They had struggled back to the park, gaining attention from everyone they passed – walkers with their faces hidden by thick anoraks twisting awkwardly to stare, each gaze an accusation, as though they could all read the fresh secret she carried.
In hindsight, she had wondered if things would have been different if she had told him straightaway. There were a thousand moments she could have confessed the truth. On that track, the second he mentioned Fairbridge. Or when they reached the car park and realised Leo wouldn’t be able to drive himself home. Instead, she let him climb into her car and gave him a lift. She had parked outside a small restaurant at the southern end of town and helped him through the nondescript red door next to it, and up the stairs into his first-floor flat. Even as she knew she shouldn’t be there she asked him what he needed and collected ice from the freezer, trying not to absorb the surroundings, a trespasser into a life she shouldn’t be part of.
As he lay on the sofa she couldn’t bear it any more. She had lied, told him she had a shift that afternoon, apologised and said she should get back. When she was about to leave he had said, ‘Georgia,’ and beckoned her closer, and when he could reach her hand he had pulled her to him and kissed her and said, ‘Thank you. I’ll see you soon.’
For an instant it was Georgia and Leo again, and nothing and no one else. She had a short-lived swell of hope. Was there any way, despite what she had learned, that they could keep themselves separate from the rest of the world?
Once she was home, the day had passed in a jumble of realities. The emotions when she replayed Leo kissing her at the lake. The confusion she felt when she imagined him at school, taking a class, with Georgia surrounded by her friends. She saw the faces of Sophia and Bethany and Danny and Eddie Miles laughing hysterically at the thought of Georgia and a teacher out on a date. She relived Leo pulling her close and kissing her, and his obliviousness to the true scenario they had found themselves in made her feel sick.
She didn’t sleep. The next morning he sent her a text. His ankle was much better. Could he cook her a meal to say thank you for looking after him? Tonight?
She would go and tell him, she decided. She didn’t know why she dressed up for the occasion, choosing a silk top and short skirt and adding a few sprays of Dolce & Gabbana, as though she were heading out on a proper date. Or why she concealed her outfit under her coat as she told her parents she was heading for Bethany’s house, and might be late. Perhaps if she could just get to know him a little bit better, spend extra time with him. If she could be certain he was as in love with her as she already was with him – well, then surely they would plot together how to keep their secret rather than let it tear them apart. She was about to turn eighteen, not under age, and they had got to know each other in complete innocence, hadn’t they?
In order to think like this she had to shut out everybody else. There wasn’t space for imagining her parents’ reactions, or Sophia’s, or Zac’s, or people at school. At home she found it near impossible to escape a succession of imaginary chiding voices, but as she made her way to Leo’s flat it began to feel like only the two of them mattered.
He didn’t seem to worry that she was quiet over dinner. He talked a lot instead, telling her about himself, his family in Dorset, his first job in London where he’d been promoted year after year. How proud he was to have been head of department by the age of twenty-six. All things she knew she shouldn’t be hearing. All things she was desperate to know.
He was older than she had thought. But now she was here, she didn’t care. The seafood was delicious, and the wine had relaxed her. By the time they moved to the sofa she had begun to smile more, to laugh as they remembered the state of themselves by the time they got down from Loughrigg, to tell him about her own running ambitions – carefully, of course, since every piece of information had to be weighed now, so the secret didn’t come out accidentally, only when she was ready. When they were in so deep that it wouldn’t matter.