I laugh through my growing tears. “Thank you.” My words come out as a whisper. I attempt to wrap it around my wrist, but he stops me.
“No. Here.” He takes it from my trembling hands, and he uncrosses my ankles delicately. He moves back from me and straightens my leg, sliding my jeans up my leg slowly, his fingers warm on my skin. He fastens the chain around my ankle, and then he moves forward again, closer this time, wrapping my legs around him.
He lifts my chin and we are nose-to-nose, the moonlight between us. He tilts his head and kisses me softly, smoothly, sweetly. His lips are succulent, his tongue delicious, and I lift my hands through his hair and am lost in him, in this moment.
When I think back to that moment, my heart soars as it did then, and everything is heightened, magical, musical and mystical, almost too good to be true. I could live that moment for ever, his lips on mine, our bodies pushed together, both of us hungry for more, our future as wide open as the vista before us, as bright as the moon. It was just us on top of the sleeping world, invincible, untouchable.
It was the most perfect moment in my life.
It was the last perfect moment in my life.
I wake up, and the first thing I do is slide my leg out from under the duvet to check my ankle. Anklet still there. It was not a dream, not some juicy figment of my imagination that dissolves as soon as I wake. I snuggle down under the covers to relive it in my head and then realise that delaying this morning would delay spending time with Art. He will be waiting for me, as he always is, at the bus stop, where we will go on to school together.
Despite my joy, my sleep was fitful, with so much to absorb after the Angelina Tinder scene. I feel unsteady on my feet as I get dressed. Something has been shaken, stirred within me. My feeling of security has been tested, and perhaps my trust, though not with Art, whom I trust more than ever. Oddly, I think it is with my own self.
I don’t need to think when I dress; I never do, not like Juniper, who is swearing and sighing as she pulls yet another outfit over her head in frustration, never happy with how she looks. She gets up half an hour earlier than I do just to get dressed and still ends up being late every morning.
Most people who don’t know our personalities can’t distinguish between me and Juniper. With a black dad and a white mum, we have both inherited Dad’s skin. We also both have Dad’s brown eyes, his nose and his hair colouring. We have Mum’s cheekbones, her long limbs. She tried to get us into modelling when we were younger, and Juniper and I did a few shoots together, but neither of us could stay at it. Me because posing for a camera failed to intellectually stimulate me, Juniper because she was even more awkward and clumsy under people’s gazes.
When it comes to how we act, how we dress and everything else about us, though, we couldn’t be further apart.
I put on a cream linen dress and baby-pink cashmere cardigan, with gold gladiator sandals that spiral up my legs. It’s hot outside, and I always wear pastel colours. Mum likes to buy pastels for all the family. She thinks that we look more like a unit when we’re dressed that way. I know of some families who hire stylists to help co-ordinate not just the clothes but their overall look as a family. None of us wants to look out of place or like we don’t belong, though Juniper often likes to do her own thing, wearing something that’s not a part of our family colour palette. We let her do just that – her loss, though Mum worries that it makes us look fragmented. I think the only person who looks fragmented is Juniper.
As usual, I’m downstairs before my sister. Ewan is at the table eating breakfast. He’s wearing cream linen trousers and a baby- pink T-shirt, and I feel happy we match. A good start to the day.
Mum is staring at the TV, not moving.
“Look what I got last night,” I sing.
No one looks.
“Yoo-hoo.” I circle my ankle in the air, graceful like a ballerina.
Ewan finally looks at me, then down at my ankle, which I’m dangling near his face.
“A bracelet,” he says, bored.
“No. A bracelet is an ornamental band for the wrist, Ewan. This is an anklet.”
“Whatever, Thesaurus.” He rolls his eyes and continues watching TV.
“Art gave it to me,” I sing loudly, floating by Mum to get milk for my cereal from the fridge.
“Wonderful, sweetheart,” she says robotically, as though she hasn’t heard at all.
I stop and stare at her. She is completely engrossed in the TV. I finally pay attention and see it’s News 24, and Pia Wang is reporting live from Highland Castle. Pia Wang is the correspondent for the Guild. She covers every case in extreme detail, providing a profile of the Flawed, during the trial and after. It’s never a favourable profile, either. She does a good job of burying whomever she wants, though to her credit, she’s covering Flawed cases, people who have made bad decisions, so she’s not exactly trying to glamourise them.
I look out the window. Dad’s car is gone. He must have been alerted to the story and had to take off early. That happens a lot.
“This case has garnered more attention than any other,” Pia says, her face perfect with peach-blush cheeks. She is wearing peach, and she looks like you could eat her, a perfect china doll. Glossy black hair, a fringe framing her innocent-looking, petite face. So perfect. “Even gaining attention around the rest of the world, which is reflected here in the turnout outside the Guild court in Highland Castle, with record numbers of people turning out to support their football hero Jimmy Child, Humming City’s best striker, who has led us to victory for so many years. And today he is victorious again, as he left the court only moments ago having been deemed by Judge Crevan and his associates not to be Flawed. I repeat, breaking news to those who have just joined us: Jimmy Child is not Flawed.”
I gasp.
“What?” I say. “Has that ever happened before?”
Mum finally breaks her stare from the TV. “I don’t know. I don’t think so. I … maybe once,” she says vaguely.
“Not a surprising result when a Crevan owns a share in the football team,” Juniper says suddenly from behind us. I turn to her.
Mum’s face looks pained. “Juniper …” she says simply.
“Damon Crevan. Owns a fifty-five per cent stake in Humming City, but I suppose everyone will tell me that’s just coincidence. If you ask me, it was his wife they put on trial,” Juniper says. “And that dirty man got away with it.”
Nobody disagrees. Jimmy Child’s glamorous wife has been on the front page of every newspaper for the past few weeks as her lifestyle was thrashed out for all to see. Every aspect of her, every inch of her body, was fodder for gossip sites and even news sites.
“Go to school,” Mum says in a warning tone. “Any more talk like that and they’ll come for you, missy.” She clips Juniper’s nose playfully.
She was almost right.