How to Fall (33 page)

‘He doesn’t need any distractions. He’s got enough to worry about at the moment.’

‘Because his mum is dying?’

He flinched. ‘Yes.’

‘Don’t you think he might need some support? Don’t you think now is exactly when he might need to have someone who cares about him?’

‘Maybe.’ Dan looked down, then back up at me and I saw the hatred in his eyes again, the same look I’d
seen
the first time I met him. ‘But it shouldn’t be you.’

My knees had begun to tremble. ‘Why not me?’

‘He doesn’t need to make the same mistakes I made.’

‘Are you talking about Mum?’ I shook my head, angry now. ‘It’s not the same thing. And from what I understand, the mistake was yours anyway.’

‘Is that what she told you?’

‘I’m not going to discuss a private conversation with you, Mr Henderson. Besides, you were there. You know what happened.’

He winced.

‘I’m not my mother,’ I said softly. ‘And Will’s not you.’

‘So you’re not going to do as I ask.’

‘I don’t know. I don’t know how Will feels about me. I don’t know if he wants me around or not. But if he does, as a friend or – or – or
whatever
, nothing you say or do will keep us apart.’ I could not say ‘girlfriend’ to Dan Henderson, it turned out.

‘Is that right?’ A smile curved the corners of Dan’s mouth, but there was nothing pleasant about it.

‘Try me.’

He stared at me for a long moment, then nodded. ‘Consider yourself warned.’

‘I do.’ I was still shaking but I hoped he couldn’t see
it
. ‘But I came to see Will, and I’m not leaving until I do.’

He was at the back of the house, in a dusty garage that housed a car I only just recognized as a Ford Capri, low-slung and with pure seventies style in every line. It was painted brown and seemed to be missing about half its bodywork. The bonnet was open. Will was fiddling with something deep inside the engine, concentrating on what he was doing so I was able to stand and watch him for a couple of minutes before he noticed me. When he did, he straightened up with a start.

‘Hey.’

‘Sorry. Did I scare you?’

‘Surprised me. What are you doing here?’

‘Watching you. Being told off by your dad for coming round.’

He had been wiping oil off his hands with a rag, but now he went very still and stared at me. ‘Seriously?’

‘Am I laughing?’

‘What did he say to you?’

‘That I should leave you alone.’

Will looked down at his hands and started to work on them again. ‘Oh. That must have been a pleasant conversation.’

‘It had its moments.’ I hesitated. ‘Did he speak to you too?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Is that why you didn’t come to see me?’

He didn’t answer me for a minute. ‘Not exactly.’

‘Oh.’ My face started to burn. ‘I see. I thought—’

He interrupted. ‘How are you?’

‘Fine.’

‘Great. I’m glad. Thanks for coming over.’

‘Well, I was at the Leonards’ anyway,’ I said, gesturing in that general direction. This was horrible. This was the worst conversation ever. Will was like a stranger and I didn’t seem to be able to find a way past the polite chit-chat to what I wanted to say. I tried a different angle. ‘Did you hear the news? Mum wants us to stay here for a year.’

‘I heard.’ Will turned back to the engine and his voice was muffled when he asked, ‘Are you?’

‘That’s the plan. We’re staying at Sandhayes.’

‘Oh, right.’ He sounded vague, as if he wasn’t listening properly.

‘What’s the matter?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You know what I mean. You’re being weird.’ I felt as if I was on a tightrope over Niagara Falls and I hadn’t practised. I was very much afraid of getting this wrong and there was nothing I could do but keep going. ‘I thought . . . when we were on the beach, it
seemed
 . . . you were going to—’ Was it actually possible to die of embarrassment?

Will straightened up again and looked at me, his expression completely unhelpful. ‘What are you trying to say, Jess?’

‘I haven’t seen you. I waited, and you didn’t come.’ I knew there were tears in my eyes because he had gone blurry all of a sudden. ‘What did I do wrong?’

‘Nothing. Absolutely nothing. It’s not you. Or Dad.’ He couldn’t even look at me. ‘It’s just better if we don’t get too close.’

‘In what way?’

‘Jess, why do you think your mum wants to stay in Port Sentinel? And why do you think my dad doesn’t want us to get involved with one another? They’re just waiting for my mother to be gone so they can get together. If we were going out, it would make it a bit awkward.’

‘You’re wrong.’

‘I wish I was.’

‘That may be your dad’s plan, but it’s not Mum’s. At all.’

‘She knows what he wants and she’s gone along with it so far,’ Will said. ‘Whose idea do you think it was for you to stay here? It didn’t come from her.’

‘She told me she wouldn’t go back to him. She said it was all in the past.’

‘Not very far back.’ Will kicked the tyre nearest him, very gently. ‘Do you know what Dad said? I’d ruined their lives once before. If it hadn’t been for me, they would never have split up. He said it was his turn to be happy for the first time in eighteen years and he wasn’t going to miss out on it again.’

I would kill him, I thought. I would kill Dan with my bare hands. Not because he’d made it impossible for me and Will to be together, but because he’d put that expression on his own son’s face. ‘He’s so completely wrong. You didn’t believe him, did you?’

He shrugged. ‘It’s not that big a deal.’

‘Don’t say that.’ I went over to him and put my hand on his arm, trying to get him to look at me. ‘You don’t really think that, do you?’

Will gave me a quick, awkward smile and moved back so my hand fell away. I recognized the technique. I’d used it myself on boys whose attentions were unwanted.

‘OK. Fine. I’ll go.’ I turned to walk away, the tears I’d suppressed earlier springing into my eyes so I could hardly see. ‘See you around.’

‘Jess.’ Somehow he managed to get a world of longing into the way he said my name, and I stopped, but I didn’t turn round. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said at last.

‘Me too.’

I couldn’t trust myself to say anything more. It took everything I had, but I walked away without looking back.

Never stage a big dramatic exit without knowing exactly how you’re going to get away. I had no intention of going back through the house, where Dan would be waiting to see what had happened. There wasn’t another way back to the road without returning to the garage and I had even less intention of seeing Will again. That left the wall at the back of the garden, the one that led straight to Sandhayes. If it was the left corner of the garden there, it was the right corner in Will’s house. I headed in that general direction, taking deep quivery breaths to try and get my tears under control. The garden was big, much bigger than it would have been in London, considering the size of the house. I was out of sight of the garage and the house itself when I saw the wall.

I could see straight away how it was possible to climb it, as it was crumbling in places and therefore had plenty of helpful gaps where you could hold on. Whether it was possible for
me
to do it was another matter. It was high – two and a half metres at a guess – and I wasn’t fully recovered from adventuring on the cliffs.

But it was the only way out without serious loss of face. There was no alternative I was prepared to consider.

What I
was
prepared to do, however, was improvise. I had noticed an old garden chair a couple of metres away and I dragged it across to the corner, where an impressive array of scuffmarks told me that was Will’s route. The chair was rickety and wobbled alarmingly as I stood up on the seat, very slowly, and then balanced on the back, and stretched as high as I could to reach the top of the wall. Success. I held on and found somewhere for my right foot to go, remembering Will’s voice in my ear on the cliff.

Take your time. You’ve got to feel safe before you move. If one toehold doesn’t work for you, find another
.

I wedged my toes in between the crumbling concrete blocks and levered myself up in two moves, managing to haul myself up to the top of the wall. I sat there, amazed that my plan had worked. The happy feeling faded as I realized I couldn’t pull my leg up. I had wedged my foot right into the gap I’d chosen, and now I could neither move it nor get it out. I was stuck, with my leg at an awkward angle. I couldn’t go forwards or back.

‘What are you doing?’ Will’s tone was conversational, as if there was nothing weird about finding me marooned on his garden wall.

I looked down, acutely aware that I had just been crying and probably looked dreadful. I took refuge in sarcasm. ‘Learning to play the guitar. What does it look like?’

‘It looks like you shouldn’t ever attempt to climb something without me.’ He reached up and pulled my foot. ‘Wow. That’s properly stuck.’

‘Can you get it out?’

‘If I take your foot out of your shoe.’ He started undoing my laces. ‘Your foot should slid out of the trainer. Then the shoe will collapse and I’ll be able to pull it out.’

‘Thanks,’ I said shortly.

‘Any time.’

‘Hopefully not.’ I glanced at him, at the long eyelashes that were lowered in concentration as he worked to untangle a particularly resistant knot. ‘What are you doing here, anyway?’

‘I was on my way to see you.’

‘Why?’

He was levering my foot out of the shoe and didn’t answer straight away. ‘I thought of something else I wanted to say.’

‘OK.’

My foot came free and a moment later he had my shoe in his hand. He reached up and gave it to me.
‘Here you go, Cinderella.’

‘Too kind.’

With a lot more dignity than I’d managed, Will climbed up and sat astride the wall.

‘What did you want to say?’ I asked.

‘I’ll tell you when we’re on the ground.’

‘Are you coming too?’

‘I thought I’d help in case you ran into any trouble on the other side.’

I looked over. ‘It doesn’t look too complicated.’

‘It’s not.’

I frowned at him. ‘Are you saying the trouble would be my fault?’

‘Consider the last five minutes and tell me what you think.’

‘Anyone could have got stuck on the wall.’

‘Anyone
could
, but you
did
.’ He didn’t wait to hear what I thought about that, jumping down with practised ease.

‘You can see you’ve done that before.’

‘A million times.’ He looked up at me. ‘Are you coming down?’

‘In a second.’

‘You’re not scared.’

It looked a long way down now that I was on top of the wall. ‘I could break an ankle,’ I pointed out.

‘I’ll catch you if you fall.’

‘I’ll flatten you.’

Will shook his head, laughing a little. ‘Come on. You can’t stay up there for ever.’

He was right. I finished putting my shoe back on, turned round to sit on the wall, as he had, and launched myself into space, to be caught and set gently on the ground and held. I didn’t move, and neither did he, and we were as close as we had been on the beach, if not closer. His breath stirred my hair when he spoke.

‘Did you close your eyes before you jumped or after you landed?’

‘Somewhere in the middle, I think. Should I open them now? Is it safe?’

‘You could risk it.’

I blinked up at him, leaning back so I could see him. ‘Rescuing me is getting to be a habit, isn’t it?’

‘You keep climbing things. I never feel completely relaxed when you’re off the ground.’

‘Me neither,’ I confided. ‘And I’m terrible at swimming. Give me good solid dry land any day of the week.’

‘I’ll keep it in mind.’ Will was showing no signs of letting go of me and I’d have stayed like that forever, but I was too curious.

‘You were going to say something else.’

‘Yes, I was. Thank you for reminding me.’

‘Well?’

‘I don’t like leaving things half done.’

‘What do you mean?’ I tried for normal, but I could barely breathe.

He took a second to answer me and I could see he was weighing up the consequences of whatever he did next. I waited. And I might always wait for Will Henderson, I thought hopelessly, even if he walked away now.

Even if he never came back.

His eyes met mine again, and I forgot everything else but him, standing there, holding onto me as if he never meant to let me go.

‘I mean this.’ He leaned in and kissed me, properly this time, and I had spent days imagining what it would be like to kiss him but I hadn’t even come close. He kissed me like it was the start of something, or the end, and I couldn’t work out which it was but I didn’t want to ask.

For once, I didn’t want to know.

Acknowledgements

This book would not exist without the help and support of the following people:

Lauren Buckland, the most wonderful editor, Duran Duran fan and tweeter a writer could wish for; Sophie Nelson, razor-sharp copy-editor and fount of good suggestions; Simon Trewin and Ariella Feiner, superheroes in literary-agent form; Jane Willis – who has waited so patiently for this book to exist – and all her other colleagues at United Agents; the podettes, particularly Rachel Petty, who loves YA as much as I do; the legions of YA authors whom I have edited, read and admired from afar – they have taught me so much along the way; my fellow crime writers, lovely people despite their dark, dark thoughts; the snakepit, especially Philippa who read the first draft on her phone; Michael and Bridget, Gemma, Tim and Amber, who make visiting Devon such a pleasure;
na lads
– Edward, Patrick and Fred – who help, hinder and always entertain; and James, who knows which character is based on him.

And last of all, thanks to you, the reader, because I wrote this book for you.

About the Author

Born and brought up in Dublin, Jane Casey has been twice shortlisted for the
Irish Crime Novel of the Year Award
. She was working as a children’s books editor when the manuscript for her first book,
The Missing
, was discovered on her agent’s submissions pile and subsequently published by Ebury Press. She has written a further three bestselling books for adults –
The Burning, The Reckoning
and
The Last Girl
.