“I LIED!”
The truth tore out of Sophie with a force so strong it blasted through Win’s body so that Sophie’s pain felt as real and terrible as if it were her own.
“She just left and I didn’t know where she’d gone and I didn’t know why and I thought” – a sob broke free – “I thought I must be wrong. I thought she’d call. I thought … she was my best friend.” Tears broke over the shores of her cheeks, a tide running down her face. “And now I find I was worth less to her than a bunch of strangers.”
The paper in her hand screwed into a ball as she clenched a fist around it.
“I’m not even worth a letter.”
She threw the balled-up paper towards them, but for all her rage it got no further than if a light breeze had puffed it from her fist. Then Sophie was gone. Not back to the car, but hauling herself over the stile set into the wall. As Win called her back, she twisted round to look at them.
“Fuck this.” The words came out low, trembling with the strength of her feelings. “I’m done with all of you.”
RYAN
Ryan had spent all his life convinced no one wanted anything to do with him. He didn’t have to look far for the proof: his dad leaving; Mam blaming him for trouble he didn’t even start; all his mates so desperate for an invite to Kellan’s place they forgot who’d introduced them.
Just for a bit, Freya had him fooled.
Then she left too.
Not a word for him, for every Wednesday they spent together from that first time she showed up, soaked to the skin, or the spare moments caught when no one else was looking. But she’d had them for Sophie, hadn’t she? That was the only person whose calls got answered, messages returned. He’d sat quietly in the classroom and listened, greedy for any echo of a word from Freya, even if none of those words were for him.
A month after she left, Ryan gave in. Swallowed his pride and asked Sophie how Freya was doing. Expected it to be hard, because it wasn’t like he and Sophie were pals, but the way she looked at him like he was dirt…
And I’m supposed to believe you care when you made her life hell right up to the moment she left?
Sophie made it sound like she knew – like Ryan had done something so terrible on December 31st that Freya couldn’t forgive him. But he’d thought – he’d believed – that night had made things right between them. That weeks of keeping his distance, punishing him as much as her for what they’d done, could be put behind them.
But the next day Freya had left. And she’d told Sophie why.
…you made her life hell…
All this time, Sophie’d been spinning her bullshit and Ryan had swallowed the lot. He had to work very hard not to laugh as the girl he’d envied for so long, for so little reason, staggered down towards the river through the long grass, as if finally finding out the truth had knocked it out of her.
Good. Because of Sophie, he’d spent months thinking the girl he’d risked everything for hated him so much she’d shat all over her own life to get away.
“Shouldn’t we go after her?” Lucas said, but Win shook her head.
“When someone runs off it’s because they want space.”
“There’s a lot of that going around,” Sunny muttered, shrugging when her sister gave her a stern look. “What? Like running off isn’t exactly what Freya did?”
“We’re not talking about Freya—”
“Why not? She’s the person behind all this.”
She was. And each one of them had a letter from her that no one other than Sophie had read. Ryan glanced at the time on his phone. “Anyone want to start a book on how long it’ll take Carbs to climb down from that shit fit?”
“Don’t you dare joke about this.” Win’s words lashed across the quiet of the churchyard.
“Newflash. When I make a joke, you’ll fucking laugh.”
“I fucking won’t.”
Ryan was almost impressed. Almost. “Why are you having a go at me?”
“Because this is all your fault—”
“It’s really not,” Ryan snapped back. “I know Sophie’s doing a very good job of acting like the victim, but if we’re playing who’s got the tiniest violin, then how about the guy whose evening started by trying to wash off the penis she inked on my forehead and ended with his cousin trying to knock his teeth in?”
There wasn’t any sympathy in the way Win was looking at him; she just crossed her arms like she thought he’d deserved it.
“I’m not the one who wrote her best mate a one-line letter,” Ryan said, bringing his voice back to something less than full volume. “And it sure as hell wasn’t my idea for all of us to come here and open them in case there was some puzzle to figure out.”
Win drew back, the shutters coming down on her expression after that little nugget hit home.
“Since Freya left, Sophie’s been on my case like this was all my fault.” And he’d believed it – how could he not, when he was the last person she’d talked to?
He really needed to know what was in his letter.
“So, if I want to take the piss out of Sophie, then you’d better believe I’m owed it.”
His next breath dislodged something bloody in the back of his throat and forced him to hock it out onto the grass. Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, Ryan gave the others the full force of his glare – Win, her mouth pinched in a rigid line and Lucas, who stood back, brows raised like he might actually have been listening. He didn’t look at Sunny. Didn’t want her to think he cared what she thought.
“I’m going home,” he muttered. “You lot do what you want.”
He was long out of the graveyard and halfway down the road before Ryan decided that no one was coming after him.
Like he wanted them to.
SOPHIE
Sitting on a fishing jetty, her back to the church and the fields leading up to it, Sophie stared across the river to the jumble of mews houses opposite. Round to the left – past the wharf and the car park – hulked the riverside apartments, whose balcony windows blazed a little bigger, a little brighter. To the right, the path led past the beer garden of The Sheep, the murmur of conversations and clink of glasses mingling with the whish of cars crossing the bridge.
She hurt. Nothing new, but a shattered heart made everything else that much harder. Sitting was all she felt up to, waves of revelation washing over her, each bigger than the last. First Win – just a name on a parcel – then Lucas and his alter-ego, then Ryan. She wished she could unknow all of them, go back to believing that Freya was the person she knew best in the world.
As it turned out she’d not known Freya at all.
For months, Sophie had been turning over every memory, an archaeologist studying her own history, looking for clues as to why Freya had left. She’d blamed Freya’s mum for being so cold and closed off, Kellan for failing to live up to his promise as a boyfriend, Ryan for making Freya’s life so miserable at school…
But quietly, Sophie held a belief so secret that she barely acknowledged it herself: her best friend had left because Sophie had failed her.