The Girl I Used to Be(75)

“Who was that girl . . .” I imagined them saying. “That scruffy little redhead . . . Didn’t something happen to her? I can’t remember now what it was . . . Did she die or something?”

I blinked hard to stop the tears falling.

And then I gathered my courage and looked at the photos from the party that Jack had put on Dropbox.

I turned the iPad away from the sun. I could see which albums I’d viewed, and clicked on the next one. It was clear that Jack had run out of steam, or maybe even just run out of film, because of course it wasn’t a digital camera that he was using then. The last fifty or so photos were random ones rather than several at a scene. So there was a group of girls doing karaoke, then a photo of the fire pit with all the smokers sitting around with bottles of beer. Then there was Lauren, sitting in the hammock with Tom. I stopped at that one, remembering that I’d wanted to go home at that point, but Lauren had avoided my eyes. I could just about see the love bite on her neck; it looked at first like one of the pink flowers on her dress.

I steeled myself. Now I was about to see what happened while I was upstairs. There were people dancing on the patio, though I think they were just doing it for a laugh. Or at least I hoped so. The next scene was the kitchen. Jack must have been making his way back into the house. Lauren was in the kitchen now.

I remembered her telling me in the taxi going home that night that someone had tipped them out of the hammock and she’d got mud on her dress. I didn’t reply, didn’t say a word. I’d pretended to be asleep.

I got goose bumps as I realized that the photos I was looking at now were taken when I was upstairs.

In the first shot she was at the kitchen sink, splashing her face with water. Tom was holding her hair up and for a second I saw how much Jack had liked her, as the droplets of water splashed her face, her hair held aloft, giving her an air of grace that the love bite completely destroyed.

In the next shot she was sitting on Tom’s knee, her arm casually around his neck. How much had it hurt Jack to take that photo? And behind her, just about to walk out of the kitchen door into the hallway beyond was a young man. Not a boy. You could never have called him a boy.

This man was dressed in jeans and a Coral T-shirt. It was a T-shirt that was on sale in Glastonbury that summer. The same T-shirt that Alex had been wearing all evening.

It wasn’t Alex, though, who was leaving the room unnoticed by the crowd.

It was David.





FIFTY-SEVEN


    GEMMA


MY REACTION WAS so physical it was as though someone had thumped me in the chest. For a second or two, no matter how wide I opened my mouth, I couldn’t breathe. I put my head between my legs and tried to breathe, just as I had in the days and months, even, after that party. My parents were napping on their chairs on the deck and I could hear the distant sounds of Rory and his little friend as they splashed around.

And then it was as though the air burst out of me and with one huge gasp I started to hyperventilate.

“Mum!” Rory ran over to me and shook my arm. “Mum! What’s wrong?” He screamed, “Granny! Granny!”

I heard my mother gasp, then shout my dad’s name. She came running over to me, but all I could see was a blur.

“What is it, Gemma? What’s the matter?”

I was struggling to breathe again. My chest was tight and felt like a balloon was about to explode, but I just couldn’t get the air out.

I heard my dad in the kitchen, pulling open drawers, swearing under his breath, and then he was uncurling my fists and I could feel the rough rasp of a paper bag in my hands. He knelt in front of me, his eyes fixed on mine.

“Breathe into it, pet,” he said, and then I remembered him saying that all those years before and tears streamed down my cheeks. “Breathe in and let’s count. One, two, three, four. That’s right. Now breathe out. Come on, blow hard. As hard as you can. And look at me. Look at me!” He counted again and I watched his face intently. “You can do it. Come on, let’s count again.”

My mum was hovering in the background, trying to reassure Rory and Evie that I was okay. She made Rory pull out the plug of the paddling pool with the promise of a spa night later if he was good now, then sent him off to find the biscuit tin for both of them.

“I knew we shouldn’t have talked about it,” she kept saying. “It’s my fault. You never get over that sort of thing. I shouldn’t have asked her questions.”

I could see my dad didn’t know what she was talking about, but then something in him recalled this from the past, where he’d had to help me to breathe to cope with what happened. There was anger in his eyes, not at my mum or me, but fury that something that had happened to me, his only daughter, was still hurting me even fifteen years later.

Slowly, my eyes fixed on my dad’s, my breathing returned to normal. My mum was inside now with Rory, having packed Evie off home. When the panic attack was finally over, my dad got up and pulled up a chair next to mine.

“We’ll talk about it, Gem,” he said, “but not now. Have a rest and we’ll get Rory to bed. And if you’re not up to it tonight, don’t worry. You’re here for a few days. There’s plenty of time.”

My iPad had turned itself off while I was away from it. I couldn’t bear the thought of seeing that picture again, but at the same time I panicked in case I might lose it. I asked my dad to go and check that Rory was okay, and in the couple of minutes he was gone, I e-mailed it to myself on my private e-mail.