Hold Me Close - Talia Hibbert Page 0,320

ever made such a racket at my back door. To be honest, only one person in this village ever comes to see me at all, not that I’m complaining.

Rebecca lets herself in after three seconds of waiting, which she’d probably describe as Oh my God like a fucking hour, and stands in the open doorway, her hands on her hips. Behind her, I see my garden, a contained little fairy forest bathed in rich, afternoon sun. The light glints off Rebecca’s hay-coloured curls and steely expression.

“Griffin Everett,” she says to me, “you best not be working.”

“Nope,” I tell her. Not a lie. I’ve just started washing up.

“Oh, Lord, you are. This is what happens when I leave you to your own devices of a weekend.” She throws up her hands. “Come on, you great lump. Let’s go and have some fun.”

I grumble and moan because that’s what I do, and she ignores me happily.

Five minutes later, we’re walking down the village’s main road. It’s called Fernley Road. The village is called Fernley. Yeah. It’s that kind of village.

Since this is the only way to get anywhere useful, and since it’s such a nice day, there’s plenty of people out and about. They walk their dogs, call absent orders to their kids, give each other cheerful hellos, ignore me and Bex. That’s part of the routine. We come face to face on the narrow path with old Mr. Holyrood and his five dachshunds, who all stop to greet Rebecca—probably because they’re miniscule dogs and she’s a miniscule human. My best friend and I are opposites, little and large, light and dark, mouthy and socially silent.

Mr. Holyrood, like everyone else in this town, watches me from the corner of his eye as if I’m one of those midnight monsters who creeps up on you when you look away. He greets Bex first, since her only crimes are 1. Being a bit brash, for a woman, and 2. Being best mates with me. The fact that she used to get with girls before she “came to her senses” and married a nice young man is seen as a teenage phase—by everyone but us, I mean.

“Rebecca,” he says stiffly, nodding all slow and careful, like the pea-sized head on his long, thin neck might drop off and roll away. Then, through gritted teeth like I’m bloody Voldemort, he mutters my name. “Griffin.”

Griffin. Even that part of me is wrong, in a place like this. My mother—my tragic, scandalous, blah-blah-fucking-blah mother—gave me a weirdo name, as far as Fernley’s concerned. People round here are called John or Beth or James. People round here aren’t born out of wedlock, people round here aren’t unnaturally massive and unnervingly quiet, people round here aren’t openly into men and completely fine with it. People round here aren’t me, unless they have the bad taste to be me, in which case you’d better avoid them or tell them what a freak they are whenever you can.

Although, most people stopped choosing that last option once I hit 6’2.

“Afternoon, Mr. Holyrood,” Rebecca says. The words are polite, right? But the way she says them, they sound like Fuck you, Mr. Holyrood, wearing their Sunday best. That’s her superpower. I don’t have a superpower, or the patience to talk to people I don’t like, so I just stand there in silence. I do that a lot, which might be part of my, er, image problem. Not that I care.

After a tense moment of awkward nodding and sharp commands at dogs, Holyrood skirts around us and fucks off. Once he’s gone, Rebecca hooks her arm through mine—which is awkward, with the height difference, but I like it anyway—and drags me down the street. “Don’t you want to know what we’re doing?”

I seriously consider that. “Is it going to give me a heart attack?” Rebecca has a talent for wild decisions and for convincing me to go along with them.

“No,” she laughs. The sound tinkles like bells. If you didn’t know Rebecca very well, you’d think she was just the sweetest doll of a woman. “We’re going to spy on Mrs. Hartley.”

Maria Hartley is a war widow with three kids, and a teacher at the local school. She has a single shock of white in her brown hair and she smiles at me like I’m a normal person. When my mother was alive, Mrs. Hartley called her Gemma, babe, and looked her in the eye. Sometimes Mum sent me round to hers with jars of