Page 37 of The Fall I Fell

‘You were with your girlfriend, Jacob.’ I shake myself from his grip and make for the barn doors, but he follows me.

Mum is tipsy in the yard, trying to catch smoke in her hands before turning to Sian and giggling into her witch’s cape. Callum, dressed as Gandalf in a cloak I stitched for him hastily earlier, chats to some girl from college. Lizzie is nowhere to be seen, and Alfie seems to be in a conspiratorial huddle with some of his friends.

‘What’s that got to do with anything?’ Jacob calls out behind me. ‘You’re in pain, I wanted to help you. We’re friends, Ava, that’s what friends do.’

‘Yeah, well, I’m starting to think we’re not even friends any more.’

His face transforms from anger to pain. ‘We’ll always be friends.’ He draws in closer to me now and only I can hear his voice. ‘Nothing will change that. Not London, not Pen, not Milan.’

I don’t want to be friends. I don’t want to sit at the side lines and be forced to smile and congratulate him and Pen when they eventually marry. I don’t want to have to pretend that I’m not overwhelmingly in love with him. I can’t keep pretending.

But he’s right. He’s with Pen, who is practically Mary Poppins with an eyebrow piercing for god’s sake. And in a few months, I will uproot my life once more to move across the channel. Jacob couldn’t stand London, so it’s not like he would get on a plane to see me in Milan. We’ve had so many chances at being something more, and none of them have ever worked. Maybe I’ve been clinging onto something that was never concrete to begin with. Trying to make a relationship with Jacob would be like trying to catch the copious amounts of smoke from this bloody bonfire that is choking me and sending my eyes streaming: futile, and I’d look stupid doing it. It’s self-destructive.

Shoving down the pain that bubbles up through my whole body, I nod, and try and stretch a smile only my trembling face. ‘Yeah, friends. We will always be friends.’

I turn from him before he can see me cry, and this time, he doesn’t follow me when I walk away.

Everything else has been a disaster since I got here, why not the famed Halloween party as well?

Chapter 20

Two and a half years ago

Jacob made it clear he hated London during his one and only visit over the years.

I usually tried to avoid King’s Cross Station like the plague. It was always too loud, too busy, with too many people walking far too slowly past the platforms nine and ten, and then being drawn into the stupidly long tourist trap queue of Platform 9 ¾. Or they’d try and walk too quickly out of the barriers, and you’d always end up in a bottle neck of sweaty suits, all trying to make the stupid things read your ticket fast enough to let you through the dam.

But on that day, I found myself there willingly. I wasn’t travelling, so the stress was immediately diminished, but I still bounced my leg impatiently as I sat on one of those big concrete slabs outside that some overpaid fella thought was a better option than a traditional bench. Callum had disappeared to some sandwich shop around the corner, and I was anticipating him coming back with something the size of his own head, only so he could complain the whole bus ride home that he was too full.

Each time another train arrived, a deluge of bodies flooded out onto the station floor and I found myself scanning each and every face for his, despite knowing his train didn’t get in for another ten minutes. Still, I watched, as all of the unknown faces passed by, on their own journeys to who knows where, wondering what their story was.

The spring sun seeped out from behind the clouds, the warmth of it hitting my face as I savoured it for just a moment. After months of winter clouds, this felt nice. Basking in the light, I tuned out the sound of the road, the flight path, the thousands of bodies, until I was sat in the garden at Granny and Grandad’s at the start of the summer, with six whole weeks ahead of me where anything felt possible. There really was no feeling like it: the freedom, the anticipation, the knowledge that I was exactly where I wanted to be.

When I opened my eyes again, the clock tower showed 11:52 a.m. Bodies flowed through the gates, though this time, I knew they had travelled through the countryside I called home. I scanned over each person until the last one sauntered through. But his face wasn’t amongst them. Did I miss him? Did he get on the wrong train? Did he change his mind and decide not to come after all?

Getting to my feet, I headed back into the station, scanning each and every crevice for any sign of him. That boy could navigate his way through any forest, or make it way back home in the dark with only moonlight to guide him; surely, he couldn’t be lost. With my heart thumping in my ears, I paced the platform, gnawing on my fingernails as I went. I checked the time again. We had only an hour until the show. If he was delayed, he would miss it, and this would’ve all been for nothing.

‘Ava!’ Jacob called my name from the opposite side of the barrier, relief flooding his expression as he grappled with various tickets and papers in his hands.

For just a moment, I took in the image of him. It seemed that every time I saw him, there was something that had changed: a new dappling of stubble on his chin, or that he’d grown an inch or two, or that he hadn’t cut his hair for a few months. But this was different. He was almost exactly the same as when I saw him the previous autumn, and yet, everything felt wrong. It was like seeing a polar bear in the zoo. You know that it’s possible, that they can survive there in their drab enclosures, but that doesn’t mean it feels right.

After explaining to him how to feed his ticket into the machine, seeing as he refused to bring his phone to do it the easy way, he was finally before me in all his glory wearing … full length trousers.

‘How was your journey?’ I asked, trying not to mention the new addition to his wardrobe.

‘I was quite nice actually, getting to travel through parts of the country you can’t otherwise get to. Plus, it’s spring, so every other field is full of lambs. And you know me and my lambs.’ He grinned. I was expecting a moan, about too many people in one tin can, or the time it took to get here, but he seemed genuinely happy.

‘Well, welcome to London.’ I gestured to the streets. ‘It’s so strange – you coming to my house, in my town, for a change. I can’t wait to show my friends that you’re actually real and I haven’t just been making you up all these years.’ I wanted to weave my arm through his and have us skip down the path, but I tapered my excitement and settled on squeezing his bicep with a smile.

Jacob flushed, then coughed. ‘Where’s Cal? Is he not coming too?’

I had almost forgotten about my twin and his rather long detour for food, but I wasn’t worried. ‘He’s around here somewhere, but I’m afraid his stomach came before you.’

‘Standard.’ He chuckled and we rounded the corner and found Callum perched on a ledge, scoffing his sandwich as though someone was on their way to steal it from him.

‘Jake!’ He lit up at the sight of his friend, and smiled with his mouth stuffed with various meat and cheeses. ‘Welcome to London, mate!’ he finally added after he’d scarfed down his bite.

‘Right, we need to get going,’ I declared. ‘I said I’d meet the guys in the café before the exhibition, and it’s at least twenty minutes on the bus from here.’ My initial excitement from seeing my guest was slowly being overtaken by anxious thoughts about the thing he actually came for.