‘That’s what siblings do,’ said Frances, seeing a flash of her own sister’s pursed lips.
‘We had this thing where if the fight got really bad we’d stop talking to each other and it was like a competition to see who would talk first, and the person who talked first was kind of saying sorry without saying sorry, if you know what I mean, so I didn’t want to be the one to talk first.’ She looked at Frances as if she were telling her something truly terrible.
‘I used to have a very similar arrangement with my first ex-husband,’ said Frances.
‘But I could tell there was something not quite right with him,’ said Zoe. ‘That week. I could tell. But I didn’t ask him. I didn’t say anything. I just ignored him.’
Frances kept her face neutral. There was no point saying, You mustn’t feel responsible. Of course she felt responsible. Denying her regret would be like denying her loss.
‘I’m so sorry, darling.’ She wanted to envelop the child in a big, probably unwelcome hug but she settled for placing a hand on her shoulder.
Zoe looked over at her mother. ‘I’ve been so angry with him. It felt like he did it on purpose just to make me feel bad forever, and I couldn’t forgive him for that. It just felt like the meanest, cruellest thing he’d ever done to me. But last night . . . this sounds stupid, but last night, it felt like we talked again.’
‘I know,’ said Frances. ‘I talked to my friend Gillian, who died last year. And my dad. It felt different from a dream. It felt so vivid. It felt realer than real life, to be honest.’
‘Do you think maybe we really did see them?’ There was so much tremulous hope in Zoe’s face.
‘Maybe,’ lied Frances.
‘It’s just, I was thinking how Masha said that after her near-death experience she realised there was this other reality, and I just thought . . . maybe we sort of accessed it.’
‘Maybe,’ said Frances again. She didn’t believe in alternate realities. She believed in the transcendent power of love, memory and imagination. ‘Anything is possible.’
Zoe lowered her voice so much that Frances had to lean in close to hear. ‘I feel like I’ve got him back now, in a weird sort of way. Like I could text him if I wanted.’
‘Ah,’ said Frances.
‘I don’t mean I will text him,’ said Zoe.
‘No,’ said Frances. ‘Of course not. I understand what you’re saying. You feel like you’re not fighting anymore.’
‘Yeah,’ said Zoe. ‘We made up. I used to always be so relieved when we made up.’
They sat in silence for a few comfortable minutes and watched the lock pickers crouched down next to the door.
‘By the way, I forgot to tell you: I read your book during the silence,’ said Zoe. ‘I loved it.’
‘You loved it?’ said Frances. ‘Really? It’s fine if it wasn’t your cup of tea.’
‘Frances,’ said Zoe firmly, ‘it was my cup of tea. I loved it.’
‘Oh,’ said Frances. Her eyes stung, because she could see that Zoe was telling the truth. ‘Thank you.’
chapter forty-eight
Zoe
She lied. The book was so, so sappy.
She had finished it yesterday morning (there was nothing else to do here), and it was fine, she kept turning the pages, but you knew from the very beginning that the girl would end up with the guy, even though they hated each other at first, and that there would be trials and tribulations but it would all work out fine in the end, so what was the actual point of reading it? There was one part where the girl fainted into the guy’s arms, which, like, was romantic or whatever, but did anyone ever really faint in real life? And if they did, was anyone ever really there to conveniently catch them?
Also, where was the sex? It took, like, three hundred pages to get to the first kiss, and the book was called Nathaniel’s Kiss.
Zoe preferred books about international espionage.
‘I thought it was a fantastic book,’ she told Frances, perfectly poker-faced. Your country is depending on you, Zoe.
‘Maybe you’re still high,’ said Frances.
Zoe laughed. Maybe she was. ‘I don’t think so.’
She couldn’t believe she’d got high with her parents. That had been the freakiest part of the whole experience. The fact that her mum and dad were there with her. Whoa, she kept thinking. There’s Mum. Whoa. There’s Dad. Worlds collided with volcanic sparks and supersonic booms.
She felt like she could spend the rest of her life remembering everything that happened last night. Or it could all disappear. Either way was possible.
But one thing that wouldn’t change when she left here was her mother’s revelation.
She and her mother had barely spoken to each other this morning. Right now she was doing sit-ups, although Zoe noticed that she was doing them with less . . . aggression than usual. In fact, as Zoe watched, she stopped and lay flat on her back with her hands on her stomach, staring at the ceiling.
All these years Zoe had longed for someone to blame other than herself. After Zach died, she’d been through all of his technology: his phone, his email accounts, his social media. She wanted to find evidence that he’d been bullied, that there was something going on in his life which was nothing to do with her that could explain his decision. But there was nothing. Her dad had done it too. He’d met up with every single one of Zach’s friends, interviewing them, trying to understand. But nobody understood. All his friends were devastated, as baffled as his family.
Now it seemed possible that there was nothing going on in the outside world. It was all in his head. It was the effects of the asthma medication making him temporarily lose his mind.
Maybe. She would never know for sure.
Her mother’s revelation didn’t exonerate Zoe, but it did give her someone with whom to share the blame. For just a moment, she allowed herself the pleasure of hating her mother. Her mother should not have let him take those stupid tablets. Her mother should have read that leaflet like a responsible mother. Like a mother with medical training.
But then she remembered the sound of her mother’s scream that morning and she knew she could never truly blame her.
It had been so wrong, and almost childish of her mother to keep this a secret, but that very childishness made Zoe feel better. For the first time ever, she saw her mother as just a girl: a girl like her who made mistakes, who screwed things up, who was just making it all up as she went along.
Yes, her mum should have read the leaflet about the side effects, just like Zoe should have gone into her brother’s bedroom when she saw him lying on his bed. She should have walked into his room, sat on the end of his bed, grabbed his gigantic foot, given it a shake, and said, ‘What’s wrong with you, loser?’
Maybe he would have told her, and if he had told her, and if he’d made it seem serious enough, she would have gone to her dad and said, ‘Fix it,’ and her dad would have fixed it. She looked at her dad, the only innocent one in their family, on his hands and knees peering at the lock. He’d get them out of here. He could fix anything given the opportunity. He just hadn’t been given the opportunity to fix Zach.
It wasn’t okay, it would never be okay, but it felt like hard knots in her stomach were loosening and she wasn’t resisting. Other times when she’d started to feel better, when she’d found herself laughing or even looking forward to something, she had immediately pulled herself up. She had felt as though getting better would be forgetting him, betraying him, but now it seemed like there might be a way to remember not just the times they fought, but also the times they laughed so hard their faces hurt, to remember the times they stopped talking, but also the times they talked, about anything and everything, to remember the secrets they kept from each other but also the secrets they shared.