Almost True (27 page)

And then Sue comes in with my supper on a tray.

‘Well!' she says, snapping the light back on. ‘I'm not sure this is what the doctor ordered!' And she laughs a lot at her own lame joke and plonks a plate of fish pie and some fruit salad on the table. ‘You're going to have to move,' she says to Claire, who goes and sits on a chair. ‘It's important that he builds up his strength.'

And she pulls the wheelie table so it's right under my nose, and wags her finger at Claire and says, ‘Visiting time finished half an hour ago. I'll turn a blind eye right now, because you've certainly cheered him up, but I want you gone within the hour, OK?' And we can hear her laughing with Dennis as she leaves.

I try and push the table away, but Claire says, ‘No, she's right, you do have to eat. You have to get better.'

‘I'm not going to get better eating this muck. Honestly, Claire, they treat you like dirt in here.' There is absolutely no chance that I am going to kiss Claire tasting of manky hospital haddock.

‘I remember Ellie got really fed up when she was
in hospital,' says Claire, ‘But it sounds like you'll be out soon.'

Is she saying I'm a whinger? Ellie was in hospital for months. ‘Yeah, that's what they say.' And I tell her about France and going to a French school and possibly being called Eric, and then I notice that she's not looking very happy.

She's forcing herself to smile, and I lean towards her. ‘It's just . . . France is such a long way away,' she says.

‘Oh. Well. I know. But we can email . . . oh, God . . . what have I said now?'

Before, Claire was just looking a bit sad. But now big tears are welling up in her eyes, her nose is running and she's put her hand over her mouth.

‘It's not . . . it's not you,' she says, ‘It's nothing you've said. It's me. It's what I've done.'

‘What do you mean?' I shove the table hard enough to send it spinning to the bottom of the bed. The fish pie flies into the air and lands with a splat on the floor.

Claire's really crying now. I try and reach out to her, but she shakes her head and huddles in her seat. I feel like an idiot.

‘You're going to be angry with me,' she says.

‘No, Claire, I'm not. I could never be angry with you.'

I've gone all cold and shaky inside. What's happened?
Who has she got off with?

And then she says, ‘It was at the hostel. After you went off.'

‘What. . . Who. . .?' Oh my God. That was quick.

‘The police came and they talked to me, and Joe . . . Ty. . .'

‘What? Tell me. . .'

‘I showed them your email.'

Maybe she's totally overreacting. Maybe those police were just local plods, seaside cops, know-nothings, couldn't care less. . .

But any cop would be interested in something that said, ‘I'm lying to the police,' wouldn't they?

‘It was a Detective Inspector Morris,' she says, scrubbing her eyes and sniffing hard. ‘Your mum called him when I came back without you. He drove down from London. He seemed really nice, really concerned about you. He said I had to give them all the help I could, to keep you safe. . .'

Uh-oh. DI Morris. Head of the investigation into Rio's murder. Relying on me as star witness. This is not good.

‘So I told him we'd been emailing. And I showed him that one . . . I'd printed it out. I couldn't stop thinking
about it, trying to work out what you meant . . . what you'd done. . .'

I swallow. ‘It's OK, Claire, it's OK. I shouldn't have sent it in the first place. It wasn't fair on you.'

‘DI Morris looked really angry,' she says, in a small voice. ‘He showed it to the other policeman and he said, “You were right all along.” And then the other one said, “Wait till the defence lawyers get their hands on it,” and they asked me to make a statement.'

‘Did you?'

‘Yes. Just saying how we'd met and how I knew what your name really was and that you'd sent me the email. And my mum and dad read it too. . .' Her voice is all trembly, ‘and they weren't very happy. . .'

I ought to be panicking, but I'm quite calm. I'm actually less jittery than I've been for ages.

It's just that Claire's tears, and the blood drying on my arm remind me of that first time. The time I saw her cut herself. The way I felt when I saw the blood creeping down her arm. The excitement. The guilt. I'm beginning to feel it again. I hate myself for it, but at the same time . . . it's there.

And I'm hungry. Really hungry. But not for fish pie.

‘Come here,' I say, ‘Please, Claire, come here.' She doesn't look at me, but she sits back on the bed next to me. She's not on the side with the scar, which means
I can lean right into her, hold her tight, brush her tears with my hand while my greedy mouth finds hers. . . And it's not a soft, gentle kiss this time but a hungry, thirsty, biting one and it's only the start . . . it's nowhere near enough . . . and I want . . . I want . . . every inch of my skin wants to be next to hers and even my bones are aching to . . . to. . .

And she's shy and shaky at first, but then she's kneeling on the bed and pressing against me and holding my face in her hands . . . oh God. . .

And I don't know whose tears are whose, and I don't know whose skin is whose, and my frantic hands are searching, stroking her face, her neck, pushing under her T-shirt, kissing her beautiful throat, touching her arms. . .

Shit.

My fingers stop their journey. I've found . . . what have I found? An interruption. A roughness. It's . . . it's a plaster. Shit.

I pull away. I'm gasping for air. ‘Claire – Jesus, Claire – you're cutting again?'

‘No,' she says. She pulls me back.

‘You are. . .' I say, telling myself it doesn't matter. It's her business. There's nothing I can do. All I care about is this hunger, this need, how close she is, how beautiful, the smooth, slippery sweetness of her skin. . .

And then I stop. I can't do this.
Jesus
. What's wrong with me?

‘You promised,' I say. ‘You said you'd stop.'

‘I did stop,' she says. ‘I did. But then you . . . you . . . I didn't know what was going on. I didn't know who you were. That email.'

Oh. I see. It's my fault.

‘I should never have sent it to you.'

‘It's not just the email. Archie said that you started a fire in the hostel. You could've burned the place down. I don't know. . .' Her voice has gone all shaky. Thanks, Archie.

‘I didn't start a fire. Not a real fire. But my clothes were all covered in dog shit, Claire, they were disgusting. I just wanted to get rid of them.'

She's looking at me with her big eyes, and I can see she's really struggling. And I'm struggling too, because I care about her so much, but I'm not really sure any more that I'm any good for her.

‘I've not coped very well with everything, Claire. . . I think I've gone a bit . . . a bit. . .'

I'm trying to talk and breathe at the same time. I wish I could just shut up. I can still feel her skin, electrifying my fingers.

‘ . . . a bit . . . err . . . stressed. I've got this thing. Post-traumatic stress something. Google it.
It's really complicated.'

‘Oh,' she says. ‘But what about the email? I've made it worse for you.'

I have to stop her worrying about me. I have to stop the cutting. Even if it means lying to her.

‘It's OK, Claire . . . it's fine. They talked to me. It's no problem. They were really cool about it.'

She looks at me, disbelieving, her eyes all puffy and her face red.

‘I've been killing myself with worry about this, and now you say it's no problem?'

I hope she'll never find out that I was lying to her. I keep my voice steady.

‘Nah. Just a stupid email. You shouldn't have worried.'

‘But what did you mean?' she asks. Her tears have stopped. Her eyes are round. ‘Who did you hurt? What lies did you tell?'

‘Oh, nothing really. I just had a small . . . argument . . . with my friend Arron. I accidentally hurt him. But not very much. Really nothing. A tiny scratch. I don't think the police are very worried about it. He didn't even tell them about it. That's all I was lying about. Just that. Nothing else.'

‘So why didn't you say that in the first place?'

‘I . . . errr . . . I suppose I wanted to feel that we were
really close again. Maybe I overdid it a bit.'

I never knew Claire could look this angry.

‘You. . . I thought I could trust you! I thought we were going to be honest with each other!'

‘Yes . . . I know. . .'

‘But you just wrote me a load of crap . . . why? What's going on?'

‘I . . . ummm . . . errr. . . I don't know really.' Christ, I sound lame.

‘God. Joe . . . Ty. . .'

I put my arm around her. ‘Claire, you're going to have to go soon. Can we just . . . just talk about something else? Just be together?' The hunger is still there, and my skin tingles at her closeness, but I know it's no use.

She sniffs. She looks like she'd like to pull away. But she doesn't. She holds my hand. And then she spots my mum's copy of
Twilight
and picks it up. ‘Wow . . . you're actually reading it . . . isn't it amazing?' she says. She sounds hopeful. Happy. Even loving.

More lies. I have no choice. ‘Yes,' I say, gazing into her eyes. ‘It's brilliant. It makes me feel closer to you.'

And she sighs and snuggles next to me, with her head on my shoulder. I can feel my body getting heavy and my eyes trying to shut and I'm yawning. Her voice is a soft murmur and I'm only getting odd words here and there. She's talking about the book, I think. . .
Bella this, Edward that, some bloke named Jacob. I'm trying to stay awake, trying to make sense of it all. But I can't do it. I fall asleep, head on her shoulder, cuddled up next to her.

And sometime in the night she must have sneaked away without waking me, because when Sue bustles in with my breakfast, there's no Claire by my side.

My hospital room is kind of crowded. There's my mum. There's Mr Armstrong, a lawyer. There's DI Morris and his sidekick DC Bettany and a woman DC called Pam who's set up a tape recorder – a really old-fashioned one. You'd think the police would have better equipment.

They've all dragged chairs in and they're jammed close together. I'm sitting on the bed, but luckily I'm in jeans and a T-shirt, not pyjamas, although I have to wear tops that hang loose over the dressings, so I don't look at my best.

How I look doesn't really matter a lot right now.

Mr Armstrong has advised me to think carefully before I answer any questions and to stay silent if I want to, but to remember that if I don't answer, then a jury
might draw conclusions from that. I don't know what he wants me to do. I don't know that he really cares.

I've heard it all a million times from the police, anyway.

Mr Armstrong told us that I could only have one adult to stay in the room with me, to protect my interests. My mum and dad both wanted to do it, but she just gave him a really hard stare and he kind of mumbled, ‘Oh, OK then, you stay.' He gave me an encouraging smile when he left the room. My mum examined her fingernails and ignored him.

I might have known that their new, mature, we'regetting-on-for-your-sake relationship wouldn't last.

The bust-up came yesterday while my dad was explaining how Mr Armstrong was going to be there when DI Morris came to talk to me. ‘It's your chance, Ty,' he said, looking hard into my eyes. ‘Your chance to get things straight.'

My mum looked puzzled. ‘What do you mean?' she asked.

‘Ty's not told the police everything, Nicki. I think it's bad for him. It's weighing on his mind.'

My mum looked from me to him and back again. She got right away that he knew about the knife I'd been carrying in the park. She doesn't know what happened next with Arron. But just the knife was
enough to set her off.

‘Are you
joking
? Are you
crazy
? What do you know about Ty? You should mind your own business.'

‘Come on, Nicki, anyone can tell things aren't right at the moment.'

‘That's because of what he's been going through. No need for him to tell the police stuff that's going to get him into trouble. Jesus, Danny, don't tell him what to do. Don't ruin his life.'

‘Do you want him to live a lie? It's up to him. Isn't it, Ty?'

I was reading one of Archie's manga books. It was about this guy who has a notebook which kills anyone whose name he writes in it. That'd be a really scary thing to own – so easy to kill, so easy to lose. The guy used it for good, but it was doing his head in.

I didn't look up.

‘It's an interview with the police, for Christ's sake,' said my mum, her voice trembling. ‘Not one of your sessions at the Priory.'

She must mean Allingham Priory, where Archie is now completely miserable, according to his letters. I didn't know my dad had been there too. And I have not a clue why he glared furiously at my mum, said, ‘I thought we agreed to leave the past behind us, and anyway it wasn't the Priory,' and slammed out of the room.

And they don't seem to have made it up now.

‘Don't tell anyone anything,' my mum said to me after he'd gone, and I just shrugged and looked at the book and kept my mind completely empty of police and emails and parks and knives.

And here we are, with DI Morris and DC Bettany and Pam, and they're explaining that anything I say may be taken down and used in evidence against me, blah, blah, blahdy, blah.

DI Morris asks about my health. He says he's glad to hear that I'm getting better. ‘I hear you were very brave,' he says. I shrug. I gave them their statement about the stabbing a few days ago – another lot of police, another story to sign. Now I'm trying to forget it. Not so easy.