The silence lasts most of the following week. Mum says nothing, but her mouth is set in a straight, hard line that Joe says is more worry than anger. He shrugged his shoulders when I told him what Banks had done, as if to say, what did I expect? Matt said nothing when I went over to get away from Mum’s silence. I sat in a huge beanbag while he made us lunch, raising a questioning eyebrow at me every so often – waiting for an explanation that I didn’t give him. Raven was kinder, but even she thought I was crazy to be surprised. ‘He’s, like, a tramp,’ she said. ‘Give the guy a break.’
I sit in Sam’s room now, in secret, while Mum and Dad whisper to themselves downstairs. I don’t know why I came in here. Perhaps it’s because it’s the last place anyone will look for me. I sit on the edge of his bed while the voices rise and fall beneath me, and remember just how far back the stain spreads.
Once, when I was quite small, we went on holiday to Cornwall. I don’t know why I did it, but I stole a marble from a tourist shop. I’d been brought up to know that stealing is wrong, but I remember wanting the marble more than anything I’d ever wanted before. It was a clear green like the sea, with a twisting spiral of white deep inside, which trapped the light when you held it to the window. I didn’t have a penny of my holiday money left and remember standing there, knowing that I couldn’t leave without it. Then, before I knew what I’d done, the marble was in my pocket and my heart was hammering as if it would jump right out of my chest. I changed my mind at once. My hand went to my pocket and clutched the marble ready to lift it back out and return it, but then I saw Sam staring at me from across the aisle. I ran, and he ran after me, shouting my name. He chased me all the way to the cliff path and caught me in a grip of iron. ‘What’s in your pocket?’ he demanded. ‘What did you do?’
‘I didn’t mean it,’ I cried. ‘I’ll take it back!’
‘You can’t,’ he said, ‘you’d give yourself away. I’ll do it.’
‘Don’t tell, Sam. Don’t tell Mum and Dad.’
He looked at me with his hand out, waiting, so I put the marble on his palm where it winked in the sunlight like the most beautiful green eye.
‘This is going to be hard,’ he said. ‘I could get caught doing this and go to jail. You owe me. Never forget that. You owe me now.’
I was only young. I believed him. I remember it clear as day.
Years afterwards, I crept into his room to see if he’d taken my purse. I remember easing open a drawer and seeing the green marble lying in one corner like a dirty secret. It seems like people have been stealing from me ever since.
At lunchtime I see Joe. He’s sitting alone in the canteen. He looks at me as I walk past but says nothing and nor do I because I’m angry with him. He always seems to be judging me, and now I just know he’s all smug. He was right about Banks, wasn’t he? And I bet he just loves it. He isn’t waiting after school either, so I wander down to the seafront, well away from The Mansion. I don’t know what happened to Banks with the police, and I don’t think I care. Then I realise that I had no reason to come down here. If I really didn’t care and I didn’t want to see him I’d have just gone home.
I turn with the wind behind my back and think of Gran’s ring in the window of a pawnshop. That’s the thing to do if something hurts too much: think of something that stops the pain getting through and making a mug of you. Something that allows you to feel hate, or something like it, then walk away.
As I’m walking, a text comes from Joe: ‘Sometimes its not about u.’
I think of a smart answer, but realise just as I’m about to hit send that I don’t really know what he means. ‘Who is it about then?’ I say into the air, and suddenly the answer hits me and I feel ashamed.
I go home and have dinner with Mum and Dad. We talk trivia – anything to avoid talking about what we’re all avoiding. Afterwards we watch a drama together, curled up like sheep avoiding a storm. We’re together and not together, feeding off one another’s warmth for a brief time before going to sleep alone. As I go up to bed, a real storm gathers outside. It rumbles away somewhere over the sea then moves across the town, flinging rain at the windows. I wonder where the homeless people are and whether the old man, disturbed by the thunder, lies twitching on his sleeping bag bed.
I fall into a half-dream, where the red-headed man runs naked across the shingle, outlined in thunder. He screams at me that he has seen God and has a message for me. It’s written on the underside of a white stone that he turns and hurls into the dark water like the best bowler anyone ever saw. Then he laughs at me. ‘I know where your answers are! They’re on the bottom of that stone – swim for it!’ and he screams like a wet, white gull and flaps away over the water.
I wake with a start. Mum is standing at my window staring out at the night. I pretend to be asleep so that when she bends to pull the duvet up, she won’t know how much it means to me. I pretend to sleep on, hiding the knowledge inside as an act of defiance.