‘Libby.’ My sister’s voice was so soft I had to strain to hear it. ‘I haven’t seen that look on your face since you were sixteen. Just… talk to him. Find out who he is now. If who he is still fits so perfectly with you.’
Fits so perfectly?
In the end, he left before I had a chance to say anything, let alone decide whether I wanted to ask him for a catch-up coffee.
Was there going to be a single damn night this century that I got some proper sleep?
16
THEN
The next time I was alone with Jonah – and I mean properly alone, with no one else in the house – was a Saturday afternoon, around a week after our conversation in the garden. Unsurprisingly, we once again ended up in the kitchen. Mum had asked me to make a curry, so I had every excuse to be there. Jonah appeared, then took a knife, came to stand beside me and started chopping peppers as if prepping dinner together like an old married couple.
‘So. How about rockhopper penguins?’ I asked, breaking the silence.
He glanced up from dicing the second pepper to ascertain whether I was being serious. I hoped the casually amused expression I was trying to adopt worked, because I was feeling anything but casual.
‘Have I missed something?’
‘Yes!’ I exclaimed. ‘You’ve missed the wonder of witnessing rockhopper penguins in the wild.’
He continued staring at me blankly, so I pressed on. ‘Or if penguins aren’t your thing, which I find very hard to believe– what kind of aberration doesn’t love penguins? – how about whales? Or marmosets. Oh – jackals! Like your hat.’
‘What?’
‘Wouldn’t it be cool to see actual penguins in the wild? Isn’t that something worth seeing?’ I chopped up a couple more mushrooms with a faux-blasé shrug.
He put the knife down and turned to face me. ‘Okay. Is this your attempt to give me a reason not to kill myself?’
‘Um… maybe?’ My skin was growing so warm I could probably brown the chicken on it. ‘I’ve come up with quite a few. This is just an initial testing the waters. I mean, Ellis and Billy would probably love to see penguins, too.’
‘Good idea. I’ll be sure to buy three tickets to Antarctica as soon as I’ve finished here.’
‘Um, shouldn’t that be four tickets, given that it was my idea?’ I attempted an eye-roll but was unable to smother my smile. ‘Rude.’
He shook his head but smiled back, and for a second we stood there, grinning at each other, before he resumed chopping, still smiling. His whole face transformed when he smiled. Like a cliff face opening up to reveal a secret garden hiding behind it.
Jonah had a surprising amount of cooking advice for a teenage boy. After he’d inspected the row of spices I’d got ready, he swapped two of them out and added a potato.
‘When did you become a curry expert?’
He flicked an eyebrow at me. ‘I’ve been cooking since I was old enough to reach the hob. When you’re scratching meals together from whatever leftover crap you can find, you learn how spices can make things edible.’
He shook some cumin over the meat and vegetables, smelled it, then added some more.
‘I’ll teach you sometime if you like.’
My breath caught behind my ribcage.
‘Okay.’
‘Or, even better, once exams are over, I’ll cook for you.’ He gave the pot a stir. ‘For all of us, I mean.’
‘I’ll look forward to it. Now, pass me the coriander.’
Ice now broken, we started chatting as we chopped, and by the time there was a pot of jalfrezi simmering on the stove, I’d told him all about my plans to be a midwife, how I thought helping a new life into the world must be the best job ever. I learned that he’d sat his GCSEs last year – he was already seventeen – but having failed them all was now resitting four and had no plans beyond earning enough money to take care of Ellis and Billy.
‘You must miss them,’ I said, stating the obvious.
