Where the Memories Lie

 

Plenty of men have affairs with younger women.’

 

‘Dad wouldn’t have had an affair with his own son’s girl-friend! He loved us. He would have never done something to hurt us.’

 

‘But I remembered something she said to me at the time and I thought she was talking about Chris, except now I think she was actually talking about Tom.’

 

‘What did she say?’

 

‘She implied they’d had sex, but Chris says he never slept with her after they split up. She was talking about someone who was with us at the pub that jazz night before she left. Now I think she meant Tom.’

 

‘That’s ridiculous!’

 

‘Is it? He could’ve been secretly sleeping with her. After all, he’d been involved in a relationship with Georgia before without anyone knowing.’

 

‘Katie always was a troublemaker. I never knew why you liked her so much. She was sly and lied and she even stole stuff from Nadia’s room when she was here seeing Chris. Did you know that?’

 

‘What?’

 

126

 

Where the Memories Lie

 

‘Look, I know she was your best friend and everything, but it’s true. When Katie first started going out with Chris, Nadia didn’t think anything of it. Little things would disappear from her room and she just thought she’d misplaced them, or Dad had moved them when he was tidying up. But then it was bigger things. Sometimes Dad would give her her weekly pocket money and she’d leave it on her dressing table, but then later she’d discover a couple of pounds missing. Or she’d look for some clothes that she hadn’t worn for ages and they’d be gone. And jewellery, too. Then she worked it out that it always happened after Katie had been in the house visiting Chris.’

 

A vivid memory flashed into my head of Katie and me when we were about sixteen. My mum had given us a lift into Dorchester to spend my Christmas money and we were in a new trendy shop that had just opened, trying on piles of outfits in the changing rooms. It was a Saturday and madly busy. The staff were harassed at the tills with a long queue and hadn’t had time to take out the discarded clothes left in the changing rooms by shoppers who didn’t want their selected items. Katie went into her cubicle with a couple of dresses and a pair of jeans while I took the one next to her with a few skirts and a new bra in hand. We took our time, slipping in and out of the cubicles as we got changed into our new items and parading them up and down the centre of the room for each other in front of the mirrors, doing a bizarre walk that was supposed to make us look like a couple of catwalk models but really made us look like we both had one leg shorter than the other.

 

My stuff looked awful on me but the two dresses looked great on Katie. I asked if she was going to get them but she said she couldn’t afford to. I even offered to buy her one. I was sick of seeing her in the same old clothes all the time. Probably not as sick as she was, though, thinking about it now. She waved me off and said she didn’t 127

 

Sibel Hodge

 

like them that much, anyway, so it was no biggie. It wasn’t until we were on the bus on the way home that she opened her big handbag and showed me the dresses folded up into tiny bundles inside.

 

I was shocked, of course, but I just thought it was daring and brave of her. It was my rebellious streak coming out again. Yes, Katie could be a troublemaker and a live wire, but she was fun and wild and reckless and exciting, too. No one would stop her doing what she wanted. And anyway, didn’t most youngsters dabble in a bit of shoplifting? She justified it by saying that if the staff weren’t interested enough to try and stop people stealing, then why should she feel bad?

 

I shook the memory away and tried to question what Ethan had said, but I knew deep down it was the truth. ‘Was Nadia sure it was Katie? She never stole anything from me.’