Page 3 of Forever is Now

I don’t really remember much about it.

But anyway, I’m going further back than when I met Ruari.

So, who am I? Well, I’m the youngest daughter of Margaret Taylor. My mum’s my best friend. Always there for me. She’s sick now, she’s got kidney failure. But she’s still here for me. Always.

And she got me legal representation and everything—because she used to be a lawyer. She stopped when she had me and my sister. That’s Matilda. She’s the model, the one who the papers have been printing those risqué photos of, ever since my story came to light, as if Matilda’s job somehow discredits my experiences.

Adelaide James: The public deserves to know the truth.

Summer Taylor-Braddon: Matilda’s ten years older than me, and she moved out when I was seven-and-a-half. No, I was nearly eight years old, I think. It had been the three of us, growing up. A house near Fatherford Lane in Okehampton. So then it was just me and Mum. I want to say ‘rattling’ around in that house, but there was never any rattling because that implies empty space and hard surfaces. It was a small house, but it was perfect for us. Always warm, inviting, cozy. We had this super soft carpet—a light pink color, and it was so wonderful to walk barefoot on it.

Mum worked two part-time jobs once I was old enough and at school. Not law. Cleaning. Mum always said she hated it, but she did what she needed to do to put food on the table. And from about when I was eight or nine, we’d get some money from Mattie too. She’d send some back when she had really well-paying jobs. We weren’t like super poor, but we weren’t always comfortable.

Sugar sandwiches, in my lunch box until the school realized, said it wasn’t nutritious. They suggested cheese or tuna, and Mum was in tears then.Do they think I’d be giving you sugar if I had a choice?

But after that, I did have cheese.

Mum stopped eating some meals though. I didn’t know this until later. Still feel bad now though.

[Neither Summer nor Adelaide speak for five seconds, but traffic can be heard nearby]

Summer Taylor-Braddon: It’s what mothers do right? Sacrifice.[She clears her throat] But yeah, even though there’s my sister, it often was just me and Mum, all through my teenage years. And my friends all loved Mum. Hana and Julia, they were my besties. And when we got into Sixth Form, our friendship group kind of merged with the boys—Ruari and his two friends. Dante and Ashley. We became a six. We hung out in the park together in free lessons or after school. We were at my house a lot, too. Didn’t really go to their homes much. Mainly it was Mum. Mum loved them all. Loved having a full house, she said.

She’d always wanted more kids. Of course, she was entirely devoted to Dad. When he got killed—he was a soldier, Afghanistan—I was three. But she never dated again. So no more kids. But she sort of ‘adopted’ my friends. And Ruari.

And shewasconcerned about him. She really listened to him, asked what she could do to help. She’d sit with him at our kitchen table. You see, he was having a tough time at home. That was why he really liked coming to my house. He gradually opened up about this, when it was the whole group of us and Mum, but also when it was just me and Mum and him.

He’d sit there, breathing deeply, his hand trembling. “I just... I don’t know why she does it,” he told me.

You see, he was talking about his mum, and his blue eyes darkened to this steel grey—the hue they went when he was really troubled by something. I only met Portia a couple of times, before she died. An overdose. She’d struggled with addiction for years, and Ruari, as her only child, had struggled too. I’d noticed, of course I had, that he’d been coming to school later and later, many mornings turning up with huge bags under his eyes. His clothes were getting more thread-bare and several times he only had a quarter of a sandwich in his lunchbox from home. He’d eat it really quickly too, sort of looking around at everyone, as if daring anyone to make a comment about it.

He didn’t have money for school trips. There weren’t even that many, in Sixth Form, but there socials. These nights that our Sixth Form committee would put on, but he didn’t go on a lot of them.

When our friendship group was hanging out, we always tried to do things that didn’t cost anything, because none of us really ever talked to him about it—until I did.

We were seventeen. At the end of year 12. Ruari and I both had a free lesson before Assembly, whereas Hana and Dante were in Chemistry, Ashley in Psychology—or it might’ve been Media Studies—and Julia had dance. Our group tended to hang out in the little computer room in the Sixth-Form block, and I was sitting at a table, the computer keyboard pushed back so there was room for my bag and folder. I was going through my notes from English Lit, and he came in. He stopped a few spaces away from me, sat heavily in the chair, like the weight of the world was on his shoulders, and I tried not to look at him.

But of course I glanced up. “All right?” I asked.

“Yep,” he replied, his voice curt, and he just stared at the computer in front of him. The machine was off. The screen black, reflecting his face. I could only see that all distorted though, because of the angle, and when I looked up at him, I was struck by his strong profile.

In the last year or so, he’d filled out a bit. He was now the same height as me, but his face seemed stronger. Harder lines around it, making up its edges, even though he also still had baby fat. His jaw was strong, his nose finally seemed to be the right size for his face and no longer on the large size, and he was clearly in need of a shave. I’d not really paid a lot of attention to Ruari’s shaving routine. He always was fresh-faced, soft skin, only now he wasn’t. Like he’d not shaven in a day or two. Which was fine—more than fine, really, because it made this part of me want to reach out and touch him.

Only I couldn’t because that would’ve been so, so weird. He was my friend.

But I noticed how attractive he looked. Maybe not in the conventional way. But still, it was a way that really spoke to me.

His glasses had steamed up, upon coming in here, even though it was pretty warm outside, but he took them off now, and that was when I saw it. The faint shadow of a bruise around his eye socket.

Yeah. I said something like, “Oh my God.” And it didn’t seem enough, you know? I was standing up, heading over to him before I’d even realized I was doing it. “Are you okay? What’s happened?” I couldn’t believe I’d not seen it before, to be honest, because it didn’t really look new.

But my mind flashed back to last week—when he’d been off. Measles, he’d told us all. He’d only just come back the day before, in fact. I’d not really seen him much that day though—Mondays were my busiest of days—but sitting there, in the computer room, I felt... I don’t know. Overwhelmed with it all.

He looked up at me—I was still hovering over him—and he slumped farther back in his seat, then slowly put his glasses back on. His Adam’s apple bobbed a bit as he visibly swallowed. “I’m just so tired, Summer.” His voice even sounded tired, like huge weights were sitting on the words, dragging them down.

I sat next to him, very aware that my breathing was fast. I leant forward, propping my elbows on the computer desk, and looked carefully at him. He met my eyes slowly, and then it all just poured out.

He told me about his mother’s new boyfriend. A man named Al. Al had come over several times before and Ruari didn’t like him. Al was too quick with his fists.

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