The Last Summer of Us Read online

  He gives me the same look Amy did. Fragile, it says. Handle with care. Danger: stay back two hundred feet.

  And then he gives up and ruffles his hands through his hair, which he knows makes him look about nine years old, and he meets my gaze and says: “I want to go see Mum. I need to. I just thought, you know, it would be good to do something else too. Go other places on the way. Have some fun. Not make it all about…” He clears his throat again and sticks his hands in his pockets, the way he always does when he’s nervous or uncomfortable. Or both.

  Ah. I see.

  He doesn’t need to finish the rest of his sentence. I already know what he didn’t want to say. It’s not like I can deny him, is it? After all, this is what we do. We hold each other’s hands (metaphorically, not literally – god knows where his hands have been…) and we pick each other up. I never thought that hanging out at our respective mothers’ graves would become an integral part of our friendship, but life has a way of surprising you. So does death.

  He doesn’t visit his mother’s grave often: her birthday, the anniversary of her death… The usual, I guess. Now is neither of those things, but given the circumstances I can’t say it’s a shock he wants to go – and while every single fibre of me hates the thought of it, I can’t let him go alone. Hasn’t he just done the same for me?

  “You don’t want to go with your dad?” I ask.

  “No.” His voice hardens, just for a second. He’s angry about something, even if he’s trying to hide it. There’s something going on here. “No,” he repeats, more softly.

  “Are you…is everything okay?”

  “You’re asking me that? After yesterday? Come off it.” He grins at me. “I just… Mothers and stuff. You know?”

  I do.

  three

  “A tent?”

  “Where’d you think we were going to be sleeping?”

  “I don’t do camping.”

  “Bye, then. See you in a few days.”

  They’re enjoying this far too much.

  To their credit, they have at least managed to scrounge a couple of tents: the kind that just sort of pop up, provided you put the right tube into the right hole. Or something. As you can tell, I’m an expert.

  The last time I went camping, I was five, on holiday with my parents – back in the days when we still did that. Seems like a long time ago. All I can remember is having a plastic baby doll that I liked to bathe in the washing-up bowl. It rained. There was mud. And as we started to drive out of the campsite, my dad (who, thoughtfully, had packed the car the night before and put the inflatable dinghy on the roof rack) tapped the brakes and a tidal wave of rainwater sloshed out of the dinghy and down the windscreen of the car.

  Like I said, I don’t do camping. I know, I know. I should have thought about this more, but I didn’t. I mean, it’s not like I’ve had anything else on my mind, is it…?

  So. Tents. Tents which are currently rolled or folded, or whatever it is you do with tents to make them go small again, and sitting outside the kitchen door. I’m feeling an attack of The Incompetents coming on.

  The Incompetents is that thing you do when you’re faced with something you don’t really want to try. We’ve all done it, just to get out of the stuff you probably could do – like climbing the rope in gym or, say, putting up a tent – but don’t quite have the heart to. And no, before you ask, it’s got nothing to do with being a girl: I’ve seen Arfon Davies come down with a chronic case of The Incompetents at the start of every dissection class in biology for the last year.

  Besides, I’m with two great big, lumping boys who just demolished a mountain of bacon, one of whom (Jared) is both taller and considerably stronger than me. (Steffan, not so much, despite how much he likes to pretend otherwise.) The least they can do is put up my bloody tent.

  “Fine. Tent. Whatever.” It’s a couple of nights. It can’t be that bad, I think – and all the while I’m trying to forget the opening few scenes of every horror movie I’ve ever seen. You know. With the road trip. And the camping. In the woods.

  They’ve already moved on, and are discussing tools. What they should take, whether the car’s likely to need some kind of intensive open-engine surgery at the roadside…

  Cars feature heavily in any conversation with Jared. Always have, always will, even though he and Steffan didn’t pass their tests all that long ago. Jared’s been nuts about cars ever since I’ve known him. Any kind of sport that involves a car, he’s into. Racing, rallying, Nascar, the lot. He knows pretty much everything there is to know about cars, too; how they work, how to fix them when they don’t. Steffan, bless his little cotton socks, is at the other end of the scale – although it’s not for want of trying. Fortunately for him, Jared likes nothing more than having his head stuck in an engine – and Jared’s presence is probably the only reason I’m insane enough to get into the rust bucket which passes for Steffan’s car.

  Except they’re out of the door and onto the drive and they’re not stopping beside the Rust Bucket. They’re still walking, following the curve of the drive around the house and towards the garage. And those keys Steffan’s swinging around…they’re not his. They’re his dad’s.

  “Uhhh…Steff?”

  Ahead of me on the drive, there’s the faintest hint of him slowing down; a suggestion of his head tipping to one side when he hears me. I can guarantee you that he’s grinning, even though I can’t see it from here. That’s not the point: it’s not meant for me.

  “Steff. Your car? It’s back there.”

  “I know.” He flips the keys around his finger again and presses a button on the key fob. There’s a blip-blip sound, and the garage door rolls open. “We’re not taking that one.”

  His dad’s convertible is sitting innocently in the middle of the garage, surrounded by stacked cardboard boxes sealed with packing tape and labelled with fat black marker pen.

  His dad’s convertible.

  “You’re kidding me.”

  “Dad said he thinks my car’s a piece of crap and this is a bad idea. So we’ll be taking his. It’s not like he’s going to miss it – he left for his golf trip at, like, dawn.”

  Did I mention that Steffan’s…well, rich? Probably not. It doesn’t come up much. Not until he does things like this, anyway. You’d never be able to tell from his own car – but that’s different. He paid for that himself, so it was the cheapest one he could find that still had all its doors (hence the general crapness). Maybe that’s one of the reasons his dad hates it.

  Jared’s eyes have glazed over, and he takes a step closer to the car. His hand hovers over it for a second as though he’s waiting for something, then drops onto the paintwork. He runs his fingers along it like he’s stroking a cat.

  “The V8. Nice.” Both Steffan and I are staring at him. Steffan narrows his eyes. He really does try, but he genuinely knows as much (or as little, depending on how you look at it) about cars as I do.

  “It’s silver?” he volunteers after an embarrassed pause, and Jared’s face creases into a smile.

  “It’s a good car.”

  “Yeah, well, I knew that. Even Limpet knows that…”

  “Oi!” I swat at him, and he laughs.

  “Go on then.” He waves at the car. He’s waiting for me to say something stupid and prove his point – not that he’d know. The only mechanical term Steffan really knows off the top of his head is “Wankel rotary engine” and he only knows that because it makes him laugh.

  I shake my head. “Shiny car. Pretty car. Not your car.”

  “Oh, come on. I’m insured on it. He’s not here, is he? He won’t even know.”

  Jared looks up from stroking the car. “Unless you drive it into a hedge,” he says pointedly.

  It’s a long story. And no. I’m not telling.

  “Better not crash this one, then, had I?”

  In fairness, it was only a little crash. Well, little-ish.

  Steffan looks at me. “Besides, you really want to spen
d the whole time crammed in the back of the Rust Bucket?”

  I pause to consider the amount of crap he keeps in the back of his car, and the fact that one of the windows is jammed shut…and the other one only opens halfway. Both of these things had slipped my mind – as they tend to do when you’ve had a couple of beers, and it’s all about the glorious new idea not the practicalities, which are inevitably ankle-deep in old crisp packets. And now there’s this other brilliant new idea in front of me – literally sitting in front of me – and I can see us driving down the twisting road that drops down to the beach on one side of the Havens, and I’m stretched out across the back seat in the sunshine with the sea wind in my hair…

  “You were saying?” Steffan knows exactly what I’m thinking. Of course he bloody does. “Still want to be The Responsible One?”

  “Only if you’re going to keep being The Rich One.”

  He opens his mouth to reply…and closes it again with a small shake of his head. He looks like he’s about to say something else…and then changes his mind again. Second-guessing his second guess. That’s not like Steffan, who has the worst mind-to-mouth filter I’ve ever come across. There’s a small smile – a sad smile – and then he shrugs. “The so-called Rich One’s going to get the bags. Is The Responsible One going to help, or shall I just leave hers in the drive?”

  “What’s up, petal? You afraid you might not be able to lift it?” I nudge him with my hip as he squeezes past me and out of the garage.

  I’m never sure what Jared makes of the way Steffan and I talk to each other – after all, they’ve known each other so much longer. Maybe it’s a guy thing, but they always seem to dance around each other. Neither of them ever says anything. They talk, but you could write down what they actually say on the back of a postage stamp; it’s all nods of the head and grunts and smacking each other around the shoulder, interspersed with occasional mockery of someone’s driving.

  I can’t talk to Jared the same way I talk to Steffan. With Steffan, it’s easy. It’s effortless. But with Jared, it’s all sharp edges and overthinking and I can feel him watching me when I talk. He’s doing it now, from the shadows of the garage. I can feel those eyes of his on my back. He never lets on what he’s thinking; just stands there, watching. Weighing. Remembering. Jared remembers things; the smallest things, things I couldn’t even keep a handle on for a day, never mind a couple of months. But him? He just sucks it all in and locks it away somewhere and you don’t even realize until it pops back into a conversation a few weeks later. It’s unnerving. He did it to me not long after we met. I’d finished school for the day, and I was waiting for Steffan after rugby practice, watching them head back across the playing field to the changing rooms, when Jared was suddenly behind me, still wearing his kit and covered in mud. “I’ve got something for you,” he said.

  “Oh yeah?” What’s a girl to say when the new captain of the rugby team hits you with a line like that?

  “In my bag. You were saying you liked Hemingway?”

  “Was I?”

  “A couple of weeks ago. Talking to whatshername. With the bad hair. Outside room five.”

  That could be most of my English class. “And you were eavesdropping?”

  “I was waiting to go into physics. On the steps right across from you. You waved at me, remember?”

  “Huh.”

  “Anyway. I found a Hemingway book of my grandad’s in some boxes of my dad’s stuff in the attic. Thought you might want it.”

  “Won’t your dad notice it’s gone?”

  “Not likely. He’s not much of a reader. Besides, he’s…away a lot.”

  I already knew about his dad by then. It’s a small town, and people talk. People talk. It’s one of the reasons he changed school: too much talk at his old one. Too many whispers. Too many looks, too many nudges. Not that it’s all that different here – everyone still knows, especially in the upper years – but Steffan’s got a kind of magic about him, and as soon as the whispers about Jared’s dad and who he was and what he’d done started, Steff made it clear they were going to stop. And stop they did. I don’t think Jared actually needed Steffan though; after all, once he made the rugby team, he was safe anyway, and as soon as he got switched to captain that was it – he was golden. The rugby team is untouchable. It’s an unwritten rule, passed down from on high: you don’t mess with the squad. So he may not have needed Steffan, but it’s what Steff does. He protects people. He protected Jared; he picked me up and dusted me down and protected me. He still does.

  And now, apparently, he nicks his dad’s car and takes us along for the ride…

  I’m missing something, aren’t I? Even by his standards, this is off. I mean, it’s not like he ever passes up the chance to wind his dad up, but it’s one thing to nick his beer or whatever…and quite another to nick his car.

  Steffan’s strolling along the drive, whistling, and Jared gives me a look across the garage. He shakes his head and gives the convertible one more thoughtful stroke. Then he sets off after Steffan, who’s still swinging the keys around his finger…right up until Jared runs up behind him and snatches them.

  There’s another blip-blip, and the garage door starts to roll closed – with me still inside. It’s not elegant, the scramble to get underneath it, but neither of the others notice: they’re too busy squabbling over the keys. Steffan has closed his fist around them and is wagging a warning finger with his other hand, and Jared’s not having it. Not at all. This continues up the drive… Or at least it does until Jared, with his captain-of-the-rugby-team aim, somehow prises the keys from inside Steffan’s fist and lobs them straight into the middle of the garden pond.

  Steffan’s mouth couldn’t drop any further open without his jaw unhinging. He’s so shocked that he can’t form actual words; there’s the occasional squeak coming out, but that’s about it. He points wildly at the pond, then stares at Jared and, finally, he gets it together enough to shove him away and shout: “You tosser! What the hell’s the matter with you?”

  “Saving you from yourself, mate,” Jared says, blandly. There’s a torrent of Welsh in reply, and you don’t exactly have to be a speaker to know what Steffan’s saying. It’s…well, it’s not very nice. I wonder how much I miss, not being able to speak it. Probably not much, knowing those two. They both grew up as native speakers…but my parents never saw the point of it. I mean, I had lessons at school like everyone does but I was awful so I dropped it. I pretty much tapped out after “The cat ate my Welsh homework.”

  As Steffan paces up and down, still swearing under his breath and rubbing at his hair (not to mention coming up with a few brand-new names to call Jared), I lean against the side of the Rust Bucket and try to ignore the groan that comes from its suspension. The picture I had in my mind – the wind in my hair and the sun on my face – evaporates.

  Jared winks at me. He’s caught it too – that edginess, the sense that there’s something our friend, our protector, our fearless ringleader isn’t telling us. Still, we’re going to have several days in the Rust Bucket. We can always threaten to lock Steffan in until he tells us what it is…

  limpet iPhone / music / playlists / road trip

  Mallory Knox - Beggars

  Bastille - Things We Lost in the Fire

  Green Day - Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)

  You Me At Six - Lived a Lie

  The First - Take Courage

  We’re No Heroes - Ghost Coast

  Little Boots - Remedy

  Fall Out Boy - Alone Together

  My Chemical Romance - Summertime

  Super Furry Animals - Gathering Moss

  Tracy Chapman - Fast Car

  The Script - Exit Wounds

  Snow Patrol - New York

  limpet iPhone / notes & reminders

  Black dress to dry cleaner’s (Amy??)

  What’s bugging S?

  Is J smoking??

  Call Amy.

  Sunscreen!

  Reminder: S dad
car keys. Pond!

  [Remind me in: 1 hour 1 day 1 week]

  four

  “You know he’s going to kill me, right?” Steffan flicks off the indicator as we pull out of the drive. My foot is sticking to something on the floor behind Jared’s seat, and I can only hope it’s chewing gum. In this car, it could be anything. I tried to get Steffan to clean it out. I did. I even refused to get in until he cleared the worst of his detritus from the back. When he found the remains of a sandwich in the footwell, I swear I nearly threw up. It was green. Bread shouldn’t be green. It’s just…wrong.

  The two of them argued about the car keys while I threw everything in the boot of the Rust Bucket. Picture that, if you will. Them: rugby players. Me: picking up all the bags and loading the car. And they say chivalry’s dead. I could hear them, although they were both trying to keep their voices down. Steffan was all disbelief and a filthy temper. Jared was quieter, calmer. He shrugged a lot. That’s Jared all over: always watching, waiting, reacting to everyone else (usually Steffan). As they came back over to the car, all I heard was the tail end of their conversation: Steffan saying, “You have no idea what you’ve just done,” and Jared replying with: “It’s not like he’s not lost his keys before, is it?”

  Car keys at the bottom of the pond, or Steffan hurling the shiny speedy car around the B-roads for a couple of days with us in the back. I think we all know which is the lesser of those two evils.

  “He’ll kill you a lot less than he would if you called him from a recovery truck while he’s playing golf.”

  “You think I’d tell him? Christ. No way.” Steffan leans into the steering wheel and looks up and down the road, holding the car at a junction as a tractor rumbles past, scattering hay behind it.

  “So what, then?” Jared’s seat creaks as he slides further down into it, settling in for the journey.

  “I’d tell him someone nicked it, wouldn’t I?” There’s a jerk, and the tyres snicker against the hot tarmac as the car leaps forward and we’re away.

  You get used to Steffan’s driving. It’s not that he’s bad, exactly – it’s that he’s…energetic. He throws his car around corners and into bends with complete conviction, and that’s probably all well and good if you’re up front. But back here? Not so much. The first sharp bend we take, his violin case skids across the back seat and slams into my thigh. It – sorry, she (he’s adamant she’s a she) – is an antique. She cost a small fortune, which came out of his inheritance from his mother. Most of it’s locked away until he’s twenty-one, but the violin’s different. Apart from that, he can’t touch it. He doesn’t like the phrase “trust fund” but…