You Again Read online

  Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication

  1 - Angie: butterfly

  2 - Angie: muse

  3 - Lennox: gunshots

  4 - Lennox: velvet

  5 - Angie: electric

  6 - Angie: survivor

  7 - Lennox: dark side

  8 - Lennox: forgiven

  9 - Angie: trouble

  10 - Angie: secrets

  11 - Lennox: revolutions

  12 - Lennox: more

  13 - Angie: questions

  14 - Angie: break

  15 - Lennox: tolerance

  16 - Lennox: spontaneous

  17 - Angie: broken

  18 - Angie: threatened

  19 - Lennox: connection

  20 - Angie: critical

  21 - Lennox: fingerprints

  22 - Angie: truce

  23 - Lennox: darker

  24 - Angie: dangerous

  25 - Lennox: triggerman

  26 - Lennox: tomorrow

  27 - Angie: corruption

  28 - Lennox: memorial

  29 - Angie: paperwork

  30 - Lennox: again

  Acknowledgements

  About the author

  The right of Helen MacArthur to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not be by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the author’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  Cover design by ignitestudio.co.uk

  You Again (First Edition)

  Copyright © 2015 Helen MacArthur

  All rights reserved.

  To Suzanne Thomas,

  with love

  1

  Angie: butterfly

  You could say a skateboard saved me. I don’t mean at that exact moment when a Glock 26 was fired over my head and took out my mother and then my father. I mean later on, when I was around eight years old – eight going on “I’ve seen it all before”.

  Bullet-proof people need saving sometimes. Even people who survive gangland-style assassinations and live to tell the tale need saving sometimes. For the record, I’m not bullet-proof and, no, I didn’t dodge a bullet. I just lay there – fast asleep in my pram, blissfully unaware that everything was changing, forever. Wrong place, right timing thanks to a scheduled afternoon nap.

  Seven years ago I was officially flagged up as “going off the rails”. This expression kills me each time because that’s me, literally, it’s what I do. I soar off rails, ramps, steps and jumps whenever I’m on my skateboard. To some it means unacceptable behaviour, to me it means I’m airborne, I’m free. Back then, the eight-year-old me had become “unacceptable”. I’d started acting out, playing up, shouting out. I’d also started to piece together the shattered fragments of an abruptly broken life – mine.

  It came down to this: I did have parents, once upon a time, but they’re now buried deep in a Primrose Hill cemetery in London. I also had a therapist who helped break the news that my parents had been murdered in a quiet, suburban park while pushing me along in a pram. As brutal and bizarre as it sounds, I’m glad I wasn’t spared the truth or given a sugar-coated scenario to sweeten the blow.

  I should point out that I’ve cut straight to the murders when, actually, it took years of talking, drawings and play therapy with dolls and bandaged bears to gently unravel and carefully reassemble the facts.

  When the truth finally threatened to break me down (hey, there’s no easy way to accept murder), my therapist, Mr MacKenzie (“Call me MacKenzie,” he said) gave me a skateboard. I’m sure it’s unethical for therapists to hand over gifts to their patients but sometimes rules are made to be broken. Perhaps MacKenzie knew me better than I knew myself. Perhaps he had researched the subject and concluded that skateboards had specific healing properties that worked with damaged children. I didn’t ask. He didn’t tell. He did, however, hint at a reason when he handed over the board, this blank plank on wheels. “The trick is to keep moving, Angie,” he said. “Stay ahead of trouble.”

  He also liked to talk about leaving my past behind. “Keep moving,” he insisted.

  When I turned 13 and knew everything, I challenged him, precocious, furious. “Aren’t you supposed to reconcile me with my violent past? Help me make peace with it?”

  MacKenzie replied without missing a beat, “Don’t look back, Angie. You’re not going that way.”

  The skateboard was more than just a plank, it was a well-crafted piece of equipment that needed someone who was in control, someone who understood that the ride meant more than just acrobatic tricks, flips and grinds. It was a mindset. It allowed me to become a dancer, an artist, an entertainer, electric. It gave me space and freedom to move, to escape. These days my board is more than a gift. It is a shield. It is a weapon. It is a part of me and it is my getaway.

  I’m 15 now and I know nothing. Well, not quite, I know one thing. I am now officially the same age as the shooter was when he gunned down my mother and father.

  Given my case history I should probably be a loner but I’m not. You keep the curtains closed, you read a lot of Harry Potter, you read a lot of everything actually. Along the way you learn more words than you ever know what to do with, you move on. I’ll tell you what else, I’m pretty well socialised because my friends are my family. I have a best mate called Vivienne Lee. Viv to me. Think grunge-meets-glamour buddies – and I’m not the one wearing the Fifties frock. We’re like the flat-pack furniture of friendship: we’d never win prizes as individual pieces but put us together and we become something more appealing, something that works, well I like to think so.

  Viv cornered me in the corridor at school while I was putting my skateboard in my locker.

  “Have you checked out American Boy?” she asked. “Flawless.”

  I looked her up and down. I’ve never met anyone but Viv who can make a school uniform look vintage chic. While other girls are stuffing curves into pencil skirts, Viv is working an A-line look.

  Viv popped her gum. “Well?”

  “Flawless with a broken nose and a chipped front tooth?” I replied.

  “Ha!” hooted Viv. “So you have checked him out.”

  “Viv,” I warned.

  “He’s here for a year. He’s in our year,” she cried. “Don’t you just love a co-ed school?”

  “We’re blessed,” I responded dryly.

  We both laughed. It was a well-known fact that the boys in our class were all posh and no substance.

  I was curious. “Does American Boy have a name?”

  “Lennox Jones.”

  There was no need to respond because I knew Viv wasn’t done.

  “Big-wave rider, apparently,” she added teasingly. “Nickname Mavericks.”

  “So say all the surfers,” I responded unimpressed.

  “He also has two younger sisters. One is like nine months older than the other but both look identical. Blonde, sunshine smiles, shiny cheerleading stars.”

  I raised an eyebrow, questioning Viv’s keen interest in the newbies. “Keeping up with the Joneses, are we?”

  “You know me, babe. Never one to leave a person unturned.”

  The bell rang. Conversation over. Viv swished off in a rustle of retro-print petticoat underneath her school skirt and blew me an air kiss without looking back.

  “See you after school,” she shouted before disa
ppearing down the corridor amidst the bottle-green blazers.

  “You know where I’ll be,” I hollered back.

  After school I always needed a little escape time, a little on and off the rails time. Me and my skateboard would leave the classroom behind and head for open spaces, secret spaces. There were a few to choose from but Viv knew my favourite. But how did he manage it? I have no idea. Maybe he asked. Whatever it was, we ended up at the disused car park under the old bridge, a place that has not been totally overrun by skateboarders.

  I knew he was watching me but I refused to put on a show. Instead, I just looped around on the concrete and eased into a few jumps, flips and turns, going through the motions. His presence really didn’t put me off because I knew I had it nailed and wouldn’t embarrass myself. I tend not to fall down in public, I do my falling down where no one else can see me.

  I didn’t look in his direction. I was concentrating. I seem to go into a zone that totally shuts out the world. I never worried about who was on the outside looking in. Then there he was. Leaning on the rail I was about to own. Blocking me.

  “Hey skater kid, I like your groove,” he said. “I’d work more on your core though to help with those trickier turns.” He grinned, a chipped-front-tooth grin.

  “Get off the rail,” I snapped, irritated that he had messed with my concentration.

  He gave me a mock salute and stepped back, springy on his feet, dancing a few steps. Usually I would just pick up where I’d left off but he’d thrown me. I blamed Viv for talking too much earlier, putting useless information in my head about this American Boy who meant nothing to me.

  Sensing my hesitation, he moved in. “Lennox Jones,” he said, deliberately making eye contact, the fancy footwork still going on. I returned his stare but didn’t introduce myself. He began to fill the gap with some more information.

  He stepped closer still, he leaned into me. “Lennox as in Lennox Lewis, undisputed world heavyweight champion. Give me Jones over Lewis though. I am the one-syllable surname, knockout punch.”

  It sounded like a well-rehearsed spiel to me. He leaned in even further and playfully cuffed me under the chin, barely making contact – a butterfly touch, tender not violent, despite how it looked.

  Somehow I didn’t react even though I could feel the heat from his hand as it gently brushed across my skin. This time I leaned into him until our faces were that close, almost touching.

  “Do that again,” I whispered, “and I’ll kill you.”

  I didn’t so much have a family tree as a few sticks chopped up for firewood. I live with an aunt, Louise Lowe, who is my legal guardian. If life was a James & The Giant Peach book then Louise was more Sponge than Spiker but there was no giant peach to facilitate my great escape. Unlike James though I wasn’t a penniless orphan. Scratch that stereotype – I’d had parents who had done the paperwork and made a will. I lost and gained the second they were gunned down. Aunt Louise gained too, in pounds, both kinds. Being appointed my legal guardian was a lucrative move for her – because of me, she inherited a substantial family house in Primrose Hill and ate at the table of the deceased’s wealth, gorging herself, drinking and no longer going out to work. She also had a fatal case of consumerism – shopaholicism in its final stages. Aunt Louise wasn’t interested in me and kept out of my way, so I returned the favour. It would be rude not to. It was a mutually beneficial agreement. And, as Viv liked to remind me, who the hell needed a giant peach when you had an American Express card?

  I was utterly convinced there had to be a few more sticks from the family tree but, according to Louise, she was my mother’s sister and that was it. There were no grandparents on my father’s side either. Deceased and deceased, a well-worn phrase in this 15-year-old’s world. Aunt Louise was vague to the point of wipeout when it came to questions about my mother. Not even a box of photographs to treasure forever but that’s the digital generation for you.

  “You made quite an impression on Lennox Jones,” chimed Viv cheerfully. It was Saturday. We were meandering down the King’s Road looking in shops. Viv was forever on a vintage-clothes mission. I called them unwanted jumble-sale clothes but Viv called them “pre-loved” pieces. It was an interesting spin on the same thing: “unwanted” reinvented to make the world sound a warmer place.

  “He made no impression on me whatsoever,” I said disinterestedly, pointing at a shop that sold milkshake. “I need to hydrate.”

  “I got the feeling he’s used to girls falling at his feet,” continued Viv. “You were definitely the exception to the rule.”

  “Just as well.”

  “He is stupidly handsome though, you have to admit.” Viv grinned and nudged me. ‘Buzz cut, attitude and, whoa, those edges.”

  I responded, “He knows he’s attractive, which is not attractive in a person.”

  Viv cackled and ordered a chocolate shake.

  “I’ll have the same,” I said.

  “He boards,” she added.

  “He’s a surfer who probably thinks he knows how to skateboard,” I said. “Water and wheels do not mix.”

  “You just don’t like being told what to do,” reprimanded Viv.

  “Talk to the therapist. My issues speak for themselves.”

  “Talking of which,” added Viv conspiratorially. “I saw him come out of Mrs Martel’s office.”

  “And your point is?”

  “One week in town and he’s at the school therapist?”

  I snorted at this. “We’re all at the school therapist.”

  It was true. Just about every kid I knew got professional help in some shape or form – and not just at school. Our lost generation had to be seen to be talking to someone – preferably the best “someone” money could buy. I had my own theory on this: I reckoned the teenagers who couldn’t afford a Harley Street therapist went their own kind of crazy and probably turned out to be much more interesting people as a result.

  Lennox Jones took to the school as though he’d been there all his life. He’d shrugged off his new-kid status in seconds and settled in, feet not so much under the desk as on top of it, comfortable as you like. Other people found him likeable soon-to-be loveable. He could turn on the American charm just like that – all smiles and positive attitude, a totally unfamiliar concept to me. He looked up and saw blue skies. I saw black clouds. We couldn’t be more different.

  “How’s that core coming along,” he would holler whenever he saw me in the corridor.

  I’d ignore him. I’d let my silence speak for me.

  “Angie Anderson talk to me,” he begged, running a hand over his short, dark hair. A gesture, I suspect, he thought made him look boyishly irresistible.

  I resisted and ignored him all over again.

  Jeez, he was persistent.

  “You’re playing hard to get,” said Viv, puckering up her claret-red lips, “which is intoxicating to the opposite sex.”

  “You should ask him out. He’s becoming your pet project.”

  “Babe, he’s not interested in me. He talks to me to get closer to you. I’ve got a been-there-done-that degree in the laws of attraction.”

  “There’s something about him,” I said, surprised to hear myself saying the words out loud. I’d actually thought it the first time I’d ever made eye contact with him but never acknowledged it until now.

  “Tell me about it,” screeched Viv, winking salaciously. She stopped short of licking her lips.

  “Not like that,” I said, rolling my eyes.

  “Like what then?”

  “Like nothing. It doesn’t matter.”

  Viv looked down at her phone to check for messages. “I’m feeling unloved,” she said. “Can you send me a text to make sure my phone is working?”

  I fiddled with my phone, glad for a distraction. There was something about him. This revelation unsettled me and I wished I’d never mentioned it. I didn’t want to be thinking about Lennox Jones and here I was thinking about him – someone I didn’t know and co
uldn’t shake off. It made me feel out of control. I’d written my handbook for survival with a nod to MacKenzie. Keep on the move. Check. Trust no one. Check. Never lose control. Unchecked. I was losing it.

  Sitting on the school wall, shoulders touching, feet swinging in time, both lost in our own thoughts, I sent Viv a text: Have I told u lately that I <3 u?

  She replied in a heartbeat: Te amo.

  2

  Angie: muse

  Viv took one look at my ripped tights and scuffed Dr Martens and said, “We seriously need to work on your weekend wardrobe, darling.”

  “You’re beautiful enough for both of us,” I replied.

  She twirled in her swing skirt and made me smile. We might swap secrets. We would never swap clothes. Viv was trapped in the Fifties, her life one big Ella Fitzgerald song. She carried an elaborate handbag, I carried a piece of decorated plywood with four polyurethane wheels.

  It was Saturday again, this time we’d caught the Tube to the Southbank, river hotspot and home to skateboarders who dipped and tricked amongst the tourists who were mellowing in the London springtime sunshine.

  “I’m going to hang with the stars at the National Film Theatre while you trundle about,” said Viv. “Meet me for lunch?” she called over her shoulder.

  I nodded, cutting across the concrete, soothed by the sound of the wheels running on the hard surface. No sooner had Viv disappeared, than he appeared. He was holding a supersized and clearly expensive camera, which was obscuring his face. I dug in hard and came to an abrupt stop. I’d lost that soothing feeling.

  “Angie Anderson,” he said, lowering the camera. “I thought I’d come and check out the talent.”

  “Nothing to see here,” I said. “Move on.”

  “You’ve been sent here to save me,” he joked. “You just don’t know it yet.”