Page 48 of The Book Swap

She started screaming at me the second she saw me, with Bonnie at her side trying to pull her away.

“Felix said you told them. That you sent them there. How could you?”

“Come on, Erin! He isn’t worth it.”

The words hit me as hard as the expressions on their faces, contorted in pain and disgust.

“I’m sorry,” I shouted, rain dripping from the top of the hood of my waterproof jacket onto my lips. “I’m so sorry. I only told Marky and his mates.”

“That’s the same as telling the whole school and you know it.” Erin pointed a finger at me, her face screwed up.

I walked toward her, hand outstretched. “Please, Erin. Can we go somewhere and talk about this?” I was close to tears, and grateful for the rain. “I wrote you a letter.”

“She doesn’t want to talk to you,” Bonnie shouted. She was holding a bright purple umbrella over the two of them. Just days earlier, the three of us were sharing it.

I threw my arms out. “Please. I really am sorry.”

“It’s too late for that,” Erin said, and she was crying so hard my heart ached with a need to make it better, but I couldn’t. I was the reason she was so upset. “Everyone knows. You heard them in assembly just then. They’re chanting at me that my mum’s a ‘teacher fucker.’ It’s never going to stop.”

“It will,” I said, my voice weak.

She laughed. “The way it has for you, you mean?” Shaking her head, she fixed her eyes on me for the last time. “Can’t you see that that’s why this hurts so much? You knew what would happen to me if they found out. You knew, more than anyone, and you still told them. I’ll never forgive you for this. Ever.”

“Neither of us will,” Bonnie added, and the two of them turned their backs to me, walking quickly away from college. Erin never came back. She started at Matravers School in Westbury afterward.

If she ever finds out I’m the person writing in those margins, it’s over.

Passing Camberwell Green, I cross at the lights and walk down the high street, avoiding a crowd of drunk people eating McDonald’s in a sheltered doorway.

I think about what Erin said to me in the back of The Great Gatsby.

Thank you for giving me the freedom to be myself.

The irony of it. That in allowing her to be herself, I have to be anyone but me.

Is that even possible? I could deliver the books in the dark of night. Never reveal anything that gives away my identity. Just thinking about it fills me with guilt, but the alternative is worse. The alternative is never writing back, and I don’t think I can do that. She doesn’t know it’s me. Putting an end to the conversation in the margins would only hurt her more than I have already.

In the morning, as though the universe isn’t done mocking me, Middlemarch is back. Next to it is a book I’ve never heard of, called Beloved. Swallowing, I run my eyes across the title, then flick to the back of George Eliot to check I’ve got the right one—and sure enough, there it is.

Meet me in Beloved?

I try not to read into it. It’s just a book title. She didn’t choose it on purpose. Putting the books in my pocket, I jog to the bus stop. I pull them out once I’m on the tube.

As before, I go straight to the back where the answers to my questions are waiting. I can’t think about the fact that it’s Erin writing back to me. If I can keep them separate, somehow, then nothing has changed. And then I read the answer to question eleven. Her greatest regret.

I let down a friend when she needed me the most and I’ll never forgive myself. She died and I think I’ll spend the rest of my life trying to make it up to her.

Closing the book, I squeeze my eyes shut. It feels too personal now. How can I let Erin live with that pain, when I know that Bonnie forgave her? That she understood. But I can’t tell her, because I’m not meant to know it’s Erin, and because of the promise I made Bonnie—to take our friendship to the grave. I never imagined it getting so complicated.

It’s only as the train stops at Oxford Circus, and the carriage empties and then fills with even more people than before that I notice the PS in Beloved and my stomach clenches.

What’s your name, if it isn’t too personal to ask? I’m not sure how much longer I can refer to you as “Mystery Man” in my head for.

I slam the book closed. For the rest of the journey my brain isn’t filled with my novel; it’s filled only with how I can avoid answering that question. At some point she’ll find out, and when she does, I lose everything. All I can do is keep that from happening for as long as possible.

As I exit at Highbury & Islington, I see a giant advert. It’s a picture of the Statue of Liberty, with the words “New York Misses You.”

That’s the answer. Of course it is.

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