough so that he can get past.

“I’m off out to have a cup of tea with Mum,” he tells his grandmother. “Don’t go throwing a wobbly, now, Gran. We’ve got enough on our plates as it is.”

His grandmother gives him a hard look, and I think she’s going to launch into a further tirade. But then she clamps her lips together in a tight hard line, turns, and walks inside, slamming the door behind her.

“We can sit down in the staff room,” Jase says to his mother.

She reaches up to hug him—not easy, as she’s even shorter than I am. Jase, I notice, allows the hug, but doesn’t really return it. He pats her shoulder with one hand, awkwardly, his body stiff and resistant.

They turn toward me, and I get my first look at Jase’s mother, face-on. Her skinniness and slightness make her look young, but her face belies that. There are lines fanning out beside her eyes, deep grooves worn down from her nose to the outer corners of her lips, gray roots to the thick black hair pulled back from her face. She looks very tired, as if she hasn’t had a good night’s sleep in years.

But although her eyes are weary, their color is unmistakable. They’re just like Jase’s: pale amber, clear and glowing golden in the winter sunlight. And her lips are like his too, full and purplish, like a plum with the bloom still on it.

I hesitate for a moment as they disappear behind the van. There’s a split second when they’re out of my sight, and I could take the opportunity to run away, duck behind the van until they’ve gone, postpone talking to Jase until he’s on his own. Even without my concerns about how Jase will react when he sees I’m here, I’m not sure I want to meet his mother. The rest of his family haven’t exactly been my biggest fans to date.

But I must want to see Jase more than I want to avoid being yelled at by yet another relative of his, because my feet refuse to move. And the next moment Jase and his mother emerge from round the side of the van.

I’m not even looking at her. Jase is all I can see. And I don’t even stop to register his reaction to the sight of me.

I just run toward him and practically jump into his arms.

MUCH TOO MUCH INFORMATION

“What are you doing here?” Jase looks down at me as I step back almost immediately, embarrassed that I overreacted and threw myself at him like that.

Not a good start. But at least he put his arms around me briefly, which is more than he did for his mother.

Don’t be clingy, I tell myself firmly. You are not Lizzie Livermore.

“You sounded awful on the phone,” I explain. “I just wanted to see you and make sure you were okay.”

He shrugs. “Well, I’m not okay.”

God, everything I say to Jase today is coming out wrong.

“Jase,” says his mother eagerly, “is this your girlfriend?”

I hold my breath, waiting. After what feels like an eternity, Jase says:

“Yeah, Mum. This is—”

“I’m so happy to meet you!” she says fervently, smiling at me. “And you’re so pretty!” She frowns. “I must have seen you round Wakefield village, you look very familiar. Will you come and have a cup of tea with us? She’ll come and have a tea, won’t she, Jase?”

I dart a glance over at Jase. I’m feeling more confident now that he’s acknowledged me to his mother as his girlfriend, but his demeanor is barely more welcoming than his grandmother’s was to his mum. His arms are folded and his shoulders are set, his eyes the darkest amber I’ve ever seen them.

“Okay, I suppose,” he mumbles.

If his mother weren’t being so nice to me, I would turn and leave. But I’m curious about her. Maybe this will help me get more of an understanding on why the Barnes and Wakefields have such a dodgy history.

“Then I’d love to,” I say, smiling brightly.

“You know I didn’t want to leave you, Jason,” his mother is saying plaintively.

“I know, Mum,” Jase rolls his eyes. “You say this every time I see you.”

“Your dad said he’d do all sorts if I—well, better not repeat that, he was your dad, after all. But he promised me he’d never lay a hand on you.” She clutched tighter onto his arm. “He didn’t, did he?”

From what Jase has already told me about Mr. Barnes, I know his father didn’t keep his promise. Jase looks straight ahead, his voice a dull monotone, as he answers:

“No, Mum, he didn’t.”

I can’t believe his mother doesn’t see that he’s lying.

But then I think: She doesn’t want to see it. She left Jase with her ex-husband, knowing what he was like. She doesn’t want to admit what she did.

“Have some more tea, Mum.” Jase jumps up and takes the disposable cup from her. He glances at me, one of the few times this afternoon he’s actually met my eyes. “Want some more?”

“Please,” I say, sensing that he needs to keep as busy as possible.

Jase takes my cup as well and crosses the room to the big teakettle. I definitely don’t want any more; it’s stewed, as thick as pea soup. I could almost stand a spoon in it. Heroically, though, I swig down the fresh cupful he brings back, feeling it burn down my esophagus and settle in my stomach, where it’ll probably eat through the lining.

We’re in the kitchen staff room, which is mercifully empty, as everyone’s busy getting dinner ready. Perched on faded old armchairs whose stuffing is coming out at the seams, we’re drinking the lees of the tea that was probably made for the cooks and kitchen staff at six that morning, before the breakfast service. It certainly tastes like it’s been sitting around all day.

“Digestive?” Jase says, holding up a battered old biscuit tin.

“Don’t mind if I do.” His mother takes a few and props them on the arm of her chair.

“She eats like a horse,” Jase says to me, with a curve of his lips that’s a faint, sad shadow of the easy smile of his that I’m used to. “I don’t know where she puts it all.”

Staring at Dawn—I can’t think of her as Mrs. Barnes somehow—I realize that she’s eaten her first digestive biscuit in two swift bites, like an animal given a treat, quick to consume it before another predator can take it away. That’s not a bad comparison. There’s something wild about her, something furtive, as if she were on the verge of running back into the forest she came from, to hide in her den.

She meets my eyes, and in hers I see fear. Unmistakable, pure, naked fear.

What does she have to be afraid of? I wonder.

“When’s your dad being laid to rest, Jase?” she asks.

Jase looks grim. “We can’t have a funeral yet. Not till the inquest.”

Dawn’s hands clutch at her cup in a spasm, her thin fingers sinking into the squashy white foam. “There’s going to be an inquest?”

“They told me they’re not sure it was an accident,” Jase says flatly.

My throat nearly closes up. After Dan’s death, I know all too well what an inquest is. I had to testify at his. It’s like a mini-trial, with a kind of judge called a coroner presiding, and a jury. The coroner holds an inquest when someone dies under suspicious circumstances, or when he wants to confirm that what seemed like an accident really was one. The jury gives a verdict—accidental death, misadventure, suicide, or murder—and the police tend to follow what they say.

It’s horribly stressful to be a part of an inquest. Especially when the fact that one’s being held means that the police and the coroner have doubts that Mr. Barnes’s death was the drunken fall it appeared to be at first. If the verdict doesn’t come back as accidental death—God, Jase must be coming apart at the seams just thinking about it.

“Of course it was an accident,” Dawn says frantically. “He was drunk, wasn’t he? He fell down and whacked his head. The only surprise is it didn’t happen years ago.”

She turns to me.

“You mustn’t think too bad of me,” she says unexpectedly. “You mustn’t think Jase’s got a mum who just ran away and left him.”

I’m totally embarrassed that she’s talking to me about such personal, family stuff. It isn’t my business what she did when Jase was little. I flash back quickly to the only mothers I’ve been around for any length of time, the mums of my ex-friends Alison and Luce. They didn’t talk like this. They’d ask us what we wanted for dinner, or say it was time to turn off the TV and do some homework, or tell us off for not carrying our plates to the dishwasher when we’d finished eating.

Normal stuff. Being brought up by your aristocratic, distant grandmother and your loathsome aunt in the grounds of a girls’ boarding school doesn’t give you a very good perspective on what normal is, but I do know how to recognize it. Normal’s easy. It feels simple and right and nice.

It doesn’t make you want to writhe around in your chair, let alone clap your hands over your ears and sing La la la very loudly to drown out what someone else is saying.

“He was all right before.” She leans forward earnestly, fixing me with those hypnotic golden eyes. “Jason’s dad, I mean. Oh, he always had a temper, but it never got out of control. Same with the drinking. He wasn’t like that when we got married.”

This is much too much information! I look frantically over at Jase, but he gives me a look that says, as plainly as if he’d said it out loud, You wanted to come along, and well, here you are.

Then he stands up and escapes on the pretense of getting himself some more tea. Bastard, I think. How am I supposed to deal with this on my own?

Dawn sighs. “All the girls in Wakefield were after Kevin. I couldn’t believe it when he asked me out. Our parents weren’t keen on us getting together. Things were different then. He was a white boy and my parents didn’t like that, and nor did his mum.” She pulls a face. “No one thinks twice about it now, do they? But my parents wanted me to marry a nice Jamaican boy with a family like theirs. And his mum was a right old racist, to be honest with you. She didn’t have a good word to say to me. But we were so in love. You should see the photos. Kev looked so handsome. And I wasn’t bad myself in those days.”

She catches the involuntary expression of disbelief on my face, and the lines on her forehead deepen.

“I haven’t been the same since I had to leave Jason,” she says. “And it was the drink ruined Kev. The curse of the Barnes family. Once they start, they can’t stop. His dad drank himself to death too. But don’t you worry. Jason doesn’t have it. I know the signs, I’d see ’em by now. He takes after our side of the family, and we’ve got no alkies there, thank the Lord.”

Now I’m paralyzed in my chair, unable to move, as if Dawn has hypnotized me with those big golden eyes, like Kaa the snake in The Jungle Book. And just as if I were in a trance, she doesn’t seem to expect any response from me: she just keeps on talking.

I manage to flick my eyes sideways, urgently looking for Jase. He is standing with his back to the wall, his expression as dark and brooding as if he were Heathcliff on the moors. He looks so tortured. Despite my anger at his refusing to talk to me, at his abandoning me here with his mother, my heart aches for what he’s going through.

Dawn takes another biscuit and disposes of it in two swift feral bites. It barely interferes with the flow of her speech. “At first, we were fine. Right up until Jase was five. We settled into the cottage—his mum was off living with her sister in Wakefield village—and it was all cozy and nice. I can’t say he was always sweetness and light, but he never drank after dinner and he never laid a hand on me, not really. Not so you’d count it. His dad was long dead and his mum was always hovering round, trying to run our lives, but he told her to sod off, and we were happy, just the three of us. And then, everything changed.”

She shivers.

“Like day to night. Just a few days after Jason’s fifth birthday. We had a party for him, balloons and cake and everything. We didn’t have much money, but we wanted it all nice for our boy. I can still see his little face now—he was over the moon, he was that excited. But just a few days later, Kev came home in the middle of the day with a face like thunder, and went straight for the whisky bottle. And after that nothing was the same.”

She wraps her arms around herself.

“I told him I wouldn’t stand for it,” she says quietly, “and he said I could go whenever I wanted but I had to leave Jason. He’d get his mum in to look after the boy. I couldn’t take him with me.”

She looks at me pathetically.

“I couldn’t stay,” she says, her voice rising. “It got so bad so fast that I ran out of there with only the clothes on my back one night, a bare two months after he started necking down that whisky like there was no tomorrow. Didn’t even stop to grab one thing I owned, I was that scared. I drove back to my mum and dad’s. They tried to tell me I should get Jason back, go through the courts, but Kev came round and said he’d kill me if I tried, and we believed him.”

There are tears in her eyes now. But, thank God, Jase is coming back to where we’re sitting, concerned at the high pitch of his mother’s voice.

“Mum, what are you going on about?” he says, looking deeply embarrassed. “Scarlett doesn’t want to know all that old family history stuff!”

Dawn freezes in her seat, every muscle in her thin body seeming to contract. The only thing that moves is her eyes, wild, as she stares from Jase to me.

“Mum?” Jase says, sounding worried now.

“What did you call her?” Dawn said, looking at me incredulously.

“Scarlett. Scarlett Wakefield. Did I not tell you her name before?”

Dawn drops her foam cup of tea. It splashes everywhere, a stream of thick dark liquid staining her jeans, splattering onto the floor. She jumps up, patting at herself, and I do too, touching the leg of her jeans, backing away when I realize with great relief that the tea wasn’t hot enough to scald her.

I run to the tea table to grab some green paper towels to mop her up with. But as I turn around, I see that Dawn’s already moving. Ignoring the soaked front of her jeans, she’s heading determinedly toward the door.

“I need to get going, Jason. I’m late for work as it is,” she says hastily as I push through the door in their wake.

Outside, she fumbles for her keys, ducking her head as she drags them out of her pocket, refusing to meet Jase’s eyes, let alone mine.

“I’ll ring you later, Jason,” Dawn mutters, swinging open the van door, climbing up into the driver’s seat, looking very small behind the wheel of the big vehicle. I notice that she’s put an old cushion on the driver’s side to sit on, to give her an extra bit of height. The steering wheel’s being held together with duct tape, and there are some tools and a rusty old bit of pipe rattling around on the floor. The upholstery’s so faded and patched up with more duct tape that you can’t tell what color it was originally. Jase’s mum isn’t exactly living the good life.

Dawn doesn’t say goodbye to either of us. She just leans over and grabs the open van door and slams it shut as the engine comes to life, turning over with a noise so rattling that even I, who know nothing about cars, can’t help thinking that it sounds like it needs a good going-over by a mechanic.

Jase jumps back as the van accelerates away, the exhaust pipe bouncing and grumbling with a series of grunts, the entire undercarriage sounding ominously like it’s about to fall off at any minute.

We stand there, watching the dirty blue rear of the van disappear down the service road, not knowing what to say, not even looking at each other.

Because there’s no question that Dawn’s violent reaction was provoked by hearing my name. My full name. Yes, she was nice to me, but only before she realized that I was a Wakefield.