Page 11 of The Book Swap

I close my eyes, so I don’t see her kiss him.

“Bye, girls,” he says, squeezing Georgia on the shoulder before walking past me and stopping.

“I think so far, it’s formidable,” he says, nodding toward the book which is still resting on the table. “The way that she’s tackled the issue of her protagonist’s mental health by setting those scenes in another world with so much abstract imagery is very clever. Very clever, indeed.”

I try to feign disinterest even as excitement fizzes inside me. He likes it too, for all the same reasons I do. He doesn’t wait for a response. He knows I won’t give him one. Instead he walks out of the kitchen and down the hallway to the front door. I pretend I don’t notice Mum’s and Georgia’s eyes on me.

“Bacon sandwiches all around?” Mum asks.

“Hell yes,” Georgia replies, sipping her coffee.

My stomach betrays me by rumbling. Everyone hears it.

“Sure. Thanks,” I say, bringing my own coffee to my lips.

Mum puts the bacon under the grill and turns to rest on the oven. I glance quickly up at her. She’s letting her gray grow out. Ever since I can remember, she’s had the same hair color as me, returning to the hairdressers every six weeks without fail to get the highlights put back in, and later dye and highlights. Now the color starts above her ears, and the crown is silver. She can see me looking, and puts a hand to her hair to run her fingers through it. She’s self-conscious. I look away.

“So, how was last night?” She’s asking me. Looking right at me. I wait for Georgia to answer, but she doesn’t.

I want to tell her the truth. I want to talk to her the way I used to, before she ruined everything. To tell her that it was devastating to only have photos of my best friend in a room where she’d normally have been the life and soul. That the only thing that makes it better is that I still see Bonnie as though she’s real. I know that makes me sound mad, but Mum wouldn’t make it feel that way. She’d understand. When I was younger, she always understood whatever I was feeling. Then, she cheated on Dad and she left us, and suddenly she was responsible for all the bad feelings, and I couldn’t talk to her about it anymore. She was gone. She tore our family apart, and rather than stick around to help us through it, she moved out—into this house, with Derek.

“It was fine,” I say.

She keeps her eyes on me, nodding slowly.

My throat tightens and I stare down into my coffee.

“Guess who got their tits out though? This guy,” Georgia says eventually, pointing at herself with two thumbs, unable to take it anymore.

Later, on the drive back to London, I turn the sound on the radio up every time Georgia tries to bring up Mum. This is why I hate seeing her. Why, if I can avoid it, I will. Because I just leave feeling sad, and I’m sad enough already.

When I drop Georgia in Clapham, she leans her head back into the car.

“Talk to someone. I’ll pay.”

I don’t tell her that I already talk to someone. Someone I’m on my way back home to chat to now. I talk to Bonnie.

Callum’s sitting on the sofa with a friend, drinking beer when I walk in. It means, in a few hours when the friend’s gone, I’ll be getting a knock on my door. Letting him in for the tipsy sex we seem to have fallen into over the past few months. There’s minimal speaking in between, but if we’re both home and one or both of us has had a drink, there’s a high chance we’ll end up in bed together.

“Hi,” I shout loudly over some sort of sports commentary booming out of the television. He raises his hand in the air by way of response, still dressed in the same tracksuit. I wonder if he’s even got changed since I left.

I forgot about my mass clear-out and for the first time since I can remember, walking into my room doesn’t fill me with dread. It actually looks surprisingly together. Tidy. Like the sort of room which should belong to a thirty-year-old, instead of the mess I was living in before.

I know Georgia’s right and I’ve got to make some changes. The first thing I’m going to do is frame the card Bonnie got me. A reminder to live my life for both of us. Standing on my bed, I go to the bookshelf to find the book I keep it in. It’s my other favorite possession. The copy of To Kill a Mockingbird which I studied for my GCSEs and again as part of my English degree, and have kept ever since. Every page has sentences underlined, and notes in the margin. I’ve kept all of the books I studied, but that’s the one I fell in love with. I used to read it most years, but I haven’t in a long time. Maybe I will now. I always find something in it that feels like it’s speaking just to me. I can’t see its spine on the shelf. It’s white with black imagery across it. A girl swinging on a tire. Jagged black writing. I’d know it anywhere. I pull all of the books down onto the bed and rifle through them, my heart in my throat. Some old favorites are there, among my “to be read” stack: Jane Eyre, Little Women, Wuthering Heights. I can’t see it.

“No, no, no, no, no,” I say, looking over to Bonnie’s chair, but she’s nowhere to be seen.

I try to remember putting all the books in the community library. I’d have seen that book, surely? There’s no way I would have put it in the suitcase and given it away, unless I was temporarily distracted. Possessed by a desire to rid my room of unwanted things.

Tears of frustration in my eyes, I burst out of my bedroom and pull open the front door. I run as fast I can up the road and under the bridge to the library.

I yank open the little cabinet door, scanning the spines. I can see some of the ones I donated, and that fills me with the smallest bit of hope. It’s got to be here—but as I pull the front row of books out to look behind them, I know it isn’t.

It’s gone, and the last thing Bonnie ever gave me has gone with it.

4

JAMES

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