Page 82 of Save Me

“I was only keeping an eye on Ruby foryoursake,” I interrupt her. “That’s all there is to it.” The words scratch in my throat and feel so wrong as I say them. I can’t breathe, and Lydia is watching me so intently that the weight on my chest is getting heavier by the second. The unfamiliar sting in my eyes makes me blink and swallow hard.

“Oh, James,” she whispers, taking my cold hand and rubbing her thumb over the back of it. I can’t remember the last time we held hands like this. I watch her pale fingers for a while, as theywrap around mine. Somehow, this simple gesture of hers has helped me breathe a bit more easily.

“I know what it’s like when you can’t have a person, even though you know they’re the only thing that would make this life more bearable,” Lydia says out of the blue, squeezing my hand. “When I met Graham, I knew at once that we had something special.”

Suddenly, I look up. Lydia returns my gaze calmly. She’s never spoken to me about the business with Sutton before, and every time I’ve tried to get her to talk, she’s vehemently shut me down. The fact that she’s doing it now shows me how crap I am at hiding my desperation from her, and how sorry she must feel for me. Even so, I’m glad she’s changed the subject.

“How did you even meet? Was it at school?”

She shakes her head. For a moment, it looks like she’s hunting for the right words. I can see what an effort it is for her to tell this story. After all, it’s a secret she’s been keeping for ages.

“It was over two years ago, just after I broke up with Gregg,” Lydia begins, and the hot rage immediately fires up my stomach. Gregg Fletcher spent months posing as Lydia’s boyfriend when he was actually a hack on a national newspaper. He used Lydia and broke her heart just to get the gossip on our family and the firm.

I squeeze her hand back. “I was so tired then,” she continues. “Of…everything. I was like a zombie.”

“I remember.” After Fletcher’s tell-all story, the press was on us like hyenas. It was a difficult time, and we all had to find our own ways of dealing with it. Mine were doing coke and getting drunk, hers were a deathly silence and a wall that nobody could break down.

“One evening, I was just desperate. I had nobody to talk to, butI really needed someone. I was fifteen years old, and I’d fallen into a relationship with a journalist because I was naïve enough to believe that there might be someone out there who was actually interested inme. Not just Beaufort’s. I was in a bad way. I was beating myself up, asking how I could have been so stupid.”

She pauses for a moment and takes a deep breath.

“That evening, I set up an anonymous profile on Tumblr. I just wanted to let everything out, without consequences. My first post was just a pile of messed-up words. I just wrote out how I felt and that I wished I could be a completely different person. A day later, I got a really sweet message.”

I stare at her. “From Sutton?”

She nods. “It wasn’t much, just kind words, sympathy, but right then, they meant the world to me.” A slight smile plays around her lips. “After that, we started messaging each other regularly. We talked about all kinds of stuff; told each other things we’d never told anyone else. He wrote to me about Oxford and the competitive atmosphere, the pressure that was starting to get to him. I told him about my broken heart and my fears for the future. We gave each other hope. I never gave him my real name, obviously, and I didn’t know his either. But the things I shared with him felt more real than anything else in my life.”

“That’s insane.”

She nods again. “I know.”

“Then what?” I ask.

“Six months later, we talked for the first time. On the phone. For five hours. My ear hurt all night because I’d pressed it to the phone so hard. After that, we kept on calling.”

I remember the night of Ruby’s birthday and the eternity we’dtalked for. I left Wren’s party and came home just so I could keep listening to her voice.

“So that’s why you kept chucking me out of your room,” I say with a grin. “And eventually you met in person?”

“It was over a year until I dared meet up with Graham. We went for coffee once he’d finished his degree.”

“And when did you…get together?” I ask, realizing as I say it that I sound like I’m in year seven.

Lydia flushes. “We were never really a couple, but we spent a lot of the summer holidays together.” She clears her throat. “When Graham got a training post at Maxton Hall, he broke up with me. Right away. He said we could still be friends online, but no more than that.” Her eyes start to glitter suspiciously. “I was OK with that, you know? Better than losing him completely. At the end of the school year, his placement was coming to an end, so I started to hope again. But we were back to square one in the middle of the summer when he got a permanent job there after all. The same heartache as before. But this time he didn’t even want to message me. He cut me right out of his life because he said that was better for both of us.”

I think for a moment about everything she’s just told me. “So what happened at the start of term?” I ask. “The day Ruby saw you together?”

She gulps. “Some kind of slipup.”

I nod slowly. I knew Sutton meant more to Lydia than just a nice way to pass the time. She’d been too upset in the last few weeks and leaped to his defense too quickly if I made any remark about him. But I’d had no idea that they’d known each other for two years. Or that it had been that serious.

“Just one more year, then maybe you could…” I don’t even know what I’m trying to suggest. Even once Lydia’s left Maxton Hall, a relationship with her ex-teacher would shatter her reputation forever. I can just imagine what our parents would say to that.

“I’m not stupid, James. I know that Graham and I have no chance.” She pulls her hand away and reaches for the crisps as if she hadn’t just confessed her deepest secret to me. She shoves a handful into her mouth, eyes fixed on her duvet case.

It hurts to see her like this. And it hurts even more that I can’t help her. Because she’s right. There’s no future for her and Sutton, any more than there is for Ruby and me.

“Thank you for telling me,” I say in the end.

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