‘Ryan doesn’t drink.’
‘You expect me to believe that?’
I nodded. ‘He doesn’t drink because he drives.’
She sighed dramatically. ‘Let’s talk about the car. Where did he get that from? Was it stolen?’
‘It’s his dad’s. He borrowed it.’
‘He borrowed it? Are you suggesting his father gave him permission to use his car?’
If I said no, Ryan had stolen it. If I said yes, Ben was irresponsible too. I couldn’t win.
‘No,’ I said eventually. ‘But he has his licence back in the States.’
‘Does he have his licence here?’
‘No. But it was just along the coast road from Perran to Penpol Cove.’
‘Your parents died just driving along that same stretch of road. They nearly killed you too.’
I shut my eyes. We never talked about how my parents died. Or how close to dying I’d been.
‘I’ve spent the last ten years trying to keep you safe from boys like him.’
I said nothing. The rest of the conversation remained unspoken, but the message was loud and clear. Miranda had tried to keep me safe. Miranda had taken care of me even though she was only twenty herself when my parents died. Miranda had abandoned her law degree and dream of becoming a lawyer to take care of her six-year-old niece. Miranda had a string of failed relationships and no children of her own because she had sacrificed her own future so that she could take care of mine. And I had let her down.
‘I’m sorry I upset you,’ I said quietly. ‘I’m sorry I let you down.’
‘I’m disappointed,’ she said quietly. ‘I’m going to have to think about Saturday night.’
‘What do you mean?’ My voice shook.
‘I’m not sure I can trust you to go to the ball with your friends. I’m not so old that I don’t remember what happens at the leavers’ ball. I know there’s alcohol and parties afterwards.’
‘I won’t drink anything,’ I said. ‘And Megan’s parents are paying for a limo to drive us.’
‘I’ll have to think about it.’
I poured myself a large glass of water and went out of the kitchen door into the back garden. The purple sky from earlier was now a deep, endless black and the faint stars were turning on and slowly brightening, like a chain of fairy lights. I went over to the picnic table in the middle of the lawn and lay down on it so that the whole black canvas of night was stretched above me. Instinctively I scanned the sky for Cassiopeia, the reassuring w-shape that reminded me the universe was not an empty swirling mass of chaos. I scanned my eyes across the sky to Perseus and Algol, the winking star that was a sun – three suns – to Eden. Home. Ryan’s home. About to become the best-kept secret in the universe.
‘It’s beautiful, isn’t it?’ said a quiet voice.
Travis. I sat up on the table. He flicked open his lighter and held the flame to the end of his cigarette.
‘Spectacular,’ I said. ‘Do you know any of the constellations?’
‘The Big Dipper,’ he said, pointing up at the sky. ‘Everyone knows that one. And there’s Polaris, the North Star. That’s about it though. What about you?’
‘I only know a couple. You see that w? That’s Cassiopeia. And that over there is Algol, the demon star.’
Travis chuckled. ‘Between us we know half the sky.’
‘Did you know that Algol looks like one star, but actually it’s three?’ I asked.
‘How do you know that?’ Travis inhaled deeply on his cigarette.
‘Someone told me,’ I said. I gazed at the sky. Sea mist was heading swiftly inland. In a few minutes the stars would be hidden from view. ‘I wonder if there’s anyone out there, lying in the garden and looking up at the stars and maybe looking at our sun, wondering if there’s anyone out there looking up at the sky and wondering . . .’
‘How much did you drink?’ Travis interrupted. ‘Or are you high?’
I giggled. ‘Stone cold sober. Although from Miranda’s response you’d think I’d spent the afternoon turning tricks on the high street so I could get my next fix.’
‘Did she rip you a new one?’ he asked.
I smiled. ‘You could say that.’
He perched himself on the seat. ‘She’ll calm down. She’ll let you go. I’ll speak to her.’
‘I have to go. Ryan is leaving on Saturday night after the ball. He’s going home and this is my last chance to see him.’
‘You really like this boy.’
It wasn’t a question.
‘I like him more than I can put into words.’ Somehow the darkness made it easier to say.
‘He’s from New Hampshire, right?’
‘Right.’
‘The world is not so big, Eden. You’ll stay in touch.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘It’s complicated. I can’t explain why. But I know I’ll never see him again after Saturday.’
‘Oh, Eden,’ he said sadly. ‘I really am sorry to hear you say that.’
Chapter 14
As I made my way down the lane to Ryan’s house with my hair caught in the branches of the sapling in my arms, I began to regret choosing a tree as my gift to Ryan. Earlier that morning it had seemed a perfect choice – something that would last as long as the distance between us. Now it just seemed designed to ensure that I looked a mess. My hair was tangled, my arms covered in dirt and I could feel a trickle of sweat run down my back.
‘Wow, a walking forest!’ Ryan laughed as I approached. ‘What’s this? Birnam wood approaching Dunsinane? Have you come to defeat me? To prove once and for all that you can’t escape your fate?’
‘Umm, help?’ I replied, attempting to untwist a length of hair from one of the branches.
The smell of lemons filled the air around me as Ryan gently untwisted my hair and took the tree from my arms.
‘So what’s this all about?’ he asked, a smile making his eyes twinkle.
‘A gift,’ I said. ‘The gardener at the nursery promised me that this tree will last over a hundred years and produce a healthy crop of juicy apples each year. I thought we could plant it today and then when you get back home . . .’ I swallowed as my words threatened to catch in my throat. ‘When you get home it will still be there, an old, crabby tree, full of apples. You can see what’s become of it.’
‘Is it indigenous?’ he said, placing the tree on the ground. He smiled up at me, a big, happy smile that contained none of the barely concealed grief behind my shaky smile.
‘What do you think? Come on, let’s choose a spot.’
Now I was no longer trapped in a splay of branches, I could see that the only car in the driveway was Ryan’s.
‘They’re meeting with a lawyer in town,’ he said, following my eyes. ‘They won’t be back for a while.’
He winked ironically, but I was used to his flirtations by now and knew they were entirely innocent.
Ryan carried the sapling over one shoulder as we strolled across their vast lawn.
‘How was Miranda?’ he asked.
‘As expected. Disappointed in me.’
Ryan laughed.
‘She didn’t have anything good to say about you either.’
‘But she let you come and spend the day with me?’
‘She’s at work. She doesn’t know I’m here.’ I held up my phone. ‘And I’ve switched my phone off so she can’t reach me.’
Ryan fetched a shovel and began digging a deep hole in the middle of the lawn. His muscles bunched and lengthened as he effortlessly scooped out the earth and piled it to one side. He was just about to lower the roots of the apple tree into the hole, when I stopped him.
‘Why don’t we bury something underneath the apple tree?’
‘Like what? A body?’
‘How about a time capsule?’ I said.
‘What do we put in a time capsule?’
‘We did one at school once,’ I said. ‘To celebrate one hundred years of Perran School. It’s supposed to be buried for another hundred years. We put all sorts of things in it. Headlines from newspapers, a photo of the school staff, another one of the student body. A school tie, the school newspaper.’