The Day Of Second Chances (34 page)

She had texted her mother, invented supper at Avril's, wandered for hours around the streets of dead poets until dark, her thoughts going round and round and finding no home. She tried Avril's flat again, but she wasn't in. Every few seconds her phone beeped with a new Facebook notification until she turned it off and went home, straight up the stairs to her bedroom where she didn't sleep, imagining what people were saying.

And here they were, outside the school waiting for their morning exam.

Her eyes went immediately to Avril – as always Avril had a gravitational force, something that meant that Lydia looked for her first, found her in a crowd. She was with Harry. His arm was around her shoulders. But they were looking at her, like everyone was looking at her. She felt the weight of dozens of eyes.

She could not keep the mask in place. After years, it had deserted her. She had thought, walking here, dizzy from not having eaten or slept, that she might be able to face it out. Be breezy, nonchalant, all ‘oh, you never knew?' That was the best way. She knew it was the best way.

Instead in the silence that surrounded her, she stared at Avril and she knew that the hunger in her own face was so naked and raw that everyone could see it.

Someone sniggered. It was the sound of over a hundred Facebook posts and comments and texts and images, the sound of all the whispers, electronic and real.

‘Lezzy Lyddie,' said someone, probably Darren Raymond, but she was too busy looking at Avril, trying to read Avril's expression, to listen.

‘Shut up,' said Avril, and she ducked under Harry's arm. She walked up to Avril. ‘Lyds, we have to talk.'

‘Can we watch?' called someone else, and there was laughter.

Avril turned to the crowd and showed them her middle finger.

‘Go on, snog her!'

Lydia was rooted to the spot, hot and cold all at once, her mouth dry. Avril put her hands on her hips.

‘Shut the hell up,' Avril said to the others. ‘It's a stupid rumour. We're
best friends
, I would know if she was gay.' She faced Lydia. ‘Right, Lyds? If you were gay, you would tell me.'

Avril, angry, was magnificent. Her eyes flashed and her head was tilted, full of attitude, full of defiance.
It's the two of us against the world
, said her stance. It had always been the two of them against the world.

‘You'd tell me,' Avril said again. ‘I'd know. Right? Tell them.'

Lydia could not speak.

No one was jeering now. No one was saying anything. They were watching, avid. Every person in her year, people she had laughed with, studied with, eaten lunch with, waiting for her to say something. There were words in her mouth but she couldn't get them out. They were blocked there like stones.

Lydia saw the exact moment when Avril realized the truth, because the colour drained out of her face. For a split second, Lydia thought she was going to faint. She reached out for her, to catch her or help her, and Avril stepped quickly back. She stepped back, just in the same way that Bailey had stepped back. There was a noise, like a collective inhalation from the crowd, and the other students crept closer to them, surrounding them in a circle.

‘You are,' whispered Avril. ‘Oh my God, it's true.'

Nudges. Whispers. Someone laughed.

‘I couldn't – I was going to–' Lydia had no idea what she was saying. ‘It doesn't make any difference.'

‘You
lied
to me. All this time, you've been lying to me.'

‘I didn't – it wasn't lying, I–'

‘It was lying. You never told me. I trusted you with everything, I told you
everything
, and you never said. Never.'

There were tears in Avril's eyes.

‘Avril, I …'

She shook her head. ‘I thought you were my best friend.'

‘I am.'

‘You promised never to lie to me, Lydia!
You promised!
What else have you been lying to me about?'

I love you.

The circle around them, tight and close.

‘Nothing,' said Lydia. ‘I swear it, nothing.'

‘I can't deal with this. I feel like I don't know you at all.'

Avril looked the same way she had when Lydia had helped her pick her mother off the bathroom floor. Sick and scared and exhausted, unshed tears in her eyes.

‘Avril,' Lydia said, helpless.

‘Girls!' Madame Fournier, the French teacher, pushed her way into the circle. She made hurrying movements with her small hands. ‘What are you doing? The exam is starting, it's time to go inside. Get into your places.'

The crowd dispersed instantly. Avril turned her back on Lydia and hurried to her place in the queue. Lydia watched her go. She watched the other students stand back to give her a wide berth. Avril did not glance in Lydia's direction.

‘Go, you'll be late,' Madame Fournier told Lydia. ‘Foundation tier in front, Higher tier at the back. You're Higher, aren't you? It's important that we begin exams in an orderly fashion. Quietly now, quickly. What is the matter with you, did you not hear me? Quickly!'

How was it possible that she was still holding her pencil case, her bottle of water? Lydia walked to her place in the queue, in between Marie Lavelle and Zachary Linton. They both shifted quickly so that there was a large gap between them. She looked at her shoes, feeling the eyes of everyone on her.

‘Right, we will proceed into the building,' announced Madame Fournier. ‘Silently, now.'

Lydia's face flamed and her head was almost too heavy to lift. In the silence she felt them watching, heard them breathing. She could almost hear the thoughts flinging around in the air, the significance in the coughs and fidgets. Shuffling forward with the others, row by row, to her seat with her name and her number and her examination booklet, sheafs of lined paper waiting for answers.

Her desk was near the front of the room. There were only two people ahead of her in the row, but she could feel the weight of every single person behind her where she couldn't see them, but where they could see the back of her head, the vulnerable skin of her neck. They could examine her and find her wanting, wrong, incorrect. She got out a pencil, a pen, a highlighter, and noticed that her hands were shaking and damp.

An examination paper was placed on her desk. She glanced up to see Mr Graham, and a wave of cold engulfed her. He smiled at her and moved on to give out more papers.

‘You may begin,' said a voice, and Lydia opened her paper. It was full of words, black shapes on white.

All this time you've been lying to me?

I thought you were my best friend.

Behind her, the scratching of biros on paper. Someone cleared their throat. Someone uncapped their water bottle. A page was turned, then another. She saw her hands on the desk as if they belonged to someone else. Rubber-soled shoes walked between desks, spelling out a soft rhythm, voicing all the thoughts in this closed and airless room.
Liar. Liar. Lezza. Pervert. These examinations will determine your future. I feel like I don't know you at all.

Lydia jumped up, scraping her chair back. She stumbled out of her seat, up the aisle, out through the door and out of the building. Toward the morning light, away from the thoughts and stares and words, to somewhere she could run.

‘Lydia!' A voice behind her, a male voice, deep and adult, not unlike how she remembered her father's. She didn't stop, but he caught up with her a few metres from the building. A hand on her elbow.

Mr Graham. She shuddered away from his touch.

‘Lydia,' he said, slightly out of breath, his glasses halfway down his nose. ‘What's the matter?'

‘I need to get out of here.'

‘Are you ill? Calm down, tell me what's wrong. You can have a break and come back, it's OK, you'll be all right.'

‘I won't be all right. I won't be. It's all ruined.'

He frowned with concern and compassion. Fake, of course. ‘I understand, there's a lot of pressure. But you can do this – I have faith in you. Can you tell me what's wrong?'

All the messages, all the laughter, Avril's eyes brimming with tears. If she told Mr Graham, he'd tell her mother. Whisper it to her in their lovers' time.

‘Lydia?' he said. ‘Please, tell me what's happening.'

‘You want me to tell
you
what's wrong?' she spat out. ‘Why would
you
understand?'

‘Well, I am your tutor, but if you'd rather speak to—'

‘You're also fucking my mother.'

She'd thrown it out, not really believing it was true but saying it to shock, to hurt, to drive him away so he'd leave her alone. But the way he went completely still, his hand at his face about to push up his glasses, frozen, told her that she'd been right. The realization drove the blood from her face, dropped the earth out from under her.

‘Oh my God,' she gasped. ‘You really have. You've been fucking my mother.'

‘Lydia. I don't—I never meant to—'

‘You fucked her
by mistake
?'

‘Calm down, please.' He was looking around quickly, to see if anyone had heard them, and she felt sick.

‘That's all you care about – keeping your secret. You don't care about me, you don't care about anything, either of you!'

A part of her, a part that was somehow still rational, wondered if they could hear her through the open windows of the hall. They were standing in almost exactly the same place where she had just stood with Avril. The same place they had stood all those years ago, on that first day, when they walked into school together.

‘Lydia, tell me why you ran out of your exam.' Mr Graham's voice was steady. Trying to be reasonable. At least she'd wiped the smile off his face. ‘If it's because of me and Jo, that doesn't have to—'

She recoiled when he said her mother's name. ‘Leave me alone. Just leave me the fuck alone.'

She wheeled away from him and off, out of the school gates and down the street, running clumsily, her hands both pressed to her chest as if she had been struck there.

IT WAS INCREDIBLE
how lovely and peaceful the house could be without the children in it. Radio 4 played quietly on the kitchen windowsill, and Jo could hear a blackbird singing outside, probably on the apple tree. It was warm enough for all the doors and windows to be open, sending a green-scented breeze through the house. Honor was out for a walk, and it was Iris's first morning at nursery with Oscar: a trial run, and just for two hours, three days a week, nine till eleven. When the children were with Richard the house felt empty to Jo, but two hours was perfect. Their scents lingered, their games only paused, not abandoned. Iris had been happy to go, toddling in after her older brother with barely a single cheerful ‘No!'

Honor might have offered to look after them – she seemed to be developing a bond with the children, which was more than Jo had ever hoped for. And Honor and Jo seemed to have come to some new understanding since they had been to see Adam together. Honor had softened, somehow. She had said,
I have not been very kind to you, Jo
. And though Jo would have thought that it would take a lot more after all these years of enmity, she found that actually, that one sentence of apology, of acknowledgement, was enough.

Still, Honor wouldn't be with them for ever. Probably not for very much longer at all; she was walking without a limp now and would be well enough to go home soon. Besides, Jo wasn't ready to tell anyone, let alone Honor, what she was thinking of doing with her six hours of freedom a week.

She perched on a kitchen island stool and opened the laptop, which she hardly ever used except for occasionally doing the weekly shop online or getting tips about potty training. She'd bookmarked the Open University webpage already.

She couldn't afford the tuition; she couldn't really afford the extra hours for Iris in nursery. But surely she could do something to save the money: sell the car and get a more economical one, switch supermarkets, not use the tumble dryer at all. With Richard remarrying, he might be amenable to selling this house, and she could find somewhere smaller for them to live – maybe even somewhere that would be all theirs, where she would feel at ease to decorate. Where she could put up a shelf for her teacups.

She was only investigating now. She wasn't committing to anything, not yet. They had to see how Iris got on at nursery, get through Lydia's exams, work out a budget and a timetable.

It was just that there was something about the way that Marcus had looked at her when she'd confessed she wanted to get that degree she'd never earned, maybe even teach. He'd looked at her as if she could do it. As if she were a person who had more possibilities than she knew.

Jo was clicking through to the courses, not wanting to look at the tuition fees yet, when her phone rang. As always, she got a warm thrill when she saw it was from Marcus.

‘I was just thinking of you,' she answered. ‘Isn't it risky to ring during school hours?'

‘It's about Lydia,' said Marcus, and Jo sat upright on her stool. ‘She's walked out of her exam. She seems really upset. I thought she was ill, so I went after her, and she …' He lowered his voice. ‘She knows about us.'

‘Oh no.' Jo's hand flew to her mouth. ‘Oh God, that's dreadful.'

She tried to think of how Lydia could have found out. Had she glimpsed them through a not-closed curtain, had she snooped on Jo's phone? Jo thought she had been so careful, but how many other people might know, too, while she had been blissfully carrying on?

‘Yes,' said Marcus flatly. ‘Dreadful.'

‘I need to go,' she said. ‘I need to find her.'

‘All right,' said Marcus, and she hung up.

She grabbed her keys, planning the route that would make her most likely to intercept Lydia on her way home from school, trying to think of what she could possibly say, when the door opened. But it wasn't Lydia; it was Honor. She was walking without her cane, and she shut the door carefully behind her, wiping her feet although it was dry outside.