in December.’
The bombs spray the garden with green smoke. Loads of it. It’s as if goblins are about to arrive. Cal and Dad come running from the bottom of the garden, laughing and spluttering.
‘That’s a ridiculous amount of smoke!’ Dad cries. ‘It’s like being in Beirut!’
Mum smiles, passes him a Catherine wheel. ‘Do this one next. It’s my favourite.’
He gets a hammer, and she stands up and holds the fence post still while he bangs the nail in. They’re laughing together.
‘Don’t hit my fingers,’ she says, and she nudges him with her elbow.
‘I will if you do that!’
Cal sits in Mum’s seat and rips open a packet of sparklers. ‘I bet I’m famous before you,’ he tells me.
‘I bet you’re not.’
‘I’m going to be the youngest person ever to join the Magic Circle.’
‘Don’t you have to be invited?’
‘They
‘Hey!’ Dad says. ‘What’s this?’
Mum sighs. ‘Both our children want to be famous.’
‘Do they?’
‘Fame’s next on Tessa’s list.’
I can tell from Dad’s face that he wasn’t expecting this. He turns to me, the hammer limp at his side. ‘Fame?’
‘Yeah.’
‘How?’
‘I haven’t decided.’
‘I thought you’d finished with the list.’
‘No.’
‘I thought after the car, after all that’s happened…’
‘No, Dad, it’s not finished.’
I used to believe that Dad could do anything, save me from anything. But he can’t, he’s just a man. Mum puts her arm around him and he leans in to her.
I stare at them. My mother. My father. His face is in shadow, the edges of her hair are tipped with light. I keep really still. Cal, next to me, keeps really still too.
‘Wow!’ he whispers.
It hurts more than I could ever have imagined.
In the kitchen, I swill my mouth out with water at the sink and spit it out. My spit looks slimy, is pulled so slowly towards the plug-hole that I have to chase it down with more water from the tap. The sink is cold against my skin.
I turn off the light and watch my family through the window. They stand together on the lawn, sorting through the last of the fireworks. Dad holds each one up and shines the torch at it. They choose one, shut the box, and all three of them walk away down the garden.
Perhaps I’m dead. Perhaps this is all it will be. The living will carry on in their world – touching, walking. And I’ll continue in this empty world, tapping soundlessly on the glass between us.
I go out of the front door, shut it behind me and sit on the step. The undergrowth rustles, as if some night creature is trying to hide itself from me, but I don’t freak out, don’t even move. As my eyes adjust, I can see the fence and the bushes that line it. I can see the street beyond the gate quite clearly, lamplight splashing across the pavement, slanting across other people’s cars, reflected back from other people’s blank windows.
I can smell onions. Kebabs. If my life was different, I’d be out with Zoey. We’d have chips. We’d be standing on some street corner, licking salty fingers, waiting for action. But instead, I’m here. Dead on the doorstep.
I hear Adam before I see him, the guttural roar of his bike. As he gets closer, the noise vibrates the air, so that the trees seem to dance. He stops outside his gate, switches off the engine and turns off the lights. Silence and darkness descend again as he unclips his helmet, threads it through the handlebars and pushes the bike up the drive.
I mostly believe in chaos. If wishes came true, my bones wouldn’t ache as if all the space inside them is used up. There wouldn’t be a mist in front of my eyes that I can’t brush away.
But watching Adam walk up the path feels like a choice. The universe might be random, but I can make something different happen.
I step over the low wall that separates our front gardens. He’s locking the bike to the gate at the side of his house. He doesn’t see me. I walk up behind him. I feel very powerful and certain.
‘Adam?’
He turns round, startled. ‘Shit! I thought you were a ghost!’ There’s a cold-washed smell to him, as if he’s an animal come out of the night. I take a step closer.
‘What are you doing?’ he says.
‘We said we’d be friends.’
He looks confused. ‘Yeah.’
‘I don’t want to be.’
There’s space between us, and in that space there’s darkness. I take another step, so close that we share a breath. The same one. In and out.
‘Tessa,’ he says. I know it’s a warning, but I don’t care.
‘What’s the worst thing that can happen?’
‘It’ll hurt,’ he says.
‘It already hurts.’
He nods very slowly. And it’s like there’s a hole in time, as if everything stops and this one minute, where we look at each other so close, is spread out between us. As he leans towards me, I feel a strange warmth filtering through me. I forget that my brain is full of every sad face at every window I’ve ever passed. As he leans closer, I feel only the warmth of his breath on my skin. We kiss very gently. Hardly at all, like we’re not sure. Our lips are the only place where we touch.
We stand back and look at each other. What words are there for the look that passes from me to him and back again? Around us all the night things gather and stare. The lost things found again.
‘Shit, Tess!’
‘It’s all right,’ I tell him. ‘I won’t break.’
And to prove it, I push him back against the wall of his house and keep him there. And this time it’s not about tenderness. My tongue is in his mouth, searching, meeting his. His arms wrap me warm. His hand is on the back of my neck. I melt there. My hand slides down his back. I press myself closer, but it’s not close enough. I want to climb inside him. Live in him. Be him. It’s all tongue and longing. I lick him, take small bites on the edges of his lips.
I never realized I was this hungry.
He pulls away. ‘Shit,’ he says. ‘Shit!’ And he runs his hand through his hair; it gleams wet, animal dark. The streetlights blaze in his eyes. ‘What’s happening to us?’
‘I want you,’ I tell him.
My heart’s thumping. I feel absolutely alive.
Twenty-four
Zoey shouldn’t’ve asked me to come. I haven’t been able to stop counting since we got through the door. We’ve been here seven minutes. Her appointment’s in six minutes. She got pregnant ninety-five days ago.
I try to think of random numbers, but they all seem to add up to something. Eight – the number of discrete windows across the far wall. One – the equally discreet receptionist. Five hundred – the number of pounds it’s costing Scott to get rid of the baby.
