Never Ending (14 page)

Shiv listens. Nods, smiles.

Mikey hasn’t spoken about his sister at Talk; has broken the silence just once, to rant at Assistant Sumner about what a waste of time Talk is. Some of the others resent him for it –
We speak, why should he be any different?
Shiv wishes she could’ve recorded what he just said and play it back to everyone.
See, he
is
the same as us
.

Shiv could easily set herself in opposition to the whole regime here, as he has done. Detach herself. Give in, smash things, lash out. But she doesn’t want to be that person any more. She doesn’t want Mikey to be, either.

“I almost got her.” He mimes grabbing something, his messed-up hands raised like a pair of monstrous paws. Then, shaking his head, as though a wasp is bothering him, “I
should’ve
. I should’ve held on to her.”

With a bit of prompting, he tells Shiv about the river. How it was Dazza’s idea to wade out to the island but that didn’t count for shit, ’cos Mikey was meant to be watching out for Feebs and he ought to have said no. Or just told Feebs to stay put. Not to follow them. ’Cos, him and Daz, the water only came up to
here
– he does a karate-chop motion at his belly – but with Feebs it was right up to her armpits.

“And the current…”

Mikey can’t finish. He doesn’t need to.

Shiv can picture it as clearly, as horribly, as if she was there on the riverbank, watching a nine-year-old girl with wavy brown hair losing her footing, being swept away, shrieking, her brother diving after her, grabbing hold of her arm with both hands … but not strong enough. Nowhere near strong enough. Pictures him clutching at nothing as the fast-flowing water carries Feebs off, then under.
Did he swim after her? Did he almost drown trying to find her, pull her to the surface, save her?

She imagines he did.

Maybe that’s what the log was all about – hauling it up and down the hill to prove his strength; the strength that wasn’t enough when he really needed it. Or maybe he was
punishing
himself for failing to save her.

She thinks of how Declan died. Her part in it. Her failure.

“
You’re
not s’posed to cry over Feebs,” Mikey says, looking oddly at her.

Shiv wipes her face. “No, I know. Sorry.”

He goes on studying her before shifting his gaze again. Towards the base of the hill, the log on its side where he left it. For a moment, she thinks he’s about to go over there and carry it up the slope once more.

“It’s all over in a few seconds, isn’t it?” Shiv says quickly. “They’re there, and then they’re not – and you can’t ever have those seconds back. That moment when you could’ve made things turn out differently.”

Mikey won’t meet her gaze; she can tell she has his attention though. She starts to explain what happened the night Declan died but he cuts in.

“I know. It was on the news.”

Shiv shakes her head. “What they said on TV and in the papers—” she breaks off. Tells him the true version – the one where she’s to blame.

They are silent afterwards. She checks her watch; late for dinner but so what? She could go on sitting with him like this for ages – until it’s cold and dark and they’d merge into the gloom of the woods as surely as if they were draped beneath a cloak of invisibility.

“We should go back,” she says, reluctantly. “Before they send out a search party.”

Mikey frowns, as though only vaguely aware that someone is speaking to him.

“They didn’t find her for two days,” he says. “Some bloke fishing spotted her – nowhere near where she went in.” He sniffs, swallows. “First off he thought it was a dead dog. ’S what he said. A dead dog floating in the water.”

That night in her sleep she is in the woods near Aunt Rosh’s place, with Dec. They’ve run on ahead of the adults, scouting for trees to climb.

It starts off as an actual memory two summers ago: Declan picking out a large sycamore and making it almost to the top before panic sets in. He doesn’t call for help – just clings to a high branch that bows with his weight, like he’s in a trance. Shiv has already scrambled back to the ground and is gazing uselessly up into the canopy.

When the others catch up, Shiv expects Dad to kick straight into action, or Aunt Rosh, the athlete, but, before either of them grasps the situation, Mum has shrugged off her rucksack and is hauling herself up the tree.

“I’m coming, Dec. You just hold on tight as you can and I’ll be right there.”

Positioning herself below Declan, Mum reassures him, coaxes, reaches up to guide first one foot then the other to a lower branch – again and again, all the way down to the ground, where Dec stands stock-still, face bleached with shock, while their mother tidies his clothes and hair, like getting mussed up is the worst of it.

In her dream, though, things happen differently.

Shiv is the one on the high branch, not Declan. The tree sways in the wind and an icy, numbing rain lashes down and – bizarrely, impossibly – there are no lower branches by which she might climb back down. Or by which anyone might clamber up to rescue her.

Worse, two large dogs prowl around the base of the tree – lean as timber wolves – baying dementedly, waiting for her to fall.

“I could’ve
died
,” Declan said that evening, back at Aunt Rosh’s.

Dad shook his head. “Not today, Dec. It wasn’t your turn.”

Kyritos

Nikos wasn’t there.

It was private, at least – nobody to witness her humiliation. A cool space, shaded by the trees that fringed this end of the beach, and screened off from the Easter festivities by a huge hoarding at the rear of the temporary stage. The ground was strewn with cans, food wrappers, cigarette butts and stinking debris dumped by the tide. A rusted oil can. A used condom. With no one to mock her, their meeting place had taken on the task. Along with the jaunty music and the sounds of dancing and singing.

He stepped out from among the trees.

If he hadn’t smirked, she might not have hit him so hard in the shoulder. If he hadn’t tried to grab her hand, she might not have wrenched herself free and stormed off.

How
dare
Nikos just turn up like that – late, looking so pleased with himself?

How
dare
he not notice she was upset, or understand why?

Shiv half walked, half jogged out of there. At the edges of her vision, blurred by tears, she saw people dancing, sitting at picnic tables, standing around chatting and laughing and having a good time – but they could all go to hell.

Nikos was coming after her, calling her name.

She kept going, jostling her way through the revellers outside the tavernas that fronted onto the beach, blind to their glances, deaf to their comments. She broke free of the crowds at last, hurrying along one of the narrow passages that led back to the village square. After the gloom of the passageway, the plaza was drenched in sunlight.

Nikos finally caught up with her by what must once have been an ornamental fountain but which now stood dry, its stonework blotched and flaky.

“Shiv, please. Stop.”

She wheeled round, shaking her wrist free from his grip. “Don’t
touch
me.”

“I don’t get why you’re angry with me.” He sounded more out of breath than her. He was wearing one of his basketball vests – the blue-and-white one – sweat pooling in the dent at the base of his throat, his chest heaving. “Was I so very late?”

“I thought you weren’t
coming
,” Shiv said. “And then you just stroll out of the trees with that stupid grin on your face, like everything’s all right now you’re here.”

“I was grinning because I was pleased to see you.”

Shiv refused to be mollified. “And why did we have to meet
there
?”

“Because nobody would see us,” he said, shrugging. “Your parents.”

“It stank. It was disgusting.”

“Shiv—”

“I didn’t see you
anywhere
.” She gestured towards the beach. “You didn’t even text or anything.”

Nikos let out his breath, clearly exasperated but trying not to show it. “You were with your family – I didn’t think you’d be OK to check for messages.”

She stood there, glaring at him, only just beginning to calm down. Why did he have to be so bloody reasonable? Tentatively, he stroked her bare arm.

“Shiv, please don’t be like this.”

Her immaturity struck her then. Her wrongness. How childish she must have seemed to him – crying, storming off, acting stroppy. And for what? He hadn’t stood her up, or even been all that late really. She’d simply got herself so convinced he wouldn’t show that, when he
did
turn up, the relief overwhelmed her. Just then, the age gap between them seemed greater than ever.

“God,” she groaned, “you must think I’m such an idiot.”

He smiled. He hadn’t shaved and his teeth looked so white against the dark stubble. “What I think,” he said, flexing his shoulder, “is you punch
really
hard.”

He took her to a café down a shady side street. A sanctuary from the blistering sun. They sat at one of the tables lining the pavement, sipping black coffee from tiny cups.

“You like it?” Nikos asked, as Shiv set hers back in its saucer.

“Mm,” she said, trying not to grimace. She’d never tasted anything so bitter.

“English people don’t usually like our coffee.”

“Yeah, well, it’s not skinny latte.”

Shiv took another sip, hoping it might taste better than the first. It didn’t. She glanced at the bottle of chilled water Nikos had ordered for them to share.

He unscrewed the cap and filled their glasses. “Go on, I won’t be offended.”

“Have I failed some kind of test?” she asked, smiling.

“Yes, absolutely.”

She laughed; they both did. It was OK, being here with him like this. It was good. The scene behind the stage, Shiv running off, the quarrel in the square – all of it had begun to recede like an outgoing tide. The street was deserted; she and Nikos might have been sharing a table in a ghost town, the sole survivors of an apocalypse.

“Won’t your folks wonder where you are?”

She told him where they’d gone but didn’t mention that she was supposedly keeping an eye on Dec while he helped to build the bonfire. They fell quiet, settling into each other’s company – learning how to
be
together.

“D’you miss home when you’re away at uni?” she asked.

“Yes and no.” He ran his finger up the condensation on the side of his water glass. “I like being here but also I like going away again.”

They talked about his life on the mainland – his studies, his friends, his part-time job in a bar, the things he missed about Kyritos. It wasn’t a conversation Shiv could have with a boy at school. And though Nikos was talking about the difficulties of adjusting from island life to city life, the insecurity of living away from home for the first time, he seemed at ease with himself. It was a different confidence to the kind she was used to from guys her own age. Less showy, less needy of her approval.

“Will you move back after your degree?” Shiv asked.

“To Kyritos?” He thought for a moment. “I doubt it. Maybe I’ll leave Greece altogether. No money, no jobs.”

“But what about your family? Don’t you—”

“They are my family, sure, but they aren’t my life.”

“I thought you were close?”

“I am. But…” He left the thought incomplete.

“But what?”

“In such a close family – especially a big one – you are tied up in lots of little knots. Like a prison, but where everyone loves you and you have to love everyone back. And sometimes you just want to …
untie
yourself.” He gave a shrug. “That’s one reason I was happy to go to Thessaloníki.”

“So where would you go next, if you could live anywhere in the world?”

“America.” Then, plucking at his vest, “All I need is to be twenty centimetres taller and I can play for the New York Knicks.”

She laughed. Took a swig of water.

Leaning back in his seat, Nikos gave her a long, appraising look, a hint of a smile on his lips. She tried not to stare at him or let him see how sexy she thought he was.

“What about you?” he asked.

“What about me?”

“Will you live in another country?
Would
you? The conditional tense,” he said. “I think the English invented it to make foreigners seem stupid.”

She smiled. “I don’t think so. Live abroad, I mean.”

“Why not?”

“I haven’t really thought that far ahead.” It was out before she realized.

Nikos rescued her. “Yeah, you have college first. Do you start in the autumn?”

Did she? If she was seventeen … “Yes. Yeah, in September.”

“Oxford?” he asked, deadpan. “Or Cambridge? It must be so hard to choose.”

Shiv stuck out her tongue – Jesus, she
stuck out her tongue
? “Depends on my grades – but, no, neither of those.” She was trying to recall a conversation she’d had with Laura’s older sister. “I’ve applied to Leeds and Nottingham.” Which led to a brief but hazardous discussion about why Leeds was her first choice, and what subject she’d study, and will – would – she have to get a part-time job as well, seeing as how expensive it was to go to university in England?

Shiv winged it. She hated deceiving him. But if you lie about your age you have to lie about a load of other stuff as well.

“So, just a few months,” Nikos said, “and you’ll be leaving home.”

“Yep.” She tried to look excited and apprehensive all at once.

“Would you miss your family?”

“
Will
you.”

Nikos frowned. “Will
I
miss your family?”

“No, it should be—” Then she saw he was making fun of her. She laughed. “Don’t take this the wrong way, Nikos, but you really remind me of Dec sometimes. Same sense of humour.”

He nodded. “I can see that.”

“That’s why he likes you.”

“Maybe it’s why
you
do too.”

Shiv snorted. “I
like
you because you remind me of my
brother
?”