That night, Eva dreamed of a snowy silence and Dad walking across ice. She tried to struggle awake more than once, but the dream kept sucking her back. It was harsh and cold. Finally she forced her eyes open and lay in the darkness, tangled in her sheets.
In her dream, Dad had been walking away from her.
And that’s how it felt in real life too.
Eva kicked off her covers.
It wasn’t fair, Eva thought. Dad didn’t know Jamie. He had never even spoken to him.
It wasn’t fair.
The thought twirled and swirled in Eva’s mind like a snowstorm. Dad wasn’t fair.
She must have gone back to sleep, because the next thing she knew she was woken by a sound that she couldn’t place. The light in her room was milky, the colours all different shades of grey. It was still early, really early in the morning.
The sound came again. It was a muffled thud and it came from outside. Eva pushed herself out of bed and peeked through the curtains.
She swallowed a squeal.
A trainer hovered just outside the window pane. It was attached to a long pole, she realised. The pole swung and the trainer bashed against the glass again. She scrabbled with the window catch and pushed it open.
‘Morning!’ Jamie said. He was hanging out of his own bedroom window, the pole and the trainer gripped tightly in his hands.
Eva rubbed her eyes.
‘I thought you might be awake. I had a feeling.’
‘Of course I’m awake,’ Eva snapped. ‘That’s what happens when people throw shoes at your window.’
Jamie laughed. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Nothing. Sleeping.’
‘Do you want to see something funny?’
‘Now?’
‘Yes, now. Can you come out?’
Eva yawned and stretched. The pale morning sun was warm on her skin.
‘I can’t,’ she said. She wasn’t even supposed to be talking to Jamie. ‘Dad said . . .’ She paused. He was smiling so warmly that she couldn’t tell him what Dad had said – that they were banned from being friends. She was never, never, to spend time with him. Jamie was a bad influence. A bad apple. A bad boy.
He waved the trainer at her again. His gold-brown eyes looked eager.
‘Dad said . . .’ she tried again.
‘Is your dad awake?’ Jamie interrupted.
‘No. What time is it?’
‘Six thirty. In the morning,’ Jamie added helpfully.
Dad wouldn’t be awake for half an hour. Eva thought about her dream. It wasn’t fair.
‘Will we be long?’ Eva asked.
‘Ten minutes. Tops. Promise.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Meet me out front.’
The trainer was reeled in, and Jamie’s head disappeared.
Eva pulled on a pair of jeans and threw a cardie over her nightie. Her sandals were waiting neatly beside her chair.
On the landing, she paused. She shouldn’t go out. Not without telling Dad.
Eva held the banister, not sure which way she should go.
There was no chance that Dad would let her go out. He would send her back to her room and lock the door and the windows. He would stop her going to the lodge. He’d stop her going anywhere ever again.
That seemed to decide it for her legs. They took her down to the front door. She pulled off the chain, turned the key, drew the bolt and stepped outside.
Jamie was already waiting by the front gate.
She pulled the door closed behind her as gently as she could so as not to wake Dad.
Outside felt delicious. The air was cool, but with the smell of sunshine that meant they would be in for a scorching day. She did up the buttons of her cardie and stepped into the low rays of light.
‘What did you want to show me?’ she asked Jamie.
He grinned. ‘I’m glad you came out.’
Eva started to get impatient. ‘Why exactly am I here and not still fast asleep?’
‘Come with me.’ Jamie stepped on to the pavement and began walking away from the house.
‘What? Wait! Where are you going?’
‘Come on, I’ll show you. It’s the funniest thing ever.’ He took hold of her wrist and pulled gently.
Eva glanced back at her house. It was still, the curtains drawn like closed eyes. Dawn warmed the bricks and made the glass golden. She had a little while before Dad woke up.
‘OK, but I can’t be long. Dad will worry.’
‘We won’t be. I promise.’
The streets were deserted. The tweets and chirrups of small birds cheerleading the dawn were the only sounds. It was as if she and Jamie were the only people left in the whole world. For a giddy moment, Eva imagined wandering the sweet aisles of abandoned shops, driving red sports cars through empty streets, doing anything and everything she wanted without any grown-ups to say no. Then she heard the clink and trundle of a milk float and the world came back with a thump – ah well, it was a nice daydream while it lasted.
Jamie was heading towards the park. At the west gate, he turned right.
‘Are we going to the lodge? Why?’ Eva asked.
‘Shh. No. Not the lodge. This way.’ Jamie crouched down low, as if he didn’t want to be spotted. Eva copied, though she had no idea who they were hiding from. The park had to be deserted at this time of day.
But it wasn’t.
There was a group of people on the playing field, loads of them, in tracksuits and trainers and sweat bands. A whole gang of sweaty, puffing, groaning grown-ups.
‘What are they doing?’ Eva whispered.
Some of the group ran up and down, lifting their knees as if they were crossing hot coals barefoot. Others rolled on the grass, crunching their stomach muscles and huffing with the dust and the effort. Another group held huge Thor Hammers and were laying into some innocent car tyres with them. The car tyres just took it patiently.
Beside her, Jamie started to giggle.
Eva felt herself smiling too. Grown-ups could be very strange sometimes.
Jamie ducked down behind a bush. His face and hands were dappled with leaf shadow, making him seem camouflaged.
‘It’s a boot camp,’ Jamie explained. ‘They do it every morning.’ He pulled aside a branch so that they could get a better view. ‘You know the best bit?’
‘No, what?’
‘Look at that one there. The one in the pink tracksuit.’
Eva peered out. Then laughed. She slapped her hand over her mouth so that the adults wouldn’t hear her.
Melanie. The woman in the pink tracksuit slamming hammers into tyres at the crack of dawn was Melanie, Jamie’s social worker.
A dog leapt around her feet, trying, it seemed, to get right in the way of the hammer. Melanie was trying just as hard to make sure he didn’t. They were both getting a good workout.
‘That’s her dog. Bandit,’ Jamie said. ‘She drives up here every other morning and tries not to hit Bandit with a hammer. And she thinks I’ve got problems.’
A tall man wearing army clothes walked from one group to another. He spoke in a clipped, strong voice, but they were too far away to make out the words.
‘That’s Gary,’ Jamie said. ‘He’s in charge. He used to be a soldier, but now he shouts at civilians for money.’ Jamie sounded impressed, though Eva wasn’t sure whether it was Gary being a soldier, or Gary making money from shouting at people that impressed him. Maybe both.
Eva settled back on her heels. The sun was a little higher now and the bush they were in cast a long shadow on the grass, like an ogre leaning forward.
‘Jamie,’ she said, ‘why does Melanie look after you?’
‘She doesn’t look after me, no matter what she thinks. I take care of myself.’
‘Yes, but why is she there at all? You’ve got a family. Loads of them. Why have you got a social worker too?’
Jamie frowned and tugged a leaf off the bush. He started tearing it into strips. ‘Mostly because of my family, I suppose. Michael and Drew went into care, ages ago, but it means Mel has to keep an eye on me. She’s looking for any reason to take me away from Mum and Dad. I know she is. But it’s not going to happen. I’ll never let it happen. She can’t take me away.’
‘Why were they in care and not you?’
Jamie let the leaf fall like rain. ‘I wasn’t born yet. Mum and Dad . . . they had problems . . . I don’t know what really, they don’t talk about it much. Dad went away, I know that. So Michael and Drew went too. Mum couldn’t manage on her own.’
Why would parents go away? There was only one reason that Eva knew, but it couldn’t be that.
She must have looked confused, because Jamie said, ‘I mean he was in prison.’
Eva felt her face flush. Oh. Her eyes darted to the ground. All she could see were the torn bits of leaf.
‘Are you shocked?’ There was scorn in Jamie’s voice. ‘Just because your life is perfect, doesn’t mean everyone else’s is.’
‘My life’s not perfect!’ Eva said hotly. ‘You don’t know the first thing about my life.’
‘It looks fine from where I’m standing.’
Could she say? Could she do it? Eva held the words in her mouth like a bad taste. She hadn’t said them for a long time. She hadn’t needed to; she hadn’t met anyone new since it had happened.
‘My mum died,’ she said quietly.
Now it was Jamie’s turn to look shocked. ‘Really?’ he said, in the end.
‘Really.’
‘How? When?’ He looked interested. He leaned towards her so that she could see the yellow and gold in his eyes.
‘An accident. Two years ago. A skiing accident.’
‘Skiing?’ Jamie said it as if it were an idea he couldn’t fit anywhere in his head.
Eva took a deep breath. The air tasted of grass clippings and earth and warmth. It tasted of life here and now, not that time two years ago when the world had splintered and broken. ‘They went on holiday, Mum and Dad, for their ten-year anniversary. I stayed with Gran, so it would be just them. I remember crying when they drove away. I waved from the doorstep for ages, until Gran made me go inside.’
Jamie’s eyes were wide as chocolate coins. ‘What happened?’
‘Gran told me what happened. Dad wouldn’t ever really talk about it. Gran told me that Mum loved to ski. She was always good at things like that. Brave. Anyway, they’d been told that one of the slopes was closed. It was too dangerous, the snow was too thick. But Mum laughed and said it was the best run and they should do it anyway. Dad said no, but she teased him. She went on her own in the end. Dad was right though – she shouldn’t have done it.’
Eva paused. She didn’t know if she should say the last thing. The thing that Gran hadn’t said, but that Eva had realised. The thing that was a dark, dirty thought inside her and Dad both.
Jamie reached out and laid his hand on top of hers. His nails were black with soil, but his palm was warm.
‘The worst thing,’ Eva whispered, ‘the worst is that it wasn’t an accident, really. If she’d listened, she wouldn’t have died.’
‘You think it was her own fault?’
Eva felt the dark twisty idea, like a worm in her skull. It made her want to scrub her insides clean. ‘If she’d listened to Dad, it would have been different,’ she said softly.
Jamie moved his hand away and reached for another leaf to tear. ‘Is that why your dad’s so . . . I don’t know . . . so odd?’
Eva frowned. ‘He’s not odd.’
‘He is a bit,’ Jamie said. ‘Complaining about my family all the time. Not letting you go out, wondering where you are every minute of –’
‘He just wants to keep me safe,’ Eva interrupted.
‘He just wants to keep you a prisoner, more like.’
‘That’s not true!’ Eva stood up. ‘It isn’t! You don’t know anything about him. He’s kind and funny and he looks after me.’
‘Don’t shout at me,’ Jamie said.
‘I can if I want!’ Eva shouted.
‘No, I mean it. Mel will hear.’
Eva glanced across at the boot camp. No one was looking their way. ‘You don’t care about me or my dad. All you care about is not getting caught. My dad was right about you,’ Eva said. ‘Stay away from me, Jamie. Just leave me alone.’