Page 21 of The Fall I Fell

Jacob braked a little harshly at my question and we both jolted forward with the motion.

‘Sorry,’ he muttered, cheeks reddening. ‘Erm, a bit. You know, who’s making tea, or who has to force Alfie to put his pants on in the morning, the normal stuff. Why, do yours?’

‘Yeah, sometimes,’ I confessed. ‘Do you think your parents really love each other?’

‘I mean, they’re always snogging in the kitchen.’ Jacob pulled a face. ‘It should be illegal for old people to do that in front of anyone. But I’d say they love each other, yeah. I can’t imagine them being apart from each other.’

I knew the answer before I asked the question. Sian and Dave Thorogood always reminded me of Granny and Grandad; they bickered like their lives depended on it, and yet you could tell in every look, every cup of tea made, every smile shared in between moments of chaos, that they were a team, that they were in love.

Many a time I questioned why I too couldn’t have been raised on Hope Farm, surrounded by parents who actually enjoyed one another’s company, or actually enjoyed my company. Granny and Grandad were in love; I only had to look at them to realise that my parents were never going to last. But no child wants to admit that. I still didn’t want to admit that.

Jacob pulled up to the orchard without either of us asking any other questions and I was glad when I could disembark and take a full breath of fresh air again.

For a while, we plucked the apples from the tree in relative silence, only stopping to show one another a peculiarly shaped fruit or to take a moment of respite. But I could tell from the way he chewed his lip and drummed his fingers against a few apples that he also had something on his mind.

‘Are you alright, Wolfie?’

His face softened at the name, and I was glad he was yet to grow out of it or think me silly for still calling him that. He threw the apple down and stood up straight, as if waiting for a chance to speak.

‘Erm, well. It’s, well, it’s just that …’

My heart pumped faster as I watched him stumble over his words. He’d never been nervous around me, why now? Yes, I might have started to wear a bra, and I had dyed a bleached strip in my hair, but I couldn’t keep up with the constellation of spots that wouldn’t disappear from my face and I was pretty sure I was growing a moustache too. He couldn’t all of a sudden see me as a girl, and not just some other animal in his kingdom.

But what if he did? He’d changed too. His voice had dropped so every word vibrated through me with its depth, and his hair had started to wrap around his jaw and chin. We were both growing up, and I wondered if he saw me the way I was starting to see him.

‘Ava, can I ask you something?’

Something in his whole being made me hot, made me lose my breath, made my skin tingle at the slightest touch of him. Could this really be him, confessing he feels the same?

‘Anything,’ I breathed, hearing nothing but his voice and the whooshing of my own blood in my ears. What if he kissed me?

‘Have you got to pick your options at school?’

Like a hot air balloon struck by a fighter jet, I deflated.

‘It’s just, you know,’ he continued in a rush, ‘school isn’t my thing and now I have to decide what subjects I’m going to need for my future but I have no idea what my future even is.’

My chest tightened and my stomach tensed. It was clear from the way Jacob paced the orchard that this was something that had been plaguing him for a while. Him telling me was nothing out of the ordinary – I’d asked him a hundred times for his advice on friends, on homework – so why did it feel so wrong now? Why was I so disappointed that his worry was so mundane?

I think I knew then that I loved him more than just a friend from the next farm over. I had spent so long wondering what love was, observing everyone around me, and I knew then, at fourteen years old, that he was the Grandad to my Granny. I think I knew by the way I felt about him that love wasn’t like Mum and Dad’s relationship – between two people that weren’t even friends. I knew that I was in love with Jacob Thorogood, and I wanted him to know he loved me too.

But I pushed down my feeling, and I tried to be the friend he needed. ‘Erm, yeah. I think I’m going to pick something to do with textiles and art. I want to be a fashion designer when I’m older, making clothes like Granny. I haven’t picked between History or Geography, and my music teacher told me I definitely wasn’t allowed to take music, so I guess I’ll do something arty instead. Callum had all his picked in year seven. He knew what he wanted to do and I was jealous for a while, but he’s always been a history geek.’ Jacob ran a hand over his face and I grasped his wrist before the force of his palm could do any damage. ‘What do you enjoy, Jacob?’

‘Dad keeps talking to me about the farm as if it’s all just assumed that I’ll end up taking it on when I’m older. But I don’t know. I love the farm, I do, but do I want to be a farmer? I don’t know.’ His words took me by surprise. I had always thought Jacob lived and breathed the farm, every spare moment of his day was in some way spent in and around it, helping his dad, or finding his own jobs to do. Even as a teenager, he could’ve taken over the farm without skipping a beat.

‘You’re thinking too far ahead. What do you enjoy, right now? If not the farm, what else?’

‘This. Hanging out with you. Not having to sit and write in an exercise book. I don’t know.’ A little of my hope rekindled and I clung to his words, more than he could’ve known.

‘Well, I’m afraid there are no GCSEs in hanging out with me, as far as I’m aware. How about something with animals? I don’t know, biology?’

‘They wanted us to dissect a frog in year eight and I couldn’t bring myself to do it. My biology teacher didn’t give me good grades after I refused and left the classroom. I know I live on a farm, I’m not naïve about death, and I eat meat, but … I don’t know, I just like being with the animals, not studying them from a textbook or looking at their dead bodies in detail.’ He shivered.

‘Fair enough. But what about something practical, something where it’s not all just writing? PE? DT?’

He pondered for a moment. I couldn’t work out if he was trying to come up with an excuse for both, or genuinely considering it, but his musing was interrupted.

‘Wait, shhh.’ Jacob pressed his hand to my mouth in a sudden change of character, and he gestured with his head towards the line of trees. I could only watch him, wide-eyed, enveloped by the sweet smell of apples mixed with tractor oil that stained his hand. ‘Stay here.’