Saskia was cleverer than him, maybe way cleverer. She was – she had been – talking about Oxbridge, or Durham. Her dad had been at Oxford, and she knew he wanted her to apply to his old college, if she had the grades. But she said if she went at all, she’d be more likely to choose Cambridge, and make somewhere just hers, not a family thing. She knew what she wanted to do – political sciences, something like that. She listened to Radio 4 and read her dad’s copy of the Spectator. Ethan had joked that he got smarter just being with her.
They’d been at some of the same exams. Seeing her walk in had been a jolt. She’d had loads cut off her hair, and it sat just on her shoulders now. She’d smiled at him, a pinched, regretful smile, but he couldn’t read anything more in her face. She looked pale and worried. But her mum had driven her to all of them, and come back to collect her. His mum had offered, but he’d said no, that the fresh air and short walk would clear his head before and after a paper. Maybe he’d hoped he’d get to see her, to talk even. But Claudia was there, hovering in her estate car, and Saskia came in just before the exam started, and scuttled off the moment the papers were collected. She always sat behind him in the rows of desks lined up in the sports hall, near the exit, because of their surnames, and he was glad about that. He wouldn’t have been able to concentrate if he’d been able to look at her. He always spun around, the moment the invigilator took his paper off his desk, but she was always gone.
He missed her. He missed the way she smelt, and felt, and sounded. In bed, at night, when he couldn’t sleep, he went over conversations the two of them had had, played his memories of her in his head, tried not to feel resentment towards her for following her parents’ diktats so faithfully.
He might have stayed in the room all afternoon, but hunger moved him. He and Mum had stopped at Chieveley Services for sandwiches and coffee, but that had been ages ago. In the kitchen the welcome pack yielded a box of shortbread: he took three, and wandered onto the back patio, squinting at the sun like a nocturnal animal.
Outside, Hayley, his sort-of cousin, was swinging on a chair on the patio, reading a book. Every other swing, she let her toes catch on the paving, then pushed herself off again. Her toenails were neon green, and her legs were very brown. She looked at him over the top of the paperback as he walked past, and threw himself down onto a second swing chair. He nodded to her, but didn’t take off his headphones. He tried to keep his chair still, but it resisted him.
After a minute or two, Hayley laid her book on her stomach and looked at him purposefully, so he slid the headphones onto his neck.
‘What are you listening to?’
‘Oasis.’
She wrinkled her nose. ‘Aren’t they old?’
‘They’re brilliant.’
She raised a cynical eyebrow, but didn’t argue.
It was his turn to ask a question. She was sort of waiting for him to say something. ‘What do you like, then?’
‘All kinds of stuff. Grime. R&B. Ariana Grande …’
‘You’re kidding, right?’
She smirked. ‘Just testing. Not Ariana Grande.’
‘Thank fuck for that.’
‘I wouldn’t let Mere hear you say that. Major fan.’
Ethan grimaced. ‘What you reading, then?’
Hayley picked up the book, held it out towards him. ‘To Kill a Mockingbird. Do you know it?’
‘“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view – until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it …”’
Hayley sat forward excitedly. ‘Wow! You do know it.’
‘Yes.’ He was glad of it, too. He knew Hayley and her sister were at a fancy private school in Surrey. At their mum’s wedding to his uncle, he’d thought he’d got a touch of smug arrogance off them – he couldn’t have pinpointed what or how, but he knew enough kids like that to recognize it. It might have been shyness, he supposed.
‘Did you do it for GCSE this summer?’ She’d realized, and Ethan felt deflated. He’d quite liked her being impressed.
‘Yeah. But I’d read it before.’ This was not true, but definitely impossible to prove.
‘Me too.’ This, he suspected, was the truth.
‘And you’re reading it again?’
‘I like rereading. And this is my favourite. I’m going to call my daughter Scout. If I have one …’
Even in his soppiest thoughts about Saskia, or their dopiest conversations, they had not covered baby names. ‘Cool.’
‘How’d you do, do you think?’
Ethan shrugged. ‘Really trying not to think about it.’
‘Me too.’ He didn’t believe that. She looked clever. Private-school kids got spoon-fed everything, didn’t they? Off a silver spoon.
‘Which question did you do?’
God. He wished he hadn’t started, but now he had to finish. The excruciating conversation about which question they’d both answered lasted a few minutes, then petered out, mercifully.
Ethan wondered if it would be rude to put his headphones back on.
Hayley carried on swinging. ‘Have you got a girlfriend?’
He eyed her suspiciously. Did she know? But she didn’t look sly. Just nosy. And did he? He supposed not. ‘Not right now, not really … You?’
‘Girls’ school.’
Which was not really an answer.
He was about to slip his headphones back on and put them both out of their misery when he heard his mother shouting from inside the house for help to unload the car. He nodded at Hayley, not sure they had made much progress, and escaped.
27
In the kitchen, Heather had definitely taken charge. The boys had carried the shopping in, and now Scott was loading tonic water, white wine and Diet Coke into a drinks fridge in the corner by the window. Nick and Dad were nowhere to be seen, and Ethan had made himself scarce too.
‘I see gender roles are very much alive and well in my family.’ Laura hadn’t meant it to sound quite so snippy.
Heather smiled at her, but it was brief and not entirely genuine. ‘Or maybe they thought it would be too crowded in here.’ She’d made Laura feel petty.
To show she didn’t really mind, Laura grabbed a few boxes of cereal from the table in the centre of the room where the boys had left them, and began to put them into an empty cupboard.
‘Oh, Laura, I think it might actually work better if we just, you know, left the cereals out on that dresser – where the gap is? That way everyone can help themselves in the morning and not get in the way of the kettle and the coffee machine, right?’
She might very well be right. But she was annoying as well.
‘What would you like me to do?’ And this time Laura had meant her voice to sound just a tiny bit sarcastic. If Heather heard it, and Scott certainly did – he stiffened – but, then, he’d been hearing it for more than forty years, she chose to ignore it, flashing a megawatt smile at Laura.
‘You know what, Laura, you’re just so sweet. But I’m fine to do this. Honestly. I’m all unpacked upstairs. You haven’t had a chance. Let me do this.’