Page 82 of Close to You

‘You can’t just come in here,’ I say.

‘What happened?’ she fires back.

‘What do you mean?’

‘I had the police around. They say David’s missing.’

‘I know. Who do you think reported it?’

‘So, where is he?’

I have to fight away a yawn, which only seems to make her angrier. It’s only now that I realise I’ve never given her my address. She must have got it from David.

‘If I knew where he was,’ I say, ‘I wouldn’t have reported him missing.’

Yasmine stands up a little straighter and smooths her top across her stomach. Her belly button has popped and looks like the cherry on top of a bakewell. Her eyes scan my roll-neck neck top and it’s as if she knows.

‘What did you do to him?’ she asks.

Until now, I thought I’d have no problem dealing with her, but it’s as if the force of the accusation is too much as I find myself taking half a step backwards.

‘What are you on about?’

‘He wouldn’t just disappear.’

I’m not sure why I react in the way I do. I should sympathise and perhaps try to force out a tear. We could be sisters in arms. Instead – and I suspect because I simply don’t like her – I fire right back.

‘He disappeared all the time,’ I say. ‘He’d claim to be off in one place – and then I’d find him sitting in a service station by himself.’

Yasmine’s arm remains half raised. ‘What do you mean?’

‘What do you think I mean? It’s not a metaphor, it’s a fact. There’s plenty he didn’t tell me – including who you were, until you showed up in my class.’ A pause. ‘And whydidyou turn up?’

Things have swapped and now Yasmine folds her arms defensively across herself. ‘Because he’s my brother,’ she says. ‘He’d never had a proper girlfriend before and I wanted a look at you.’

‘Why not tell me that at the time, instead of running away?’

She slumps a little, unfolding her arms and gripping the counter. There’s a moment in which I wonder if she’s about to go into labour. I’ll have to bundle her into the car and get her to hospital.

‘I’m not sure,’ she says, quieter this time. ‘David’s a complicated person. He’s been hurt by girlfriends before – or at least that’s what he’s said. Sometimes I wondered if he was the problem. I was going to ask if you knew what you were getting yourself into… but then I thought you were playing games in pretending not to know me.’

‘Ididn’tknow you.’

‘Well, I know that now…’

It’s now that I know I should stop – except this is when I twist the knife. It’s one thing to tell lies to cover; another entirely to tell them to cause someone else pain.

‘Doyouknow where he might have gone?’ I ask.

I picture the lake and the bridge.

There was no need for that – and yet I feel like she started it by announcing herself after my class and then storming away. What goes around, and all that.

‘I did tell the police,’ Yasmine says. Her tone has changed from angry and accusatory to soft acceptance.

‘Tell them what?’

‘Dad’s old house is out in a place called Greatstone on the Kent coast. We’ve not known what to do with it since Dad died. It’s too run-down for anyone to live in and neither of us have the money to restore it. Developers have been interested – but only to knock it down. David would never agree to that, so it’s still sitting empty.’