Tell Me No Secrets (16 page)

The dreams become less frequent – I must be doing something right – and my life settles into a rhythm. Euan does a good job of avoiding me and I let him and then, after the October half-term, he doesn't come back to school. A week goes by and still he isn't in class. I ask my mum whether he's sick.

‘Not that I know of,' she says, then hesitates before adding, ‘He's moved down to stay with his uncle in Glasgow.'

‘Why?'

‘Better options there for his exams.'

I know this can't be true. He was already doing the Highers he needed for university.

I go next door to Mo. I haven't spoken to her for a few weeks and she spends the first minute hugging me and asking me how I am. When she takes a breath I say, ‘Where's Euan?'

‘He's in Glasgow with family. Better for him down there.'

‘He didn't even say goodbye.'

‘It all happened fast.'

‘Could I have his address?'

She strokes my hair. ‘I'm sure he'll write to you when he's ready.'

‘I'll write first.' I give a short laugh. ‘I don't suppose he'll be much good at letter writing anyway.'

I expect Mo to smile and give me the address but she doesn't, she turns away. ‘Best leave it, Grace,' she says. ‘How about a lemonade? I've just made some.'

‘But please, Mo.' I move around so that I can see her face. ‘He's my friend. I want to write to him.'

‘No,' she says. ‘That won't be possible.'

‘Why not?' Tears are already filling my eyes and I blink them away.

She sighs and looks at me sadly. ‘He doesn't want to hear from you.'

My solar plexus pulls inward as if I have been punched. I run out of the front door and keep running until I get to the playground. I sit on a swing and move backward and forward, backward and forward, keeping my feet on the ground and my eyes on the horizon. I can't believe it. Euan has left the village. I'm not allowed his address. He doesn't want any contact with me.

I stay on the swing for over an hour. It starts to rain. I don't move. I come to the conclusion that there's nothing I can do about it. If he doesn't want to talk to me then that's that. I know that Mo won't give in to me and I know that Macintosh is too popular a name for me to try to look for him. But one thing's for sure: he'll have to come back and visit and then we can talk. I'll bide my time. Keep myself busy. I'm in the restaurant three evenings a week and working harder with my school work, as I promised. My art teacher thinks I should study art at the college in Edinburgh. She writes a letter home to my parents.

‘You're a born nurse,' my mum says. ‘Don't go changing your mind at this late stage.'

‘Now steady on, Lillian.' My dad puts down his knife and fork. ‘What do you want, Grace?'

I want it to be like it was. I want to go back to 15 June 1984 and live it differently.
He's waiting for me to speak. ‘I'm not sure, Dad,' I say at last.

‘In that case stick with nursing.' Mum loads more mashed potato on to my plate. ‘Much safer that way. You don't know what type of people you'll end up mixing with if you go to that art college.'

‘No rush,' my dad says, patting my hand. ‘There's plenty of time to make up your mind.'

By the end of fifth year we're all seventeen. To my knowledge, Euan has not been home. Not once. But I do find out that he's been accepted at university to study architecture. I have enough Highers to start my nursing course but I'm not yet seventeen and a half so I decide to stay on for sixth year at school. ‘You're far too young to leave home anyway,' my mum says.

Sixth Year Studies biology is harder than I thought. I've been serving Paul for over a year now and feel brave enough to ask, ‘Do you ever do extra tuition?' I place his sea bass and sauté potatoes in front of him. ‘I'm struggling a bit.'

He looks up from the paper he's reading. ‘I'd be happy to help you. Why don't you speak to your mum and dad? See what they say.'

My parents are glad that I'm taking my studies so seriously and Paul coaches me in his lab at the university. Soon it becomes the highlight of my week. He helps me with my project and I see him in a different context, engrossed in his research work and respected by students and colleagues. He is easier to be with than anyone I know. Every so often we talk about Rose and one day as we're finishing up he tells me about his wife Marcia. They met at university when they were both eighteen. She fell pregnant by accident and neither of them was comfortable with the reality of an abortion. So they married. When Rose was born he fell in love with her, he said. She was the perfect baby, a sweet and cheerful bundle. To lose them both was the hardest thing.

‘Anyway, enough about me.' His hand shakes as he locks the lab behind us. ‘Have you applied for your nursing course yet?'

‘Not yet. I have the application forms. I just haven't filled them in.'

‘What's stopping you?'

I shrug. ‘I'm not sure I want to be a nurse. I don't like the sight of blood.'

He laughs. ‘That could make it tricky then.' He presses the button for the lift. ‘Your drawings are beautiful, you know. The details included in your fieldwork report show exceptional talent.'

‘I like drawing and painting,' I acknowledge. ‘I had thought about art college but my mother thinks I'll end up mixing with hippie types and be smoking pot and having rampant sex with all and sundry.'

‘It's a mother's job to worry. Don't be too hard on her.'

I punch the edge of his shoulder. ‘How do you know that I'm hard on her?'

‘It's that look you get on your face sometimes – don't-mess-with-me-or-else.' We step into the lift and he glances at me sideways. ‘Feisty.'

‘Feisty?' I hold up both fists. ‘Who's feisty?'

I start to think of him at night, in my bedroom. I'm still a virgin. I wish I wasn't, I'm almost eighteen, but it was always going to be Euan and now he's gone and not one letter, not one, and although I've been out a couple of times with other boys I've quickly lost interest. I start to think about Paul, to fantasise about him kissing me, making love to me. No cold hands or fumbling like with boys my age but the experienced, confident touch of a grown-up man.

I don't dream about Rose any more. Every day I think of her but being close to Paul has lessened the guilt. I'm not over it. I know what I did and I know that it will never sit comfortably inside me. There is no way to reconcile killing a child but I am able to function and smile and even laugh again. I have to avoid certain triggers: I've never been back to the Guides, I don't go anywhere near the pond and I cannot abide the smell of lily of the valley soap. It transports me straight back to the pond's edge, Rose bloated and blue, her body fatally altered by the water.

Towards the end of the school year I'm having my last lesson with Paul and feeling desperate. He's so much a part of my life now that I don't know what I'll do without him and I can't think of another excuse for us to spend more time together. We cross over the road to Donnie's Bites. This time I'm not waitressing. I'm taking him for dinner, as a special thank you.

We're eating our starters, prawn cocktail with Donnie's spicy sauce, when he tells me he's planning to go to America for a couple of years. He has a place to study with Professor Butterworth in Boston. He is the most respected scientist in the field of marine biology.

My heart plummets. ‘I'll miss you.' I blurt it out, just like that. I'm surprised at myself and I blush.

‘And I you, Grace.' He looks at me kindly. It's a look he always gives me: tolerant, understanding, fatherly. I hate it.

‘I'm not a child,' I tell him. ‘You always look at me as if I'm a child. I'm not.' I take a mouthful of food. ‘I'm eighteen next month.'

‘I know.' He pauses. ‘I am well aware of you.'

‘You are?'

‘Of course I am. I'm a man and you're a very attractive young woman.'

‘You find me attractive?' My heart is swelling like a balloon.

‘Grace.' There's that look again. ‘Don't.'

‘Why not? Because of the age difference? Paul, it's only twelve years.' I throw up my hands. ‘That's nothing!'

‘Not just that. I've had too much tragedy. You're young. You have your whole life ahead of you. It would be wrong of me—'

‘What happened was terrible,' I butt in. ‘To lose Marcia and Rose. But please. Give me a chance.' I reach across the table and take his hand. ‘Please.'

It's three months until he leaves for America and he agrees that we can spend some of that time together. He is working on a PhD – toxicology and disease in marine mammals – and I join him in the lab either helping set up experiments or working on a project of my own: a portfolio for art college. Although I've yet to tell my parents, I've decided that I can't possibly be a nurse. It's one of those ideas that sounds good in theory but in practice, I know it wouldn't work. It's not just the thought of blood and needles and broken limbs, it's the thought of having to encounter death. I can't do it. I know it would remind me of Rose and what I did to her. And that hurts too much.

Three days a week, after the lab work, Paul teaches me how to play squash. I pick it up quickly and before long we're having proper games: not taxing for him but good enough to feel like exercise. We go to the cinema together and find we have similar tastes in movies and books. He introduces me to his close friends and, to my surprise, I find I can hold my own. I know enough about Paul's work to talk with confidence and I find his friends impressed by my own growing conviction that I can paint. As time passes, I see Paul looking at me differently. I become less of a teenage girl and more of an equal and finally, towards the end of the summer, he kisses me and I know that at last he is seeing me as a woman. ‘What man could resist loving you?' he says.

Before he goes to Boston he asks me to marry him. I tell my parents. Silence. My mother's mouth falls open into an O shape. My father is staring at me, newspaper poised above his knee, his head to one side, frowning, as if he hasn't heard correctly.

‘Look!' I hold my ring finger towards them, moving it slightly so that the diamonds catch in the light from the standard lamp.

My dad clears his throat. ‘It'll be a long engagement?'

‘No, Dad. Paul starts work in America next week. I want to be married by Christmas so that I can go out and join him.'

‘What? What is this madness, Grace?' My mother rises to her feet. ‘You can't possibly be married!'

‘Lillian.' My dad drops his paper and stands up too. ‘Grace, as you know, we are very fond of Paul, but he is a man who has suffered two great losses in his life.'

‘But that's the thing, Dad.' I take hold of my father's hand and swing it towards me. ‘I can make him happy again.'

‘Grace, you found his child.' His voice lowers. ‘His dead child. I can't help but think that this has caused you to have feelings for him, feelings that you would never otherwise have had.'

I drop my dad's hand and step backward. I've thought of this too but I truly believe that what Paul and I feel for each other has nothing to do with Rose's death. I feel sure that if Rose was alive, we would still be in love. ‘I love him.'

‘Then I'm asking you to wait. Just wait a little while.'

‘But I want to join him in America.'

‘You can visit each other.'

‘Two or three times a year,' my mum chips in. ‘The time in between will fly by.'

‘He might meet someone else.'

‘If he loves you then he'll be happy to wait.' My dad walks towards the telephone. ‘I'll have a word with him.'

‘No!' I shout. I have a horrible feeling he will put Paul off. ‘Paul makes me happy. I thought you would understand that.'

‘Grace.' My dad rubs his hand across his forehead. ‘What about Euan?'

‘What
about
Euan?'

‘I always felt that you two would end up together.' He looks pained. ‘All through your childhood you had a bond.'

‘But I'm not a child any more and I haven't seen Euan for ages and I haven't even thought about him in weeks.' That isn't entirely true. I think of Euan most days. It isn't deliberate. It's just that he pops into my mind. I eat a sandwich and I think about how Euan doesn't like tomatoes. I play some music and I remember the concert we went to in Edinburgh. I walk along the beach and I think of us jumping the waves. I take the bus into St Andrews and automatically look towards the back row in case he's sitting there.

But none of that matters. Euan is gone. My childhood is over. I'm eighteen now and ready to get on with the rest of my life. My father insists that Paul comes to have a word with him. Paul readily agrees. He had wanted to do the traditional thing and ask for my hand in marriage but I wouldn't let him. I didn't want my dad to have the opportunity to say no. I feel a sense of rightness, a rounding off – Paul and I sharing a life together.

Paul talks to my dad. He agrees to wait for a year but I do not. I insist, persist, push and pull until we all make up our minds to a compromise – six months. My mother grumbles and groans. She doesn't have long enough to plan the wedding. I am to wear her wedding dress: ivory silk with antique lace at the sleeves and neckline.

‘Six months is surely enough,' I tell her.

‘It feels rushed,' she says.

‘I just want to be married and join Paul in Boston.'