And then she had laughed and shaken her head, and said, ‘Because you’re — what — nineteen? And you’re dressing like your granddad! Come on! I’ve got the morning off and so have you. Drive us both into town and I’ll help you. You’ve got money, yeah?’
And to her amazement… he’d said yes.
Three hours later, when they’d driven back in, parked up next to the Bluecoat chalets, and got out, everyone came bursting out to see what transformation she had made. And their jaws had dropped. Barney was wearing Levi’s 501 jeans and a soft denim shirt, Converse trainers on his feet. His hair was cut so well he now looked like a member of a boy band, rather than a character out of The Simpsons.
He’d learned fast and thoroughly. She’d told him to go back to the same salon every month and to stick with the styles and colours she’d picked out for him. And looking at him today, she could see he had remembered and worked with that advice ever since.
But it was the words that clearly meant the most.
‘You told me I was enough,’ he said, staring down at his arm and going a little red across his handsome face. ‘After the clothes and the haircut, and all the Blues being so impressed, you came up to me the next day, on your own and you said… you said it didn’t matter what I wore or what my hair looked like, not really. It might help me fit in and feel more comfortable… but in the end what mattered was that I had to be myself. And I had to know that… I was enough.’
She smiled, feeling her throat constrict. God, she was emotional these days.
‘I’m really glad I was able to help,’ she said. ‘That you let me.’
‘It turned things around for me,’ he said. ‘It made a difference. So… I got the tattoo done a few years ago. Jason, my other half — he loves it. He agrees with you. He says I am way more than enough. Sorry if I freaked you out, chasing you down. I just wanted to tell you… show you… and say thanks. That’s all.’
She smiled at him warmly as he nodded and then walked back to his vehicles, skirting the RAC truck as it carried the Capri across the field. She hadn’t been able to say anything because she knew she would just squeak. She was on the edge of tipping over at any moment.
She’d had a phone call with Talia, on a drip in Lowestoft Infirmary, an hour earlier, and had struggled to hold it together then, too. ‘Shit, Kate,’ Talia had croaked. ‘Never thought we’d piss someone off so much they would literally try to kill us.’
‘Yeah, well, it’s a long story,’ Kate had replied. She knew Mike’s sad, broken tale would come out soon enough. She didn’t have to deliver it to Talia herself. Either way, Kate was pretty sure Talia would get through it. She was made of tough stuff. Hopefully Craig and Nikki were, too.
‘Bloody hell — who knew my sister was such a paragon?’ Francis was marvelling as they followed the track back to the hire car. ‘Inspiration for a tattoo, no less! Can the Pope beatify you if you’re not Catholic?’ When she didn’t answer, he gave her a brotherly nudge and added, ‘Well done, girl.’
Kate felt something inside her drop. ‘I didn’t do so well for everyone,’ she said, her throat constricting. ‘In fact… I did so, so badly, I don’t know if I’ll ever forgive myself.’
Because not everyone who’d tangled with the Magnificent Seven had come out of it as well as Barney, had they? She thought of poor Tessa, in her awful yellow dress, sitting in the bunker, hoping to be included and instead being bullied and joked about by some stupid, thoughtless young people who should have known better. She pictured Tessa being embarrassed by Talia, dented by Julie, publicly shamed by Martin, privately mortified by Bill and his brutal comedy turn… and let down by Kate Sparrow, who should have stood up and shouted STOP, but didn’t.
She felt something crumple inside as she grappled with her failure. Then, finally, she began to cry. And once she’d started it was very, very hard to stop. Even though she was seriously freaking out her brother.
Could anyone ever escape their guilty past?
36
A skylark was spiralling up into the hazy blue, a speck, identifiable only when its joyous song rang through the warm air.
Lucas had suggested Pepperbox Hill, and on this morning in early summer it was a sound call. Peaceful and quiet. The pleasant walk along the ridgeway would be a distraction… for a while. Kate parked up and set out along the path, taking in the soft greens and yellows of the valley below and the silver braids of the River Avon as it wound its way towards the northern edge of the New Forest. The spire of Salisbury Cathedral was just about visible on the western horizon.
She found Lucas after a couple of minutes, sitting on a weathered wooden bench, taking in the same view. His biker’s jacket was slung over the back of the seat, and he was stretching and yawning, his toned arms visible in the short sleeves of a dark blue T-shirt. His jeans looked freshly laundered. He was tidier than she’d seen him in a while, the beard trimmed back to fine stubble, the loose waves of his dark hair looking freshly washed. It made her uneasy. She couldn’t quite manage the idea of Lucas sprucing himself up for her. Every meeting they’d had over the last half a year had been under circumstances of stress, tension and knife-edge necessity; she was pretty sure neither of them had given a thought to their personal presentation up until today.
She’d be lying to herself if she tried to claim her own attire had been given no consideration. Like
