5

I was up late the next morning, it was gone eleven. Hot yellow light was billowing in through the window. I threw the cover off and stretched, feeling completely awake and deliciously languid. As I did so, my hand came into contact with a folded piece of paper on the pillow next to my head. I squinted at the familiar writing.

He’d actually come into my room. I contemplated that as I surveyed my sprawl across the bed. The sheets were strewn half across the floor. My – rather his – T-shirt had ridden up over my hip on one side exposing a triangle of back and giving a pretty good view of my underwear. I hoped I hadn’t been kicking or yelling in my sleep but I didn’t remember any more nightmares. I read the note for a third time. He had said I looked peaceful, so hopefully that meant silent. And beatific. Or maybe not. I didn’t want to look saintly to him – I wanted to look sexy. The two didn’t seem compatible as adjectives. Oh God, I had to switch my head off.

I decided to take a run in an effort to turn down the chatter in my brain. I got up, took a few minutes in the bathroom then threw on a pair of shorts that covered my bruise nicely and a T-shirt. I did the laces up on my running shoes and headed down the stairs, gathering my hair into a ponytail as I went.

‘Jack?’ I yelled.

My voice echoed back at me. The house was empty, the silence hummed. I guessed he was still at work – he sure worked some crazy hours.

I stepped out into the midday Californian heat, shutting the door behind me, and took off in the direction of the ocean.

My mind stilled itself, drifting into a consciousness that registered only the rhythmic smack of my feet hitting the concrete, the dry rustle of the palm fronds along the street and the distant sounds of lazy traffic. I kept on until the Alex chatter had reduced to background noise and then I looped back to the house.

As I rounded the corner of the street, I pushed into a sprint for the final fifty metres, desperate to reach the shade of the porch and get out of the bleaching sun, which was drilling like a laser through the top of my skull. A dark shape caught my eye on the veranda by the front door. As I came closer I saw it was a girl, crouching awkwardly as she peered through the letter box. She was wearing a short black-and-white dress, her bare legs flashing like pearls in the shadows. What was she doing?

I scanned the street quickly, my feet still driving me forward but my pulse now elevated beyond the high of my run. All around was a perfectly normal suburban scene: children playing in a backyard, the cicada hiss of water sprinklers. It was ridiculous of me to panic. She was just a girl. I couldn’t let two kids with a knife terrorise my thoughts for the rest of my life.

The slap of my feet on the pavement alerted her and she whipped around to face me, poised and alert as a cat with its back arched. When she saw me though, her pose relaxed, her shoulders dropped and a slow smile crept onto her face. I came to a stop at the bottom of the veranda steps.

‘Can I help you?’ I panted, squinting up at her.

My first impression was of someone who looked like she’d jumped straight out of a manga cartoon. She was drawn with fast, jagged lines, from the sharp slash of her cheekbones to the zigzag shapes of her dress. She was teetering on three-inch platform heels that gave the impression she was balanced on stilts. Her hair was cut sharply into a jet-black bob that followed the angle of her jaw and sheathed her face on either side. She had straight black eyebrows and dark gold eyes fringed by spidery lashes. I wondered if it was Sara but she certainly didn’t look like a neuroscientist, that was for sure, more like a Japanese superhero – she was stunning, to the point of not seeming real – and she was eyeing me as though I was a little bird she was deciding whether or not to pounce on.

As I waited for a response of some description, she tilted her head to one side like she could hear a noise from somewhere behind the house and her eyes narrowed. She looked me up and down.

‘You live here?’ she asked in a voice like glitter.

‘Yeah,’ I nodded, wiping the sweat away from my brow with the back of my arm. ‘Can I help you?’

She danced down the steps, springing towards me so fast I was forced to take a step back.

She smiled wide, baring her little white teeth at me. ‘I think maybe you can. I was looking for Jack,’ she said brightly.

Now it clicked. For all Jack’s words about monogamy, clearly he’d been up to something with this girl. Leopards and spots, after all.

I was disappointed and it came through in my voice. ‘I’m his sister.’

She seemed delighted to hear it, glad that I wasn’t a rival, I guess. I knew the routine and waited. This was the point where girls would switch into suck-up mode and start to ask me what his favourite bands were and what star sign he was.

‘Nice to meet you, Jack’s sister. I’m Suki.’ She held out her hand.

‘Hi, I’m Lila,’ I said, reaching out my hand to shake hers reflexively. I was stumped still as to who exactly she was and what she had been doing peering through our letter box. That was stalker behaviour. ‘So, um, should I tell him you called round?’

She didn’t reply and neither did she let go of my hand. Her grip tightened minutely as she stared at me with a weird transfixed look on her face. I was seriously going to bring this up with Jack. Where was he hanging out to pick up girls like this?

Then suddenly she was back in the moment, shaking her head and laughing her dainty little laugh. ‘No, don’t you worry about that. I doubt he remembers me anyhow.’

She gave me another big smile and skipped off down the road, pausing once to look back at me over her shoulder with an expression of childish glee which lit up her face.

‘Weird,’ I muttered to myself.

I trudged up the steps to let myself in. The door was still double-locked, so I knew Jack wasn’t home. With a sinking stomach I remembered I’d forgotten to set the alarm. Still, Jack didn’t need to know. I let myself in, toed off my running shoes and ran up the stairs into the bathroom where I turned on the shower with just a glance in its direction and then whipped back the shower curtain with a second glance before remembering once again that I was supposed to be going cold turkey with this power thing.

As I was drying my hair, I heard the rattle of keys in the front door. Pulling my towel around me, I stepped into the hallway to peer down the stairs.

It was just Jack.

‘Hi,’ he said as he appeared in the hallway. He looked tired.

‘Hi.’ I waved back.

‘Why’s the alarm off?’

I pulled a face. ‘Um, because I forgot to set it?’

‘Did you go out?’ he asked.

‘Yeah, I went for a run.’

He glowered at me. ‘Don’t go out without telling me first, OK? And don’t ever forget to set the alarm.’

I stared at him. Why didn’t he just stick a tracking device on me and chain me up while he was at it?

‘I’ll get you a pass to the gym on the base, you can run there.’

He turned to walk into the kitchen and I watched him go, wondering whether he’d ever let up on the overprotective big brother routine. Then I went back into the bathroom and got dressed.

When I joined him downstairs he was busy frying some bacon and eggs.

‘So, what happened to you last night? Where’d you disappear to?’ I asked, sitting at the table.

‘Oh, just a work thing.’ He had his back to me as he flipped the bacon with a spatula.

‘What kind of work thing? Why did you have to leave in the middle of the night? Or am I not allowed to know? Is it all top secret?’

‘Yep, it’s so top secret that if I told you, I’d have to kill you. And seeing how you’re my sister, that might not be too good for our relationship.’

‘Ha ha. Wow, very James Bond.’ I paused for a moment. ‘Hopefully without the scantily clad women.’ I didn’t want to imagine any Bond girl moments involving Alex.

‘So, who are the bad guys then?’

I was sparking with curiosity, though a big part of me still didn’t want to know. Was it drug busting? Gang wars? Vice? I was pretty sure from the way Jack was trying to avoid the question, it wasn’t petty crime.

He rested the spatula on the side and turned to face me, recognising I wasn’t ready to let this drop. ‘No one you need to worry about.’ He gave me a look and then turned back to spoon the eggs onto the plates.

‘I’m not worried. Why would I need to worry? Didn’t you catch them last night?’ I raised my eyebrows innocently.

‘We caught one of them.’ He didn’t sound happy, like he’d won the bronze not the gold. He was always so competitive.

One of them – that seemed to suggest there were a finite number. Maybe it was a gang, then. Jack came and sat down opposite me. I looked at his face and tried again to picture him and Alex catching bad guys. The thought of Alex in uniform induced an automatic smile but then I thought about guns and the fighting that had to be involved in stopping bad guys and I had to struggle from having a full-blown panic attack.

‘So you had a chat with Alex last night?’

I almost choked on my eggs. My mind stumbled over itself trying to think what Alex might have told him. When had they even spoken?

‘Er, yeah, yes. I was thirsty, came down for something to drink. We chatted. You didn’t need to get him to come over.’

‘I didn’t ask him, he offered.’

‘Oh.’ That surprised me.

‘What did you talk about?’

‘Oh, you know, nothing really.’ I shovelled some eggs in my mouth so I didn’t have to talk. He was still looking at me. I swallowed. ‘You know – school, London, that sort of thing.’

‘Speaking of which – you need to call Dad.’

I grimaced at him. Jack ignored me and pushed his plate aside, got up and left the room. A second later he was back with a phone in his hand.

I took it reluctantly.

He gave me a brief smile. ‘Good luck.’

I dialled the number he handed me. The country code was +39. Italy, I thought. Dad was still away, then. Some things never changed. I did the maths – it would be about midnight. Hopefully he’d be sleeping and be too groggy to argue with me much. The phone gave a long beep, pause, another long beep, pause. I wondered how many beeps I should wait for before I could legitimately hang up and still claim I’d tried.

But then there was a click and a ‘Hello?’

He didn’t sound groggy, the total opposite in fact. I could picture him pacing the room as he spoke.

‘Hi, Dad.’ This was awkward. Jack was watching me so I walked into the hallway. I heard a sigh on the other end of the phone.

‘So, Lila, are you going to tell me why you are in California, when you should be in London?’

It wasn’t as though I hadn’t expected him to ask the question but I still hadn’t prepared an answer.

‘I – I just needed to see Jack, Dad.’

Nothing.

‘I miss him.’

My dad sighed again. ‘I know, Lila. But couldn’t you just have called him?’

He had a point. ‘Yes, probably, but I didn’t really think. I wanted to see him.’

‘Lila. You need to come home.’ Here it came.

‘Dad, I like it here.’ I could hear the panic in my voice. Oh, what the hell, at least there were several thousand miles between us, might as well lay it all on the line. ‘I want to stay.’

‘It’s the middle of the school term.’

I stepped further away from the open front door so my words wouldn’t carry inside. ‘It’s revision-time. I’m fine missing a couple of weeks. And, actually, I’ve been thinking—’

‘Lila, I want you home.’

‘Dad, you’re not even there. What am I coming home to?’

He was silent for a long time. I could hear his breathing and the static on the line humming.

‘I’m sorry, Lila. It’s just work is—’

‘I get it, Dad. You don’t need to apologise.’ I needed him to see that whatever painkiller or distraction his work offered him was what being here with Jack – and with Alex – offered me. ‘Can you understand that sometimes it’s hard for me, too? Being away from Jack and being on my own so much?’

He was still silent.

‘I want to stay, Dad. I want to stay with Jack.’ And with Alex. ‘I don’t want to come home.’

As soon as I said the words I realised that I was prepared to fight hard to make it happen. My dad would have to extradite me if he wanted me back home. It was my life and I was sick to death of being told where I was going to live and what was best for me. Of course there was the little detail of money and the fact that until I turned eighteen in October, which was five months away, I was still legally a child, but I’d deal with that later.

‘Lila, we’re not having this conversation. You’re coming home. I’ll fly back tonight and meet you off the plane. I don’t want you over there.’

‘Why?’ I was more determined now than angry.

He hesitated. Maybe he was realising for the first time that I was defying him and there was little he could do about it other than flying to San Diego to confront me. But I knew he’d never come back here – the memories of my mother worked better than an electric fence and barbed wire at keeping him out. He’d told me he was never coming back and while Jack regularly accused me of being melodramatic, the same couldn’t be said about my dad, so I believed him.

‘Lila, there are things you don’t understand. Reasons I don’t want you there. Even with Jack.’

‘Oh my God, please don’t tell me you’re worried about my safety too?’ I almost yelled. It was so frustrating this compulsion he and Jack had of wrapping me up in cotton wool and treating me like I was a china doll. ‘How am I any less safe here than living in Brixton?’

‘Let me speak to your brother.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I have to ask him something.’

I took a deep breath. Talking to Jack was not going to help my campaign much. ‘OK, I’ll put him on.’

I covered the mouthpiece and walked back into the living room where Jack was still sitting. His hands were motionless on the keys of his laptop and I could tell he had been listening.

‘He wants to talk to you,’ I said.

Jack frowned at me then closed the laptop with a snap. He swivelled in his chair and held out his hand for the phone. I handed it to him, begging him with my eyes. I didn’t have much hope. It seemed that Jack and my dad agreed on only one thing and that was on me going home.

I hovered by his chair, trying to hear what my dad was saying, but Jack got up and stood by the bookshelf, turning his back on me.

‘No – I told you that already – she is.’ He was behaving like a hostile witness. ‘She can – OK. Yes, that’s fine.’

A pause.

‘You know I will. It won’t be the end of it, though, you do realise that? You should ask her yourself. I’ll put her back on, hang on.’

I took the phone, my hand trembling a little. ‘Hey, Dad.’

He got straight to the point. ‘What did Jack mean when he said that this wouldn’t be the end of it?’

‘I told you. I want to stay. I don’t want to go back to London. I’ve been thinking I could transfer over here to finish high school – then go on to college.’

‘You are kidding me, right? You can’t go to school over there!’

I started to protest but he cut me off. ‘You can stay for two weeks now’ – I started to interrupt but he just talked louder – ‘and we’ll talk things through when you get back.’

I mulled it over. It wasn’t a great compromise. But I didn’t have much choice.

‘OK. You promise we’ll discuss it, though? It’s not just a ruse to get me home?’

‘No. I promise you we’ll discuss it.’

‘Thanks, Dad,’ I whispered.

Jack was frowning at me, his green eyes darkening.

‘I love you.’

‘I love you too.’

I hung up and put the receiver back on its base.

‘What did he say?’ Jack was sitting on the sofa, his arms on his knees, his hands clasped.

‘He said I could stay two weeks. And that we’d discuss college.’ As I said the words they rattled inside me. Two weeks was no time at all. And then there was another whole year before I could come back. If Dad even let me. He might just want to discuss with me the reasons why he wasn’t going to let me step foot in the States ever again.

‘Well, then,’ Jack said, getting up slowly from the sofa. ‘I guess we’d better make some plans for the next couple of weeks. Make sure you have some fun.’

I thought about offering some suggestions, but they all involved Alex and scenarios with just the two of us and I didn’t think Jack would be interested in hearing those.