Innocence (14 page)

I catch Jay smiling out the corner of my eye, and I scowl at him in response. “Did you not tell her girls aren’t my…. That I don’t….” Frustratingly heat rises to my cheeks as I stumble over the words.

“That you like boys?”

Sometimes I hate him.

I look at him then and wonder what it was he wanted to tell me that day at the shopping center.

“Tell Lorne not to waste her efforts, or I’ll have to do something truly unpleasant to you, okay?”

An hour later, when Dad’s not around, I sit with Jay on the sofa and tell him an abridged version of what happened to Finn. He seems to take it pretty well, but the rest of the day, I catch him watching me when he thinks I’m not going to notice, and the expression on his face rips a hole in my chest.

T
HERE
IS
no new salvage job on Monday, for me anyway. Liam comes round late Sunday evening, and I hear him talking with Dad as I sit feeling sorry for myself up on deck. There will be a meeting over at the camp at first light about what happened.

I doubt I’m invited, but I’m going to be there even if I have to set off walking at 4:00 a.m. I want to know how Finn is, if he will be charged, if the police know the details they have for me are fake, if Logan is okay.

I listen and listen for any news about Finn’s condition, but Liam doesn’t mention him.

“I want to come with you,” Jay whines for the fourth time as I hastily dress myself in the semidarkness of our cabin early the next morning. The light outside the window is grainy and still mostly dark. A light mist hovers above the river.

I sigh. I don’t know if it’s a good idea or a bad idea, but ever since the accident, I’ve not really wanted to be on my own. I seem to swing between craving my own company and craving other people’s.

“Hurry up and get dressed, then,” I hiss, pretending to be exasperated.

Before we leave I make Jay write a note for Dad. I’ve been trying to keep out of Dad’s way since he told me he wants me gone. Again something I haven’t told Jay. Just thinking about it makes my heart feel bruised and beaten. I keep telling myself I’ll talk to Jay about it later, but deep down I know I won’t.

It takes us the best part of two hours to reach the narrow lane up to the camp. It must be at least six miles away.

I pull off my jumper, trying to ignore the way my stomach protests hungrily at the way I’m stretching.

Jay looks exhausted.

To the east of us, the sky is my favorite kind of blue, all dark and unfathomable, shot through with pale. The light it casts on everything is mellow and dreamlike.

We slow up, kicking at the torn leaves and berries that lie scattered all around us. Over the hedge, field after field is waterlogged and flattened, the golden crop ruined and rotting in the wake of the lightning storm.

Once we reach the camp, I pull Jay round the back of the vans, through the lines of cars parked up on the muddy ground. I don’t want to make a big entrance. I just want to stand in the shadows and listen in. I don’t know if I’m welcome here anymore, though I suspect Malachi might stick up for me. At least, I hope he would.

Shane’s van is set at a funny angle to the others, so I stand to the back of it looking round at everyone sat in the doorways to the vans, even Malachi, with Maisie at his feet. Most people are smoking, drinking tea or coffee, and generally looking like they’ve just been woken up for something they’d rather not be woken up for.

Liam is giving some lecture on how he won’t have any qualms about chucking out those who bring disrepute on his business. Malachi yawns. If I wasn’t so far away, I’d swear he was aware of my presence. But I don’t stare at him, not with Jay next to me. And the thing is, I agree with everything Liam says. I know I fucked up, and I want to tell him I’m sorry, not to get my job back but just because I am. But I don’t have the guts to walk up to him with everyone watching.

Jay and I stay hidden until Liam’s lecture is over. Nothing is said about Finn, about the police, and Logan, too, is absent—and Chase was never at this camp in the first place. It’s like they didn’t exist.

I watch Liam get in his white van and drive away.

“I guess you’re out of a job, then.”

The voice makes me jump and I spin round, slipping a little in the mud and near bowled over by a very excited dog pawing at my legs.

Malachi’s hand on my arm steadies me as I bend down to make a fuss of Maisie.

“Jay,” Malachi says softly, nodding at Jay. Out the corner of my eye, I see how he holds out his hand and how Jay doesn’t take it.

“Would you both like some breakfast?”

I can’t believe Jay would rather stand out here in the mud, even if he says he would, so I drag him with me to Malachi’s van.

Around Jay, Malachi seems uncomfortable, and I didn’t think he’d react that way. I thought he’d be better than that. It’s more disappointing than I want to acknowledge.

I stand at the window, fiddling with the curtains as Malachi makes toast and Jay curls up small on the seat near the door, doing a very good impression of someone asleep.

“Liam didn’t say anything about what happened. I thought that’s what he was going to talk about at the meeting.”

“Everyone
knows
what happened.”

“How’s Finn?”

“He’s out of intensive care. Want me to take you down to the hospital?”

I nod. “Thanks,” I say quietly.

Malachi hands me two pieces of toast for Jay, but I end up eating them as Jay refuses to move and just mumbles for me to
leave him alone
.

We sit at the narrow breakfast bar, which is really just a couple of tall skinny chairs on the other side of the work surface.

“Is Logan gone too?”

“Yeah.”

“Will Liam chuck Finn out of the camp?”

“He already has.”

Oh.

“You don’t want to talk about this, do you?” I say as I pick at the crumbs around my plate.

Malachi sighs and gets up. “Not really.”

“Alright, we’ll go away in a minute and leave you alone.” I gesture pointlessly in Jay’s direction.

“Just because I don’t want to talk about something doesn’t mean I don’t want to talk to you.”

“You contradict yourself all the time,” I mutter, thinking back to those things he said to me in the car.

“And you instinctively know exactly what to say to piss me off.”

I look up.

He smiles, wryly. “I offered to take you to the hospital. And….” He looks out the window behind him, his expression awkward, though he tries to hide it. But I know awkward, intimately. “I might have a job for you, if you were interested.”

“The last person who said that is now in hospital.”

“Not that sort of job, a real job. A job where you might actually learn something while doing it, like how to fix engines, not the monotonous manual labor Liam had you doing. I’ll teach you about cars.”

“I’d be working for you?”

“Yeah. I could really do with a hand at the moment. I’m willing to give you a few driving lessons too, just around the fields… if you want….”

I want to stop the bubbling excitement that threatens to tip me off the chair, but I can’t. “Okay,” I manage to choke out.

“Is that like yes, but with less enthusiasm?”

I can’t tell if he’s making fun of me. I’m doing a rubbish job of hiding how I feel about this.

I
T
LOOKS
like rain as we step out of Malachi’s caravan onto the muddy ground, and I can’t help but feel the bright weightlessness of summer has gone, replaced by a collapsing gunmetal sky that promises nothing.

Malachi unlocks his car and waits while we sort out who is sitting where. After a brief standoff, Jay climbs reluctantly into the back, where he slouches, scowling—mostly at me—for the entire journey. I don’t know what’s wrong with him. He’s the one who wanted to come.

The hospital is unfathomable and huge, sprawling out like a suburb, but it’s not just the size of it that makes me feel uneasy. Last time I came to a hospital I was six and Jay was screaming in agony. I glance at him as we walk through the glass doors into the reception, but if he has any recollection of that horrible day, he doesn’t let it show.

Malachi goes to check where Finn is. Drawing out the Irish lilt in his voice, he tells the pretty receptionist we’re all related, we’re all brothers. Looking at us, it’s just ridiculous, but (depressingly) he has a charm she can’t refuse, and he flatters her and makes her blush, and I go and stand a little way off so that I don’t have to see it or hear it.

Out the corner of my eye, I can see Jay watching me.

“Come on,” Malachi gestures, striding past us.

Apparently Finn is upstairs on a high-dependency ward, one step down from intensive care, and he can now have visitors.

As we wander down the maze of shiny corridors, I wonder, not for the first time, if this is where it happened. If this is the hospital, if Arlow is the place we were living when everything went wrong. But there is no way I can ever know for certain, unless I ask Dad. And that’s never going to happen.

Visiting hours start at ten and we are a little early, so we go and sit in the windowless waiting room next to the ward.

It’s a bad idea. We don’t talk, and tension ripples between all of us, because not one of us has any idea how to deal with it.

Eventually Malachi rummages around in his pockets and finds Jay a handful of change to go and get some hot drinks from a coffee machine somewhere. Jay isn’t happy about it, but he goes, and I hate that I feel a bit relieved. All I can think is that Jay is worried about me getting into another bad situation like I did with Finn. Somehow I’m going to have to impress upon him later just how straight Malachi is and how unlikely he is to ever jump my bones, and how nothing is ever going to happen between us.

More people flood into the waiting room, all of them carrying something like flowers or food or magazines and books.

“I haven’t brought him anything,” I mouth helplessly to Malachi, not wanting to go into the ward empty-handed.

Malachi looks round as if only just noticing all the people in the room with us. He seems a little preoccupied.

“They’ve got a shop downstairs,” he says, getting up. “I’ll, um… I’ll be back.”

When he’s gone, I go and stand out in the corridor to look out for Jay before the walls close in on me. Outside, the ugly square hospital buildings are so white it hurts to look at them, and I’m so tired. Just for a moment, I lean my head back against the wall. I don’t mean to close my eyes.

I’m half sunk in the deep of it when a hand grips my arm, fingers digging into my flesh like talons. Instinctively I struggle out of the grasp and turn to find the absolute last person I want to see—Pixie, glaring at me furiously.

“Keep away from Finn,” she hisses, backing me into a doorway as I try to edge away.

She looks different in uniform, more severe, her wild hair neat and tucked away beneath her nurse’s hat. I’m shocked at how intimidated I feel. She must be a foot smaller than me.

“Don’t flick your eyes up like you don’t know what I’m talking about. You’re not the first pretty boy he’s had an infatuation with.”

I stare at the badge on her chest, feeling nauseous.

“Stay away from him. He was mine long before he was yours.”

“I’m sorry,” I say, but opening my mouth is a mistake as it seems to rile her up even more.

“You haven’t got a clue, have you?”

I shake my head. I feel awful. For her, for me, for Finn.

“Your little sorry, hanging-your-head routine might work on some unsuspecting guy who thinks he’s gonna get in your pants, but it doesn’t work on me, alright. I can see right through you,” she sneers. “I hope Liam chucks you off the site.”

I don’t tell her he already has, that her wish has come true. But at least I haven’t lost my home. Yet.

Trying to look impassive, I meet her eyes. It’s like staring at colored glass. Whatever she says, I’m going in there to see Finn. She must know she can’t stop me.

“Pixie.” Malachi appears out of nowhere, a carrier bag in his hand. “I’m sorry to hear what happened.” His voice has the hint of a growl, but he’s looking at her kindly.

I don’t understand him at all. He seems to be made of contradictions.

“Like you’d care,” she snaps, turning to face him, giving me the space to duck out of the doorway.

Malachi shrugs. “Think what you like, but I wouldn’t wish that to happen to anyone.”

“You’ve no idea what it’s like to think you’ve lost someone,” she whispers, her voice cracking. She gives me one last glare and then takes off down the corridor.

Drawing in a deep breath, Malachi sighs and hands me the carrier bag containing a box of biscuits. “You okay?”

I shrug. “Why wouldn’t I be?” I mutter. It’s not like my feelings on anything matter.

“F
INN
?” I
say softly.

I can’t tell if he’s asleep. His face and chest are heavily bandaged, his eyes closed. It could be anyone under there.

His bed is at the top of the ward, nearest the nurse’s station. By his side the ventilator sucks and gasps, the sound the loudest noise in the room. He has a tube in his mouth and one in his arm, and the machine next to the ventilator records his heartbeat in even green flashes.

If Jay wasn’t standing next to me, being here would be terrifying. I wasn’t sure Jay would want to come in, but I’m glad he did. He squeezes my hand down low next to the bed where no one can see.

Only two visitors are allowed per patient, so Malachi is hanging around in the corridor. He didn’t seem particularly keen to come onto the ward anyway.

We hover near the foot of the bed, not daring to move any closer. We must look unsure we’re in the right place, as a nurse comes over to talk to us.

“Your brother’s been heavily sedated, but he should be coming out of it. Just talk to him, let him know you’re here.”

She has a nice smile, but Jay shrinks back as her eyes linger on him a fraction longer than seems necessary.