“Chloe! Chloe get down here!”
My mother is angry again. Certain tones of her voice act as warning signals, and the particular one that she is choosing to use today makes me fear for my life. I hate it when she’s cross- it brings back too many bad memories. I take the stairs two at a time and catapult myself from the fifth step to the floor, sliding across the wooden tiles.
“Here,” I say, breathless.
Dark circles framing tired eyes are the first things I notice when I look at my mum. I haven’t seen her all day; I’ve been hiding in my room to avoid lying to her. She has obviously been awake for much of the night; that much is clear from her tendency to blink too often and the way her jaw is clenched like a glued hinge. She looks like she used to, back when it happened, and that scares me.
“Do you know anything concerning the whereabouts of William Falcon?” she questions. I suddenly feel as if I am in a full-scale police interrogation, where my future safety depends on my ability to fabricate a lie.
I give her a blank stare.
“You know. Will. The one that comes over for piano lessons?”
“Oh, right,” I say, as if only just remembering his face. As if I hadn't been kissing it feverishly the previous evening. “That Will. Nope, I haven’t seen him. I didn’t think there was a lesson yesterday.”
Mum sighs. “There wasn’t. But it seems he didn’t get the memo.”
“He’s here?” I ask.
“No, Chloe. Keep up. He’s gone missing.”
“How do you know?” I ask, remembering the fact that I blocked his parents’ numbers from her phone.
“May called the home phone last night- which is weird, by the way, as I never gave her that one. She probably found it in the phonebook, but I wonder why she didn’t call my mobile… I never will understand that woman. Anyway, she said that he took a taxi here, but hasn’t returned.”
I hope my guilty blush isn’t showing. “I was at Kate’s yesterday, Mum, so I don’t know what you want me to say.”
She sighs. “Just keep an eye out for him, will you? He must be around here somewhere.”
“’Kay,” I promise, and rush back up to my bedroom. I have my fingers crossed behind my back. The time says four o’ clock.
Within the next half an hour, I have dressed myself and done my hair, and am running to the youth hostel with a tube of Pringles, under a relentless rainfall and the pretence that I left something at Kate’s house.
****
“…and so they’ll probably be scouring the village for you. Did you use your real name when you checked in?” I ask Will a while later, having just told him the entire story.
We sit together on his slightly rumpled bed, with a considerable distance between us that is beginning to annoy me. He plays with the corner of his bed sheet for a while and I watch the rain.
“Course not,” he replies suddenly. “You really think I’d be that stupid? As of yesterday, I am Oliver Smith, a scruffy nobody from London.”
“Oliver-like Oliver Twist?” I let out the breath that I’ve been holding as a laugh. He nods.
“I panicked. It was the first thing that came to mind when I thought of London.”
“Can you even do a London accent?”
He clears his throat and attempts a Cockney accent. “’Ere, mate, I’m skint an’ from London an’ this old shit’ole’s the best I can do.”
YOU ARE READING
Her List of Kisses
Teen FictionWhen she was thirteen, Chloe Golding wrote a list. On this list was every type of kiss she hoped to experience in her teenage years. They ranged from an innocent peck on the back of the hand, to passionate make-out sessions and kisses on the private...
