Jonah, on the other hand, had been confronted with his worst trigger – screaming, out-of-control adults. He’d instinctively switched to survival mode, posture aggressive as he swore and shouted, trying to get up in Dad’s face.
After a seemingly endless couple of minutes, Nicky appeared.
‘What’s going on?’ She pushed her way in between Dad and Jonah, bracing them apart with held-up palms.
‘Dad?’ Her voice was loud but it quavered. ‘Mum, stop! What are you doing?’
‘Jonah’s leaving,’ Mum said, shoving a pair of jeans into the bag.
Nicky spotted me then, eyes going round as she started to process the cause of all the drama.
‘They found you, then,’ she said, head shaking in dismayed disbelief. ‘Best get out of here before you make things even worse. Both of you.’
She grabbed the T-shirt now in Mum’s hand and shoved it at Jonah.
‘They aren’t going anywhere,’ Dad spluttered, but Nicky was having none of it.
‘They’re going downstairs, where they’re safe, while you two fricking well pull yourselves together before you do something that’ll get you both struck off.’
‘Irrelevant,’ Mum snapped, her voice thick. ‘I’m done. This is too much. I can’t do it. I shouldn’t bloody wellhave to do it!’
‘Go with them, Nicola,’ Dad barked. ‘They aren’t to be alone together.’
‘What, you think we’re going to start getting it on in the living room while you’re up here ransacking my stuff?’ Jonah scoffed.
If possible, Dad’s face turned even more purple, his fists clenching. Nicky pulled a furiously impatient face at me, and I slipped past her out of the door. To my relief, Jonah followed me. I went straight to the kitchen, expecting him to come too, but instead the front door crashed shut, echoing through the sudden silence.
My parents’ social worker, Robin, arrived an hour later. Clare, social worker for Jonah, was not far behind. I’d hidden in my bedroom the second Jonah disappeared down the road, and remained there until Robin knocked on my door and asked if I would be kind enough to come down and have a chat about what had happened.
I’d had an hour to try to come up with an explanation, a justifiable excuse for being in Jonah’s bed at ten-thirty in the morning. With Jonah.
The best I could do was present an edited version of the facts. We were chatting, both feeling stressed about exams, got cold so we went under the duvet. We clearly hadn’t had sex, nothing like that had happened before, there was no relationship. Blah, blah, blah.
I pushed back my shoulders, tried to look innocent, and sauntered into the kitchen, coming to a dead stop at the journal sitting in the middle of the table.
‘You read my diary?’ I cried. ‘You went into my bedside drawer, took out my diary and read it. That’s… why would you do that?’
‘You were missing!’ Mum said, sounding as distraught as I felt. ‘You have a maths exam this afternoon and you were nowhere. Your phone was in your bedroom, bed clearly hadn’t been slept in. We waited an hour, called Katie and Alicia, and they didn’t know where you were either. None of your shoes were missing. The front door was locked from the inside. We were frantic with worry.’
‘So you know, then,’ I said, all the fight seeping out of me. ‘Is there any point talking about it?’
Robin cleared his throat before either of my parents could answer.
‘We know that you clearly had some feelings for Jonah.’
‘And you also know that they were only feelings. Up until yesterday.’
‘What happened yesterday?’ Robin asked, stroking his beard. I liked Robin. He’d been a social worker forever and had seen pretty much everything. He used to take me and Nicky out for milkshakes sometimes, and had become a something of a replacement for the grandad we hardly ever saw because he lived in a care home miles away.
‘We spent the day hanging out and revising together. In the garden. Later on we were both feeling stressed about the exam,so I went into Jonah’s room and we talked for a bit. It got really late, and we ended up falling asleep.’
‘You talked in his bed?’ Clare asked.
‘On his bed. You’ve seen the state of his room. There wasn’t anywhere else to sit.’
‘Your parents found you under the covers.’
‘It got chilly!’ I knew, rationally, that there was no way to salvage this. Not now they’d read the obsessed ramblings in my journal. But I could try to make sure Jonah didn’t get into too much trouble. At least, little enough trouble that we could keep on having contact once he moved out.
