“Ask anyone in my year,” she finished quietly. “They’d tell you the same.”
“And Freya just took it?” Win looked troubled, like that didn’t match up with the Freya she’d known.
It didn’t match up with the Freya Sophie knew, either.
“Sometimes she gave as good as she got,” Sophie said with a shrug. “Sometimes she ignored it. But she never did anything to change it.”
You should tell Kellan.
About what?
About Ryan. He’s his cousin, can’t he stop him?
I’m aware of that. And I can fight my own battles, thanks.
And Sophie had backed down because it was easier than arguing. Guilt dropped like a rock into the well of Freya-related feelings. Always backing down wasn’t the best way to support someone who needed propping up.
“One day it just stopped,” Sophie said, staring out of the window. “A month before she left, maybe. Ryan came to school and acted like Freya didn’t exist.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing.” Sunny sounded confused. “Surely that’s better?”
But it hadn’t been.
“She went to ask him something. Ryan didn’t even look at her. Just turned around and walked off,” Sophie said. “That was the first time he’d made her cry.”
She turned to look at the three of them, at Sunny’s confusion and Lucas’s gentle frown, Win resting a hand on the wheel, waiting for Sophie to finish.
“If Ryan and Freya had something going on,” she said, “then that makes the way he treated her worse, not better. So maybe hold off on sympathy concerto in A minor, OK?”
LUCAS
Ryan lived in a house a quarter of the size of Kellan’s, set in a row of four with gently sloped roofs and Sixties cladding. An estate more like the one Lucas lived in, where nets masked ground-floor windows, stickers and toys suckered onto the ones above, a flat scrap of grass separating the road from the people who lived on it.
“I think it’s this one…” Sophie frowned at the white plastic door before pressing the bell and stepping back onto Lucas’s foot.
“Ow.”
Sophie gave him a faint smile of an apology as footsteps thundered into existence, a shadow darkening the door’s slim glass panels before it opened.
Ryan’s hair sat in damp, dark tufts and the sting of citrus shower gel in Lucas’s nostrils suggested Ryan had used half the bottle. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
He wasn’t looking at the girls, but at Lucas – and he looked almost scared.
“Er…” Lucas hadn’t expected to be the one to do the talking. “We’re kind of going on a road trip—”
“To the sea!” Sunny put in.
“And we thought—”
“Yes.” Ryan snapped his head round from where he’d been looking back into the house. “Yes I absolutely do want to come with you.”
Lucas glanced at the others, all looking as surprised as he felt. He’d expected some resistance. Ryan snatched a pair of trainers from a heap next to the door, stepping out onto the path before he’d even put them on.
“We can wait while you get some socks…” Win began.
“Don’t need them,” Ryan said as he turned and pulled the door shut gently behind him so that it made almost no noise at all.
“Ryan, is everything—”
But before Sunny could finish her question, Ryan was chivvying them back to the car, still in bare feet, his hand jabbing Lucas in his lower back.
“Hurry it up, Big T.”
Lucas frowned as he pulled open the car door, not sure he was so keen on being manhandled by anyone but Sunny. Clambering in first, Sunny followed, then Ryan. As soon as Win shut her door, Ryan started thumping a fist on the back of her seat.
“Drive!”
“Dial down the dramatics, 007,” Win said with a calm that would have infuriated the patron saint of patience. “Has everyone got their belt on?”
“Just start the fucking car!” Ryan yelled with such force that every tendon stood out on his neck.
It did not have the desired effect.
“You can get out if you’re going to talk like that, pal.” Win arched her brows at the rear-view mirror.
Ryan huffed, hissed through his teeth and craned round Sunny to look at his front door.
“OK. I’m sorry. But unless you get a shift on, my cousin’s going to walk out that door –”
Lucas would have hunched down to hide behind Sunny if he hadn’t been so worried she’d think he was a coward.
“– and if I’m honest, I’d quite like to sit my exams with my face intact, so if you could—”
But Win had already let off the clutch, the car pulling swiftly away from the kerb to zoom off towards the end of the road. Although once she got there, she stopped at the junction and fixed Ryan with a glare in the rear-view mirror.
“I was serious about everyone putting their belt on.”
RYAN
Ryan knew there must be nice places along the coast. He’d been to one when he and Jules were just kids, Dad the one holding the camera as they made sandcastles with Mam.
Dredging his memories, Ryan came up with beaches of soft golden sand and rock pools surrounded by gleaming slabs of stone. Harbours bobbing with fishing boats beneath a sky of soaring gulls. Crooked little alleyways crammed with shop fronts he didn’t have enough money to look behind. A holiday of ice-cream parlours and mini golf and the Dracula Experience.
Nothing like this shit hole.
Killing the engine, Win announced, “We’re here.”
An apathetic “Hooray…” trailed from Sunny’s lips as Ryan issued a more frank, “Looks like the arse end of Boro.”
“You didn’t have to come…” Sophie turned to say.
“And you could have just dropped me in town like I asked—”
“We’re all supposed to be getting to know each other,” Sunny said, with a fraction more enthusiasm than a moment ago.
“Give over.” Ryan rolled his eyes. “This is just an excuse for you to get on biblical terms with Big T.”
Lucas didn’t like being called that, Sunny didn’t like the implication, and Sophie hated him. If Ryan had the luxury of being able to make a quick exit out of the driver’s seat like Win, he’d have taken it.
“Ry-an!” Sunny said it the same way Jules did when he’d wound them up a bit too far. “Can’t you at least pretend you want to be here?”
He wasn’t sure he could. But then how was he supposed to explain to any of this lot that he never wanted to be anywhere. His whole miserable life was a series of trying to be somewhere other than wherever he was. Unless that “wherever” was with Freya…
“How about I pretend I want to be here and Sophie pretends that she doesn’t wish I wasn’t?” Ryan glared into the back of Sophie’s skull, watched her shoulders rise and fall in a shrug before she turned to look at him.
“Fine. Let’s see who breaks first.”
And with that, she got out of the car.
The sun was warm and the wind cool. Not a bad combination for May – although Ryan wished he was wearing something a little more substantial than a muscle vest he hadn’t the bulk to fill. Even though he’d dissed the place, the smooth, clean stretch of promenade looked new and nice, and when Sunny ran across it to go look at the sea, Ryan was happy enough to follow with the rest of them. Below the sea wall the sand stretched out towards the sea, the sea towards the sky, and Ryan tipped his head back to squint up into a blue that reminded him of his aunt’s downstairs toilet.