All About Us. Tom Ellen

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      Alice comes out and loops her arm straight through mine. I’m not sure if Daphne sees this, because she’s at the front of the pack, chatting to someone else. Marek shouts, ‘Let’s go!’ and starts to lead our chattering, giggling group down the walkway and over the bridge behind the English blocks, where the campus maze looms out at us through the darkness.

      A couple of the group have no idea what Sardines is, so Marek’s explaining it to them: ‘Someone goes to hide, right, and then we all look for them. When you find the hider, you hide with them, and it goes on like that until everyone’s hiding and there’s only one person left looking.’

      ‘So who’s hiding first?’ someone else asks, as we arrive at the entrance to the maze. I look round to see Daphne and Alice both grinning at me.

      ‘I think Ben should,’ Alice says.

      ‘Yep.’ Daphne nods. ‘Ben seems like a natural hider.’

      I feel the sudden urge to just drop onto the damp grass and adopt the foetal position until this dream or nightmare or vision or whatever the fuck it is is over. But something propels me forwards, and before I know it, I’m bolting into the maze while they all start counting to fifty behind me.

      I’m nowhere near as drunk as I was first time round, but still, I have absolutely no clue where I’m running to, or where I originally hid. I’m just sprinting mindlessly, turning corners whenever I feel like it, my footsteps keeping time with my heartbeat, the sweat cold and clammy on my temples.

      The counting has stopped now, and I can hear them all bundling raucously into the maze after me. I slow down to a standstill, clutching the throbbing stitch in my stomach, and claw my way into the nearest hedge. I flop down painfully among the prickly branches, and try to picture Alice climbing in beside me.

      But what happens if she does? We kiss? And then what?

      Do I stay here, in this new reality? For how long? For the rest of my life?

      I try to decide whether I would actually – genuinely – want that. Whether it would be better for everyone, Daphne included. But I can’t. The concept is just too massive to properly process. My head throbs with confusion and doubt, and I realise the only thing to do is let fate take control, exactly as I did last time.

      I hear Harv’s whooping laugh float around the corner as he bumps into somebody in the darkness. I remember this happening first time round too, and wonder idly if I’ve somehow ended up in the exact same hiding spot as before. Just as they did originally, the two pairs of trainers bounce right past without stopping.

      And then, almost immediately, I hear another crackle of feet on twigs. I crane my neck to see someone else rounding the opposite corner and beginning to emerge through the leaves. I squint to try and make them out …

      And as I do so, something even stronger than déjà vu slaps me hard across the face. A sense memory so vivid it makes my head spin.

      All these years I’ve been telling myself the story of what happened in this maze. And I realise now I’ve been telling it wrong.

      It was Alice who got to me first.

      I see her now through the gaps in the hedge, creeping past just as she did back then, scouring the branches for any movement. The precise thought I had at the time flashes suddenly into my brain: I could make a sound now. I could let her know where I am.

      But I found that I didn’t want to make a sound. I didn’t want her to find me.

      Alice squints right through the branches, and for a second I’m certain she’s looking straight at me. But then she draws back, turns and keeps walking.

      I breathe out shakily, because it’s all coming back now and I know exactly what will happen next. I’m not sure how I could have forgotten it – the booze, I guess, or just the gradual erosion of the intervening years – but the memory is now crystal clear in my mind.

      Right on cue, Daphne appears, peering gingerly into the hedge opposite. And without thinking, I do exactly what I did fifteen years ago: I reach up to bend one of the branches above me until it snaps cleanly in two.

      She jumps at the sharp sound and turns in my direction, a smile playing on her lips.

      It wasn’t random chance at all.

      I wanted her to find me. I made her find me.

      She gets nearer and nearer until she’s standing right over me, grinning down through the leaves.

      ‘So,’ she whispers. ‘Not a great hitman, not a great hider.’

      I just about manage to croak a laugh.

      ‘Is there any room in there?’

      I lift the biggest branch and she climbs under it and sits down opposite me, cross-legged. Our knees are already overlapping, but then she has to lean forward to readjust her position, which brings our faces so close they are practically touching.

      ‘Oops,’ she whispers. ‘This is a bit, erm …’

      She lets the sentence hang there, unfinished, as we look into each other’s eyes. My heart is thumping so hard that I’m sure she must be able to hear it. But I can’t help it. My head is suddenly filled with the memory of this moment, fifteen years ago: our first kiss. How right it felt, as I leaned forward and touched her lips to mine. The way she smelled, the way she felt, the way she tasted.

      She tucks a stray curl back behind her ear and smiles at me. And God, I want to kiss her again.

      She tilts her head slightly, and without thinking, I reach up and touch her face, very gently. She smiles again, and the tip of her nose brushes my cheek as her lips find mine. And as we kiss, everything around me seems to fizzle and dissolve, until there’s only the two of us left.

Chapter Eleven

      I’m not sure how long we stay like that, lost in that kiss.

      I must have kissed Daphne a million times over the past fifteen years, but I can’t remember any of them feeling this perfect. It’s like my whole body is being lit up from inside. I don’t want it to ever end.

      But then, suddenly, it does.

      There’s a sharp crackle of leaves, the branches are pulled back, and there’s Alice, staring straight down at us.

      Daff pulls away, and the look on Alice’s face brings me right back to earth with a jolt. It’s exactly as I remember it: the initial flinch of confusion that melts instantly into a kind of embarrassed disappointment. She sucks in her bottom lip, glances down at the grass and mutters: ‘Sorry.’

      Daff shoots me an ugh-this-is-awkward grimace, but I have no idea what to say or do. The moment is so insane and unreal it feels like it’s happening to someone else.

      Thankfully, I don’t have to do anything. Marek and a couple of others materialise out of nowhere, right behind Alice, giggling like idiots. They barge into our hiding place, and suddenly there are enough bodies in the hedge to СКАЧАТЬ