Scattering Like Light (6 page)

“Exactly what I had in mind,” he murmured, picking a flat rock and sitting down, his hand lingering in mine. “I can’t think of anywhere I’d rather be.” He pulled me down to sit close beside him. I could feel the warmth of his arm pressed up against me, his strong fingers still laced through mine. With his other hand he
started to count my bangles, and with every touch I felt a jolt of excitement. A small smile played around his lips as he counted out loud. “Hmm, seven. She has gone overboard rather, hasn’t she?” I knew that I should edge away, but I found I couldn’t move. I was so close I could almost hear his heart beating, and I could tell that it was going as fast as mine. For a moment I was hit with a wave of desire: Max was so gorgeous, so obviously interested in me and so uncomplicated. I knew that if he turned to kiss me, I wouldn’t stop him.

I was almost breathless, waiting for the moment to happen, anticipating how his lips would feel, how I was going to react, that it took me a couple of seconds to realise that he was examining the amulet. “I like this one best; it’s unusual. This wasn’t from my mum, was it?”

“No, I’ve had that one a while.” With a sudden shiver I realised how wrong it was to have Max touching the delicate silverwork over the strange blue stone, and when he put his finger under the band to turn it around for a better look I had to stop him. Gently extracting my hand from his I gave him a small smile and fractionally edged away. I was horrified with myself at just how close I had come to letting go, of betraying Callum.

Max sensed the change. “Everything OK?” He reached over and tucked a stray tendril of hair back behind my ear.

“Everything’s fine. Have I not told you the story of this bracelet? I found it in the mud on the bank of the Thames. It was tied to a big rock with a piece of wire.” I couldn’t help reaching over to touch the stone enclosed in its cage of beautifully plaited silver ropes.

“Really? That was lucky. It must be worth a fair bit of money.”

“Yes, I guess.” I paused, knowing I had to say something more. “It’s Callum’s favourite too.”

Max straightened up, shaking his head slightly. “I see. Well, I guess round one to Callum then.” He smiled as he said it, but I could read a different message in his eyes.

We started to make our way back down the rocks to the soft sand, and the silence between us was becoming embarrassing. I knew that I needed to say something, but everything I thought of seemed really trivial. Eventually I reckoned it was as good a time as any to ask the question I had been putting off. “I know this is a bit random,” I asked brightly, “but did you say the other day that you studied Latin?”

“Uh-huh. Just finished the A level, and won’t be touching it again anytime soon. Why?” The surprise was evident in his voice.

“I came across an inscription on something recently, and I think it might be Latin, but can’t be positive.”

“Do you remember what it was?”

“Well, I’ve no idea how to pronounce it but it was roughly
mor memoriae
.” I stumbled over the unfamiliar words.

“Really? Are you sure?”

“I think so. The script was a bit difficult to read, but that’s what it seemed to be.”

“Can you show me?”

“No, sorry, I don’t have the thing with me. It was on a…” I hesitated, not wanting to say it was on the amulet because I was pretty sure that he wouldn’t be able to see it. “It was on a silver photo frame that someone gave to a friend of mine.”

“Can you write it down?” He bent down and picked up a long stick from the driftwood on the water’s edge, then pointed towards a patch of smooth sand.

“Oh, OK, I guess I can.” I took the stick and started to write, trying to put in as many of the flourishes from the inscription as I could remember. Max stood next to me, a thoughtful look on his face.

“With Latin, a few words can have a number of different translations because they didn’t have the same grammatical structure that we do. But this doesn’t really mean anything as a phrase.
Memoriae
is memory,
mor
isn’t a word I’ve ever heard of.”

“Really? Maybe it isn’t Latin.”

“Or maybe whoever wrote it didn’t know their Latin very well. They might mean
mors
, which would be death.”

I stopped in my tracks, remembering the faintly scratched “s” between the words. “Death?”

“Yeah, I guess it could mean ‘death of memories’. Perhaps it was a frame which held pictures of dead relatives.”

Death of memories. I realised that I had been hoping it would be something more profound, something that might unravel the puzzle. But as it was it fitted the amulet perfectly; describing what they did every day, dead people finding an endless stream of other people’s memories. It would be just the sort of inscription that I should expect on something so malevolent. All those poor Dirges, trapped by their amulets, destined never to be freed from the endless grind. I looked at the writing in the sand as a slightly larger wave hit the beach. The gentle sweep of water ran quickly across the flat patch of sand, obliterating the words. I was suddenly overwhelmed with emotion, lost in pity for the souls caught in the hideous existence imposed upon them by the amulet and its strange inscription, my inability to work out how I could save them, and piercing guilt that I hadn’t spent more time trying to figure it out.

“Hey.” The gentle touch on my arm almost startled me. “What’s up, Alex? Why does that make you so sad?”

I couldn’t speak, just continued looking at the beach where the sand had been wiped clean. Every trace of the words was gone.

Back at the hotel I locked myself in my room and sank on the bed with my head in my hands. How could I have been so quick to forget my plans to help the Dirges, and how on earth had I so nearly let Max kiss me? I couldn’t believe how I was feeling: the guilt and the longing were fighting in my heart. I needed to talk, and there was only one person in the world who would really understand. Mum would go ballistic when she realised I’d used my phone to chat to someone in France, but I’d deal with that problem later. Crossing my fingers that Grace would have her mobile with her I selected her number and listened to the strange beeps and hisses of the foreign phone system. Finally I could hear an echoing ringtone. It went on and on, and I was just about to give up when there was a click followed by a breathless voice.

“Alex? Babe, is that you?”

“Hi, Grace, yeah. How’s the holiday?”

“Oh, it’s OK. There’s not much to do. How’s yours?”

“Complicated. I need a speed chat before Mum finds me. She’s banned the use of mobiles this year.”

“What’s up? Who is he?” As usual Grace had got to the heart of the problem in an instant.

“You remember me talking about Max, the guy we always see out here? He was a right geek, but he’s got sort of gorgeous since I last saw him. I’ve been playing it very cool, not flirting or anything, but there’s definitely a connection.” I paused, feeling my cheeks starting to burn just thinking about it.

“Yes, and?”

“Earlier, we were sitting on the beach, and I realised that I wanted him to kiss me! How can that be possible? I still love Callum, but Max is unbelievably hot.”

“
Did
you kiss him?” she asked.

“No, I stopped myself just in time. I still feel awful about it though.”

“Why? I mean, you are on holiday.”

“What! How can you say that?”

“Oh, come on, relax; enjoy yourself for a change.”

I couldn’t believe what she was saying. “Right, so is that what you’re doing now, eyeing up all the French boys?”

“Of course not, Jack’s too important to me for that.”

“And Callum’s important to me too, obviously,” I shot back at her.

“But I’ve known Jack forever, we were friends before, and this, well this is the real thing.”

“And for me this is no different!”

Grace paused for a fraction of a second. “Hon, think about it – it has to be. Apart from the fact that you’ve only known him for five minutes, he’s not even properly alive!” Grace was the only person who knew about Callum, and she believed me because she had seen Catherine when she had been trying to kill us both in Kew Gardens weeks before. It was such a relief to be able to have honest conversations with someone about him, even if I didn’t agree with what she was saying.

“That’s low, Grace. I love Callum, I know I do, despite the problems. I’m just having a minor lust moment, I think, that’s all.”

I could hear Grace thinking. “Have you ever considered that you might just be having a minor lust moment with Callum? I
mean, it was seriously quick.”

“No,” I said angrily. “It’s absolutely not the same.”

“Calm down and listen to me. It could easily be: Callum appears out of nowhere, he’s gorgeous, he wants you but you can’t have him. It’s the perfect recipe for unattainable lust. You have to be realistic, hon.”

“I am being realistic. I’m going to make it work.”

There was a brief silence, and I could tell that Grace thought I was mad. “Alex, how are you going to do that? It’s impossible.”

“It’s not. I think there may be a way to bring him over. I just can’t explain it all to you now.”

There was a pause and I could hear the distance between us crackling. “Well,” she said, clearly dying to ask me for more details, “in that case, if you’re sure, you need to be careful how you treat Max; you can’t play with people’s feelings.”

“I know, and I feel really bad about that.”

“You need to stay away from him. Show him you’re really not interested.”

“I suppose. That’s going to be pretty hard though.”

Grace paused, and I knew that hundreds of miles away she was giving me one of her shrugs. “That’s how it is, babe. It’s your only choice now.”

“I know. I just don’t want it to be and was hoping you had a magic answer.”

“Sorry. No magic here.”

I knew that she was right, but the thought of deliberately ignoring Max, refusing to walk with him, not going with the others to the beach bars in the evening, wasn’t an easy one to contemplate.

“Thanks, Grace. I’m sorry to dump all that on you.”

“No worries,” she said. “But you
are
going to ignore my
excellent advice though, I can tell. I want to hear all about him when we both get back.”

I smiled and rang off, thinking how lucky I was to have a friend like Grace. I sat for a bit, staring out of the window at the bright bougainvillea casting a pink-tinted dappled shadow, watching without seeing as a fat bee buzzed from bloom to bloom.

The conversation had only confused me more, thanks to Grace pointing out some uncomfortable home truths. I
had
fallen for Callum laughably quickly. So was it love? Or was it only lust? How was I supposed to know the difference?

As Grace predicted, I couldn’t bring myself to ignore Max completely, but I did try not to be alone with him any more. Luckily only a few days of the holiday remained. I was really firm with him, and myself, and didn’t allow anything to happen that might give him the idea I was interested in him. Every night I stood in front of the bathroom mirror trying to imagine Callum’s familiar features behind my shoulder or his featherlight touch on my hair or cheek or shoulder. And every night it got increasingly difficult. I was missing him more and more, and couldn’t wait until we were home and I could go to the top of St Paul’s again. I spent a great deal of time fantasising about what we would say and do when we finally saw each other again, and tried not to remember the times when my thoughts wandered off in an entirely different direction. Thinking of Max was out of bounds.

On the last day my carefully constructed evasion plan failed completely. At the beach I had been volunteered to go to the bar to get cold drinks for everyone, and Max had offered to help. Refusing would have been rude, so we walked away from the group together.

“You’ve been very quiet these last few days, Alex,” he said as soon as we were out of earshot. “Did I do something wrong?”

“No, honestly, it’s nothing like that.”

“So what is it then?” he pressed. “There has to be something. You’ve barely said a word to me.”

What should I say? Make something up or let him know the truth? I glanced over at him and he was watching me carefully. “I didn’t want to hurt you,” I admitted slowly, then pushed on quickly. “I didn’t want to give you the wrong impression and then have to let you down.” I could feel the blood rushing to my cheeks as I continued to stare at the sand.

“What impression was that then?” he asked with a smile in his voice.

“I didn’t want you to think that you, well, you know…”

“That I would be in with a chance, you mean?”

“Exactly,” I replied quickly, grateful that I hadn’t had to say the words myself.

“I’m not sure that’s the whole story.” Max’s tone was casual as we carried on walking. “I think that you fancy me too, but don’t trust yourself.”

“Well, maybe there’s a tiny bit of that,” I admitted, wondering a fraction of a second too late if the better response would have been to be offended.

“I
knew
it!” Max caught my hand and pulled me round to face him.

“Everyone fancies you, Max, and you know it.”

“I don’t want everyone, Alex. I only want you.”

I finally met his gaze, expecting to see his usual grin, but he was looking steadily down at me with such an open, honest expression that I could hardly bear to look at him. He was so nice,
and all I had done was mislead him. I was suddenly filled with shame. “I’m so sorry,” I whispered, my voice catching.

Max pulled me into his arms and held me close. “Don’t be upset, please,” he whispered into my hair.

His kindness was too much and for a second I let go of the pent-up emotion. A sob escaped and I felt his arms tighten protectively around me.

“I’m … I’m sorry,” I mumbled again into his T-shirt, overwhelmed by the sudden feeling of security I felt.

“Hey, shush. No worries. It’s your decision.” He gently stroked my hair, reminding me of another touch. I quickly pulled away, keeping my face averted.

“I didn’t mean to do that. I’m sorry.”