THEY WERE RANGED against her outside the school building the next morning. A wall of blue jumpers, grey skirts and trousers, sitting, standing in clumps, leaning against the wall. All of Year Eleven was taking the English Language exam. Lydia passed through the school gates alone, her shoulders self-consciously straight, her chin high.
She had texted her mother, invented supper at Avril’s, wandered for hours around the streets of dead poets until dark, her thoughts going round and round and finding no home. She tried Avril’s flat again, but she wasn’t in. Every few seconds her phone beeped with a new Facebook notification until she turned it off and went home, straight up the stairs to her bedroom where she didn’t sleep, imagining what people were saying.
And here they were, outside the school waiting for their morning exam.
Her eyes went immediately to Avril – as always Avril had a gravitational force, something that meant that Lydia looked for her first, found her in a crowd. She was with Harry. His arm was around her shoulders. But they were looking at her, like everyone was looking at her. She felt the weight of dozens of eyes.
She could not keep the mask in place. After years, it had deserted her. She had thought, walking here, dizzy from not having eaten or slept, that she might be able to face it out. Be breezy, nonchalant, all ‘oh, you never knew?’ That was the best way. She knew it was the best way.
Instead in the silence that surrounded her, she stared at Avril and she knew that the hunger in her own face was so naked and raw that everyone could see it.
Someone sniggered. It was the sound of over a hundred Facebook posts and comments and texts and images, the sound of all the whispers, electronic and real.
‘Lezzy Lyddie,’ said someone, probably Darren Raymond, but she was too busy looking at Avril, trying to read Avril’s expression, to listen.
‘Shut up,’ said Avril, and she ducked under Harry’s arm. She walked up to Avril. ‘Lyds, we have to talk.’
‘Can we watch?’ called someone else, and there was laughter.
Avril turned to the crowd and showed them her middle finger.
‘Go on, snog her!’
Lydia was rooted to the spot, hot and cold all at once, her mouth dry. Avril put her hands on her hips.
‘Shut the hell up,’ Avril said to the others. ‘It’s a stupid rumour. We’re best friends, I would know if she was gay.’ She faced Lydia. ‘Right, Lyds? If you were gay, you would tell me.’
Avril, angry, was magnificent. Her eyes flashed and her head was tilted, full of attitude, full of defiance. It’s the two of us against the world, said her stance. It had always been the two of them against the world.
‘You’d tell me,’ Avril said again. ‘I’d know. Right? Tell them.’
Lydia could not speak.
No one was jeering now. No one was saying anything. They were watching, avid. Every person in her year, people she had laughed with, studied with, eaten lunch with, waiting for her to say something. There were words in her mouth but she couldn’t get them out. They were blocked there like stones.
Lydia saw the exact moment when Avril realized the truth, because the colour drained out of her face. For a split second, Lydia thought she was going to faint. She reached out for her, to catch her or help her, and Avril stepped quickly back. She stepped back, just in the same way that Bailey had stepped back. There was a noise, like a collective inhalation from the crowd, and the other students crept closer to them, surrounding them in a circle.
‘You are,’ whispered Avril. ‘Oh my God, it’s true.’
Nudges. Whispers. Someone laughed.
‘I couldn’t – I was going to–’ Lydia had no idea what she was saying. ‘It doesn’t make any difference.’
‘You lied to me. All this time, you’ve been lying to me.’
‘I didn’t – it wasn’t lying, I–’
‘It was lying. You never told me. I trusted you with everything, I told you everything, and you never said. Never.’
There were tears in Avril’s eyes.
‘Avril, I …’
She shook her head. ‘I thought you were my best friend.’
‘I am.’
‘You promised never to lie to me, Lydia! You promised! What else have you been lying to me about?’
I love you.
The circle around them, tight and close.
‘Nothing,’ said Lydia. ‘I swear it, nothing.’
‘I can’t deal with this. I feel like I don’t know you at all.’
Avril looked the same way she had when Lydia had helped her pick her mother off the bathroom floor. Sick and scared and exhausted, unshed tears in her eyes.
‘Avril,’ Lydia said, helpless.
‘Girls!’ Madame Fournier, the French teacher, pushed her way into the circle. She made hurrying movements with her small hands. ‘What are you doing? The exam is starting, it’s time to go inside. Get into your places.’
The crowd dispersed instantly. Avril turned her back on Lydia and hurried to her place in the queue. Lydia watched her go. She watched the other students stand back to give her a wide berth. Avril did not glance in Lydia’s direction.
‘Go, you’ll be late,’ Madame Fournier told Lydia. ‘Foundation tier in front, Higher tier at the back. You’re Higher, aren’t you? It’s important that we begin exams in an orderly fashion. Quietly now, quickly. What is the matter with you, did you not hear me? Quickly!’
How was it possible that she was still holding her pencil case, her bottle of water? Lydia walked to her place in the queue, in between Marie Lavelle and Zachary Linton. They both shifted quickly so that there was a large gap between them. She looked at her shoes, feeling the eyes of everyone on her.
‘Right, we will proceed into the building,’ announced Madame Fournier. ‘Silently, now.’
Lydia’s face flamed and her head was almost too heavy to lift. In the silence she felt them watching, heard them breathing. She could almost hear the thoughts flinging around in the air, the significance in the coughs and fidgets. Shuffling forward with the others, row by row, to her seat with her name and her number and her examination booklet, sheafs of lined paper waiting for answers.
Her desk was near the front of the room. There were only two people ahead of her in the row, but she could feel the weight of every single person behind her where she couldn’t see them, but where they could see the back of her head, the vulnerable skin of her neck. They could examine her and find her wanting, wrong, incorrect. She got out a pencil, a pen, a highlighter, and noticed that her hands were shaking and damp.
An examination paper was placed on her desk. She glanced up to see Mr Graham, and a wave of cold engulfed her. He smiled at her and moved on to give out more papers.
‘You may begin,’ said a voice, and Lydia opened her paper. It was full of words, black shapes on white.
All this time you’ve been lying to me?
I thought you were my best friend.
Behind her, the scratching of biros on paper. Someone cleared their throat. Someone uncapped their water bottle. A page was turned, then another. She saw her hands on the desk as if they belonged to someone else. Rubber-soled shoes walked between desks, spelling out a soft rhythm, voicing all the thoughts in this closed and airless room. Liar. Liar. Lezza. Pervert. These examinations will determine your future. I feel like I don’t know you at all.
Lydia jumped up, scraping her chair back. She stumbled out of her seat, up the aisle, out through the door and out of the building. Toward the morning light, away from the thoughts and stares and words, to somewhere she could run.
‘Lydia!’ A voice behind her, a male voice, deep and adult, not unlike how she remembered her father’s. She didn’t stop, but he caught up with her a few metres from the building. A hand on her elbow.
Mr Graham. She shuddered away from his touch.
‘Lydia,’ he said, slightly out of breath, his glasses halfway down his nose. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘I need to get out of here.’
‘Are you ill? Calm down, tell me what’s wrong. You can have a break and come back, it’s OK, you’ll be all right.’
‘I won’t be all right. I won’t be. It’s all ruined.’
He frowned with concern and compassion. Fake, of course. ‘I understand, there’s a lot of pressure. But you can do this – I have faith in you. Can you tell me what’s wrong?’
All the messages, all the laughter, Avril’s eyes brimming with tears. If she told Mr Graham, he’d tell her mother. Whisper it to her in their lovers’ time.
‘Lydia?’ he said. ‘Please, tell me what’s happening.’
‘You want me to tell you what’s wrong?’ she spat out. ‘Why would you understand?’
‘Well, I am your tutor, but if you’d rather speak to—’
‘You’re also fucking my mother.’
She’d thrown it out, not really believing it was true but saying it to shock, to hurt, to drive him away so he’d leave her alone. But the way he went completely still, his hand at his face about to push up his glasses, frozen, told her that she’d been right. The realization drove the blood from her face, dropped the earth out from under her.
‘Oh my God,’ she gasped. ‘You really have. You’ve been fucking my mother.’
‘Lydia. I don’t—I never meant to—’
‘You fucked her by mistake?’
‘Calm down, please.’ He was looking around quickly, to see if anyone had heard them, and she felt sick.
‘That’s all you care about – keeping your secret. You don’t care about me, you don’t care about anything, either of you!’
A part of her, a part that was somehow still rational, wondered if they could hear her through the open windows of the hall. They were standing in almost exactly the same place where she had just stood with Avril. The same place they had stood all those years ago, on that first day, when they walked into school together.
‘Lydia, tell me why you ran out of your exam.’ Mr Graham’s voice was steady. Trying to be reasonable. At least she’d wiped the smile off his face. ‘If it’s because of me and Jo, that doesn’t have to—’
She recoiled when he said her mother’s name. ‘Leave me alone. Just leave me the fuck alone.’
She wheeled away from him and off, out of the school gates and down the street, running clumsily, her hands both pressed to her chest as if she had been struck there.