Mum looks a bit chastened. ‘Oh,’ she says at last. ‘Well . . . ninety-five! That’s great! Well done!’
‘Out of a thousand,’ says Frank, then adds, ‘Joke. Joke.’
He grins at me, and I try to smile back, though my stomach is churning. All I can think is: Three o’clock. Three o’clock.
We’ve stuck to the meeting place in Starbucks, even though the Lawtons have been constantly texting, wanting to change it to a ‘more conducive location’ and offering their own house or a hotel suite or a room at Izzy’s counsellor’s office. Yeah, right.
Frank has been in charge of all the correspondence. He’s brilliant. He’s batted away all their suggestions in a way that could totally be Dad, and refused to give them an alternative email address, which they keep asking for, and texted in exactly Dad’s style.
It’s actually quite funny. I mean, they have no idea it’s just us, two kids. They think Dad and Mum are coming. They think this is a big family meeting. They hope it will be ‘cathartic for all’, according to their last text.
As for me, I can’t believe I’m going to see Izzy again. It’s going to happen. The big showdown. I feel like I’m a spring that is slowly coiling up and up, tensing, waiting . . .
Only seven hours to go.
And then suddenly it’s seven minutes to go and I truly feel sick. My head is pounding – not with a headache, but with a kind of impending, heightened sense of reality. The street seems brighter than normal, somehow. Noisier. Rawer.
Frank’s bunked off school early, which is OK because exams are over, so all they do in lessons is watch ‘educational’ DVDs. He’s walking along with me, chatting about what happened in assembly this morning when someone brought their pet rat in and let it go. I half want to snap, ‘Shut up! Let me think!’ and I’m half grateful for the distraction.
I’m wearing jeans and a black T-shirt and black trainers. Serious clothes. I have no idea what Izzy will wear. She was never a particularly cool dresser; that was Tasha. I even half wonder if I’ll recognize her. I mean, it wasn’t that long ago, but it feels a whole lifetime.
But of course I do recognize her, instantly. I see them through the glass before they see us. The mother, the father, both looking anxious, but doing that fake-smile thing. And her. Izzy. She’s in some childlike T-shirt with pink ribbon edging, and a pretty skirt. What’s that all about? I want to laugh. But . . . I can’t.
I can’t smile either. It’s like all my powers are slipping away, one by one.
As I step inside the coffee shop, I know I can’t speak either. My insides have turned hollow. Just like that, in an instant. All the inner strength I’ve been building up, the tensed-up spring, the fighting talk . . . it’s all disappeared.
I feel small and vulnerable.
No, not small. I’m taller than her. I still have that. I’m tall.
But vulnerable. And speechless. And now they’re all looking our way. I squeeze Frank’s hand in silent desperation and he seems to get the message.
‘Hello,’ he says briskly, heading towards their table. ‘Let me introduce myself. Frank Turner. You must be the Lawtons.’
He holds out his hand but no one takes it. Both Izzy’s parents are looking him up and down in bewilderment.
‘Audrey, we were expecting your parents,’ says Mrs Lawton.
‘They were unavoidably detained,’ says Frank without blinking. ‘I am the family representative.’
‘But—’ Mrs Lawton looks flustered. ‘I really think your parents should— We understood this would be a family meeting—’
‘I am the Turner family representative,’ Frank repeats adamantly. He pulls out a chair and we sit down opposite them. The Lawtons look at each other anxiously and make little mouthing gestures and raised-eyebrow signals, but after a while they quieten down and it’s clear that the conversation about parents is over.
‘We bought some bottles of water,’ says Mrs Lawton, ‘but we can get some teas, coffees, whatever?’
‘Water is fine,’ says Frank. ‘Let’s get to the point, shall we? Izzy wants to apologize to Audrey, yes?’
‘Let’s put this in context,’ says Mr Lawton heavily. ‘We, like you, have gone through some pretty hellish months. We’ve asked ourselves Why? over and over. Izzy has asked herself Why? too. Haven’t you, darling?’ He looks gravely at Izzy. ‘How could such a thing happen? And, in a way, what did happen and who, in actual fact, was at fault?’
He presses a hand to Izzy’s, and I look at her properly for the first time. God, she looks different. She looks like an eleven-year-old, I suddenly realize. It’s kind of disturbing. Her hair is in a ponytail with a little-girl bobble and there’s the infantile ribbony T-shirt going on, and she’s looking up at her father with huge baby eyes. She’s wearing some kind of sickly strawberry lip gloss. I can smell it from here.
She hasn’t given me a single glance this whole time. And her parents haven’t made her. If I were them, that’s the first thing I would do. Make her look at me. Make her see me.
‘Izzy has been through a pretty tough journey.’ Mr Lawton continues on what is clearly a prepared speech. ‘As you know, she’s homeschooled for now, and she’s undergone a fairly rigorous programme of counselling.’
Snap, I think.
‘But she’s finding it hard to move on.’ Mr Lawton clutches Izzy’s hand, and she looks imploringly up at him. ‘Aren’t you, darling? She unfortunately suffers from clinical depression.’
He says it like it’s a trump card. What, are we supposed to applaud? Tell him how sorry we are – Wow, depression, that must be horrible?
‘So what?’ says Frank scathingly. ‘So’s Audrey.’ He addresses Izzy directly. ‘I know what you did to my sister. I’d be depressed if I were you too.’
Both Lawtons inhale sharply and Mr Lawton puts a hand to his head.
‘I was hoping for a more constructive approach to the meeting,’ he says. ‘Perhaps we could keep the insults to ourselves?’
‘That’s not an insult!’ says Frank. ‘It’s the truth! And I thought Izzy was going to apologize? Where’s the apology?’ He pokes Izzy’s arm and she withdraws it with a gasp.
‘Izzy has been working with her team,’ says Mr Lawton. ‘She’s written a piece which she would like to deliver to Audrey.’ He pats Izzy on the shoulder. ‘Izzy devised this in one of her poetry workshops.’
Poetry? Poetry?
I hear Frank snort and both Lawtons look at him with dislike.
‘This will be hard for Izzy,’ says Mrs Lawton coldly. ‘She is very fragile.’
‘As we all are,’ says Mr Lawton, nodding at me and making a face at his wife.
‘Yes, of course,’ says Mrs Lawton, but she doesn’t sound convinced. ‘So we ask you to listen to her piece in silence, without comment. Then we can move into the discussion phase of the meeting.’
There’s silence as Izzy unfurls a wad of A4 pages. She still hasn’t looked at me properly. Still.
‘You can do it, Izzy,’ whispers her mother. ‘Be brave.’ Her father pats her hand and I see Frank make a barf gesture.
‘“When the Darkness Came”,’ says Izzy in a trembling voice. ‘“By Isobel Lawton. It came on me, the darkness. I followed when I should not. I acted when I should not. And now I look back and I know that my life is a twisted knot . . .”’
OK, if they paid good money for this poetry workshop, they were done.
As I listen to the words, I’m waiting for some strong, visceral reaction. I’m waiting for some part of me to rise up and hate her or attack her or something. I’m waiting for the big moment; the confrontation. But it’s not coming. I can’t get traction. I can’t feel it.