Glamoured

Chapter 1

Sometimes, the way Emery eats his food makes me feel like throwing up. It’s not what he eats so much, although rare, bloody steak is not my idea of a good meal, it’s the way he attacks it, ripping it apart with his knife and fork like some ferocious animal that can’t wait to sink its teeth into the flesh, savouring every lick of his lips to make sure he doesn’t miss a drop. Think nature programme, wild open plains, lions, gazelles. If it wasn’t for his cute, boy-next-door looks, he might very well not be my boyfriend.

No, that’s not fair. It isn’t just his looks that attract me to him. It’s more than that. It’s familiarity and feeling comfortable, it’s the way he holds me close, it’s the fact that I can’t imagine ever being with anyone else, and, of course, that he’s in a band and every other girl I know wants to be where I am. Does that make me sound shallow? Actually, the last one’s a bonus. We were together way before the band.

How’s yours, Kait? Your nuts and beans tasty?

There is sarcasm in his voice, I’ll admit, but he’s never understood how I can be a vegetarian and not mind what he eats. I’m not vegan, because I seriously couldn’t do without dairy, but no animal flesh has ever passed my lips. It’s a family thing.

Everyone we know calls us chalk and cheese when we go out to a restaurant, as if food were the only way to judge the suitability of a relationship. So much so, that sometimes I want to … well, poking their eyes out in front of the other diners might be a little extreme, but you know what I mean.

As far as the rest of our lives are concerned, we’re not that different. We both grew up next door to each other, with the same friends. We went to the same school, and now, we attend the same university. Our parents are hardworking, what some people term middle class, but most of all, they’re normal, average, unremarkable — substitute boring.

We’re here, in the local steakhouse, rather than at the concert where my most favourite band ever are playing (okay, second most favourite), because of my parents. It wasn’t that they wouldn’t let me go, no, they’re not that boring, and I’m not that young. My parents are the kind who won’t lend me the money because, ‘I should’ve saved up from my Saturday job at the local supermarket if I wanted to spend forty quid on a ticket and another thirty getting there and back.’ As if I earn that much from my Saturday job. Life as a student is hard. Anyway, I could count the number of people of my age, that I know, who are what I would consider sane and who save money for what they need, on one finger. Teegan’s her name. She’s my best friend. She’s a trainee bank manager (ugh). She’s at the concert.

The steakhouse is okay, although the selection of dishes I can eat amounts to one. Their vegetarian speciality is a nut and bean risotto, served with my choice of chips, roast or boiled potatoes. Talk about carb overload. I always get the chips and treat them as my starter, dipping them in tomato sauce and pretending its sour cream and chives, or something with garlic. He hates it when I eat garlic, says it makes my mouth taste funny. He screws up his whole face after kissing my garlic-infused mouth, which is practically every time we go out. Makes me feel so loved.

You finished? says the waitress, with one of those plastered-on service grins decorating her face.

Yeah, thanks.

She takes my plate away while Emery stuffs his mouth full to bursting with what remains on his plate, in case she takes it away before he’s finished. He puts his knife and fork together, his cheeks stuffed hamster-style, and grinds away for a whole minute before he can speak again.

That is the second reason why he might very well not be my boyfriend.

Add an inch to your waistline, or get the bill? he says.

As if I’m going to say I want the pecan pie after that. I’m sure I don’t need to say that the third reason has just raised its ugly head. If it weren’t for food, we would be the perfect couple.

By the time we pay the bill, split strictly down the middle, because I love being broke, and get out the door, night has fallen. The sky’s one of those inky black ones, cloudless, where the stars scream at you to notice them whichever way you look. I like looking at the stars, not because it makes me realise how big the universe is, but because I like to imagine them all as tiny fireflies flitting around. I’m romantic like that.

You cold? he asks, putting his palm on my bare back.

No. And even if I am, I am, there’s no way I’m hiding my gorgeous shimmering, silver halter neck with a jacket. That stays firmly folded over my arm.

Want to go somewhere else? Emery asks, but we haven’t got any more money, or we’d have gone to the concert, so I shake my head. Want me to entertain you?

I can’t imagine what he’s thinking of doing, but I nod my head anyway, knowing that I’m probably committing myself to a moment of extreme embarrassment. I’m not wrong. He begins to prance around on his toes as if he’s doing a very bad version of Singing in the Rain, slapping his feet in the puddles from where it was raining earlier. It’s not that he can’t dance, but his best steps are the side-to-side shuffle, the back-and-forward shuffle, and the turn-me-around-in-a-circle slow dance, not a full-on, show-time spectacular.

He completes the routine with a wide swing round one lamppost, holding his arm out, pretending he’s holding an umbrella, stretching out into—

I’m not sure how loud my scream is, because it’s drowned out by the screech of the car brakes, a sickening thud and then the sounds of breaking glass and smashing wood. I can’t move my feet, even though Emery’s now ten metres further down the road. People are around us in seconds. Two groups. One each.

The car that hit him veered off to one side, crashing into another car and then careening further into the window of a sari shop. It’s draped in swathes of cloth like an exhibit at a car show.

After a few seconds, I force my legs to move, but it’s a shuffle more than a walk, the soles of my shoes scrape against the rough surface of the tarmac. It feels like an eternity before I reach where he lies on the ground, and when I do, I don’t want to look. I can tell from the faces of the people knelt by his side that it isn’t good.

Emery was lifted up into the air by the impact and landed hard. His arms and legs are posed like a mannequin that’s been put together incorrectly, limbs facing in opposite directions and at impossible angles. I steal a closer look, but my eyes lock in place and then I can’t turn them away. He’s not moving. His eyes are closed. There’s a man next to him checking for breaths, ear to mouth. He tries for a pulse. He looks up at the other faces, searching for an answer from someone with more knowledge, but we’re all searching for an answer from him.

I don’t know what to do, he says, I shouldn’t move him, but his breathing … I don’t think he is.

Conflicting snippets of medical advice flash through my brain. Don’t move the victim, they might have a broken neck or spine. To give mouth-to-mouth, lie the person on their back, tip their head back to open the airways. I understand his dilemma, but I don’t have an answer.

Just blow into his mouth, a woman at the back of the crowd shouts.

It seems like good advice, so he does it and Emery’s chest rises and falls like a different kind of mannequin. Annie, I think they call her. She only has a head and torso. Oh, God.

The meal I’ve just eaten rises from my stomach and lands on the coat of an elderly man who cannot get out of the way in time.

I’m sorry. I didn’t mean ….

He waves my apology away. I don’t think he knows what to say. I certainly don’t.

I know someone did call an ambulance, because I can hear a siren getting closer. I also know there are now arms around me, trying to comfort me, or hold me back, I’m not sure, but I don’t know who it is, because things are beginning to register fully in my brain and my eyes are so misted with tears that I can only see glimpses of what’s around me during the occasional lull in the flow. I thought I’d be better than this in an emergency. I thought I’d be practical and able to think clearly, not helpless and hopeless. Maybe I would be if Emery weren’t the victim. All I can think is that I should have told him to stop mucking around. I could see he was stepping in and out of the road. I knew he wasn’t really taking any notice of the traffic. We all have the talk about the high road-accident mortality rate when we’re kids. I thought I was an adult. I didn’t need this kind of reminder to tell me I’m not there yet.

Chapter 2

There’s one thing I know now that I didn’t know earlier. A journey in a fast-moving vehicle, with a siren blaring overhead, is not thrilling, or exciting, or in any way pleasurable like you imagine when you’re a little kid. It isn’t the thing I want to know. I want to know that Emery is all right, that his battered body has survived the trauma of being hit by a car and deposited on the road in an uncomfortable heap. The longer I wait, the less likely I think that is the thing I’m going to be told.

My parents are at the hospital, as are his. They’re the ones deep in conversation with the Accident and Emergency doctor, huddled around the bed where Emery’s pale form lies, in a tiny cubicle, hooked up to all manner of machines that must have some life-saving purpose, while I sit in a corridor trying to ignore the reality of what’s going on. There’s only one thing that gives me hope. If there wasn’t any chance, they wouldn’t waste time on the machines.

I check my phone constantly to see if Teegan’s got my message yet. It wasn’t anything awful I sent her, just ‘Please call me as soon as you can.’ The lack of a smiley face will tell her it’s serious. She probably turned her phone off when she went into the concert, and it doesn’t finish for another half hour. I don’t know how I’m going to tell her. I know she’ll feel guilty for not being here, and I don’t want that, but I do want her here. I want her to be squeezing my hand, telling me it’s all right, promising me he’s going to be okay. I want her to be offering me cups of coffee that I can refuse, and handing me a tissue to dry my eyes. I don’t want my parents to be walking toward me like that. I don’t.

Love, says Mum. She’s the one who takes my hand and sits down next to me with one of those looks on her face. She’s the one who tells me the truth.

Emery isn’t dead, not yet, but he will be when they turn off the machines. And they are going to turn off the machines.

I’m sure she tells me a lot more, because she continues to speak, but I can’t hear the words. It’s like my hearing is blurred as much as my vision. She’s tearing my heart out with nothing more than words. How can she do that?

Before I know what’s happening, she leads me across to where he lays and places my warm hand on his, cold, cold hand.

And I can hear again. Just one word out of the many.

Goodbye.

She wants me to say, goodbye.

But what about the life we were going to have together? What about that? Doesn’t that count for anything?

A tissue is pressed into my hand and she walks away. I wipe my eyes and my nos,e and I stare at Emery. His eyes, his cute, almost black eyes, look blank. His mouth, usually curled into a smile, is straight, neither happy nor sad — unfeeling, that’s what it looks like. His skin is even paler than usual. And the beautiful flicks in his dark locks hang limp around his face.

How can I say goodbye to someone who isn’t there anymore?

The beep, beep, beep of the heart monitor taps out a slow, easy rhythm beside me. I stare at it for a moment, watching the trace, and I know what to do. I pull the chair in close to the bed and sit down. I lean in toward his ear, I push the hair back from it, and, so softly that no one else can hear, I sing to him. I sing our song from beginning to end, the one that he wrote for me, so that the last thing he remembers is something happy, not sad. Afterwards, I kiss him gently on the lips and I leave. I walk out of the Intensive Care Unit, down two flights of stairs, through the automatic doors and sit on a bench, looking out onto a car park that’s only scattered with cars, because visiting hours are long gone.

I wait for someone to come and tell me that it’s over.

Chapter 3

It isn’t Teegan who knocks on my bedroom door at one in the morning, but I know she’s arrived at the house. It’s my mum, checking that I want to see my friend. I don’t blame her for asking. I’ve been crying for two hours solid and my throat is dry and hoarse. My eyes hurt as well, not so much from the crying itself, but from my constant dabbing at them with a tissue. I might as well not bother, because as soon as I’ve dabbed, they’re wet again. I wish I could dab at my insides. It feels like my heart is spilling its contents throughout my body.

Teegan comes in and gives me one of those half smiles. The kind you give when you’re not really smiling, but you need to make some kind of non-verbal acknowledgement of a greeting. I hold out my arms from where I’m slumped on my bed and she approaches me with a similar gesture. She sits down next to me and hugs me tight. It feels like my well of tears has instantly been replenished, but it’s good to have her here with me. We’ve been friends since we first went to secondary school and we’ve helped each other through lots of things. But nothing as bad as this.

It’s a long time before we speak, and then the first words we exchange are garbled rubbish. It doesn’t matter. We know what we mean. We always have. It’s like we have a sixth sense. I’ve sometimes wondered whether we might be twins separated at birth, apart from the fact that we look nothing like each other. Even non-identical twins have similarities. I’m what most people would call petite, the kind of person who can only see other people’s sweaty backs in a crowd, and she’d, rather unflatteringly, be referred to as outsize. I don’t mean fat, she’s not that, but everything about her is long. She has size nine feet, an oval face, she could see over a six-foot fence without standing on her toes, and watching her try to buy clothes that fit is like watching a cuckoo try to squeeze itself into a sparrow’s nest.

We go downstairs and make strong coffees, because I can’t stomach any food. It might be late, but neither of us is worried about the caffeine. We’re unlikely to be sleeping any time soon. My parents are still up. My mum has been crying, but not uncontrollably like me. She looks concerned. My dad is doing the stalwart thing, as usual. Trying to get him to show emotion is like squeezing out a dry flannel.

You staying, Teegan? Mum asks.

Yes, if that’s okay.

Of course, it is. She kisses me on the forehead. Well, don’t you two stay up too late. At least, try to get some sleep.

I nod, but we all know that’s not going to happen. When both of them go upstairs, Teegan says something I’m not prepared for.

Your mum said it’s going to be a burial.

It’s not like it’s a completely random thing, but I had no idea anyone had even talked about funerals yet. It seems too soon. It seems callous. It seems too practical for people who are grieving.

But what she has said isn’t a shock.

I know, I tell her. I realise it’s odd that I already know that, teenagers don’t usually talk about how they want their funerals to be, because none of us really expect to die, but Emery and I, we talked a lot, and it just came up one day. He said he’d discussed it with his parents, so it was only right that he should discuss it with me.

Oh. Why is that? I thought everyone got cremated these days, says Teegan.

She’s right. Most people do. For some reason, it’s considered greener.

No. He said he was terrified of being burned alive, and that was why he didn’t want to be cremated. I thought it was a bit odd at the time, but I guess his parents knew.

She nods.

It was odd. It’s all very well thinking you could be buried alive in a coffin, I believe it has happened, but if you started burning someone who was still alive, even if they couldn’t talk their body would twitch, I’m sure. Anyway, it doesn’t alter the fact that Emery wanted