Читать книгу The Pieces of You and Me - Rachel Burton, Rachel Burton - Страница 22

… The summer that we turned twelve was the first birthday we hadn’t spent together, the first time we hadn’t had a joint party. We had a short, awkward phone conversation and you sent me a card with a cat on the front of it.

By that summer I’d begun to grow used to you not being around. Even though you’d been home for Christmas and Easter I felt as though I’d hardly seen you – your parents were always taking you off for extra tutoring or educational trips. I’d started to spend more time with the kids who lived on our block, just like we had when we were younger, even though we all went to different schools now. Growing up on those streets that backed onto Midsummer Common, onto the River Cam, having all known each other since before we could remember, was a common denominator. We hung around together even though we weren’t really sure if we liked each other anymore. I don’t think I was the only one who missed you though.

That afternoon in July we were all playing a rather undisciplined game of rounders on the Common. I’d been consigned to deep field as usual – always hopeless at sports. I had a headache and was considering going home. I heard you before I saw you, the squeal of your bike brakes, the skid as your back wheel flipped round towards me, cutting me off from everybody else.

And there you were suddenly. Home. Standing in front of me in your Arsenal away shirt. It was summer, and the holidays felt as though they could go on forever. There was no way they could keep us apart all summer. You smiled that smile that gave me butterflies, even though it was another four years before I realised why. You’d grown again, already well on your way to six foot – your bike was too small for you, your jeans too short. You’d exchanged your glasses for contact lenses, tired of being called the Milky Bar Kid by the boys at school.

You were there.

‘Hop on,’ you said. And just like that the rest of the world stopped existing, as it always did when we were together. I jumped on the back of your bike and we flew across Cambridge, screaming with joy. Summer began that afternoon.

As teenagers we only saw each other in the school holidays and the older we got, the more things felt as though they were changing. I had my own friends – people you didn’t really know, who you only met sporadically. You never really talked about boarding school, never really told me about any friends you’d made there. It was almost as though you thought the time we spent apart didn’t really exist.

But I was still in Cambridge and the life I had when you weren’t there merged with the life I had whenever you came back. Caitlin and Gemma slowly filled up the gaps you had left behind, and we became as close as you and I had been. The three of us would wander around town together, trying on and discarding every outfit in River Island, sitting for hours in Burger King, whispering secrets to each other as we shared cups of coffee and, after we turned fourteen, filling up the little tin foil ashtrays with the butts of our Silk Cut cigarettes that Gemma, who looked the oldest of all of us, would buy. I thought, when you came home that summer, that you would disapprove of my new habit until I saw the packet of Marlboro in your shirt pocket.

When you were home you always seemed so alone. Your school friends, if you had any, miles away and your old friends distanced from you by your being away. We forget so quickly as teenagers. We are resilient, moving on to the next group of friends, the next adventure so easily. Sometimes I’d see you, playing football on the Common with the boys from our street. You and John were thick as thieves still – you always would be – but there was something about you then that made you seem aloof, as though you’d been left behind.

No, not left behind. Rupert Tremayne was never left behind. You were always light years ahead of all of us.

Every evening you would squeeze through the gap in the fence that divided off the bottoms of our gardens, the gap we’d made as children, to spend time with me. We’d lie on our backs in Mum’s apple orchard and watch the sky change colour. We’d wish upon a star and smoke cigarette after cigarette – swallowing half packets of peppermints before we went home, foolishly believing that would stop our parents finding out we smoked.

Sometimes your fingers would find mine and you’d hold my hand like you did at my grandmother’s funeral.

‘I’m still here,’ you’d say. ‘Even though I’m miles away, I’m always yours, Jessie.’

But everything felt different, as though a chasm was opening up between us. I wondered if things would have been different had you been born a girl or I a boy – would that have helped us maintain our sibling-like closeness? The onset of puberty had highlighted the differences between us, fascinating us as much as it scared us. I started to wonder what would become of us, where we could possibly go from here. I started to wonder how I would feel when you eventually told me about your first girlfriend. I started to wonder how quickly you would forget me then. Because it seemed obvious to me the summer we turned fifteen that it was only a matter of time before you got a girlfriend. The willowy, blonde trust-fund girls at my school had had their eyes on you for years.

There was nothing I could do to stop it. I was so sure of our fate when I was fifteen. I had always thought nothing could come between us, but then as we started our slow progression from childhood to adulthood, I was beginning to see that one day, something would …