Don't Ask

  Hilary Freeman is an experienced journalist and agony aunt, working for national newspapers, magazines and websites, as well as on TV and radio. She is currently the agony aunt for Sky. Her first novel, Loving Danny, was shortlisted for the Lancashire Children’s Book of the Year Award. Hilary lives in Camden Town with her husband and is Amy Winehouse’s neighbour – although she’s never been round for coffee.

  First published in Great Britain in 2009

  by Piccadilly Press Ltd,

  5 Castle Road, London NW1 8PR

  www.piccadillypress.co.uk

  Text copyright © Hilary Freeman, 2009

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.

  The right of Hilary Freeman to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN: 978 1 85340 997 4 (paperback)

  eISBN: 978 1 84812 323 6

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  Printed in the UK by CPI Bookmarque, Croydon, CR0 4TD Cover design by Patrick Knowles

  This book is dedicated to my grandma,

  Thilde ‘Safta’ Brook,

  in celebration of her 90th birthday,

  and to the memory of my late grandpa,

  Sid ‘Saba’ Brook.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 1

  Jack was perfect. And that was the problem.

  I knew I should have been congratulating myself on being the luckiest girl in the world, on winning the boyfriend lottery, but instead I couldn’t help wondering: if Jack was perfect, then what was wrong with him?

  You see, I know very well that nobody is perfect, least of all me. A perfect girlfriend wouldn’t have done what I’ve done. A perfect girlfriend wouldn’t even have thought of it. Miss Perfect would have been content to live happily ever after with her lovely, handsome, funny, clever, ideal boyfriend, without giving his impeccable wonderfulness a second thought. Indeed, she wouldn’t have possessed a cynical bone in her body or a suspicious notion in her perfectly oval little head. But I’m not her, I’m me (which I’m kind of glad about, as she sounds rather dull). I’m the girl who always has to pick the scab off her knee, just as it’s starting to heal nicely. I’m the girl who’ll take her mobile phone apart to see how it works on the inside, and then be unable to put it back together again.

  I’ll make no excuses for what I’ve done, except to state: I simply couldn’t help myself.

  It all started as a game, a challenge, which grew out of a notion.

  ‘How are things going with Jack?’ asked Katie, one rainy Saturday afternoon three months ago, as we were lounging around in my bedroom, variously surfing the net, painting each other’s toenails and discussing our half-term plans (even though we’d only just gone back to school after the Christmas holidays).

  ‘Good,’ I said. ‘He’s great. But there are a few things that have been bothering me . . .’

  The first bit is not actually true. Katie didn’t ask me about Jack. I brought up the subject myself because I was dying for her to ask and she just kept ignoring my hints. In her defence, my boyfriend had become my favourite – some would say virtually my only – topic of conversation over the previous few months and, patient as Katie is, she was beginning to tire of my endless musings on his character (not to mention his looks, tastes, clothes, interests and ambitions). Fair enough, I suppose. But personally, I think she was failing in her duties as my best friend. Commandment number one: thou shalt listen without complaint, protest or interruption. Which, I noted, I would be sure to remind her of next time she bored me rigid moaning about her mum’s new boyfriend.

  What really happened was this.

  One Saturday afternoon. In my bedroom, etc, etc . . .

  ‘Katie,’ I asked, in my best pleading voice, a few minutes after we’d last put the subject to rest. ‘Can I ask you something about Jack?’

  ‘Uh-huh,’ she muttered, without looking up. I’m sure that if her eyelids hadn’t been in the way I would have seen her eyeballs rolling back in her head. ‘What is it now?’

  ‘Well,’ I said, more brightly now that I had her reluctant attention. ‘There are a few things that have been bothering me. You know we were talking about how he won’t talk about his ex? I’ve been trying really hard not to let it bug me, but I still don’t understand why he won’t.’

  She sighed, audibly.

  ‘No, but really, Katie,’ I tried again, ‘I know she finished with him, and so he was probably upset and all, but it was over a year ago and he still goes all funny every time anything to do with the past comes up. I just want to know what went wrong, because I don’t have a clue what happened. Why did she break up with him?’

  ‘I don’t get why you need to know,’ said Katie, in a kindly but exasperated tone. ‘You’re happy with him, he treats you brilliantly and you fancy him loads, so why does it matter why his ex dumped him? If she hadn’t done it, then you’d never have met him, would you?’

  ‘True,’ I said, and I pondered her point for a moment. ‘But he’s so lovely and amazing to be with, why would anybody not want to be with him? I know I could never dream of dumping him. And why won’t he talk about it? Or her? At all? Ever?’

  ‘Not everybody likes talking about their relationships ad infinitum,’ Katie replied, raising her left eyebrow. ‘Some people think it’s a turnoff to bleat on about their exes. And just because he’s perfect for you, doesn’t mean he was perfect for Anne or Amanda, or whatever her name was.’

  I knew she had deliberately chosen the wrong names, just to be annoying. ‘Alex,’ I corrected. ‘Her name was Alex. Alex Porter. That’s about all I do know about her. That and the fact she was a huge football fan, like Jack.’

  ‘Alex, Schmalex. Stop worrying about her. I’m sure she hasn’t given you a second thought.’ Katie started fiddling around on my computer keyboard. ‘Come on, why don’t we see if we’ve got any new friend requests on Topfriendz?’

  ‘In a minute,’ I told her, ignoring her attempt at a distraction. ‘But it’s not just Alex,’ I continued. ‘It’s other things too. I mean, I hardly know anything about when Jack was younger. I know his dad died when he was twelve, but that’s it. Don’t you think that’s weird?’

  Katie took a deep breath and gave me a patronising little smile. ‘No, not really.’ She paused. ‘Lily, hon, I mean this in the nicest possible way, but can you just shut up about it and simply enjoy being with Jack, OK?’

  ‘OK,’ I agreed, because there’s no point continuing a conversation with someone who doesn’t want to take part. But I had no intention of letting the subject drop for long.

  As Katie knew very well, I’m not the sort of person who can ‘just shut up and enjoy’ being with a guy. According to my mother, I’m indomitable – she probably chose the word because she knew I’d have to look it up – which is a polite way of saying a pain in the ba
ckside, who always does what she wants. I discovered that there’s another word, rambunctious, which means almost the same thing. As a description, I like it better because it makes me picture an out-of-control sheep bumping around in a small room, knocking things over. That just about sums up my life. And my relationships.

  For most people, dating someone new is a bit like playing pass the parcel – although, usually, without the cheesy music. On your first date, your boyfriend is a neat package, wrapped in shiny paper; he’s made an effort, bought some new aftershave, he’s careful what he says and he minds his manners. Gradually, as time passes and you spend more time together, the sheets of shiny wrapping paper fall away and you start to uncover his true personality. Some of the layers reveal good surprises (he’s generous, he enjoys the same films), others disappointing ones (he never changes his socks, he likes Westlife), and so little by little, you discover his traits and his flaws, his talents and his phobias. If you’re lucky – and keep on playing until the very end – you’ll tear off the last sheet to find you’ve won the prize of a great relationship, with someone you know inside out. I know this analogy doesn’t entirely work, as the package in pass the parcel gets smaller and smaller – which means you’d end up going out with Tom Thumb (or Tom Cruise) – but I’m afraid it’s the best I can come up with right now.

  Anyway, owing to my out-of-control-sheep-like tendencies, the pass the parcel approach to dating doesn’t do anything for me. Call me greedy, but I need to know everything and I need to know it NOW. I don’t like mystery or suspense, and patience is one of the many virtues I don’t possess. Give me a book and I’ll – inadvisably – turn straight to the last page to find out what happens at the end. Invariably, what I read there won’t make much sense, and it will spoil the two hundred or so pages that go before, but knowing this won’t stop me repeating my mistake. I don’t understand how anybody can wait a whole week until the next episode of their favourite drama. I have to go online and look on a website to find out what happens next. Then I’ll eagerly read my way through the episode synopses for the whole series and, after that, I’ll Google the spoilers for the next series, the one that hasn’t even finished filming yet. My dad always says: ‘Show Lily a cliff-hanger and she’ll find a way to abseil down it.’ He thinks he’s hilarious.

  It’s not just because I’m impatient that Jack’s refusal to talk about his past bothered me so much. Mainly, it just didn’t make any sense. He was so open and frank about everything else, even things that other people don’t like talking about (such as puking and walking in on your mum when you shouldn’t). But whenever I mentioned his last girlfriend or his childhood, his eyes would glaze over and I’d feel like I was being sucked into two vast black holes. As far as the files marked Dad and Alex were concerned, anyone would think he’d signed the Official Secrets Act.

  Katie knew all this (mainly because I told her a hundred times). She said she was sure there was nothing to find out. But if there was, she said, it could only be bad news, so I shouldn’t go there. Her imagined ‘explanations’ were not very helpful. ‘Maybe his dad was a serial killer and is actually in prison,’ she once suggested. ‘Or maybe he found out his dad had an affair with Alex’s mum years ago and that they’re really brother and sister.’

  She didn’t suggest either of these that Saturday because, clearly, she didn’t want to talk about Jack at all that afternoon. All she did want to do was to mess around on Topfriendz.com, the new networking site that we’d both signed up to about a month before. She preferred logging on at my house because she and her brother share a computer, and she couldn’t be sure he wouldn’t hack into her account. Katie took Topfriendz very seriously – she already had about three hundred friends. I only had sixty-five because I had a boyfriend. And a life. And a password that was impossible to remember.

  I’ve never really got the point of networking sites. Online friendships are rubbish. From what I can tell, you have two types of friends: the ones you like, see and speak to in real life, and the ones you don’t. As far as the latter are concerned, there’s usually a good reason. Since I’d joined Topfriendz, I’d been stalked by a girl from primary school who kept asking me join her Rangers group (as if), and I’d accidentally invited all my ‘friends’ to go shoe shopping with me on the same afternoon, by pressing the wrong button. The girl from primary school was delighted. She probably thought we could buy some nice, sensible, ranging shoes together. I have absolutely no idea what ranging shoes are but I imagine them to be green, with chunky soles and thick laces. I wouldn’t be surprised if primary school girl isn’t still standing outside Clarks, wondering where I’ve got to.

  Katie had twelve new friend requests when we logged on, and I had just one. His name was Igor and he said he liked very much my picture and wanted to make talk with me. He was twenty-three and had a moustache. Katie said she’d show me how to set my profile to private.

  While Katie dealt with her requests, I started thinking about Jack again. He didn’t have a Topfriendz profile because he thought it was a waste of time and, unlike me, wasn’t so worried about missing out that he couldn’t stick to his principles. And then I thought, I wonder if Alex is on Topfriendz? If she is, I’ll be able to see what she looks like, and what she likes doing, and even who her friends are. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t come up with this idea before.

  ‘Katie,’ I said excitedly. ‘Give me a go.’

  ‘I thought you weren’t bothered,’ she said, mimicking my own words. ‘That online friendships were rubbish.’

  ‘Mostly, they are. But I’ve had a genius idea. Shove up.’ I squeezed on to the chair beside her and gently pushed her hands away from the keyboard. After a bit of fiddling, I found the search box and started typing in Alex’s name. I’d got as far as the ‘e’ when Katie groaned.

  ‘Lily, I can’t believe you’re looking her up!’ But her voice was no longer disapproving, or bored. She sounded quite excited.

  ‘I know I shouldn’t . . . but I can’t resist,’ I said. We giggled together. ‘I wonder if she’s under Alex or Alexandra?’

  She was under Alex. There were several other Alex Porters, but the others all lived in America. Or were men.

  ‘Is that her?’ cried Katie. ‘Alex Porter, age seventeen, St Edmund’s Sixth Form College?’

  ‘Yes, I think so.’ My heart was beating faster. There, in front of me, was a picture of the girl whom my boyfriend had loved for two years, and who had seemingly broken his heart so badly that he couldn’t even mention her name without clamming up. She was pretty in an unthreatening way and she had a warm smile. ‘She looks . . . normal,’ I said. ‘I mean, she looks just like an ordinary girl. Like us, only a bit older. Nice. Friendly.’

  ‘What did you expect? A monster?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe I thought she’d look like a supermodel. Or be really cold and snooty-looking. Or have a head that spun around.’

  ‘So do you feel better, having seen her?’ asked Katie, who clearly thought that was the end of the matter.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. I hesitated. ‘And no. I just wish I could see her whole profile. And talk to her.’ Somewhere, deep inside my cluttered and very disorganised mind, the germ of an idea was beginning to grow: a way of satisfying my curiosity about Jack and setting my mind to rest, once and for all. The internet is supposed to be a way of sourcing information, isn’t it?

  ‘Sorry, Lil. The only way you can do that is if you . . .’ Katie must have noticed the mischievous glint in my eye. ‘No, Lily, you can’t!’

  ‘Why not?’ I said. ‘She’s two years older than us, she lives on the other side of the city, she doesn’t know any of our friends, she went to a different school in a different area, and, most importantly, Jack isn’t on Topfriendz. So who would ever know?’

  ‘It’s too risky,’ said Katie, grinning despite herself. ‘Anyway, she’d never accept you as a friend if she knew who you were.’

  ‘But she won’t.’ I started thinking aloud. ‘And I can c
hange my profile. I can use a different email address and have a new name. I can even be someone else entirely if I want to be.’ I felt breathless, naughty, like a little girl about to do something her parents have told her never to do.

  ‘Won’t she think it’s a bit weird if some girl she’s never heard of pitches up and starts asking questions about her ex-boyfriend?’

  ‘You don’t have much faith in me, do you, Kay? I won’t ask straight away, obviously. I’ll get to know her first. And when I’ve got my answers I’ll just delete my profile and disappear. Nobody will ever know.’

  ‘Don’t do it,’ said Katie. She looked suddenly serious. ‘You’ll regret it, I know you will.’

  ‘Maybe,’ I said, without conviction. ‘But if you don’t ask you don’t get.’ I’d already made my decision, and Katie knew it. ‘At least I’ll stop going on about Alex all the time. It’s the perfect way to find out what happened with Jack. She might even know about his dad.’

  ‘True. But please be careful, Lily.’

  ‘Course I will,’ I said. ‘But what could possibly go wrong?’

  Chapter 2

  If people ask, I always tell them that Jack and I met at a party. But if I’m going to be precise, we actually met outside a party, on a damp stone wall in the back garden of 29 Elmsmere Road.

  The party itself – Sophy Richards’ sixteenth – was a big yawn, full of virtually the same people as at every other party I ever go to. It was as if somebody had used one of those sci-fi transporter machines to beam my whole year into Sophy’s living room, adding a few random extras and replacing the teachers with parents who skulked about upstairs, occasionally appearing to ask for the music to be turned down. Everyone was talking to the same people they always talk to, dancing to the same tracks, with the same stupid expressions on their faces. It even smelled the same, like eau de B.O. mixed with sickly-sweet alcopop fumes and stale cheese and onion crisps.