Don't Ask Page 4

  By our fifth date, a burger and chips followed by a DVD at my house, we were beginning to slot into the routine of each other’s daily lives and had gone beyond those sorts of basic ‘getting to know you’ questions altogether. There comes a point when, if you’ve grown close to someone, you feel you can’t ask certain things because you believe you should already know the answers. It’s embarrassing. It’s like not knowing how many brothers and sisters your best mate has, or realising you don’t know the colour of your boyfriend’s eyes. It shows you haven’t been paying attention, that you’re a bad friend or a rubbish girlfriend. So you stop asking.

  Of course that doesn’t mean my questions went away. Sometimes, I’d completely forget about them for a while and then something would happen to make me think of them again. Jack might let a new detail slip out – Alex’s surname, for example, when he was talking about a football match he’d been to – and it would get me wondering. Instead of pestering Jack with my questions, I decided to discuss them with Katie instead. It wasn’t long before she began to come up with all her crazy theories about his past. She thought she was being funny, that it was all a game and that I was, as usual, creating a drama out of nothing, and so the more I questioned, the wilder her fantasies became: maybe Jack’s family were in a witness protection programme; maybe he killed his dad; maybe his dad was a famous Hollywood actor because, well, Jack did look a teeny bit like Matt Damon, didn’t he? I’d laugh along with Katie, but a little part of me would wonder if there really was something dark or dodgy in Jack’s past.

  Whenever you hear about serial killers on the news, there are always interviews with neighbours and friends who say, ‘But he seemed like such a nice guy’ or, ‘He was perfectly ordinary’ and, ‘Nobody would have guessed’. Some of them have jobs and girlfriends whom they go home to every night, and they’ll do the washing up and watch soaps together. A person can be charming and have perfect manners and still be a monster.

  Now, I’m not saying that I ever thought Jack might have been a serial killer, because that would be crazy, stupid and totally ridiculous, but it makes you think, doesn’t it?

  Chapter 6

  I did it for both of us. For me and for Jack. I thought that if I knew everything about him, if I didn’t have any more unanswered questions, then we could be properly happy. Not knowing was stopping me from falling absolutely in love with him. If he hadn’t been so secretive, I wouldn’t have needed to involve Alex, would I?

  Sometimes I wonder if I wasn’t the only one who created a new identity to get what I wanted. I only changed my name and a couple of little details, but Jack totally reinvented himself, packing up all the memories he didn’t want to share in sealed boxes and then putting them in storage somewhere. He hardly kept in touch with any of his old friends, and he sure as hell didn’t want me to meet them. He steered me away from his mum – I’d only met her to say hello or goodbye to – and when I asked to see photos of him as a child, or with his dad, he said he didn’t have any. Who doesn’t keep pictures of their dead dad?

  How could I believe him when he said how much he liked me, when his own dad meant so little to him? How could I be sure he felt anything at all?

  It was almost two whole weeks after I’d sent my message that I heard back from Alex. Scrub that. What I really mean is that it was nearly two whole weeks before Laura heard back from Alex. Being two people can get quite confusing – sometimes even I couldn’t remember who I was at a given moment. During that icy, bleak January fortnight, when it was too cold and too dark to do anything else, I went on Topfriendz more than I ever had before, every morning before school and the second I arrived home, after dinner and before bed. I rarely bothered checking my own profile, only Laura’s. Each time I logged in, I hoped for a ‘You’ve got a new friend’ confirmation and, if I was lucky, even a message from Alex. Instead, what I received were several friend requests (ironically, Laura seemed to be far more popular than Lily ever was), a ‘Hello lovely laydee’ from Igor, and an invitation to a gig by some band called The Wonderfulls. The lead singer was quite cute, but their angsty Emo music wasn’t my – or Laura’s – thing at all. I like music you can dance to, not music that makes you want to slit your wrists.

  I began to convince myself that Alex wasn’t going to get in touch, doubting myself for ever coming up with such a stupid scheme. Why, I asked myself, would she be interested in becoming my ‘friend’, when she already had loads of friends – real friends? And even if she did accept my friend request, it was likely nothing more would come of it. Laura would just take her place as another name in a long list of names, there to make up the numbers. There was no reason why Alex should reply, she probably had a very busy life, what with her A-levels and her football and her mates. To her, Topfriendz was almost certainly nothing more than a diversion, something you join because everyone else does, just as it had been for me. Maybe I should have seen her silence as a sign: ‘Quit while you’re ahead. Don’t go there. It was a bad idea and you’ve had a lucky escape. Get out now, while you still can.’ Gosh, there are a lot of expressions that mean virtually the same thing, aren’t there?

  The only thing that didn’t cross my mind, as I tortured myself with all the what-ifs and the maybes and the buts, was the possibility that Alex might not go on Topfriendz every day, the fact she hadn’t even seen my message yet. But I’ve never been one to let logic get in the way of paranoia.

  So, when I logged on, one Thursday evening, to see alerts telling me that I not only had one new friend, but also a message from Alex Porter, it came as a surprise. A very pleasant surprise. I was so excited I almost shouted out ‘Alex has got back to Laura!’, which would have made everyone in my family think that I was on some sort of covert spying mission in my bedroom, exchanging secrets with the Russians in code. Or, more likely, that I’d finally lost the plot altogether. I hesitated about whether to call Katie before opening the message, so we could read it together, but I’d just put some fake tan on my face, one of those little sample sachets that comes free in a magazine, and I didn’t want it to rub off all over my phone and go streaky.

  Tentatively, my heart bumping away in my chest as if I’d had three Red Bulls, I opened Alex’s message. This is what it said:

  Hi Laura.

  How’s it going? Good to hear from you. I think I do vaguely remember you from that sports camp when I was ten. Are you still playing? It’s great to talk to another girl who’s into football. None of my college mates are, I think they think I’m a bit weird, to be honest. What team do you support? I’m a huge Arsenal fan. Don’t say you support Spurs, or I’ll delete you from my friend list! LOL! It would be good to chat to you again. What are you up to these days?

  Love Alex xx

  Result! I couldn’t have hoped for more. Alex was friendly, she wanted me to write back and she seemed really keen to get to know me better. She even thought she remembered me! It’s amazing what people will say so they don’t seem rude or ignorant; they will even convince themselves that a complete fabrication is the truth, rewriting history in the process. Alex probably spent hours racking her brains, wading through the fog of her distant memories, trying to put Laura’s name and face on to the body of a little ten-year-old girl whom she met at some stupid kids’ summer camp years ago. She wiped that poor girl’s identity and replaced it with mine (Laura’s). She concluded that I was someone she had once known.

  So excited that I could barely steady my hands to type, I texted Katie:

  OMG K! Alex msgd!

  OMG!! came her reply. And then a moment later: Call me!

  I cnt, I texted back. Fk tan is wet.

  It can’t have been more than ten seconds later that my phone started ringing. I put it straight on to loudspeaker.

  ‘Oh my God, Lil,’ Katie shouted. ‘You can’t use fake tan as an excuse not to tell me the most exciting thing that’s happened in weeks!’

  ‘You wouldn’t understand,’ I told her, as my own voice echoed back at me through th
e speaker. ‘You don’t need to use it. Your skin is all lovely and golden brown all year round, already.’

  ‘OK, OK,’ she said. ‘So I don’t get fake tan. For God’s sake tell me what Alex said!’

  ‘It’s mad. She actually thinks she remembers me.’

  ‘No! How come? What else did she say?’

  ‘She asked me which football team I support and said it was good to talk to another girl who’s into football. I told you football was the line to go with, didn’t I? She wants me to write back.’ I read Katie the message, so she knew as much as me about Alex.

  ‘Ah, she sounds really nice. Are you going to write back? Are you going to ask her about Jack?’

  ‘Don’t be a zombie, Kay, I can’t just steam on in there and say, “Hi Alex, good to hear from you and, by the way, it’s not just an interest in football that we’ve got in common.”’

  ‘I know that,’ said Katie, sounding hurt. ‘I was only wondering.’

  ‘Sure, hon. But I think I need to get to know her a bit before I ask any probing questions.’

  ‘So what are you going to say?’

  ‘I think I’ll tell her a little about myself – about Laura. I’ll ask her a few questions too, so she has to write back, and then take it from there. If I treat the whole thing like I’ve just made a new friend, and I’m getting to know her, like I’d get to know any new friend, I reckon she won’t suspect a thing.’

  Making a new friend was, to all intents and purposes, exactly what I was doing – if you ignore the fact that the friendship was built on slightly dubious foundations (a nicer term for lies), and that my motives weren’t exactly pure. I genuinely didn’t know much about Alex at all, save her name and the fact she’d once gone out with Jack, so it wasn’t as if I was going to have to pretend to be ignorant about her. If I’d met her in different circumstances, she could have been someone I might choose to be friends with. Jack liked her, and Jack liked me, so we must have some qualities in common.

  Was I using her? No more so than many people use their friends. Why do people make friends with each other anyway? They do it because they want to be in the cool clique, or because they’re lonely, or because they want to show someone else how interesting and how much fun they are. Everybody uses each other to a certain extent, even if it’s just to have someone to go shopping with.

  I wrote back to Alex later that evening. I said it was great that she remembered me from camp but, no, I wasn’t playing football any more. Was she? And wasn’t it a coincidence that she was an Arsenal fan because, guess what, so was I! All I really knew about Arsenal was that they were a north London team, which made them my local team. But I knew I could get some more information out of Jack about them, if I needed to. I asked her what A-levels she was doing and told her I was doing my AS-levels that summer – thereby making myself (or Laura) skip a whole year like a total brainbox, when I hadn’t even chosen my options yet. She couldn’t know I was a full two years younger than her, or she might think I was some kid with a crush. I didn’t think we’d still be in touch by the summer, when I had to take my dreaded GCSEs, so it didn’t really matter. I signed off my message with three kisses, even though she’d only put two. But who’s counting?

  I read my message three times before I sent it, to make sure there weren’t any slip-ups, like accidentally writing my own name instead of Laura’s, or mentioning Jack. You know when you’re not supposed to think about something, so you can’t stop thinking about it? It’s like being on a diet and craving chocolate all the time, when if you weren’t dieting you’d only want it a couple of times a week. The whole time I was writing to Alex I couldn’t stop thinking about Jack, so much so that I initially wrote, ‘I jacked in playing football,’ which isn’t even an expression I’d normally use. That was the guilt typing for me, I guess. It was probably also guilt that, a few minutes after I’d sent the message, made me call Jack and tell him I was missing him, even though we’d spoken only an hour earlier.

  Chapter 7

  Once we’d started writing to each other, Alex and I fell into a pattern of messaging or emailing at least a couple of times a week. She’d tell me what she’d been doing and I’d tell her whatever I decided Laura had been up to that day, which was usually what I’d done, with a bit of embellishment. The key to telling a good lie, someone once told me, is to make it as close to the truth as possible, so your stories ring true and you’re less likely to slip up, or forget what you’ve said. Laura was ninety-nine per cent me; she talked like me and she thought like me. The differences were just fine print, the tiny type at the bottom of the page that no one reads when they download a ringtone or enter a competition.

  When it came to Jared, on the other hand, the fictional boyfriend of my alter ego, I could be as inventive as I liked. The less he was like Jack, the better. Jared, I decided, was dark and skinny, and he was the bass player in a band. Part of the reason for this lie was that Jack is tone deaf, so I thought it would throw Alex off the scent, if she ever grew suspicious. Plus, I’ve always kind of liked the idea of having a boyfriend who played in a band.

  What surprised me most about the whole charade was how natural it felt to chat to Alex; it was like getting to know any new friend. Although, if I’m honest, I probably made more effort with her than I would usually make with a person I didn’t know that well, especially someone I met on Topfriendz. If she didn’t write for a while, I wouldn’t let things drift, or start getting paranoid wondering what I’d done to offend her: my typical responses. I’d just send her another message.

  I think growing a friendship is a bit like looking after a goldfish. For a while, it’s perfectly happy to swim around in a bowl on its own, eating the crumbs you throw its way. But, if you forget to feed it for a while, or don’t change the water, one day you come home from school and it’s just floating on the top. Dead.

  I’ve always been fantastic at making new friends, but not so good at keeping them. (I’m rubbish at keeping goldfish too; Dad banned me from having any more.) Staying in touch with people I meet and then don’t see regularly is such an effort. When I was younger, the friendships I made at summer camps usually only lasted until I returned to school in September. Life just gets in the way and, after a few months, unless you keep chatting, you go right back to being strangers. It’s hard enough keeping up with your best mates, let alone people you’ve met once or twice, or have shared a couple of weeks’ holiday with.

  Making the effort with Alex was different because it was a means to an end, a project. At least, that’s how it started. Sometimes, when we were chatting, I almost forgot about what I’d set out to do. The truth is, I hadn’t expected to like her as much as I did, or to enjoy the process of getting to know her. I’d intended to steam in, take the information I was after and get straight out, but I couldn’t do that. Alex was sweet and funny and kind. When I told her Jared had trapped his hand in a car door (a story I made up to curtail his bass playing for a while, after she started asking too many questions about his band’s gigs), she remembered to keep asking how he was recovering, when his bandages were coming off, and so on. She was always thoughtful, even though her life seemed so much fuller than mine. As well as college and her football, she did drama and she even volunteered at an old people’s home. I felt so boring in comparison, with my dearth of hobbies, that I told her I played the violin (I had a few lessons when I was eleven) and had once been selected to represent the county at gymnastics (yeah, right).

  The only difficult part of chatting to Alex was negotiating the subject of football without slipping up. God, it was boring. I’d sold myself as an expert – a former player as well as a fan – but I was as ignorant about football as I am about brain surgery. This is the sum total of what I knew about it: a bunch of fit men in shorts run around a pitch for an incredibly long time kicking a ball into a net. Some of them have nice legs and stupid haircuts. Some of them advertise stuff on TV. They all have incredibly glamorous wives and girlfriends, with fake tans and t
oo much bling. Put it this way: if Match of the Day were looking for a new presenter, this knowledge would probably not have got me the job.

  On several occasions, being a football dunce almost landed me in trouble.

  Did you see that goal? Alex messaged one evening, after there had been some big cup match on TV.

  Which goal? I replied, trying to keep my options open.

  Duh. There was only one goal! The one that Ronaldo scored.

  Only kidding. Yes, it was awesome.

  What? Sometimes I wonder who you support! The referee was having a laugh. It was so offside it wasn’t true. Don’t you think?

  Yes, I agreed. I had no idea what offside meant and guessed it was some new sort of exclamatory term, like phat or sick but for football. It was totally offside I continued. It was so off its side it was practically horizontal.

  LOL. You have a really strange way of looking at things, Laura.

  I’d got away with it again. Funny how idiocy can sometimes masquerade as charm.

  Whenever Alex brought up football, I longed to change the subject. But I knew I mustn’t. Tedious as it was, football was the deal-clincher, the supposed shared interest that had made her warm to me in the first place. Aware that my ignorance was going to give me away eventually, I accepted that I had to do something about it: I needed to learn about the ‘beautiful game’, as my dad calls it (no wonder he needs glasses). I tried the web, but I couldn’t understand a word on the fan sites, and the news reports were so dull that reading them made me suicidal. I knew my best option was to ask Jack, even though I felt a teensy bit bad about doing it.