Sworn Secret (37 page)

Kate winced at the desolation in Rebecca’s voice. She stood up and walked over to her. She rested her hand against the side of Rebecca’s hot, tear-wet cheek. Rebecca lowered her hands and stared at Kate, who leant forward and kissed Rebecca’s forehead. When Rachel took Kate’s hand and squeezed it, she had to fight hard to keep her own tears back.

‘I’m sorry I told you about them,’ Rebecca whispered. ‘Mrs Howe said I was a selfish little girl who only thought of myself and didn’t think about your and Jon’s feelings.’

‘She said what?’ said Rachel.

Kate stepped back in shock and sat down on the edge of the coffee table. ‘When did she say that?’ she asked.

‘She asked me to come into her office. It was after the memorial. I didn’t want to go, but I had to because she’s the deputy head. She closed the door and then she told me I was meddling with things I didn’t understand. “If you mention this disgusting business to anyone, or if I see you talking to Mr or Mrs Thorne, I’ll make your life a misery.” And then she asked me if I had any more copies of the film. I said I didn’t, even though I had it on my phone and you can easily get it off the email account we used.’ And now Rebecca burst into tears and drew her arms around her body, and looked to Kate as terrified as she had been the day they talked outside the school. ‘Then she said if I knew what was good for me I’d keep my mouth shut.’

‘She threatened you?’ gasped Rachel. ‘But she can’t do that. Oh, sweetheart, come here.’ And Rachel folded her into a strangling hug, stroking her hair and rocking her gently. ‘It’s all right, Bec. It’s OK.’

Kate rubbed Rebecca’s knee. ‘She’s wrong, sweetheart, you did the right thing to tell us.’

Kate glanced across at Lizzie. She was sitting ramrod straight with her head set and eyes fixed ahead. Her hands lay flat on her knees, which were pressed together. She looked so grown up. Kate saw a lot of Jon’s mother in her. It wasn’t a likeness she’d noticed before, but it was there: beneath the freckles, the flyaway hair and the pale slightness, was her grandmother’s resolute stare, the stoic quietude and the tumble of thoughts hidden behind a steely mask.

The Wasp Apothecary

Lizzie sat on her bed and stared out of the window at the glorious weather. It was a spectacular afternoon. The sun was making fun of her.

‘Bloody sun,’ she muttered, and stood up to pull the curtains together, poking her tongue out at it before shutting it out.

Her mum knocked on the door and then came in with tea and toast. They didn’t speak. They didn’t even look at each other. She waited until she’d left, then picked up a triangle of buttery toast. She went to take a bite, but she didn’t really feel like it so threw it back on to the plate untouched. She slumped backwards on her bed. A few moments later she leant forward and grabbed her phone. She stared at it. After a hesitation, she turned it on. There were thirteen missed calls and seven texts from Haydn. She threw the phone down on the bed and leant against the wall. Then she groaned and gently banged her head twice, and then in one swift movement, before she had time to rethink, she pulled up an empty text window, typed and pressed send.

Did you know about anna and your dad???

She stared at the phone, but instead of the bleep of the text she expected, it rang.

‘Yes,’ was all he said.

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘How could I?’

Lizzie bit her lip.

‘What would I say?’ he said. ‘If you knew what he—’

‘How did you find out?’

‘Why do you need to know?’

‘I just do, OK!’

‘Look, I heard my parents fighting, heard what they were saying. It made me sick what he did. You asked why I hated him so much, well, now you know.’

‘Did you say anything to Anna?’

He didn’t reply.

‘Rebecca was here. She told us things.’ Lizzie paused. ‘Anna wanted your dad to leave your mum and be with her. Did you know that?’

Just silence.

‘Haydn? Did you hear me?’

‘No, of course I didn’t know. How would I? I only knew about them because I heard them arguing. I just told you that.’

‘I still don’t know why you didn’t tell me. This is so major.’

Just silence.

‘Haydn!’

‘I was scared, all right!’

‘Scared of what, for God’s sake?’

‘Of . . . of . . . I don’t know of what. Of what you’d say. Of you hating me.’

Lizzie shut her eyes and began to chew on her bottom lip.

‘I love you, Lizzie. So much my heart feels like it’s exploding.’

He waited for her to say something, but she didn’t.

‘I was scared you’d leave me.’

‘Well, you know what?’ she said. ‘Sometimes you just have to face up to what scares you. Knowing you kept this from me . . .’ She hesitated. ‘I don’t know. I just need to work it all out.’

Then Lizzie hung up and turned her phone off so he couldn’t call her back. It was as if there were an enormous heap of poisonous bricks in her stomach. She loved him so desperately, but she totally understood why her parents couldn’t stand the thought of them together. If she was brutally honest, she wasn’t sure she could stand the thought either. She put her head in her hands and tried to think. She pictured him carefully: hair over his face, slightly lopsided grin, beautiful blue eyes locked on to hers in those moments before he kissed her, the way his skin felt, his smell, the way he put his lips to the tip of her nose as light as a tiny butterfly. How was it fair for him to be held responsible for his father’s actions? Was it his fault his mother hated Anna so much? Of course not! How could it be? It was like her mum said: he was the child, just like Anna, vulnerable and unable to manipulate events in the adult world. She saw his face smiling as he showed her his candlelit fairy. She couldn’t love anybody more, and she needed him. Her body began to ache. None of it was his fault!

She tried to think back. Imagined him telling her about Anna. At the memorial. Then in the cemetery. In the street when he freaked out. In the shed before they made love. What would she have said? What would she have done?

It was then that she heard the buzzing.

She opened her eyes and sat up. It was a wasp, buzzing and tapping as it bashed itself against the window. She felt herself go cold and a sweat grew on the back of her neck. She reached for her bag on the desk and clutched it to her, easing herself off the bed. With her eyes fixed on the wasp she slowly and carefully reached for the window catch. She held her breath, unlocked the window, slid the bottom half of the sash window upwards. Then she sat back on the bed and waited for it to find its way out of her room. But the stupid thing couldn’t work it out. It crawled around on the pane, and every now and then it would drop in the air and fall down the window, but not far enough to find its route out. Lizzie watched as it fought desperately to escape, hurling itself against the glass, confused and cross. She wished Haydn was with her; he’d get rid of it. She remembered the way he’d slapped his hands together in the cemetery, killed that wasp without being hurt, how brave he was, how safe she felt whenever he was around, how little she thought about bees and wasps and hornets.

How can you be so critical of Haydn’s fears
, she thought,
if you’re so vulnerable to your own?

And it was a lot of things that scared her, not just bees. She was scared of noises in the house, upsetting her parents, missing hockey, Dalston station, Mrs Howe in the dark, the spot on the mantelpiece where Anna’s urn had stood. She was scared of bloody everything, and what good did it do her?

Lizzie stood up and put her bag on the bed. Then she took a step towards the window. All she had to do was bang the wasp quickly. Haydn hadn’t been stung. He’d just clapped his hands and killed the wasp. It was easy.

This is your chance
, she thought.
If you do this you don’t need to be scared of anything again.

‘Be brave,’ she whispered. ‘Be really brave.’

She took three deep breaths and reached her hand out towards the wasp. Sweat rose up her neck and across her forehead, and she began to feel faint as her head swam. She thought of Haydn, lifted her hand, shut her eyes and slammed her hand on to the window, squashing the wasp against the glass.

The sting fired up her arm.

‘Oh my God,’ she whispered.

She lifted her hand away from the window and the half-dead body of the wasp fell on to the sill, its legs scrambling helplessly, its wings buzzing irregularly against the paintwork.

She looked down at her hand and saw the deep purple mark where the sting had punctured her skin. She clutched her throbbing hand to her chest. Her throat was already tightening as it swelled with the poison. Her mind seemed to drift away from her body, and then Lizzie thought about trying to reach for her bag. Her knees buckled. She fell on to the carpet. She needed a shot of adrenalin, but she realized she’d floated too far from her body to make herself move. She thought of her bag lying on the bed and tried to sit up. She caught a glimpse of it before it faded away like a mirage in the desert. Then she was aware of herself lifting upwards, like an astronaut weightless in space. She looked down and saw her body collapse backwards. Her reddened hand fell across her chest and her legs were splayed uncomfortably. She looked at the window sill. The wasp was dead now, its tiny black corpse curled up, still. She looked back at herself and was surprised to see how tranquil she looked considering how hard it was to draw breath, that iron-fisted hand tightening fraction by fraction around her lungs, squeezing the oxygen out of them, turning her lips and the tips of her fingers the purple of blueberries.

Then the door opened. It was her mum. When she saw Lizzie on the floor she dropped to her knees beside her suffocating body. Then she screamed. It was the same scream she’d screamed when she answered the phone the night Anna died. Lizzie’s blood froze.

Her mum gathered Lizzie’s limp body in her arms and held her tightly. Lizzie saw her own head flop backwards, the blueberry lips a fraction open. Her mum kissed her over and over, and tears fell from her eyes that cooled her burning skin. She could taste their saltiness even from way up where she was. Then her mum began to shout for help. She tipped her head back and opened her mouth and bellowed, at least she looked like she was bellowing, because although Lizzie could read her lips and make the words out she could no longer hear any actual noise, it was like her ears had been stuffed with cotton wool. Her mum looked right up at her then. Lizzie smiled but her mum didn’t see her, she just called out for someone to do something.

There’s not much I can do from up here, Mum
, Lizzie tried to say. But she couldn’t make her mouth work and the words didn’t come out.

Lizzie started to point frantically at the bag on her bed, but her mum just closed her eyes and rocked Lizzie’s stifled body.

Then there was someone else at the door.
Oh my God. Haydn!

Lizzie waved at him, but he was only looking at her empty body as it struggled to breathe on the carpet below. She watched him step closer to her. Her mum went crazy then. She screeched and started to beat him away, while curling Lizzie away from him behind a protective shoulder.

Lizzie tried to shout at him to tell him the bag was just there on the bed, but still nothing came out. He took his phone out of his jeans pocket and dialled. His lips moved, but of course she couldn’t hear a word. It was so peculiar to watch them like this, from up where she was, like two characters on a muted television screen. Then suddenly Haydn saw the bag. He grabbed it.

Clever Haydn
, she thought.
Clever, clever Haydn.

He fell to his knees and emptied the contents all over the carpet like he was searching a stolen handbag. He shouted at her mum, but she didn’t respond. Maybe she couldn’t hear him either. Haydn shook her shoulder, thrust a handful of the pills and syringes that lay scattered on the floor out towards her, right under her nose. He didn’t know what to do.

Oh, Haydn
, Lizzie tried to shout,
there’s a piece of paper, a folded one. It’s got instructions on it. Can’t you see it?

Haydn shook her mother again, harder this time. At last her mum seemed to get it. Lizzie watched her eyes focusing on the syringe. She held Lizzie’s body tight to her chest with one hand and with the other pointed quickly. Then she looked at Lizzie’s face and cried out. She slid her fingers between the freezing-looking lips and tried to make room for air to pass around the tongue, which was so swollen it nearly filled her mouth. She saw her mum’s lips moving, but she was so far away from her now, out of the room and through the roof, and it was hard to make out the words. She definitely said
I love you
, and then
please don’t die, please don’t die
, but then she started to mumble, which was impossible to read.

Lizzie looked back at Haydn. He had the syringe. He spoke to her mum. She didn’t respond. He took her face in his hands and turned it towards him. Then he spoke again, slowly and clearly.

‘What do I do?’ he said. ‘You have to tell me what to do.’

Even from where she was, high up in the sky with the clouds, she could see her mum’s eyes lock on to Haydn for a second time. She spoke to him, and Haydn nodded and tipped the syringe upwards. He tapped it with a finger. Lizzie was amazed how perfectly she could smell the old tobacco on that finger.

She winced as Haydn jammed the needle into her body on the floor and watched the syringe depress. The clear liquid powered into her bloodstream and began to shoot around as each pump of that slowing heart pushed the adrenalin to the outer reaches of her feeble body. Then she felt herself falling downwards, out of control, like an enormous ball that had reached the height of its bounce and was coming back down. As she neared her body she picked up speed. Sound returned, slowly at first, then loud as anything. Her head began to pound. She heard her mum crying. She felt hands around her body. Kisses all over her face. She heard Haydn panting next to her. She was aware of his exhausted body shivering with effort and emotion. She twitched her fingers just to see if they still worked. Her mouth loosened and the fist around her lungs at last began to ease its grip. She tried to open her eyes, but they seemed to be nailed shut.