What You Become (17 page)

Thirty-six

Rumours about Ti were everywhere. I didn’t want to listen, but couldn’t help it. Charlie said she’d seen her stumbling at the edges of school grounds with a bottle of whisky when she was getting fresh air before going onstage for Act Two. Ti must have started the fire, people said. Who else would it be?

Charlie thought that the twins had killed themselves, like Thelma and Louise, to escape the consequences of their actions, but the police reckoned they were only skinny-dipping drunk and had got into trouble by mistake. But it was so cold that night, who in their right minds would skinny dip?

Liliana, the postwoman, swore she’d seen the girls in the Fieldings’ car on Castle Road, that it must’ve spun off the road shortly after because of the winds.

Nobody was welcome near me except for Joey.

I reread Ti’s emails, wincing at how dishonest I’d been in mine. Complaining about Mum’s illness and how hard everything was when really I was obsessing over Kiaru, and having a laugh with Alisha. I’d been so angry with Ophelia when she accused me of using Mum’s illness as an excuse to be selfish, but she had been right.

I noticed the times on hers. How long it had taken me to reply, and how quickly she had responded. She obviously hadn’t been sleeping, or not well. She must have felt so lonely. And then I’d gotten Leon’s name wrong, the boy with the wet lips who smacked her on the back of the head. No wonder she hadn’t wanted to be my friend. The ones before the milkshake shop were worst of all. I read them from between my fingers, like I was watching a horror film. How must she have felt when she saw me? And what had I been running from?

A terror I could hardly interact with was that Ophelia had thrown herself in the water, in a fit of madness, and Ti had been pushed under as she tried to save her. But why the piles of clothes? And if the girls
had
started the fire, and were hiding somewhere, what were they wearing?

I wanted to read the messages aloud to my dad, but I couldn’t talk to him yet. His protests were all about equality and giving people a fair chance, but he hadn’t managed to do that with Ti. He preferred me to be friends with kids like Alisha and Kiaru, with perfect manners and rich parents.

All Mum cared about was marks. It didn’t matter who I was friends with so long as they were swots. She would prefer me to be miserable and tagging along with mean old Charlie Fielding if it meant I got more As.

Worst of all was that I’d listened. I’d let them convince me when I should have been convincing them.

Kiaru rang, but I didn’t want to talk to him. I only wanted to speak to Ti, and it was never her calling.

The only thing more impossible than sleeping was lying awake with these thoughts, and so one night, I dressed in black, and slipped out the back door into the darkness.

Thirty-seven

But it wasn’t as easy as that. Nightwandering was terrifying when you were on your own, and after walking a hundred metres along the coast path I sprinted back to the road with its lovely lamp posts and pavement and occasional car. The sky was clear and full of stars, but they only emphasized how small I was. How vulnerable. I took deep breaths and tried again, cursing myself for not bringing a torch.

The thing was that Ti hated them, and I’d got out of the habit. She complained about light pollution and how they ruined your night vision, getting mad every time I turned mine on, and in the end it was easier to just follow her as she stomped along, breaking into a run occasionally when she got excited.

‘It’s an exercise in faith!’ she shouted back to me, as I ordered her to slow down or better still come back.

‘Faith in what?’

‘In yourself and your senses! In the coast path!’

So many times she nearly fell over, but she never grew cautious. She’d trip and whoop and then I’d hear her laughing. ‘That was a close one!’

‘I’ve got the best night vision in the world,’ she said another time, as we lay on Durgan Beach, watching the stars. We tested it by seeing who’d lose sight of a satellite trundling across the sky first.

‘I can still see it,’ we said.

‘I can still see it,’ she said.

Until I had to admit defeat.

Shaking my terror away, I tried again, imagining Ti striding ahead of me. I found a big stick, and held it in front of me like a staff. I would defend myself against spirits and fate and murderers. Against my own fear. No more running away. Focusing on my breathing, I forced myself to walk on, away from the lights of the road, allowing my night vision to kick in. The hedge looked like fingers and claws, and cobwebs swept my face, but I pushed forward, telling myself I was brave until I almost was.

Something good happened when the two of us walked together, and I tried to find it by myself. I focused on the little thunder rushes of the sea, the salt air on my face and in my lungs. I let my thoughts float freely, never getting stuck. You are safe you are safe you are safe. One step at a time, until I’d walked so far the pads of my feet burned.

Gradually, I relaxed. Ti wasn’t with me, but we’d explored these places together so completely it felt like she was. Memories engulfed me. I headed west towards Swanpool and the golf course to check Daphne’s bench, an old meeting place of ours. The seat was named after D
APHNE
,
WHO LOVED THE SEA
, and we argued over who was more Daphne. I said it was me because I always photographed the water, but Ti said it was her because she knew about the actual ecosystems.

‘You only like it as a picture,’ she said, as I focused the waves through my new camera. ‘The sea’s just an idea to you, a surface image. You don’t care about the world that’s underneath.’ Was that true?

I touched Kiaru’s gate as I passed, growled at Charlie’s. Remembering Will earlier, I lifted the catch, and pushed, staring into the dark of their garden. I could hear the water of the fountain bubbling in their huge pond, could see its froth catching the moonlight.

‘Titania,’ I whispered.

Inside the house, one of their Dalmatians started barking, then another, and I rushed back to the coast path.

Daphne’s bench was set a little way off the steep track down to Durgan Beach, and the ocean grew loud as I approached. Of course there was nobody there, just me. I sat with a heavy feeling, remembering the years before Ti came, when I was still trying to fit in with Charlie and Mia, before Ti showed me that singing competitions and ranking each other’s hair and smiles and dance moves weren’t the best ways to spend your time.

The cruise ships on the horizon were lit up like birthday cakes, and I thought of Ti and Ophelia’s party at the café last summer. They’d bickered about what sort of cake June should make, only agreeing on a mermaid if she could have straight hair like Ophelia’s, in spite of the fact that every mermaid in the history of the world had wavy hair like Ti’s.

That was making a deal with Ophelia. Your forty-nine to her fifty-one was as close as you got.

Heading to Swanpool I stopped at the meadow where I had tried to teach Ti to play Frisbee when she first arrived. My second throw had hit her in the face and made her nose bleed, and we’d had to run all the way to the toilet block at Swanpool to get some tissue. By the time we arrived she looked like a victim of crime with blood all over her T-shirt and teeth and hands, and when she was cleaned up the man at the tea stall gave us both a free ice cream.

Staring at the spot where we had stood all those years ago I caught sight of the Petrified Lady, a skull-sized rock with an eerily human expression by the hedge that I hadn’t thought about for years. Ti and me had lifted the lichen-covered boulder once, and found an ancient-looking turquoise-tinged penny underneath. After that, if we had an embarrassing or personal question, we would ask the Penny of Old who was all-seeing and non-judgemental.

Would Ti ever become a deep-sea diver? Would I ever need a bra?

Tails for yes, heads for no.

What had happened to the Penny of Old, and why did I never hold on to things? The Petrified Lady was damp and green, desperate for the summer to warm her through, and lifting her I felt dizzy with a hope I couldn’t quite understand. Until I saw it.

The penny.

My stomach twisted and I heard myself gasp as two thoughts hit me consecutively.

Ti was alive! Ti was in trouble.

We had once planned how we could use the penny to communicate if we were ever in peril. Ti loved all that Famous Five code stuff, and was for ever dreaming of adventure. Heads up was a heads up. It meant ‘Come save me. I’m doomed’. Head’s down meant ‘Relax, I’m well. Have a cup of tea’.

The queen’s details were dull from being in the dark for years, but I could make out her nose and crown. It was a head’s up.

The penny was cold in my fist. Was this the last thing Ti had touched? I sent up a prayer that she was okay, and asked the Penny of Old (and the Petrified Lady, if she had any powers) to bring her back to me. I daren’t ask a direct question in case I got a no, and so I kissed the queen’s icy nose, soil dotting my lips, and placed her face down beneath the stone.

My instinct told me to check Daphne’s bench again, and I headed in its direction, heart whacking. Hope bubbled in me. Maybe Ti had left the penny as a test, to see if I truly cared about her or not. Maybe she was at Daphne’s bench right now, and we would hug, and she would tell me this perfectly obvious story explaining where she’d been this whole time, clearing up all the rumours, and we’d be sisters again.

Because the last time I saw her couldn’t be
the last time I saw her
. The memories in my head couldn’t be the only ones. I needed new memories, for her to do fresh and brilliant and embarrassing things. To get it wrong and upset me and get it right and make me brave and be herself. For us to walk.

Gorse, gorse and hawthorn: my thighs burned from the hill, and I wasn’t breathing any more. Let her be sitting, watching the horizon, hoping I cared enough to understand her sign.

But Daphne’s bench was empty.

I sat, damp from the rain, surrounded by debris – Monster Munch packet, KitKat foil, piece of hose pipe – wiping water from my face. Sea mist, drizzle, tears. What did it matter? Ti was gone.

Thirty-eight

I woke, sweating, from dreams of tsunamis at Fairfields to find Joey by my bed, looking at me as though he didn’t know who I was. I screwed my eyes shut.

Pots had accumulated in my room: last night’s bowl, dried-out bread, a spoon smearing soup on the carpet. I’d heard Mum and Dad whisper about me while I pretended to sleep – Mum: ‘We were too hard on her.’ Dad: ‘She’ll be fine’ – but getting out of bed felt like an old habit I couldn’t return to.

‘I saw your eye whites,’ Joey whined, frustrated, and something touched my nose. It smelt of chocolate and had foil that crinkled, and I couldn’t resist a peek.

‘Eye whites,’ he said again matter-of-factly. In his favourite double-denim outfit with matching blue socks and Mum’s gold wolf brooch on his collar he was rolling a Kinder egg over my face. He held it out to me, and I peeled the foil off, split the chocolate in half, and put the toy-filled egg in my mouth. Joey watched in horror until I blew the unopened orange capsule across the room, and then he laugh-shrieked so manically that I felt bad.

The capsule hit the radiator with a clanging sound and Joey went to retrieve it. He wrapped his arms round my neck, and I wanted him to keep them there forever. I wished he was small again so I could carry him around with me, my own personal monkey. I breathed in his soapy, salty, little-boy smell.

‘Kiaru called again while you were asleep,’ he said, pulling away from me, and climbing on to the bed as my heart crash-banged, cheeks burning up.

‘I told him you were ill.’

‘Good boy.’

‘But you’re not.’ Joey stood over me, his feet trapping me in the duvet and began to bounce. ‘So get up.’

‘No.’

‘Get
up
.’ He pulled at my duvet, and I clutched it to my neck.

‘Get out if you’re going to be like this.’

His face turned naughty and his fists gripped the material, and I could see how much he wanted to pull it from me.

‘You’ll never win,’ I said. ‘Think of Leg Wars.’

He glared at me, and his breathing was fast.

‘I defeat you in every physical battle, and you know it!’

His knuckles returned to their normal colour.

‘Just be on my side, Joe,’ I said. ‘Just for a bit longer.’

He sighed, disappointed, but his face returned to my favourite version of itself, and he lifted the covers at the end of the bed, and tucked himself in by my feet.

At lunchtime Dad came to ask if I’d deliver the lasagne he’d baked round to the De Furias, but I couldn’t face it. I used a bad stomach as an excuse, which wasn’t a lie, because it physically pained me to think about Ti’s parents by now. What must they think of me?

Dad looked disappointed, so I told him it should have been a cottage pie or something English, because he could never beat Fab’s lasagne, and when he shrugged that off, saying everyone appreciated a home-cooked meal, I asked if he didn’t feel like a bit of a hypocrite, acting so concerned about the De Furias now, when for weeks he’d been trying to cut them from our lives.

He didn’t answer that, just left the room, which was what I wanted. Why hadn’t he been more interested when it would have helped? Why hadn’t I? It was too little too late, and it made me feel worse.

But Dad wouldn’t give up. ‘They’re organizing a candlelit vigil at Durgan,’ he told me later, when he came home for lunch. ‘This Friday. We’ll meet where the girls’ clothes were found, and light a candle. June’s going to sing, and Fab’s going to speak. Nice idea, isn’t it? I said they could borrow my speakers and PA if they want.

‘June was very clear about it: it’s a candlelit vigil, not a memorial. “Every flame that flickers will be a symbol of hope.” That’s what she said.’

I pulled the quilt over my head, and waited for him to leave.

‘You’ve got to get up,’ Joey said, when I was still in bed at three o’clock the next day, and I knew he was frightened. Mum hadn’t been out of bed since last Monday when she overheard the Awful Thing in the kitchen, and no matter how many times I told him Joey refused to believe CFS wasn’t contagious. I couldn’t tell him I was walking at night, because he was loose with secrets – he didn’t understand why they needed to exist.