The Last Summer of Us Read online

  Anyway, wherever Steff goes, the violin goes. Even here, even now. And if she keeps bashing into me every time Steffan turns the wheel, she and I are going to have a little talk.

  It’s another unexpected thing about Steffan. You wouldn’t think it to look at him: he’s a solid-looking guy and he’s a flanker on the rugby team, so you’d probably take him for one of nature’s brass-players. A trombonist or something. Maybe handy with a tuba. Unfortunately, nature forgot to mention that to Steffan, so he carried right on being a flanker and a violinist. And he’s good (at the violin, at least – the rugby’s a bit more questionable…). He’s really good. The first time I heard him, I wanted to tease him the way you tease friends for being good at things you couldn’t ever imagine being able to do – but I couldn’t. He’s that good: he’s make-you-stop-and-listen, takes-your-breath-away, too-good-to-take-the-piss-out-of good.

  Fortunately, Steffan being Steffan, there’s always something else to take the piss out of him for. What’d be the fun in knowing him otherwise?

  Jared has wound down his window as far as it will go and slouched down in his seat. He has his knees pressed against the glovebox and one arm draped out of the car, and he’s drumming his thumb and the heel of his hand against the outside of the door in time to the radio, watching the world go by from behind his sunglasses. With a double-tap of his hand, he stops and leans across to whisper something in Steffan’s ear. It’s the glance back at me that gives it away: he’s just realized which road we’re on. Steffan’s fingers tighten around the steering wheel as he gives himself a mental kicking, but the simple fact of the matter is that the easiest road out of town, the quickest road, the most sensible road, leads right past the graveyard. We’re already at the near end of it; I can see the red brick wall and the giant sequoia trees ahead of us and it’s as if the last twenty-four hours never happened. In my head, I’m sitting in the back of another car, my black dress creasing in the heat. One glimpse of the gate and I’m transformed into yesterday’s me, the one following a coffin.

  I can’t take my eyes off it. I’ve driven past this graveyard a hundred – a thousand – times before now, and it’s never mattered. Now, though, it’s like a black hole with a fresh grave at its heart, and it’s sucking me in. My hands are shaking and the back seat of the car is hot and cold all at once and I can’t breathe…

  “Limpet.” Steffan’s voice pulls me back to the car, to today, to now, and his eyes meet mine in the rear-view mirror. “You’re alright.”

  “Am I?”

  “Sure you are.” He glances at the road, then back to me. “You want me to pull over?”

  “No! Leave me alone and watch the road, will you?” It comes out louder than I meant it to. More desperate. The last thing I want is for him to stop the car. As long as we’re driving, we’re moving. I have to keep moving. A single word I overheard Amy say comes back to me – “Treatment…” – and I tell myself that as long as I’m moving, I’ll be okay. I’m not running away, after all. I’m running towards.

  Towards what? Towards something. Anything. Tomorrow. The day after. The day after that. Anything that puts some past between me and yesterday. We’re all running, aren’t we? Towards, away…it doesn’t really matter which.

  The red boundary wall is already receding into the distance – although I can’t quite stop myself from turning in my seat and craning my neck to watch it disappear around the corner. And before I know it, the wall’s gone. The graveyard’s gone and it’s like the sun has come out from behind a cloud… And the car stinks of cheese and onion.

  “You’re eating again? Already?”

  Jared has a fistful of crisps halfway to his mouth.

  “You ate, like, ten minutes ago!”

  “Whaf? Mm hungry.” Even through a mouthful of dried potato he manages to sound offended.

  “You’re always hungry, fat boy.” Steffan’s shaking his head – but he’s still looking longingly at the packet of crisps Jared’s devouring. “Chuck us one, will you?”

  “Not you as well? Seriously?” I slump back in my seat and look for my sunglasses. Last time I saw them, they were disappearing somewhere under the violin case.

  There’s a crackle of foil as Jared throws a fresh packet of crisps across to Steffan. It lands in his lap. Meanwhile, I’m sure I just spotted the frame of my glasses underneath a magazine on the back seat…

  Just as I reach across for them, there’s a blast from another vehicle’s horn and our car lurches to the right. I’m thrown back into my seat and the side of my head catches the seat-belt bracket. My ear throbs. Steffan’s swearing under his breath, eyes wide…and Jared’s leaning across the car, one steady hand on the wheel.

  “Mate.” It’s all he says.

  Steffan passes the pack of crisps back to him guiltily. “Not such a good idea, maybe.”

  “No point letting them go to waste…” Jared starts crunching again.

  Steffan looks indignant. “How does that work? If I ate as much as you, I’d be the size of a rhino.”

  “You want to make the horn joke, or shall I?” Jared pulls his sunglasses halfway down his nose and peers over them. But it’s not Steffan he’s looking at. His eyes meet mine in the rear-view, and he holds my gaze for a second too long…then grins and disappears back behind his shades again. Steffan’s too busy focusing on the road to notice, and I’m not sure what just happened.

  We turn off the main road and onto a much smaller one, weaving through fields and hedges and woods, and my heart sinks ever so slightly. I know Steffan well enough to know where he’s going. Jared shifts uncomfortably in his seat, because he’s thinking exactly the same thing. We’re headed for the bridge. And on a day like this, with the sun burning a hole in the sky and school a couple of weeks away, we won’t be the only ones there.

  I don’t like the bridge. Well, I say I don’t like the bridge, but actually, as a structure, as a great lump of stone in the middle of the river, I’m ambivalent about it. It’s not what it is that bothers me. It’s what it becomes. Because while it’s a bog-standard means of getting from one side of the river to the other for ten months of the year, for the other two it’s the centre of what passes for the social whirl round here. It’s where everyone goes. Everyone except us.

  There’s a reason for that.

  Steffan likes them more than I do. He certainly likes them more than Jared does. He likes the bridge too. Just like the river is my safe place, I think the bridge is Steff’s. It’s where his mother used to bring him when he was little. They used to look for conkers round here in the autumn, and in the spring they would lean over the parapet and watch the fish jumping in the water below. Of course he wants to come here on the way to see her. I just wish we didn’t have to put up with the company.

  As Steffan parks the car up at the side of the road, I can already hear them. God, I can hear Becca’s laugh. Suddenly, the thought of reliving the funeral is almost appealing. I’d relive it every minute of every day for ever if it meant I’d never have to look at her smug little face again. Maybe it could be her funeral? I picture myself reading her eulogy. I reckon I could handle that. (Correction: I reckon I could more than handle it. I reckon I could do it with a smile on my face and a song in my heart.)

  “Yeah, alright. We’re not stopping.” Steffan slams his door, and the Rust Bucket vibrates gently. He already knows what we’re thinking.

  “Not stopping. Because with the parking and the getting out, it kind of looks like that’s exactly what we’re doing.” I clamber out of the back.

  “You don’t have to talk to her, do you?”

  “Shame she doesn’t seem to feel the same about me then, isn’t it?” I don’t need to say who I mean. Steffan already knows that too.

  “Just…play nice.” He has his hands in his pockets as he saunters over to them.

  They’re sitting on the rocks in the near side of the water, right by the steps down from the bridge. The water’s low enough to walk out to the middle with
out even getting your knees wet – and that’s what they’ve done. There’s a couple of empty beer cans in the hollow of one rock, and a pile of cigarette stubs in another. Becca, with her god-awful laugh, is leaning back against Simon, a bottle of something fizzy and neon pink and alcoholic in her hand. And to think I was mocking Jared and his crisps at this time of the morning. Still – that’s Becca for you. As if they’re trying to prove my point, Simon takes a deep drag on his cigarette, then leans around Becca’s shoulder and blows the smoke into her mouth. Jared’s eyebrow shoots up, and Steffan makes a loud retching sound. Simon looks up – the cigarette still hanging from his lip – and nods at them. Steff and Jared can get away with doing and saying what they want around him – Simon’s another one on the team, so it all falls under the category of “team bonding”, I guess – but Becca’s less than impressed. She scowls at them…and then she sees me, and her piggy little eyes light up. She flicks her hair back (only avoiding setting it on fire with Simon’s cigarette because he rocks out of the way) and stands up. She’s swaying just a touch and I find myself looking at the bottle in her hand. What the hell is that, anyway? Even from where I’m standing, I can smell it. It smells of lollipops; of booze and candyfloss and a total lack of self-respect.

  Her eyes slide over me as Simon unfolds himself from the rock and dusts himself down, throwing his dog-end into the river. He hops across the rocks to the bank, grinning at Steffan and Jared. “Alright?” They both nod and make manly noises back. But Becca…she’s watching Jared. She’s followed her boyfriend and she’s standing right next to him, but she’s eyeing up Jared, flicking her hair like a demented horse. Unbelievable.

  My feelings towards Becca aren’t exactly friendly, as you might have guessed, and haven’t been since the third day of Year Eight, when she got Rhodri and Mark to empty my bag onto the middle of the school field and spend the next ten minutes kicking my books around. Where was I? I was right there, learning the hard way that people lie and that not everyone who claims to be your friend stays that way. And how did I know it was her, that she was the one behind it? Easy. She was the one holding me back as they did it, laughing as my stuff got covered in mud.

  She sniffs and takes another swig from her bottle of what I fervently hope is a new and exciting poison as she steps towards me. “I saw your dad in the shop last week. He looked kind of shit.”

  “Yeah, well. His wife had just died, so there’s that, isn’t there?”

  She’s just that little bit too close to me for comfort, and I’d like to step back – to put more space between us – but I won’t. Because that would be backing down.

  “Still, on the plus side? At least there’s fewer bottles to be carrying home now.” She smiles sweetly as she says it – so sweetly that it takes me precisely three seconds to decide that I’m going to punch her in the face. So I do.

  I can’t tell who’s more shocked: her or me. She staggers backwards, squealing and clutching her hands to her cheek, dropping the bottle. Violently pink bubbles spill out of it, and I’m honestly surprised they don’t start eating into the rock. My hand hurts, and there’s a buzzing in my ears and I am going to take her to pieces. Not just for the crack about my mother. Not just for that day in Year Eight. Not just for the thousand and one snitty little comments made barely loud enough for me to hear over the last few years. But for every single time I’ve turned my back on her and walked away. And, boy, does my hand hurt.

  Becca is shrieking…something at me. The problem is that she seems to have reached a pitch that only dogs can hear, so all I’m getting is a high whining sound. She’s shrieking and she’s about to throw herself at me, and I think I’m yelling back at her only I’m not sure I’m actually in control any longer and I haven’t a clue what I’m saying – and then there’s Jared between us and Steffan behind me with his hands on my shoulders, pulling me back. Simon’s got his fingers so tightly wrapped around Becca’s shoulders that his nails have turned white, and by the set of his jaw I can see I’ve not made myself popular, but there’s nothing he can do.

  The buzzing in my ears drowns everything else out. I’m sure Steffan’s talking to me, but I can’t quite pick out the words he’s using as he tries to steer me away from the river and back towards the road. Jared’s pointing at Becca; his mouth’s moving, but it’s all white noise to me…

  Already, the side of Becca’s nose and cheek are starting to swell.

  My hand hurts, and yes – it was worth it.

  “You’re lucky you didn’t get her nose – you’d have broken your hand.” Steffan’s walking me away from the bridge – not to the car, but up towards the fields. “How’s it feel?”

  “Good. Really good.” My heart is pounding. I feel like I’ve just jumped off a high cliff and managed to land on my feet.

  “Your hand, thicko. How’s it feel?” He stops walking me along and takes my hand, stretching the fingers out and curling them back into a fist. It hurts, but not as much as it could. He frowns, then bends my hand around a few more times, making me wince (probably for his own amusement rather than anything else), before letting it drop.

  “Tell me, doctor. Will I ever play the violin again?” I raise my other hand to my forehead melodramatically.

  “Piss off, you.” He cuffs me around the back of the head as Jared catches up with us.

  “I wouldn’t do that,” says Jared, obviously trying not to laugh. “Haven’t you seen the right hook she’s got on her?”

  They’re mocking me. And yeah, I know, I deserve this one – and they’re not going to let me forget it. Not for the next twenty or so years, anyway. After all, what are friends for?

  five

  “You want to talk about what just happened with Becca?”

  “Do I ever want to talk about Becca?”

  We’re sitting up at the top of the hill by the old pillbox, looking down towards the river. The fort used to be part of a prisoner of war camp during the Second World War: they brought captured Italian soldiers to this area. Most of them worked on the farms, and the story goes that a lot of them stayed when they were released – married and settled down here. God knows why. All that’s left of the camp now is the old church and a couple of beaten-up concrete bunkers and watchtowers like this one. I used to think they were the ruins of a fairy-tale castle and every time we drove past, I’d press my nose up against the car window and try to imagine knights riding up and down the valley in shining armour, or princesses sitting in tower windows and combing out their hair. The reality? Italian POWs, shovelling cow shit. Awesome.

  The three of us are leaning against the largest remaining chunk of concrete. The sun’s on my face and it’s quiet and the air’s full of the dusty scent of hot summer grass. You can see for miles over the trees, out across the fields. The cars on the bypass look like tiny glittering fish in a river from where we’re sitting, catching the sunlight as they dart along the road. You can see them, but you can’t hear them this far away. We’re too high up. All you can hear are the birds and the occasional cow. It feels like we own the world. Of course, if we actually did own the world, I’d have had something a hell of a lot more unpleasant done to Becca. It would probably involve pliers. Rusty ones.

  The pain in my hand’s settled into a gentle throb. Who knew that walloping someone round the face hurts you as much as it does them? I suppose it’s karma. Either that or the fact that if you smack two sets of bones together, both of them are probably going to smart a bit…

  I hope Becca’s face hurts as much as my hand does. In fact, I hope it hurts more. It bloody well should.

  “So, you don’t want to talk about it?”

  “No. I don’t want to talk about it. You want to talk about what’s going on with you?”

  Steffan jerks away from me, but Jared’s on the other side of him, watching expectantly.

  “Nothing’s going on with me.” Steff stares at the ground, picking at a piece of grass.

  Jared doesn’t believe him any more than I do, a
nd says as much. But with more swearing.

  There’s silence. Jared and me watching Steffan watching us. He’s looking from one of us to the other, and I can tell from his eyes that he knows he’s been busted. He’s still trying not to spill, though. “Seriously. There’s nothing going on.”

  Jared shakes his head. “So all this stuff. The car. The cigars. That’s nothing.”

  “And you’d know a lot about it, would you?” Steff shoots back.

  “I’m just saying…”

  Cigars. So that’s what’s in the box. If Steffan’s taken his father’s precious cigars then, yes, there’s a problem. Or there will be when his dad gets back from his golf trip. He paid an obscene amount of money for them, from what Steff’s said.

  Steffan picks at the grass some more, and pulls the head off a daisy. “It’s not a good time.” A shadow flickers across us: a buzzard, wheeling overhead, riding the thermals.

  “Is that right?” Jared leans his head back against the hot concrete and closes his eyes. He looks like he doesn’t care, like it doesn’t bother him whether Steff talks or not. He looks like it doesn’t bother him either way. Doesn’t mean it’s true.

  This is, as usual, where I come in. “It’s never a good time. That’s kind of the point, isn’t it? I thought that’s why we’re here. Because it’s not a good time for any of us right now. It’s not a good time, and it should be – and it isn’t fair.” There it is. My little voice drifting up to the heavens, saying those three words I’ve been trying so hard not to say. It’s not fair.