“I would’ve looked after you,” he said a lot more fiercely than he intended. “If you’d asked me to, I would’ve run with you.”
She had that closed look that he recognized. The one that said she wasn’t going to let anyone in. Except Eddie Conlon, who she had sat with all day long on the bus. Never Charlie. Charlie was just for nighttime flirting and sex. During the day, he sat at the back of the bus and watched them with their heads together, talking nonstop. He wanted that with Violette.
“He’s my brother,” she said quietly. “And if you ever tell anyone that, I’ll do something to hurt you really bad, Charlie.”
Now he was confused.
“My mum had him in prison,” she said, and gave him a mumbled family history. She wasn’t facing him and he thought maybe she was crying.
“We’re tired,” she said eventually. “We need to sleep. Are your parents around?”
“They don’t come in here unless there’s a pretty good reason.”
Like an arrest. Or the principal telling them he wasn’t going back to school because cheating wasn’t part of its tradition.
“You people should lock your back doors,” she said. “Lots of weirdos around.”
“Violette,” he said. He wanted to see her face. “Turn around. Please.”
When she did he saw the angry tears in her eyes and they made them look like liquid black gold. The last time they had sex they came together. She’d been embarrassed after that and he remembered the way she hid her head in the crook of his throat. It was as if when they were rubbish at sex they had a better handle on their nonexistent relationship.
“Fionn said you’re heading north,” he said. “So why are you here?”
“I can’t believe you punched Kennington and Gorman for me,” she said, pressing her brow to his. It gave Charlie hope. “That’s why I’m here.”
“I can’t believe he wore a Chelsea hoodie to do it,” Eddie muttered. Charlie hadn’t noticed him removing the headphones.
“It was good thinking,” Charlie said. “I got to smash them one, and put Chelsea fans in the bad books at the same time.”
“I had to wear an Arsenal beanie the other day,” Eddie said.
“You’d have to kill me before I’d wear an Arsenal beanie.”
They all slept in Charlie’s bed that night. When he heard Eddie’s snore he tried to kiss her, but she just pointed to her brother and shook her head. She did let him hold her hand, and they whispered all night.
“Do you want to know why I’m going to be a doctor?” she asked in the early hours of morning, her voice drowsy.
“No. Why?”
“So I can save twenty-three people. And make things right.”
“I can’t believe you hid them in our house!” his mother is saying now, still staring around his room.
“Why would you think that?”
“Look at this room! Just look at it,” his mother repeats as if no one heard the words bellowed in the first place. Sometimes the Reverend Crombie forgets she isn’t standing at the pulpit of a half-empty church. “I’ve never seen it so clean!”
Charlie is irritated that she’s worked it out so quickly. “Violette made me clean it,” he mutters.
“Oh please. Don’t let me have to like this girl.”
Bee’s father is standing there staring at him, as if that will make him reveal what he knows. And in a strange way, Charlie wants to. Because every morning when he listens to the news he expects to hear that Violette and Eddie have got themselves killed. Like that time they found the body in the Channel. Charlie was glued to his computer all that day, waiting for news.
Once they’re downstairs, Bee’s father tells Charlie to follow him out to his car.
“Where is she?” he asks when they’re out on the street.
“Don’t know. She’s not big on sharing her plans.”
“I think you’re keeping something from me, Charlie.”
“I don’t care what you think, Bish.”
“One day Violette will forgive you for telling me where she is,” Bee’s father says. “But she’ll never forgive herself if she puts Eddie’s life in danger.”
He gets into the car and shuts the door, and Charlie knocks at the window.
“I got a call from one of the journalists who was at the courthouse. Sarah Griffin. Griffith. She contacted me through the rectory.”
“What did she want?”
“Most of the others want to talk about Violette. This one says she’s going public about Eddie. Wanted to know if I had anything to say.”
“Did you have anything to say?” And Charlie can tell that Bee’s father knows exactly who Eddie is.
“Yeah, I told her to go fuck herself.”
Charlie walks back inside to where his mum and dad are watching Britain’s Got Talent. “You know the worst thing about the cheating, Charlie?” his mum asks just as he’s about to go back up to his room.
Charlie doesn’t want to talk about the cheating thing. It always brings tears to his father’s eyes.
“It’s that it makes me forget sometimes how decent you are deep down.”
Charlie shakes his head. “Some people are born decent. I have it thrust upon me.”
“They thrust you with decency?” his father asks.