I said, no location.’
Henry touches Leila’s shoulder gently, and for a fleeting moment, Jake’s stomach flips over in pure jealousy. ‘Sure about this?’ he asks.
‘Yes.’ She holds her dad’s gaze, her lips pursed.
‘Okay, then.’ His fingers twitch, as if he too is aching to read the letter.
‘All right.’ Ray pushes himself from his chair and heads towards the back door. ‘Why don’t you start eating while I go and look?’ he suggests, before walking into the house.
Father and daughter glance down at the birthday cake, and Leila shakes her head. Jake wonders if she’s too nervous to eat. She starts twirling the ends of her purple and red ponytail around her fingers, over and over, and Jake knows he’s right.
A minute later, Ray reappears clutching a white rectangular envelope. There’s handwriting on the front, but Jake’s too far away to see what it looks like. Taking the letter out, he holds it toward Leila before moving to hover over her left shoulder. Henry rises to stand next to his father-in-law.
Leila unfolds the paper. Her eyes moving from left to right, she reads its slowly, mouthing the words. Her face screws up and a single tear rolls down her cheek. ‘Not ready to come home yet?’ she shouts, throwing the letter onto the mown lawn and stamping on it with her high-top trainer. ‘She’s had long enough. She’s the most selfish person ever. That’s it. I don’t want anything to do with her!’
Twirling around, she flees into the house before Henry or Ray can react. But Jake’s already scrambling down off the roof, sliding in through his bedroom window with little regard for the skin scraped off his back, flying down the stairs into the lounge. He wants to make sure she’s okay, having forgotten about his black eye and other injuries.
Even though he’s sometimes jealous of her, she’s helped him and he’d like to think they’re friends. Yanking the net curtain back from the window, he sees Leila throw herself against the door of her dad’s van, scrabbling for the handle, sobbing. Henry follows her out, reaching for her.
Just as he does, a heavy hand clamps down on Jake’s shoulder. ‘There you are, son,’ Terry says.
The Shell Charm & The Book Charm
Frowning as the teacher scrawls famous Lady Macbeth quotes across the whiteboard in blue marker pen, I absentmindedly fiddle with the new charm that arrived this morning. With a solemn nod, Dad slid the envelope across the breakfast table towards me. For a moment I thought it was from him. However, when I sliced open the envelope with a butter knife, it contained a curled-up silver conch shell with a swirly pink interior, tiny and so very cute, with a typed note. Happy Homecoming. It was on the tip of my tongue to ask how Mum knows we’ve moved back to Bournemouth and if that’s the case why doesn’t she just visit, but Dad stood up abruptly and left the room.
As he was closing the front door, he called over his shoulder he’d see me in time for dinner, and to try to be good at school, leaving me and my grandad staring at each other over my cornflakes and his marmalade on toast. The silence between us before I got up and tossed the dregs of my cereal and milk into the bin was uneasy. I’ve only seen him a handful of times since we moved away, and I never knew him that well when Mum lived with us.
I was probably a bit snappy with him as I pulled on my forest-green school blazer over my striped blouse and said I had to go, but what do people expect? I didn’t ask for this. It wasn’t my choice. I didn’t want to be transplanted, taken away from everything I know. Again. I still can’t believe Dad made me move back here. Although it isn’t his fault Ray’s ill, and coming back to look after him is the right thing to do, did we really have to move in with him? Every time I catch sight of the peeling red front door of our old house, the gaping tiled roof, or the weed-choked garden, it makes me wince. Even so, I can’t stop looking. It’s like a scab you shouldn’t pick but do anyway, even though you know it’ll leave a scar.
I wonder if Jake still lives there. I’ve not seen him since that half-term we spent together, which seems like a lifetime ago now.
I also wonder if Eloise – or anyone else I might recognise – will be at this school. Despite our promises to be best friends for ever, Eloise and I didn’t keep in touch after I left. Still, there’ve been moments over the years when I’ve thought about her, wondering how she is.
Now, flexing my toes inside my new black flats, heels stinging and rubbed raw by the walk to school, I tune out the teacher droning on about the core themes of Shakespeare’s play. Instead, I focus on the music playing in my left ear through an earphone hidden by my long hair. I’ve been listening to ‘This Love’ by Maroon 5 on loop since it came out at the beginning of the summer and haven’t tired of it yet. We covered Macbeth at my old school last term, so I know it back to front and sideways and don’t need to hear it again. Besides, I found sketching pictures of the witches more interesting than the tragedy, greed, and madness of the story.
‘Miss Jones, am I boring you?’ Mr Strickland’s sarcasm booms and bounces off the walls.
His tone annoys me. Lifting my chin, I raise one eyebrow, careful to tuck the earphone wire out of sight. ‘I’m not sure. Are you boring yourself yet?’ There are titters around the room, along with the sound of pupils shifting in their seats to watch the drama unfold.
The teacher’s nostrils flare as he straightens his back, his salt-and-pepper hair sitting on his forehead in an old-fashioned 50s-style wave. ‘Don’t be so rude. Pay attention and contribute, or else you can stay back for detention today and explain to the head teacher why you feel you’re above getting a good education, and why,’ his eyebrows draw together, ‘you feel you’re entitled to disrupt the lesson for all your classmates.’
‘I’m happy to explain to the head that you can’t keep me in for a DT today because you need to properly notify a parent in advance to keep a child back after school,’ I respond flatly, intimately familiar with school rules and regs after the last fourteen months, feeling the burn on my lower back itch at the thought. ‘Plus, I hardly think the head would be interested in my first offence on my first day, do you?’
He sucks in a breath, a puce flush washing up his neck into his face. ‘It’s because it’s your first day here you should be trying your best to—’
The smallish, dark-haired boy behind me, whom I only gave a cursory glance to when I rushed in late at the start of lesson, clears his throat.
The teacher’s face tightens. ‘Is there something you want to add, Mr Harding?’
‘Nah, I just wondered whether we could get on with it now? Lady M is kind of hot for a homicidal chick and I wondered whether there are any sex scenes.’
‘For God’s sake—’ Mr Strickland shakes his head as the class explodes with laughter. ‘You know, for someone who’s been held back for failure to academically achieve, despite being one of the oldest in your year group, you always have a lot to say for yourself, don’t you?’ The teacher marches down the aisle between the rows of laminated tables.
‘Yeah,
