Don't Ask (12 page)

Jack had always seemed to me to be an equation which didn’t make sense, like an x without a value. Now he added up. All my questions and frustrations had been justified; he
had
been hiding something from me, something which was an obstacle to getting to know him properly. What he’d told me wasn’t what I’d been expecting – although I can’t
tell you exactly what I had expected. The truth wasn’t glamorous or funny or outrageous, like the possibilities Katie and I had discussed, it was sad and grimy. If only he could have trusted
me with it a little sooner, when I was still to be trusted.

I was also thinking how strong Jack was, and how brave, and how I was so much luckier than him because I’d never had to deal with anything really bad in my life. No one had ever hurt me,
not really.

I was remembering all the times I’d moaned to Jack about my dad because he wouldn’t let me stay out late or because he was a bit of a fusspot, and how he’d sympathised, when
inside he must have been thinking I was blessed, and that made me cringe.

I was thinking how weird it was that I hadn’t known Jack’s real name and had simply accepted that he was called Parmiter, just as Alex hadn’t thought to question whether I was
christened Laura. The big difference was, of course, that Jack had changed his name to help keep him safe, while I’d changed mine because I was playing a game, because I was a nosy, impatient
sneak.

And, most of all, I was thinking about confessing every last detail of what I’d done, so that absolutely everything was out in the open, so that there were no more lies and no more
secrets. If there was a time for revelations, surely this was it.

In the end, what I said was: ‘I’m just thinking how amazing you are, Jack’, and the moment, the opportunity to confess, was lost. It was a cop-out, I know, but I didn’t
have a clue where to start. Jack seemed so fragile and I couldn’t bear to break him. He didn’t need to know what I’d done. I’d find another way of making things right.

He held me, tightly. ‘I’m surprised, but I’m actually really glad I told you,’ he said.

‘Me too,’ I said.

He smiled. ‘It’s good that you know. I feel much closer to you now.’

‘So do I,’ I said, because I felt it was what he wanted to hear. And I wanted it to be true, I really did. But, if I’m honest, I felt more distant from Jack than ever before.
Laura was no longer hovering in the corner of the room, she’d marched over and wedged herself right in between us.

As soon as my parents had arrived home and Jack had left, I went into my bedroom, shut the door and texted Katie, asking her to call urgently. It was after eleven-thirty but I
was sure she wouldn’t be asleep. Not on a Saturday night. She’d mentioned something about going to the cinema with one of our friends, although, to be honest, I’d been so caught
up in the dramas of my own day that I hadn’t really listened.

There was a short delay and then my phone began to purr.

‘What’s up?’ she slurred, drowsily, when I answered.

‘You weren’t asleep, were you?’

‘Not really. Not any more,’ she said, irritated. ‘I told you, I decided not to go out tonight because I was feeling a bit dead. Has something happened? Does Jack know you went
to the football?’

‘No, it’s not that.’

‘Oh,’ she said, in a voice which suggested I could have waited until the morning.

‘Sorry I woke you. But it’s all got so messy and complicated. I think I need to end things with Alex.’

‘Oh,’ she said again. ‘So you want to terminate Project Jared, do you?’

‘I’m being serious, Katie,’ I said, and told her what had happened, repeating everything that Jack had told me. I’m not sure he meant for me to share the gruesome details
about his father with anyone, but he hadn’t actually said, ‘Don’t tell anyone’, and he must realise that girls tell our best friends everything.

Katie listened, incredulous. When I’d finished, she said simply, ‘Wow.’

‘I know. I can’t keep seeing Alex, can I? Not now Jack’s opened up. I feel awful. Poor Jack. And what if he finds out what I’ve been doing? I’m not sure he’d
understand.’

‘Too right,’ she said. ‘But you weren’t to know that Jack had some serious stuff going on in his past. You’d never have guessed what his dad did in a million years.
He said he was dead, didn’t he? So the way I see it, you haven’t really done anything wrong. Jack lied to you, so you lied to him. You’re even. But now you’ve got to stop
it. You don’t need Alex any more. You should just dump her. It’s easy. You delete Laura’s account, you don’t reply to Alex’s messages and you don’t answer her
calls or her texts. If you really want to make sure she leaves you alone, you can even change your mobile number – you could just tell everyone it was stolen. It’s a hassle, but it
would make Laura completely untraceable.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I can just pretend that Laura never existed. Alex will get over it, won’t she? It’s not like she and Laura were ever really close; we – they
– had only met once. She’d be a bit confused, maybe a bit miffed for a while, and then she’d forget about me, I mean Laura, and get on with her life.’

‘Exactly. And Jack will never find out. Absolutely no damage done.’

Katie made it sound so clean and simple, so easy. To her, erasing Alex from my life would be no greater an effort than crossing a name off a list. But that’s all Alex was to her: a name.
She hadn’t spent time with her, talking to her and getting to know her. She hadn’t met Alex’s dad, or allowed him to buy her gifts. She didn’t care about Alex’s
feelings.

I switched on my computer and prepared myself for the task of going straight into Laura’s Topfriendz profile and deleting it. But by the time the login screen had come on I didn’t
feel so comfortable about doing that. Surely there must be a less cruel way of getting rid of Alex, a way to let her down gently? Maybe I could start by being really rude and objectionable, so that
she’d begin to find me, I mean Laura, irritating or offensive and not want to be her friend any more. A series of fart gags might work, or a string of non-stop swear words, as if I’d
suddenly developed Tourette’s. I could come up with something terrible, like a racist or sexist remark that she couldn’t ignore, something so nasty that no one in their right mind would
tolerate. Perhaps I could deliberately cause a row over something . . . football, maybe? I could tell her I’d suddenly become a Tottenham Hotspur fan (which, for an Arsenal fan, would be the
equivalent of becoming a suicide bomber) and she wouldn’t want to speak to me again. My sudden personality change would shock her, but she’d either think I was a raving lunatic or that
I now trusted her enough to reveal my true colours. Either way, she’d run a mile, relieved that she hadn’t wasted any more time on Laura. Wouldn’t that work just as well?

That approach didn’t feel right, either. I know it sounds pathetic, but I didn’t like the idea of Alex, or anyone, hating Laura or thinking badly of her. She was part of me, after
all. I wondered if there was a way of just letting my friendship with Alex slide, of deliberately engineering it so that we drifted apart, just as I had with the girls I’d genuinely met and
befriended at summer camp. I could be slack in answering Alex’s messages, not phone when I said I would and forget to return her calls. Eventually, she’d grow fed up with chasing me and
wonder why we’d ever become friends. No one would be hurt; nobody would hate anyone. It was the perfect solution. But how long would it take? Weeks? Months? Would I be able to hide it from
Jack in the meantime? What if Alex was persistent and refused to let our friendship go? What if she turned into Laura’s stalker . . .?

As Laura’s profile page downloaded, I was shocked to see what a mess it looked. Since I’d started talking to Alex I hadn’t done anything to update it, and it had grown out of
control, like an abandoned forest. I had about a million new friend requests, there were pop-ups and adverts everywhere and someone had posted a string of rude videos on my message board. It needed
serious pruning. I wondered if you could employ web gardeners to do the job for you.

There were five messages in my inbox, two of which were from the ever-persistent Igor, one from the Topfriendz administrator and one from a band inviting me to buy their latest EP. The last
message had been sent only a couple of hours earlier. It was from Alex.

Hi Laura.

It was so lovely to see you earlier. Wasn’t the match brill? I had such a fun afternoon and I really hope you did too. My dad thinks you’re great – which you should take as
a major compliment, because he hardly ever likes my friends – and he says you must come to another match with us soon, if you’d like to, of course. I’m going to have a party for
my eighteenth birthday in a few weeks, which you must come to, if you can. I’d love you to meet some of my other friends.

Anyway, speak soon.

Love Alex xxx

I found myself smiling, involuntarily. Alex was so warm and so sweet, wasn’t she? Her message was lovely. She said she’d had a great time with me and, when I
thought about it, I’d had a great time at the match too, in a way. I was certain it wasn’t like thinking about an exam in retrospect and deciding it wasn’t so bad after all. I
genuinely had had fun. What’s more, what Alex said was so flattering. She obviously really liked me, even though – unbeknown to her – I’d been at my worst all afternoon:
dressed horribly, acting stupid, holding my tongue. Her dad liked me too, and she said he didn’t like
any
of her friends. Perhaps, I thought, I simply can’t help being
naturally charming and likable, even in disguise.

‘I can’t dump Alex,’ I said aloud, even though there was no one awake to hear me. ‘I don’t want to. I like her.’

I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t hurt Alex. It was too cruel. If Laura vanished off the face of the earth, there might be terrible repercussions for Alex. She would feel abandoned,
betrayed, confused . . . She might never be able to trust anyone again. It could ruin her life, for ever. What if she reported Laura’s disappearance to the police and there was a full-scale
murder enquiry? What if she went mad because nobody believed her and ended her days in a hospital, dribbling and blathering on to the nurses about a missing girl called Laura Thompson, whom
everybody said had never existed?

While I didn’t want to hurt Alex, if I’m honest, that was only part of it: it was mainly about me. I couldn’t delete Laura because I didn’t want my little adventure to
end yet. Before Alex, I hadn’t made a new friend in ages. I knew everybody in my class at school and Sixth Form college was over a year away. I was bored. Alex could introduce me to new
people, and teach me new things. Maybe spending time with her would make me sporty and fit too. Not that I could imagine doing any actual exercise with her, but who’s to say it wouldn’t
happen naturally, like catching a cold, if I hung around her for long enough?

I still didn’t know why she and Jack had broken up and I had no guarantee that Jack would ever tell me. Alex could fill in the gaps so I wouldn’t keep bugging him about it. If I
tried really, really hard, I could almost convince myself that it would be good for our relationship. As long as Jack didn’t find out what I’d been up to, there was no reason why I
couldn’t be a loyal girlfriend to him and a good friend to Alex. Everyone has secrets; I’m sure I read somewhere that it’s healthy to hold a few things back.

Maybe, one day, when we were firm friends (I hadn’t determined quite how our friendship would become legitimate, but I’d worry about that another time), I’d be able to tell
Alex the truth. By then, she wouldn’t mind because she’d know I was trustworthy and a good person. And how, in the future, we’d laugh about the way we had met. How ridiculous it
would seem. I imagined us twenty years on, when we we’d be really old, sitting around a dinner table, with my husband Jack (who would be a successful sports reporter with his own TV show and
the best celebrity party invites), and whoever Alex married (for some reason, in my fantasy her husband had a beard), talking about our youth.

‘I can’t believe Lily changed her name and pretended to be someone else!’ Alex would say.

‘I know! What was she like!’ Jack would reply. ‘That’s my Lily for you.’ He’d laugh and squeeze my hand, and I’d stroke the swirly, whirly bit on the
top of his head, which still wouldn’t lie flat and was now streaked with silver.

‘I think the name you used began with an “L” . . .’ Alex would say. ‘Lisa? Leah? No, Laura, wasn’t it? Yes, that’s right. Could you pass the wine
please, Laura. Ha ha!’

And we’d all fall about.

Twenty years in the past, I sat alone in my bedroom and told myself everything would work out fine. Then I read Alex’s message again, pressed the reply button and typed:

It was so lovely to see you too. And to meet your dad. Tell him thanks again for the scarf. I’d love to come to your party and meet your friends. Let’s speak v.
soon.

Love Laura xxxx

Before I went to bed, I texted Katie:
Laura nt dead. Wl xplain. Sorry xx