Remix. Part 29

KAZ.

For the first time since we arrived, I take something out of our food store. The excitement with which I planned our meals seems like a lifetime ago. The beans we'd bought, Ruby sneaking ones with hot dogs into the basket when she thought I wasn't looking, remain untouched. Just like the beef jerky that Ruby insisted "goes with everything" and has been eaten with nothing. Although when I look for it, I realize that's gone, like the person who bought it.

All I have to go on is a message she sent me late last night: Staying with a friend. R As if I no longer qualify. I'm a.s.suming that friend must be Stu, since that's the number from which the message was sent. I called back, but no one answered. Just as I'm free from Tom, Ruby's lost to Stu. The irony is painful.

Tipping my cornflakes into what I think is a camping bowl, I go through ten tiny cartons of UHT that Ruby stole from the coffee station at The Rock Shop before I get bored and eat the cereal mostly dry, sitting in the doorway of the tent, my toes in the cool gra.s.s. Above, the sky is lank and grey, suffocating us with stillness. The bunting that Owen put up is now flattened on the floor next to something that I pray is a dropped curry, but is more likely to be an unsavoury substance hurled from the pit of someone's stomach.

Someone unzips the tent opposite and Owen emerges.

There's no sign of Lee in the tent behind him.

"I'm going to get a coffee. Want anything?" he asks.

"A coffee as big as you can buy it. Milk no sugar."

"No sign of Ruby?"

I shake my head. Last night I texted him that I'd had a message from her and he'd replied saying that Dongle and Parvati had seen her and she'd looked tired but fine.

I swallow a particularly sharp mouthful of cornflakes. "What about Lee?"

"You can ask him yourself when he wakes up." Owen points at the girls' tent and there's a pause in which I acknowledge that this is not the time to ask. "Turned up looking for Ruby not long after you went to bed. I pa.s.sed on the message."

This strikes me as odd. When Ruby can't find me, she has always turned to Lee.

What happened last night?

Owen's left when there's a curse as someone narrowly avoids stepping in the curry (vomit) and stumbles into the middle of our camp.

RUBY.

"Hi," I say when Kaz looks up.

"Hi" is all I get in reply. She's eating cornflakes with a chip fork out of a pan meant for boiling on the stove.

"How are the cornflakes?" It's the only thing that springs to mind.

"Cornflakey. Would you like some?"

I wouldn't, but I suppose I've got to eat something and cereal seems like an easy place to start. Kaz sets about prepping a bowl/pan for me and I help by opening the milk and tipping it in. I seriously underestimated how much to bring. Or accurately estimated since we've not needed any milk until now.

"I'm sorry about last night," I say, letting the cereal soften slightly in the hopes I'll find it easier to eat.

"Me too," Kaz says. "Lauren had a panic attack in the crowd and we had to take her to the first-aid tent."

"Oh." That is not what I thought had happened. "Why didn't you say?"

"I did. Text. Call. You didn't answer, Ruby."

"Sorry. Battery died." And I was so caught up in the excitement of Wexler that I didn't even think to check. So sure that Kaz had simply wanted to be with Lauren more than me that I didn't think I needed to. "Is Lauren OK?"

"I think so." Kaz stabs her cornflakes a little viciously. "Tom's with her now, so..." She shrugs.

"Babysitting duties are over."

"Something like that."

Kaz looks at me, making me uncomfortably aware that I'm still poking at my cereal instead of eating it. I draw lines across the bowl, mentally dividing it into four manageable chunks and start on the first.

"Ruby. What happened?"

Hands running over bodies. Teeth on skin. Sobs that sounded like pleasure. The smell of sweat and alcohol and something chemical that I can't quite place.

I feel dirty and used and stupid.

"You look really upset. What did he do?"

I glance up sharply. How does she know?

"If Stu hurt you..."

I'm confused. "Stu hasn't done anything."

"You don't have to lie to me, Ruby."

I give up on my breakfast and put it down with relief. Holding it was tiring.

"Look." Kaz shuffles close enough that I can smell her deodorant, reminding me that I've got to get clean. "I know I've not been here for you the last couple of days, and I'm so sorry, but I'm here now."

KAZ.

Ruby isn't speaking. Even breathing seems hard and she's drawing in air like she's about to be sick, but I am not making yesterday's mistakes today.

When Ruby says nothing, it's because she doesn't know how to ask for help and if she's about to be sick, she'll have to hurl on my shoulder.

I reach in for a hug and Ruby flings her arms around me, clinging tight.

RUBY.

I don't care that Kaz is offering this hug for all the wrong reasons, to comfort me for something she thinks happened with Stu when it happened with someone else. Someone I don't think I will ever be able to admit to. I no longer want Kaz to make it real. I just want her to make it go away.

KAZ.

There's a tremor in her chest and I realize that Ruby's crying.

How do I handle this? Ruby never cries. She's the one who teases me for crying all the time at Hollyoaks, old people holding hands on the seafront, lost-pet posters, war poetry, Naomi deliberately bending the nib of my favourite fountain pen, John Lewis Christmas adverts the only time she ever cried at school was when she tripped running down to the hockey pitch and slid across the gravel on bare legs, her momentum broken when her face came into contact with Kirsten Turner's left boot.

"I'm so sorry I wasn't there for you, Ruby. No one should be able to do this to you. You're worth so much more than this."

As I say the words they sound like an echo of what my sister said. Even you can do better. I hope Ruby pays more attention to what I'm saying than I did to Naomi.

32 * IT'S GOING TO TAKE SOME TIME

KAZ.

Ruby insists she needs a shower, which sounds like a nice idea until I discover that the ones on-site are communal.

"You can take a leopard to a festival, but you can't make it wash its spots off in public," she teases me and I don't mind one bit because it's the first time I've seen her smile since yesterday. "Any chance you could top my phone up at the charging tent?"

She hands me her phone and glances at mine, which has been buzzing all the way here. I'm well aware who it is. So's Ruby.

"You should go and see him," she says so quietly that I'm convinced I've misheard. "I've been a d.i.c.k about you and Tom and Lauren and ... everything."

"You haven't." But we both know she has.

"You don't get to choose how you feel about someone, right?"

I worry anew about what happened with Stu, but there's time enough for that later. "I should go and see Tom. Sort things out."

"What kind of things?"

"I'll tell you later." I give her a hug. "Promise."

Tom's left a voicemail: "Meet me down by the coffee stalls at the bottom of the hill wherever you are, you can't be far away. We need to talk sooner rather than later. Before ... well, before we see each other in the arena."

I'm confused, but then I notice the message I've got from Lauren.

Thank you so much for taking care of me yesterday! Can't wait to see you later and get the gossip on Sebastian! x.x.x I wonder whether she's told Tom? Not that it's any of his business.

After dropping Ruby's phone off at the charging tent, I go and meet him.

He's sitting at one of the picnic tables set up by the largest cl.u.s.ter of food vans. For a second, I pause and look at him. Tom has been the person I've wanted for so long that it's hard to see what he really looks like sometimes. In my mind, everything I like about him is enhanced, the bits I'm not so convinced of glossed over and forgotten: the trousers that Naomi and Ruby find so hilarious that show half-an-inch too much of his socks; the way one corner of his permanently popped collar always wilts over; his habit of biting his cuticles until they bleed. He's doing it now and at the sight of it my nose wrinkles.

I think of Sebastian's calloused fingers, strong and slender, and the ease with which he slid them between mine.

When Tom turns this way the automatic a.s.sumption that I love him no longer feels true.

"I got you a coffee," he says when he sees me.

I take a sip and nearly dribble it back into the cup. "Is there sugar in this?" He nods and I frown. "When have I ever taken-"

Both of us realize at the same time that this is how Lauren takes her coffee and I carry it to the nearest bin and drop it in, not caring one little bit that Tom will hate to see it wasted.

We walk along the path until we're in the quiet of the woods, where the air is heavier and more stifling and we sit, side by side, on a fallen log. There's room for another person between us, even if she isn't here.

Tom starts. "Thank you for yesterday."