Don't Ask (8 page)

‘I don’t care,’ I said. ‘It’s not like I’m ever going to use it in life, is it?’

‘You might do. You’ll probably use it when you don’t even realise it, like when you’re shopping or in your job.’

‘What?’ I giggled to myself. ‘Yeah, but only if I’m shopping for a mermaid’s underwear. Algae bra! Get it?’

Did I really say that aloud? I must have done because Jack groaned. ‘That’s terrible. Be serious, Lil. I know maths is a big yawn, but it’s kind of necessary. And besides,
you’ve got to pass it so you can move on to Sixth Form. Five more minutes, just for me?’

‘God, Jack, you sound like someone’s dad. Stop being so sensible.’ I looked at my watch. It was nine o’clock. I was running out of time. How could I get him from algebra
to Alex?

‘Are you calling me boring?’

‘Yes, Jack.’ I faked a yawn. ‘You’re turning into a super nerd. Go on then, do it for me, just this once. Please . . .’ I pouted. ‘Pretty please.’

‘No!’ he said. But he couldn’t help smiling. ‘Put your lip back in, I’m not going to fall for it this time.’

I pictured Jack tripping over a giant lip and chuckled to myself. ‘You know what?’ I said. ‘You could be a maths teacher – you’re so good at explaining this
stuff.’ My imagination must have been in overdrive that evening because then a picture of Jack in a horrible jacket, with cord trousers and greasy hair came into my mind, which wasn’t
what I’d intended at all. I flicked it away. ‘In a good way, I mean. A cool maths teacher.’

‘I don’t want to be a maths teacher,’ he said, frowning.

I already knew that; Jack wants to be a sports reporter. ‘Yeah, but you’d be good at it. Better than Mr Reynolds. And much, much fitter.’

He reddened. ‘Anyone would be better than Mr Reynolds. Come on, we’ve got five more questions to get through and then we can chill.’

I ignored him. ‘The girls would love you. You’d be the most popular teacher ever. You’d have them queuing in the corridor.’

He laughed and tapped my exercise book with his pen, just like Mr Reynolds does. ‘Stop trying to flatter me, it won’t work. Come on, let’s do the next question.’

I pretended to sulk. If I wanted to talk about Alex, I was going to have to risk coming straight out with it.

‘Did you help Alex with her maths homework too?’ I asked, quietly. I was really nervous of his reaction. I hadn’t dared bring up her name to Jack for weeks.

He hesitated. ‘No.’ He didn’t sound annoyed, just surprised. ‘She was better at maths than me,’ he added. ‘She didn’t need my help.’

‘Did you do your homework together?’

‘Sometimes,’ he said. ‘We revised for our GCSEs together.’

I pictured Jack sitting with his arm around the smiling girl I’d seen on Topfriendz and felt a shard of jealousy slice into me. Was there anything Jack and I had done together that he
hadn’t already done with Alex? Was there anything she wasn’t better at than me?

‘So was she a total swot?’ I asked. I wanted him to put her down, to say she was boring.

‘No,’ he said, a bit too defensively. ‘She was just naturally good at it. It was one of her A-level options. Last thing I knew, she was planning to do it at
university.’

‘Oh, I see,’ I said, feeling a little hiccup of guilt. Jack was wrong. I knew Alex had dropped maths at the beginning of Sixth Form, because she’d told me.

‘You really liked her, didn’t you, Jack? Do you think about her a lot?’

‘Not really,’ he said. He sounded impatient now. ‘Do you think about your exes?’

I wanted to answer, ‘I don’t really have any, not proper ones, anyway, not serious ones,’ but Jack’s question was rhetorical. ‘Actually,’ he continued,
‘don’t answer that. I don’t want to know. How did we get on to this, anyway?’

I knew that was that: he’d slammed the door shut on our conversation about Alex. Same old, same old. Jack wasn’t going to tell me what had gone wrong between them, or why she had
finished the relationship. And maybe he never would. Either he didn’t want me to know, or it was so awful he couldn’t bring himself to talk about it.

‘Sorry, Jack.’

‘It’s OK, it’s just not that important. It’s the past and now I’m with you.’ He closed my maths textbook and moved closer towards me, putting his arm across
my shoulders.

‘Don’t,’ I said. ‘The door’s open and my parents are downstairs.’

‘Let’s go outside to my car, then.’

I nodded.

‘I’m just going out to say goodbye to Jack,’ I shouted, as we walked down the stairs, arm in arm.

Dad came into the hall. ‘You’ve got five minutes!’ he said, firmly. ‘After that, I’m coming out to find you.’

Dad hated the fact that Jack had a car. If he wasn’t worrying that he would speed and crash, mangling us both, he’d worried that we’d get up to no good in a car park.

‘God, my dad is so uptight,’ I said, as we clambered into the car. It’s not true – my dad is a pussycat – but it gave me an easy path on to the subject of dads and
I figured this might be my very last opportunity to uncover some information. ‘Was your dad strict too, Jack?’

He stiffened and moved away a fraction.

‘Yes,’ he said. He wasn’t looking at me.

‘Did he ground you and stuff? Were you allowed out on weeknights?’

‘It wasn’t like that.’ He took his arm away from my shoulders and I was suddenly aware how cold it was in the car. ‘What is up with you tonight, Lily? I feel like
I’m in Guantanemo Bay, being interrogated. I’ve told you before, I don’t want to talk about him.’

‘Why not?’

‘I just don’t.’

‘You can trust me, you know,’ I said, softly. As soon as I said it, I had the horrible realisation that it wasn’t true.

‘Yes, I know. But it’s in the past and it’s got nothing to do with anything. Just drop it, Lil, OK?’

‘Sorry,’ I said, again. Not sorry I asked, just sorry I’d upset him.

We sat in silence for a couple of minutes. Maybe I’d gone about it the wrong way. Maybe I always did. Did I keep asking the wrong questions, or make it too obvious that I was prying? Or
was I just stupid? What had I expected, that he’d come round after college and suddenly confess his past to me, like a villain in a crime drama when they’ve been caught out by
‘zee’ clever detective? ‘It’s a fair cop, Lily, you’ve got me and now I’m going to tell you why that pesky Alex dumped me, and reveal the terrible truth about my
tragically dead dad.’ As if.

‘You know, if you ever need to talk about it I’m here for you,’ I said. And I really did mean that. I took his hand and he let me. ‘I don’t want you to be
sad.’

‘I’m not sad,’ he said, unconvincingly. ‘And one day I’ll probably tell you about him. But I don’t want to talk about it now. So don’t ask
me.’

‘OK, Jack.’ I tried hard not to sound too disappointed. There was another silence. ‘Look, I should go back inside.’

He draped his arm over my shoulders again, drawing me towards him. ‘We’ve only been out here for a few minutes,’ he said. ‘And it’s freezing.’

I gave him a quick kiss on the lips and pulled away. ‘I’m tired, Jack. Thanks for coming round though, it was really nice of you.’

‘I know,’ he said, with a wink. ‘I am nice. Very nice.’

He stroked my hair, tucking it behind my ears for me. I loved it when he did that; nobody else ever has. It made me feel warm and tingly and special. I wanted to melt and let Jack kiss me, I
really did, but I couldn’t relax because I knew that very soon I’d have to go back inside and email Alex to say I was coming to the match.

‘My dad will be out in a second,’ I said, pulling away. He looked confused. ‘Good night, Jack.’ And before he could try to stop me, I opened the door, climbed out of the
car and ran into my house.

I thought about Jack a lot as I waited for Alex to arrive at the football stadium. I thought how I’d rather be with him than here, sprawling across the sofa, ruffling his
hair. I remembered how disappointed he was when I told him I had to see Katie that afternoon, and how the anxious look that rippled across his face for just an instant revealed that he wondered if
I might be going off him. He didn’t say anything, but I could tell he was thinking it wasn’t like me to rush off or to cancel an arrangement. He was right. It isn’t like me. Or at
least, it didn’t used to be. Perhaps it was like Laura.

I also thought about how many times I’d had to lie that day, and to how many people. White lies and black lies. Huge lies and tiny ones.

There was the biggest lie of all, the megawatt lie: I’d lied to Jack. Not only by what I’d said, but by what I hadn’t said.

I’d lied to Alex, over and over, and I was about to spend an afternoon telling her still more lies.

I’d lied to my parents, who would never have allowed me to go to a football match with a strange girl and her dad, let alone travel there by myself.

And, if I’m keeping count, I was also about to lie to Alex’s dad.

All that lying made me feel empty. Empty and a little bit sad. Perhaps, I thought, I should have called myself Liar Thompson, not Laura Thompson. Laura the liar. Liar Laura. Lira. Interesting
how it was almost the same word. Was it an accident that I’d chosen that name . . .?

‘Laura!’

There was a hand resting lightly on my shoulder. I’d been so immersed in my thoughts I hadn’t heard anyone approaching. I jumped out of my skin. Into Laura’s.

‘I knew it was you,’ said Alex. She was taller than me, slender and healthy-looking, without a jot of make-up on her face. ‘I’ve been calling you. Didn’t you
hear?’

Of course I hadn’t heard. I wasn’t programmed to answer to someone else’s name. My heart was beating so fast it was hard to speak without gasping. I willed it to slow down.
‘No, sorry. I was in a dream.’

‘Anyhow. Hello, Laura,’ she said, beaming a big-toothed smile. She leaned over to give me a hug. ‘It’s so great to finally see you again.’

‘Hello Alex, I’m Laura,’ I said, slowly and deliberately, as if by repeating the name I might make it stick. ‘It’s good to see you too.’

Nobody would have recognised me. At least, I hope not, because that was my intention. On the morning of the match I’d woken early and asked myself, ‘What would
Laura wear?’, the answer to which was an emphatic, ‘Nothing you’ve got in your wardrobe!’ No doubt, worrying about Laura’s outfit was a way of distracting myself from
the nerve-wracking task ahead. I felt as if I was about to perform in a play without having seen the script. It would help if at least the costume were right.

Katie had saved the day (or so I thought) when she came to ‘pick me up for shopping’ by bringing me a pair of black jogging bottoms, a stripy black and white T-shirt with buttons at
the collar, which had once belonged to her older brother, and her black quilted zip-up jacket. This was the closest to ‘sporty’ that either of us could get. To complete the look,
I’d tied my hair into a high ponytail with a pink scrunchie, a bit like I had it in Laura’s profile picture on Topfriendz. I studied myself in the mirror, and a girl with no dress sense
stared back at me. Lily, meet Laura.

‘What do you think?’ I asked Katie. ‘Will Laura do for a football match?’

‘You look hideous,’ she said. ‘It’s perfect.’

‘I look like Vicky Pollard after she’s been run over on a zebra crossing. And that’s supposed to be good? Alex has taste, remember. She went out with Jack.’

‘Not that much taste – she dumped him,
remember
?’

‘Fair point. The only good thing is I feel less nervous now I’m done up as Laura. It’s like when we went to that fancy dress party and I could act totally stupid because I
didn’t feel like me.’

‘Probably best not to bring that up,’ said Katie, wincing. ‘I’m still trying to erase it from my memory.’

Alex didn’t seem all that impressed with my sartorial efforts. One of the first things she said to me, as we walked up the stairs towards the stand entrance with her dad,
was, ‘Are you sure you support Arsenal?’

I felt a jolt of fear. Had I been discovered? ‘What do you mean?’

Her eyes scrolled down my body. ‘Your clothes. I’m worried they won’t let you in.’

I wasn’t sure whether to feel relieved or insulted. I glanced at Alex’s outfit. She had on a pair of faded jeans, with a white T-shirt and a red hoodie – the type of clothes
I’d normally wear. Around her neck was a red and white woolly scarf. ‘What’s wrong? Do I look too chavvy?’

‘God, no. I didn’t mean that at all, I wasn’t being rude. It’s the colours. Had you forgotten, we’re playing Newcastle today. You’re wearing black and white
stripes – their colours.’ She pointed to a sign above the entrance. It read:
No away colours permitted.
‘You’ll have to sit with the away fans, if you’re not
careful.’ She giggled.

‘Oh God,’ I said, trying to think on my feet. In all my anxiety about meeting Alex, I hadn’t remembered to look up the details of the match on the web. ‘Silly me. I
thought that was next week’s fixture. I was in such a hurry this morning, I just didn’t think.’

‘Never mind,’ she said, smiling reassuringly. ‘Have you got any cash? We need to buy you a scarf.’

I looked in my purse; I had ten pounds, enough to buy some coffees and for my fare home. ‘This is all I’ve got,’ I said, holding it out to her. ‘Is that
enough?’