Twenty Questions for Gloria Page 6

  GLORIA:

  Jesus, how many times do I have to tell you? He didn’t abduct me. I wasn’t his hostage.

  DI RYAN:

  Strictly speaking, no, you weren’t. But—

  GLORIA:

  Can I ask you something, Detective Inspector?

  DI RYAN:

  Yes. Yes, of course.

  GLORIA:

  If you’ve already decided how things were between us, why d’you want to hear it from me?

  DI RYAN:

  I haven’t already de— All right, let me ask you this and then I’ll shut up and you can carry on telling it in your own way. In that first week or so after you met Uman, did you start to have your suspicions about him? Your doubts. About his story.

  GLORIA:

  What do you mean?

  DI RYAN:

  His background, his family. The posh kid moving to Litchbury because of his dad’s high-powered job. Killing time at the local school while he waits to start at a new boarding school.

  Did you realize that something about him didn’t quite add up? And all that business with the teachers, letting him behave how he liked—you were curious about that, weren’t you? I know you were. You asked him about it after religion class that time.

  GLORIA:

  He was somewhere new, where no one knew him. It was a chance to reinvent himself.

  DI RYAN:

  It was more than that, though. You know that now.

  GLORIA:

  I didn’t know it then. Not to begin with.

  DI RYAN:

  What about the way he was with you? Do boys normally come on to you like that?

  GLORIA:

  No. But boys don’t normally look like Uman Padeem, or talk like him, or think like him, or do anything that even remotely interests me. Anyway, he didn’t “come on” to me.

  DI RYAN:

  “Latched on” is the phrase you used, I think.

  GLORIA:

  We latched on to each other. And, anyway, Uman didn’t make me feel the way I did about him. Didn’t make me do the things we did. He had no hold over me.

  DI RYAN:

  You honestly believe that?

  GLORIA:

  Christ.

  DI RYAN:

  Did it ever occur to you that Uman might be manipulating you?

  GLORIA:

  No. Because he wasn’t.

  DI RYAN:

  Sometimes it can be so subtle you don’t even—

  GLORIA:

  Uman wasn’t exactly subtle about the fact he wanted to hang out with me.

  DI RYAN:

  Wasn’t he?

  GLORIA:

  That very first day, he was like, Hey, Gloria, we’re meant for each other.

  DI RYAN:

  Then he disappears for three days. And when he returns, he backs off, gives you space. Lets you make all the running. Then he’s flirting with you again. Being interested in you, hanging out with you—reeling you back in. Only, he’s so good at it you don’t even realize.

  GLORIA:

  I don’t care what you think, he didn’t trick me or manipulate me. It just wasn’t like that.

  DI RYAN:

  Okay, Gloria—tell me. What was it like?

  QUESTION 7: The Hangingstones—what happened up there?

  We headed down to the river, through the park, across the footbridge into the bluebell woods, and back over the old stone bridge by the Waterman’s Arms. It was a warm afternoon; people sat outside drinking, and eating ice creams or trays of chips from the kiosk next to the pub. Two toddlers fed bread to the ducks on the strip of mud we called the beach when I was little.

  “Me and my brother used to build mud castles here,” I said.

  We stood and watched them, as if those kids were playing the parts of Ivan and me in a scene from my childhood being reenacted for Uman’s benefit.

  “I didn’t know you had a brother,” he said.

  “Ivan. He’s nineteen.” I explained the name. “His hair’s longer than yours, actually. And he’s grown this full-on beard.” I mimed a full-on beard. “He’s down in London, at uni.”

  I started to say some more about my brother, how Ivan was my best friend when we were little (when we weren’t fighting) and how much I missed him being at home since he’d moved out last September. But I got the sense that Uman wasn’t really listening; or rather, that he didn’t want to hear it. He went quiet on me for a bit after that.

  We made for the town center. I showed Uman the remains of the Roman fort (a grassy mound, a tumbledown wall, an information board), the old church, the bandstand, Litchbury’s famous café where you queue for an hour to pay way too much for a crust-free sandwich the size of a drink coaster. Uman didn’t perk up until we hiked to the moor that overlooks the town. As I pointed out ancient rock carvings, and told tales of UFO sightings and abductions and encounters with mythical beasts, he returned to his usual self. Engaged, talkative. Funny. Where did you go just now? I wanted to ask. But I didn’t want to risk souring the mood, losing him again.

  “There’s a stone circle up here,” I said.

  “Seriously? Right, I have to see this.”

  “It’s a bit of a trek, though. And it’ll be muddy, in our school shoes.”

  He raised an eyebrow at me.

  I smiled a little sheepishly. “I’m not being very pink-and-purple, am I?”

  At the Twelve Disciples, we sat against adjacent stones and drank the drinks and ate the chocolate we’d bought in town. I apologized for the stones—a ring of stumpy, lichen-stained rocks, none more than a meter high, set in scruffy grass and surrounded by heather that had been charred to fuzz in places by controlled burning.

  “It’s not exactly Stonehenge,” I said.

  “It’s better.” He took in the circle, the adjoining moorland, with a sweep of the hand. “No busloads of tourists taking photos, for one thing. Just you and me and the stones.” He nodded to himself. “I can imagine a horde of Neolithic men in animal skins, conducting a ritual sacrifice here. A goat. Or a virgin. Or a virgin goat. Or is it Bronze Age? Whatever, this is real. It has atmosphere. Magnetism. Don’t you feel it? I bet our watches have stopped.”

  “I don’t have a watch. I use my phone to tell the time.”

  “Same here, actually. But I bet they’ve stopped working.”

  We checked them. They were working just fine.

  “Only one bar on mine, though.” Uman held his phone up for me to see. “I told you: magnetism. We’re sitting in a force field here, enclosed by an invisible mesh of ley lines and auras—aurae?—and ancient something-or-other. I doubt either of us will ever be able to pass through airport security without triggering the alarm. Or have babies.”

  I was taking a swig of water as he said this and most of it spurted out my nose.

  From the Disciples, we set off for Hangingstone Rocks. Last stop on the guided tour.

  Following a stony track across bog and cotton grass and bilberry, I told Uman something I’d been meaning to say since that first day we met.

  “I owe you an apology,” I said, the words buffeted by the breeze.

  “For what?”

  We walked in single file, the trail was so narrow. I led, which meant I could hear Uman—his footsteps, his ragged breathing, his voice—but not see him. That suited me. Made me less self-conscious. I could almost pretend I was talking to myself.

  “What you said last Monday, at break—you were right. About me being unhappy.”

  “Why’s that worth an apology?”

  “I lied. I told you I wasn’t. I got cross with you—blanked you.”

  “If anyone should say sorry, it’s me,” Uman said.

  “You? Why?”

  “For presuming to tell you about yourself. It’s arrogant. Intrusive.”

  Did he figure that out for himself or had I confronted him with it at the time? I couldn’t remember whether I had. But I liked him for acknowledging it now.

  “I guess we’re bot
h sorry, then,” I said.

  “Sounds like a deal to me.”

  The noise of our progress along the track startled a bird out of the scrub up ahead. It flew fast and low above the ground, a blur of brown and red, wings clattering, before settling again farther off with a throaty cry that sounded like it was warning us to go-back, go-back, go-back.

  “What’s that?” Uman asked. “A phoenix?”

  “Grouse. Male.”

  “I don’t think we have those in Berkshire. Except as food, of course.”

  “I imagine your cook keeps some in the pantry in case you run out of venison.”

  “I wouldn’t know,” he said. “I don’t associate with the servants. Not since the undergardener ran over a croquet hoop with the lawn mower just before an important game.”

  We’d reached a steep descent and neither of us spoke as we concentrated on keeping our footing. When the ground leveled again, I picked up the thread of our earlier conversation.

  “I don’t know what you saw in my face that morning,” I said. “Don’t laugh, but I went into the loos later on and looked in the mirror to see if I could figure out what it was.”

  “What did you see?”

  “Acne, mostly. If I’d joined up the spots, would it have spelled ‘I AM UNHAPPY’?”

  Uman laughed. “It isn’t anything visible.”

  “What is it, then? An aura?”

  “I can’t explain it. There was just something in you that I recognized.”

  “I’m not depressed or anything. It’s nothing as bad as that.” I told Uman about my “tsunami” moments. “Everything’s just the same old, same old,” I said. “Friends. Home. School. I used to like school. But, lately—most of year ten—I just can’t be bothered. With anything.”

  Uman listened to all of this in silence.

  “God, I sound like such a spoiled, sulky brat,” I said.

  “No you don’t.”

  “You know what it is, Uman? What I’m really fed up with?”

  “Yourself,” he replied, simply.

  “Yes. Yes! How do you even know that? And if you tell me you read people I’ll—”

  “I read people. Did I mention that already?”

  I laughed. “Seriously, though, what do I have to be fed up about?”

  “Unhappiness isn’t a rational choice,” Uman said. “Or happiness. You can’t decide not to be unhappy, any more than you can decide not to be tired if you’ve had a bad night’s sleep.”

  Was that true? It sounded like it ought to be.

  The track was wider now, and we walked side by side. His limp had worsened, I noticed. His breathing, too.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  “Not really. But, being male, I can’t admit to it, so please don’t ask again.”

  “It’s only another couple of minutes to the Hangingstones.”

  “Then, despite the pain, I shall endure without complaint, self-pity, or melodrama.” He coughed horribly. “But if I don’t make it, just bury me where I fall.”

  —

  I’ve summarized all this. DI Ryan doesn’t want every detail—the day is slipping away, Gloria, and I still haven’t reached what she regards as the beginning. But it began there, really. The events she most wants to hear about can be traced back to that day: eating pizza by the school fence; the guided tour of Litchbury; the hike across the moor. The Hangingstones.

  The seeds were sown. The dice were cast. Or whatever cliché she cares for.

  “So, your feelings for Uman deepened that day?” DI Ryan asks.

  “Yeah. I liked him. He was good to be with.”

  “Did he feel the same way toward you?”

  “I don’t know. You’d have to ask him that question.”

  But of course, she can’t ask Uman anything. My reply hangs a silence over us. The desire to know where he is, to find out what has happened to him—to see him again—surfaces so strongly it’s all I can do not to shout out his name. I can’t quite believe that if I cross the room and open the door he won’t be standing right there, with that lopsided grin. I reach for the water, but my fingers are trembling so badly I don’t trust myself to pick up the plastic cup.

  “D’you need a time-out?” DI Ryan asks. When I shake my head, she studies me for a moment. Then, “The Hangingstones—what happened up there?”

  —

  “Did they hang people here, in ye olden days?” Uman asked.

  “No, it’s from the way the rocks look like they’re hanging on to the side of the moor.”

  The rocks—huge boulders, really—were dumped on the hillside by a glacier during the last ice age, I explained. From just about anywhere in the town, you could see them silhouetted against the southern skyline—great gray blocks, perched (seemingly precariously) on a green swathe of heather and bracken and sheep-shorn grass. I’d loved the place ever since I was old enough to scramble with my brother on the rubble around the base of the rocks on family picnics. There’s a picture at home of Ivan and me trying to push one of the boulders down the slope. We look like mice about to be sat on by an elephant. Behind the rocks is a disused quarry where the Victorians dug out the stone to build most of Litchbury. We studied it in Geography, I told him. Or History.

  “Sometimes me and Tier come up here to watch the climbers.”

  There were several when we arrived that day, working in pairs on different pitches in the big U-shaped bowl, their Lycra suits, safety hats, and synthetic ropes daubing bright colors onto the gray of the rock face. They climbed in silence apart from the clink of a piton being hammered into a crevice, or the swish of rope being paid out, or an occasional echoey instruction. They’d drawn a small audience of hikers and dog-walkers. For once, though, the climbers weren’t the only attraction. A young guy had fixed a wire across the mouth of the old quarry and was setting himself to walk it. Twenty-five meters above the ground. Maybe thirty.

  High enough to kill him, if he fell.

  “Oh wow, look at him,” I said.

  Beside me, Uman—still regaining his breath after the walk from the Disciples—said nothing. But I felt him tense up. I couldn’t tell if it was fear or excitement, or both.

  The shape of the quarry made it a perfect theater, with us high in the upper circle. Scraps of cloud clustered overhead as if they, too, had gathered to witness the unfolding spectacle. As we edged closer to the rim to get a better view, the guy extended a leg and tested the wire with his foot, like he was stepping into a bath and wanted to make sure the water wasn’t too hot. His short, dark-blond hair and pale forearms glinted in the late-afternoon light, and the breeze rippled his red T-shirt. He looked about twenty years old, slender as a ballet dancer.

  No safety net. No pole. No helmet. Not even a carabiner attaching him to the wire.

  I started to point this out to Uman, but he nodded, like he’d already noticed it. If the guy lost his balance, he really would fall to his death.

  “I can’t watch,” I whispered.

  But I couldn’t not watch.

  Against the slope of the moor in the background, the wire was almost invisible, and for one startling moment as he set off, he appeared to be walking on air. His progress was slow but sure. He took one pointy-toed step after another, arms outstretched at his sides, fingers spread and fluttering like the feathers at the tips of a kestrel’s wings. Beneath him, the wire quivered and swayed from time to time and he would halt, perfectly still and poised, waiting for it to steady. A cluster of spectators had gathered at the top of the path that leads into the quarry, and more were dotted around the outcrops above. The climbers had paused to watch him, too.

  No one moved or spoke. It was as if we all held our breath. Mesmerized. Terrified.

  I remember thinking, Please, someone stop him. But also not wanting him to be stopped.

  It was too late for that, anyway. He would make it across. Or not.

  I have a good head for heights. On the climbing wall at school, I’ll be at the top and back down again
before most of the others are halfway up. But watching this…my guts clenched, my skin went clammy, my mouth filled with the metallic taste of adrenaline.

  I pictured him losing his balance, plummeting. Heard the impact. Saw him lying there on the dusty, rock-studded ground, a broken mannequin in a spreading pool of blood.

  He made it, though.

  He made it.

  Ninety-six steps, I counted every one. With barely a wobble, he reached the other side—to a clatter of applause and whistles and whoops from his audience, and a surge of collective relief so huge I’m amazed we didn’t all hug one another. At the top of the crag, the guy gave an exaggerated bow. Waved. Smiled. Blew kisses.

  Then, casual as you like, he packed up and left.

  My hands were still shaking. Uman couldn’t stop smiling, his eyes so glittery you’d have thought he’d been crying. He kept thanking me, as if I’d arranged the whole thing for his benefit. Even after the guy had gone, Uman stood at the rim of the old quarry for ages, staring at the space where the tightrope had been, as if watching the performance all over again.

  —

  Over the next few days, a change came over Uman.

  He still turned up for school, or not—cut classes, or not; paid attention, or not—on a whim. The barriers of attitude he erected between himself and the teachers were still in place; he continued to challenge and disobey. To break rules. Just as before, he got away with it all. But it no longer seemed to interest him. It was as if he only carried on behaving like that out of habit.

  He didn’t go on about it all that much, but I could tell this shift was rooted in the scene we had witnessed at the Hangingstones. If he’d had any idea how to walk a tightrope, I swear he would have gone back up there to fix one across the mouth of that quarry and given it a go.

  I changed, too. I spent less time with my friends, more with him—in school (when he was there) and outside. I stopped going to Tierney’s at the end of the day; instead, I’d head into town with Uman—he liked to tour the charity shops with me, browsing for bric-a-brac to turn into jewelry—or down to the riverside park. One afternoon, we bought a disposable grill and cooked sausages on the bank and splashed about, fully clothed, in the river. Just the two of us. Another time, we went into Leeds and blagged our way into an R-rated film. In a contest between the ticket-seller’s refusal to admit us and Uman’s refusal to be refused admission, there was only going to be one winner. Especially after she asked him for proof of identity and he launched into a monologue on Cartesian concepts of the self that must have left the poor woman wishing she’d been assigned to the pick-and-mix counter.