The Things That Matter. Andrea Michael

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СКАЧАТЬ counted his smiles on each visit, collecting them like it was a video game, a little ‘ding’ in my head when I made one appear.

      Dan was trying hard for me too, I knew. He didn’t ask me about the foster home they’d tried to put me in after everything happened, because there was nothing he could do. When I told him Sharon next door had agreed to take me in, at least until I could finish my GCSEs, he breathed a sigh of relief and his smile was like sunshine.

      Three months. It didn’t seem that much, not really. But for a nice boy from a nice family, who’d done nothing wrong, three months seemed like a lifetime. Especially when the nice family didn’t want to know Dan after everything happened – they couldn’t handle the embarrassment.

      People like us don’t do things like that, Daniel. Your father’s business, his contacts, you know how people are. How they talk. We can’t risk it, you must understand. Be reasonable, Daniel.

      I’d been there when his mother said it, when she explained why she wasn’t coming to court the day he was sentenced. How he didn’t hear anything from them, not his parents or his brother or sister. I didn’t ask about his family any more. We were each other’s family now, that was the promise we made.

      He looks across the yard at me in the bright daylight and holds up a hand to shield his eyes from the sun. He looks… strong. Strong and capable and yet, somehow like a stranger. Fear clutches at me, just for a moment. Has he changed? Have our plans, a teenage romance and big dreams of escape and new starts, have they been foolish? Are we just stupid kids like everybody said?

      ‘How will you make money Natasha? Love doesn’t feed an empty belly, or pay the gas bill,’ Sharon said this morning when I packed my backpack with the few things I owned and hoisted it onto my shoulders. I knew I wouldn’t be taking the three buses back to Luton again.

      ‘I know how to survive, don’t worry about that.’

      She hadn’t looked convinced. I wanted to tell her I’d been looking after myself for most of my life. That it had been years of rifling through coat pockets at school for change to buy dinner, or making a Mars bar last two days. I knew all about food banks and clothes exchanges and every single way there was of surviving. And I would teach Daniel. If he wanted to learn.

      Daniel, who was used to living in a four bedroom detached home, and had never once considered that he wouldn’t have a hot meal and a pressed school uniform. Who had never gone to bed hungry and angry. At least, not before prison.

      He never blamed me. Even as we stood in that court room and the judge declared he was guilty of manslaughter, even as his face lost all colour and his knees buckled. It took less than a second for Dan to compose himself, smile at me and hold me close as he told me it was worth it.

      In that moment I had promised myself that I would do everything I could to make it up to him, to make it true. To be worth it.

      Dan approaches me, suddenly within arm’s reach, and he smiles that same soft smile. That hasn’t disappeared. Neither have the butterflies in my stomach or that voice in my gut that says, ‘This one, this one is for you.’

      We stand looking at each other awkwardly.

      ‘I can’t believe you’re finally here.’

      ‘Me neither. The outside world. First thing I want to do is eat a huge steak and chips. Or a burger. Oh, or Thai food!’ He grins at me, those beautiful blue eyes still warm and loving, unchanged. He’s still here, he’s still mine. ‘Actually, no, this is the first thing I want to do.’

      He kisses me, and I know. I know I’ve been right all along. That every time I fell asleep on the bus home from the prison and missed my stop, or every time one of the other inmates had leered at me during visiting hours, or the number of times Dan’s mother had called me a ‘grubby little bitch who ruined everything’ whenever I pleaded with her to visit her son. It was worth it, it had all been worth it.

      Dan takes the backpack from me, putting it over his shoulder, and taking my hand in his as we start walking in no particular direction. Just, away. Our fingers interlink the way they always did, his thumb tracing my palm. Even that simple gesture feels like home.

      ‘So, what now? Where do we go?’ He kisses my hand.

      ‘Anywhere we want,’ I say, desperate to be that little ray of sunshine, to make this moment everything he’s been dreaming about for the last three months. ‘Anywhere we want. We go and we build a life. Where do you want to go?’

      ‘Anywhere! Somewhere brilliant. Shall we flip a coin? Find a globe to spin?’

      I want to tell him it won’t be easy. That we’ll have to work and struggle. That he’s never really had to think about it before. But that sounds negative. In many ways I’m so much older than him.

      I need to give him the option. I stop walking.

      ‘There’s still time to back out, Dan. Go home, apologise? See if they’ve changed their minds?’

      He tilts his head as if it’s a trick question. Those blue eyes meet mine and he shrugs.

      ‘I’ve had as much time as they have to think about this. If they don’t want me, then I don’t want them. Let’s… let’s go live good lives, Taz. Great lives! And one day they’ll come crawling back and I’ll tell them to do one. Because we’re each other’s family now, that’s the deal, right?’

      ‘Right.’

      He’s still in there, the dreamer, the one who sees the good, who sees the light. The one who reaches for happiness above all else. They didn’t take that away.

      We’re going to be okay.

      Better than okay.

      We’re going to be perfect.

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