How to Fall (2 page)

‘And Ella’s in the States.’

‘In a giant camper van, with her whole family, on the trip of a lifetime.’ I shook my head. ‘I don’t think everyone’s going to make it back alive.’

‘That’s a long time to be stuck in the same vehicle together. I could barely face the drive down to Devon.’

‘Yes, and why exactly are we going?’

‘That again.’

‘You didn’t answer me the first time.’

‘Is this teenage rebellion kicking in at last?’ Mum shot me a sidelong look, amused.

‘Oh, you’ll know when it’s teenage rebellion, I promise you. This isn’t it. I just want to know why we packed up everything we own so we could spend six weeks in the back end of nowhere.’

A shrug. ‘Family stuff.’

Very informative.

‘What about Dad?’

‘What about him?’

‘Doesn’t he mind us being away for that long?’

‘Well, your father doesn’t care where I go, or with whom.’ Another sidelong look; she had picked up on the note of hurt I hadn’t quite managed to keep out of my voice. ‘And I did ask him about your visits, Jess, but he’s really busy at the moment and he said he’d catch up with you when we get back.’

‘Busy with work or with Martine?’

‘I didn’t ask. But I imagine with both.’

I rolled my eyes. ‘Grim.’

‘Martine seems a very nice person.’

‘Mum, you don’t have to like everyone. Especially not Dad’s new girlfriend.’

‘We’re divorced. He can do what he likes. And so can I.’

She spoke lightly but I wasn’t fooled. It had been a tough couple of years since they broke up. Or rather, since Dad had left her. Mum had married young and stayed young, so when Dad left she struggled to cope. We’d both had to do a lot of growing up in a hurry. There were days when I felt as if
I
was the one who should be looking after
her
.

‘OK. So if you’re going to start acting like Dad, I can expect you to turn up with a twenty-four-year-old lover one of these days.’

She laughed. ‘I don’t really go for younger men.’

‘Maybe you should. Maybe that’s the mistake we’ve been making. Younger men must be easier to push around.’

Mum’s eyes were full of sympathy. ‘Oh, Jess. Are you still upset about Conrad?’

‘Never mention that name to me again.’

‘OK. I won’t. But just so you know, I never liked him. I thought you could do better.’

‘If only you’d said.’

‘You wouldn’t have paid any attention.’

She was right. It was my turn to go silent. I stared out of the window. I couldn’t think about Conrad without wanting to curl up in a ball, which wasn’t really possible in the front seat of Mum’s Nissan Micra. I didn’t like to think about how I’d fallen for Conrad. He was tall and thin, with high cheekbones, amazing hair and a dreamy, distracted air that had intrigued me. I had imagined it was because he was deep in thought but actually he was just vacant, his brain in neutral most of the time. He was artistic, or so he said. He wrote poetry, even. Really, really bad poetry, as I’d discovered almost immediately. No matter how much I wanted to believe he was The One, the poetry had always worried me.

All that, and I’d thought I was in love. Right up until the moment I’d arrived late at a party, wandered in and found him sitting on top of Karen Seagram, one hand burrowing in her top as if he’d lost his keys, with his tongue stuck in her mouth. To which I had said, ‘Rather her than me, Conrad. You kiss like a goat eating a jam sandwich through a letterbox.’

I’d walked out with my head high, thinking,
Never let them see you cry
. But in private I’d done more than my share of crying.

I shook my head, trying to dislodge the image, and returned to my original point. ‘What family stuff?’

‘You’re not going to drop it, are you?’

‘Nope.’

‘You’re so stubborn. I think you get it from your father.’

‘That’s fighting talk.’

‘You do get some things from him, you know.’

‘Name three.’

‘You’re argumentative. Stubborn, as I said before. And you’re tough.’

I hadn’t been expecting that. ‘Tough?’

‘Not in a bad way. Just – you’re not like me. You don’t back down. You stand up for yourself.’

‘If I have to. But I’m not sure I like being described as “tough”.’

‘Call it strength of character, then.’

‘That’s better.’

‘Proving my point . . .’ Mum murmured, more or less to herself. Then she sighed. ‘Look, it’s been a difficult year. You know about Freya.’

‘Of course.’ Freya, my cousin, born not long after me, dead since last summer. I had never met her. The news of her death had been strangely shocking – strange, because I had never thought about her, beyond knowing her name. Strange because I had felt
a
sharp sense of loss for something I had never known I was missing. ‘I hadn’t realized it was a year ago already.’

‘In a couple of weeks.’ Mum’s hands tightened on the wheel and she didn’t look at me as she said, ‘When it happened I was already in touch with Tilly.’

‘You didn’t tell me that.’ Tilly, Mum’s twin sister. Freya’s mother.

She wriggled. ‘I didn’t want to tell you about it because I wasn’t sure what was going to happen. We were just getting to know one another again. It takes time to build up a relationship after being out of touch for so long.’

‘Eighteen years.’

A nod. ‘From right after I got engaged to your father until the day the divorce papers came through.’

‘Because she didn’t like Dad.’

‘Not much. But I didn’t listen.’

‘Which is why you didn’t bother to warn me about Conrad,’ I guessed.

‘One of the reasons. It didn’t seem worth it. When you’re in love, reason goes out the window. And I loved your father very much.’

‘We all make mistakes,’ I said kindly.

‘It wasn’t a mistake. If I hadn’t married him, I wouldn’t have you.’

‘Thanks. For the gift of life, I mean.’

‘You’re welcome. Tilly was nice enough not to say
I told you so
, and she and Jack invited us to come and stay last year. But then Freya died.’

‘It was an accident, wasn’t it?’

‘As far as I know.’

‘Not suicide or something.’

The car lurched as Mum yanked the wheel, irritated. ‘Jess, I’m serious. Do not even
suggest
something like that to Tilly. Promise me.’

‘I was just asking,’ I said, wounded.

‘You can’t ask. It would be too hurtful.’

‘Because they don’t want to think Freya killed herself.’

‘Exactly.’

‘Don’t they want to know the truth, though?’

‘Not necessarily.’

I thought about that for a couple of miles. I could understand that if Freya had chosen to end her life, it would be hard to bear. I’d still have wanted to know for sure, though. And it was weird to think that she’d been the same age as me, and now she was gone.

‘So why are we going to see them now?’

‘I want to go home,’ Mum said simply. ‘I want to see the old places. I want to see my sister and get to know my niece and nephews, and I want you to have a family.’

‘I
have
a family.’

‘You have your father, his current girlfriend and me. That’s not enough.’

I was frowning. ‘If you were in touch with Tilly when Freya died, why didn’t you go to see her then?’

‘It wasn’t the right time.’

‘Why not?’

Mum looked at me before she answered, as if she was considering what to say and how to say it. ‘Because you would have come with me.’

‘So? I know Tilly didn’t like Dad, but I’m not that much like him.’

‘Mm.’

‘What else?’

‘Is my handbag on your side of the car?’

‘Don’t change the subject.’

‘I’m not.’ Mum glanced at me again. ‘Seriously, Jess – look inside my bag, in the zipped pocket.’

I found the bag wedged behind my left foot and dragged it onto my lap with some difficulty, since the front of the car was crammed, as was the back seat and the boot. We did not travel light. ‘What am I looking for?’

‘Tilly sent me a photo of the family. I think you should see what Freya looked like.’

As she said it, I unzipped the pocket. My fingertips
brushed
against a stiff bit of paper and I slid it out, careful not to bend the edges. It was a family photograph of six people sitting on a grassy slope. Two adults, one the image of Mum, the other tall and fair, superficially like Dad. The sisters had a type, it seemed. Two girls, two boys. Two older, two younger.

‘Hugo was the eldest. Then Freya. Then Petra. Then Tom.’

Tom with a football under his arm and a scowl on his face, as if he wanted to go and play instead of posing for a picture. He was maybe ten, a couple of years younger than Petra. She sat with one sandal off, bare brown legs crossed in front of her, still childish but not for much longer. Hugo, as dark as I am fair, a year older than me and broodingly attractive. And Freya, I guessed. Freya, who was blonde, like me. Who had the same shape of face as me, the same pointed chin. The same slanting blue eyes. The same mouth.

The same. Top to toe. The dead girl and I could have been twins.

I looked up. ‘Mum . . .’

‘Don’t worry. I sent Tilly pictures of you. She knows what to expect.’

But everyone else wouldn’t, I thought, feeling distinctly uncomfortable.

So it wasn’t really surprising, all things considered, that people on Fore Street were acting as if they’d seen a ghost. As far as they were concerned, Freya was back from the dead.

Awkward wasn’t the word.

I lasted another ten steps before yet another person did a double take, this time an elderly man carrying a battered golf umbrella. He stopped in his tracks, the better to stare at me. I dived without thinking into the nearest shop, without even checking to see what it sold, looking for a place to hide. The dovecot smell of dusty old books met me and I smiled to myself as I pushed my hood back. A proper second-hand bookshop. Exactly what I had been looking for.

It wasn’t a large shop but every inch of available space was shelved and a pair of bookcases ran down the middle of the room so that it was divided into three narrow aisles. Stacks of hardbacks teetered on the floor, waiting for a gap to appear in the row upon row of books, faded and worn and thoroughly enticing. The expensive ones were in glass cases nearest the door, the collector’s items in tooled leather or wrapped in the original dust jackets. Not for me. I wandered down the middle aisle, passing gardening and theology, politics and fishing – nothing that would tempt me to stop. There was a desk near the
back
with a cash register on it, but no sign of the person who was reading – I leaned over to look at the hardback that was lying on the desk –
Classic Cars of the 1970s
. Interesting stuff.

Or perhaps not.

Behind the desk, a sign on a frankly dangerous-looking spiral staircase promised that the fun stuff like contemporary fiction was upstairs. I put my hand on the banister, prepared to risk the narrow treads for the sake of something decent to read, then stopped. Quick footsteps overhead: someone moving towards the stairs. I stood back to let them come down. I wasn’t superstitious about passing people on the stairs – there just wasn’t room for two on the death spiral.

The owner of the feet rattled down the steps at top speed, a mug of coffee in one hand, a stack of books balanced precariously in the other, and it was my turn to stare. He was very much not the fuddy-duddy bookshop owner I had expected, lean in jeans and a T-shirt. He was seventeen or eighteen, tall, with dark hair. Straight nose. Broad shoulders.
Oh, hello
 . . .

He half glanced at me, his eyes startlingly grey against his tan, then did a classic double take and almost slipped. He swore as the books slid to the floor, but managed not to spill his coffee, which impressed me. I might have wondered what his problem was if
he
hadn’t been giving me the look I was starting to expect: shock mixed with suspicion. And what looked like – but surely couldn’t have been – fear . . .

‘Are you OK?’

‘Fine.’ He didn’t look at me again as he set his mug down on the desk and turned to rescue the books he’d dropped.

‘Sorry.’ I picked up the paperback that had fallen at my feet –
To Kill a Mockingbird
– and handed it to him.

‘Why are you sorry?’ He concentrated on flattening the pages that had creased when the book fell.

‘Because I startled you.’

He didn’t bother to deny it. ‘No harm done.’

‘Harper Lee is looking a bit battered,’ I observed.

A glance at the back of the book, then the grey eyes met mine again. He looked amused and I wondered if I had imagined him going pale under his tan when he saw me first. ‘She wasn’t exactly pristine before.’

There was absolutely no reason for me to blush, but I did it anyway. To cover it, I said, at random, ‘I was just going upstairs.’

‘Be my guest.’

I started up the staircase, acutely conscious that he was watching me. I risked a look down from near the top, and felt a jolt of surprise that was halfway to disappointment. He was sitting down with his back to
me
, already absorbed in his book. And why not? I was just another customer.

Even so, I wandered around the upstairs room as the floor creaked, dithering about which book to choose from the thousands that lined the walls. It wasn’t that I wanted to impress him, I promised myself. But romance was out. Crime didn’t seem to strike the right note either. Distracted, I found myself wishing I knew more about Freya. Had she been an intellectual? Did she read novels? Did she read anything at all? The room was large, with a pair of sagging leather armchairs in the middle and dormer windows that looked out on the wet street below. A door in the corner was marked
PRIVATE
; that would be where he had made his coffee, I thought, and then wondered why I cared. I went as far as one of the windows, stepping up on a low shelf to peer out at the street. As I turned away, I half saw myself reflected in the glass and looked again – a ghost version of me, shadows for eyes, washed-out skin, and hair that hung in straggling tails. A drowned me. They had found Freya in the sea, I recalled with a shiver that surprised me, then made me laugh. I was getting to be as bad as everyone else in Port Sentinel, as edgy about nothing, about a coincidental resemblance. I turned the shiver into a shrug and jumped down off the
shelf
, careless of the noise I made. I was there to buy a book, after all, not wallow in creepiness. And I still didn’t have a clue what to choose.