I kept the threads of panic bound up in my throat. ‘Yup, I’m feeling much better.’
She rested her hand on my shoulder and I touched my head against hers. She smelt of lavender and peppermint. We went into the kitchen, both of us walking carefully on eggshells.
That night I lay awake in bed imagining a car rumbling down my street, every hour, like clockwork.
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE SHADOW IN THE GARDEN
I was lost in a thick dreaming fog when Nic’s voice floated into my consciousness.
‘Sophie?’
The sound perforated the vision, filling up the endless space around me.
‘Are you here?’
The Nic in my nightmare wasn’t speaking to me. He was standing, like he always did, over the dying figure of my uncle, as blood coated the floor beneath them. I was across the blackness, leaning over Luca, with my hands pressed tight against his torso. He looked the same as he always did, as I had come to remember him even in my waking moments – paper-white and utterly still. I knew every shadow on his face, the quirk of his lips, the length of his lashes. I stared at him every night in this dream while his blood lapped around my hands. When I tried to call out, the sound always vanished into a puff of nothingness. And Nic? Nic never spoke to me. He wasn’t speaking now, either. He wasn’t even facing me.
‘Sophie? I’m sorry, I know it’s late.’
But still, that voice, so insistent, so familiar … Where was it coming from?
‘Sophie?’
I sat up in bed, half expecting Nic to burst out of my closet. I grabbed my phone and flung open my curtains, peering into the garden. Below me, Nic was lit up by the sensor light above the kitchen window. He was waiting for me with all the innocence of someone who didn’t know any better. But Nic did know better, and being in my garden at 1.12 a.m. meant he was way out of bounds.
My window was already open. ‘Nic?’
I was still groggy with sleep, halfway between incredulity and reality, and my heart and my head were doing a thousand flip-flops a minute.
He raised his hands, palms facing outwards. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘I’m breaking all the rules.’
‘The only rule,’ I hissed back, conscious not to speak too loudly and wake my mother. Since she hadn’t shooed him out of the garden already, she wasn’t downstairs.
‘Come down?’ he said, his eyebrows lifting.
‘What’s happened?’ I asked, the dregs of sleep leaving me. ‘Has someone been hurt?’ A sea of possibilities rushed through my mind.
‘No,’ he said, lowering his voice to a less audible whisper. ‘It’s nothing like that. No one is hurt.’
I could almost hear the yet in the pause that followed.
‘Oh.’ I hadn’t realized how hard my heart had been thumping until it dulled again. ‘Then what is it? What’s going on?’
His smile was tight. ‘Can you just come down, please? I’m starting to feel self-conscious.’
I knew I shouldn’t. That was a no-brainer. But it’s hard to avoid something when it’s right in front of you …
‘Stop weighing it up, Sophie. Just come down, I have to talk to you.’
His expression, steeped in moonlight, held a level of anxiety I hadn’t come to associate with Nic. He was rattled. Something had happened.
‘Fine,’ I conceded, curiosity and something else – something mutinous – pushing me from the window. ‘But only to see that you’re all right.’
I grabbed the switchblade and shoved it in the pocket of my sweatpants. It settled me, and as I descended the stairs with light footfall I relaxed in the feeling of it thumping against my leg.
The night was surprisingly cold. Now that I was close to Nic I could see just how jumpy he really was. There were rims of darkness underneath his eyes, and he shuffled uncomfortably on his feet as we stood apart from one another.
‘What’s going on?’ I asked.
‘I miss you,’ he said in one long, heavy sigh. ‘I hate not knowing what you’re doing or if you’re OK … after everything that happened. It doesn’t feel right.’
The more I studied him, the more dishevelled he appeared. His hair was more messy than tousled, curling strands brushing across his forehead and dipping into his eyes. There were days of stubble shadowing his jawline. ‘This is what we agreed,’ I said softly. ‘This is the right thing.’
The only thing.
‘I don’t like it, Sophie,’ he repeated. ‘There should be another way.’
How easily he could compartmentalize everything – separate the girl he wanted from the family she came from. For me, everything came in one big jumble. ‘There isn’t another way,’ I told him. ‘And if there was, it probably wouldn’t be the right one. You can’t just come around here, Nic. It makes it harder for both of us.’
He was scrutinizing me. Eventually he dropped his shoulders and his fists went limp at his sides. ‘So this is really what you want?’
I knew I should say ‘yes’, but somehow I couldn’t. ‘I don’t know,’ I told him truthfully. ‘I just know I don’t want to be afraid any more. I don’t want my mother to be afraid either …’