Without waiting, she grabs her coat and I watch her skip across the road, looking both ways. A sense of disquiet has been growing within me like the beating of a war drum, repetitive, dull, getting stronger every day.
She stops on the far side of the road and looks over her shoulder, holding my gaze for a fraction of a second as though worried about what she’s left behind, but determined to go on without it.
My dad once told me that people
can sometimes do amazing things when they’re in life-and-death situations. Mothers can lift cars off their trapped babies and people have survived falls from airplanes.
When the time comes, maybe I can do something amazing. Every time I contemplate stabbing George, my throat starts closing. It feels like a heart attack, although I don’t know how a heart attack is supposed to feel. I imagine like heartburn only a million times worse because you don’t die of heartburn.
I know it’s a panic attack. I’ve had them before. Tash used to help me get through them. She would hold a bag over my mouth and get me to breathe slowly or she’d rub my back, telling me to picture something that made me happy, a place or a person.
That’s what I do now. I imagine I’m lying on the grass on a beautiful sunny day in our garden beside the pond. Phoebe is next to me and I’ve made her a clover crown and a matching bracelet and necklace. Mum is in the kitchen cooking chicken Kiev, which is my favorite.
I know it sounds corny, like a scene from a washing powder advert, but it takes my mind off my panic attack. After a few minutes I start to breathe normally again. I go to the sink and wash my face. Boiling water in a saucepan, I cook pasta and mix it with a teaspoon of oil. I can only swallow a few mouthfuls. My nerves are too bad for eating.
I look at the trapdoor and listen. If not today, maybe he’ll be here tomorrow.
I’ve washed out an empty can of baked beans, which I’m using as a hearing device. I hold it against the wall and put my ear to the base, hoping to hear Tash on the other side. I even imagine that she’s doing the same thing, listening for me. Our heads might almost be touching.
On the night we finally decided to run away our heads were touching and we made promises to each other. I thought Tash was unbreakable but that night she shattered into a million little pieces and I tried so hard to pick them up again.
Ever since Aiden Foster’s trial she had talked about running away. Getting expelled from school simply created a timetable. We had one more summer in Bingham, she said. When school went back, we’d have to leave.
The Summer Festival was on the last weekend of the holidays. There were funfair rides, stalls and sideshows on Bingham Green. The local pony club put on a display and Reverend Trevor judged the dressage competition.
The entire day was supposed to be a celebration. It began with morning tea in the gardens of The Old Vicarage—one of the traditions that Mum and Dad had to agree to when they bought the house. Apparently, according to local historians (by which I mean busybodies), the vicarage had hosted a morning tea for estate workers and townsfolk for the past a hundred and sixty-two years.
I don’t know what an estate worker is, but most of the visitors were old biddies from the church, sitting at long tables on the lawn. There were scones, sponge cakes, trifles and summer puddings under muslin to keep the flies and sticky fingers away. Jasmine Dodds brought her new baby, whose scalp was all scaly like it was molting, but that didn’t stop everyone ooh-ing and ah-ing every time it burped. Jasmine used to babysit me when I was a kid.
At lunchtime Mr. Swanson, the town butcher, set up a spit and roasted a pig that looked so much like a naked person it made me feel like a cannibal when my mouth watered.
Mum and Dad made me work all day, serving tea and cakes, then clearing away dishes and washing up. I stacked chairs and replaced divots in the lawn. Meanwhile, I listened to squeals from the Disco Rider and saw people climbing the giant slide and heard the PA system telling parents where to pick up their missing kids.
Finally my temper got the better of me. I said it was fucking unfair and told Mum she was being a vindictive bitch. Dad’s shoulders slumped like he was deflating. I’d disappointed him again.
I was sent to my room. Grounded. I could hear Mum and Dad arguing about sending me away again. She was saying I was out of control and he was telling her not to overreact.
Tash sent me an email from her phone with a photo attached. She and Emily were sitting in the pirate ship, their hair flying as it swung back and forth. I couldn’t even text them. My phone had been confiscated. What would they take away next?
At eight-thirty I made a show of brushing my teeth and getting ready for bed. Phoebe and Ben were already asleep. As soon as I heard Mum and Dad start watching a movie in the lounge, I opened my bedroom window. From the roof I could climb onto the old stables and slide down the tree onto the woodpile. Crossing the garden, I silenced the frogs and crickets. Slipping through the side gate, I was only two minutes from the green.