My Side of the Diamond Read online

  ‘There’s been no mistake,’ said Becky. ‘I want to leave now.’

  Tess looked at her watch. She was calculating exactly how many minutes the visit had lasted, weighed up against how many things she had to promise Henry, on top of how many hours she had driven. Before she could announce the solution to the equation, her phone rang.

  ‘Yes. Um – yes, all right. Tell her I can make the meeting.’

  Tess turned to us.

  ‘Let’s be going,’ she said, artificially bright. ‘I’ll take you home.’

  ‘No,’ said Becky. ‘I want to go into Woodbridge, I’m starving.’

  ‘Good,’ said Tess, the LED bulb of her expression waning.

  Once in the safety of her Audi, she said, ‘Look, I really need to be back in London. Would you girls be all right if I dropped you off? This has all been a bit of a fiasco. I will see what I can do about you meeting the actual Icarus. Henry must take me for a fool.’

  I couldn’t imagine anyone thinking such a lightweight thought about her.

  ‘I want to go to Woodbridge,’ Becky said again. ‘To The Crown.’

  ‘I’m so sorry, darling – I can’t stay for lunch,’ said Tess.

  ‘That’s OK,’ said Becky.

  Too true it was OK.

  ‘We need money for lunch,’ I said, ‘and for the minicab to take us home afterwards.’

  Becky might be away with the fairies but someone has to have their feet on the ground.

  ‘No probs,’ said Tess.

  I could see what she was thinking. A strategic withdrawal. Fall back and regroup. We whizzed along far too fast and Tess had to brake really hard near the airbase as three deer crossed our path.

  ‘Damn,’ she said, genuinely shocked. ‘I didn’t see them. Are you all right, darling?’ she asked Becky.

  Perhaps she should have thought of that before putting her foot on the accelerator. Or did she think all those ‘beware of deer’ signs were there to decorate the road?

  Three more deer made a bolt for it and I wondered if they had just waited to see whether we or their mates would be dead meat.

  I felt like a bent plastic doll by the time I climbed out of the car and glad that I wouldn’t have to go back to Orford in it.

  Tess gave me a fifty-pound note. I did my not-impressed look and she handed me another.

  ‘I want the receipts,’ she said.

  Then, enjoying the admiring looks her car was getting, she stepped on the gas, as they say in films, and disappeared in a haze of speed in a twenty-miles-per-hour zone.

  I wasn’t for one minute expecting to actually have lunch in The Crown, but Becky walked in and asked for a table for three.

  ‘Who’s the third?’ I asked.

  ‘Alex. I texted him.’

  We sat at a table with white linen napkins and a lot of cutlery. And I felt a right prat. I had never in all my life eaten at a restaurant. McD’s, yes. This, never.

  ‘Tess said you hadn’t seen Icarus, that it was some drug dealer who looked like him. That you’d been conned.’

  Becky had her head down, staring at the menu.

  ‘I wasn’t conned,’ she said. ‘It was Icarus.’

  ‘You sure, Becky?’

  ‘Yes. Double, treble sure. He saw the knots in me.’

  ‘Knots?’ I repeated. ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘The knots in my head,’ she said, looking up at me. ‘You know, when he smiled at me it was as if I’d got off a train and he was there waiting for me.’

  ‘Come on, explain.’

  ‘You’ll laugh.’

  I didn’t think I would. I wasn’t finding any of this funny, far from it. If I was honest, it was beginning to spook me a bit.

  ‘Go on,’ I said.

  ‘He untangled me.’

  ‘Wait. Hold on. You saw this nineteen-year-old guy who can’t be Icarus because time doesn’t stop and no one remains young for ever, apart from Peter Pan – you saw him for ten minutes and he messed with your brain? Becks, you were conned.’

  ‘You’re right, no human stays nineteen. And no, and no again, I wasn’t conned. I’m not stupid.’

  I could see me going off on one and it all turning ugly, so I said, ‘No, you’re not. So what is this Icarus, an alien?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe, yes. All I know is that he is probably the most perceptive person I’ve ever met.’ She changed the subject. ‘What do you want to eat? I feel empty, as if I haven’t eaten for weeks.’

  ‘Surprise, surprise: you haven’t.’

  Becky ordered the fish and chips and non-alcoholic cocktails for both of us. She ordered as if she was as hungry as me.

  ‘What about your friend?’ said the waitress, nodding at the empty place.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Becky. ‘Make that three fish and chips – and three prawn cocktails to start.’

  I was speechless. This was a girl who ate air and was full. I didn’t believe she would eat any of it. But never mind – I was bloody famished.

  The waitress put bread and a saucer of olive oil on the table. Becky dipped the bread in the oil and ate it.

  I was waiting – for what, I didn’t know – when I heard Alex’s voice.

  ‘Hi, Jazmin – good to see you.’

  ‘I ordered,’ said Becky, olive oil running down her chin.

  ‘You’re eating,’ said Alex.

  ‘Yes.’

  The first course came and I was surprised that Becky ate every prawn and every shred of lettuce.

  ‘So what was Icarus like?’ asked Alex. ‘Wizened and out of touch?’

  ‘No – not in the least.’

  She stood up and went to the loo. I thought I knew what she was about to do.

  Alex said, ‘Jaz, what happened this morning in that prison?’

  ‘I don’t really know. Becky said that Icarus untangled her.’

  ‘Untangled her? Is she totally losing it?’

  I wasn’t really concentrating on what Alex was saying as I was thinking about Becky, that now she would be chucking up in the toilet. I could see Alex was thinking the same and was just talking for the sake of it because it was better than thinking about Becky and vomit. But only two minutes later Becky was back, all smiles. OK. How long does food need to be in your stomach before your body starts to use it? Maybe she’ll wait until after she’s had her fish and chips.

  But she was still sitting there, eating, talking, and I was gobsmacked when she ordered pudding. I couldn’t eat another thing. Becky appeared to be on a mission to eat every pudding on the menu.

  She’d got through cheesecake, sticky toffee pudding and tiramisu, and was asking about ice cream when Alex said, ‘Becky, you’ll be sick if you keep eating – or is that the plan?’

  ‘I’m just hungry,’ she said.

  ‘OK,’ said Alex, less and less convinced. ‘What happened to make you decide to eat?’

  ‘Icarus,’ said Becky. ‘He took the pain away.’

  ‘Becky, come on, he’s a fantasist. He’s playing with you.’

  ‘He’s not. Anyway,’ said Becky, ‘I think you will like him. You’ll meet him tonight.’

  ‘Is that a joke?’ said Alex.

  Becky looked at him through her curtain of hair.

  I felt ill. I could tell she was deadly serious.

  ‘No,’ she said.

  ‘How?’ said Alex.

  Becky didn’t bother with ‘how’.

  ‘In The Jolly Sailor at eight.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Alex looked exasperated. ‘Whatever …’

  I said, ‘Becky, Icarus is in prison and …’

  Becky licked her spoon.

  Alex rang for a minicab to take us to Orford, but Becky wanted to go to Saxmundham first and stop at the supermarket because there was nothing to eat at home.

  I stayed in the cab while Alex went to help his sister with the shopping.

  The minicab driver had a big, hairy head and the rest of him seemed welded into his plastic car-seat cover.


  ‘You know who I had in my cab last week?’ he piped up. ‘Only that Rex Muller.’

  ‘I don’t know who Rex Muller is,’ I said.

  ‘Yeah, you do – the famous artist. The one who did the portrait of that Icarus. Y’know, it was shown a few years back, up in London. They say it caused people to have hallucinations. Had to be taken down. Rex Muller,’ he said again, as if repeating the name would make it clearer. ‘It was his brother and his girlfriend who that Icarus pushed off St Paul’s.’

  I suddenly had an urge to leave Suffolk, to walk away from all this weird shit and catch a train back to London. I’d got out of the car and was heading towards the car park exit when I heard Alex call me.

  ‘Jaz! Jazmin, where’re you going?’

  Chapter Seven

  If Alex hadn’t called my name in that car park I most probably would have caught the train and gone home – the path not taken. I’ve had long enough to think how different it all would have been. That’s the thing about paths: you stumble across them, decide which one to take, knowing you’ll never find the other one again. At school I had an English teacher, Mr Abel. He was very keen on the poetry of Robert Frost. You know – the two roads diverging in a yellow wood? I never understood it back then when the world seemed a spaghetti junction of roads to take. But now I think I do understand what he was on about. The road I took did make all the difference.

  It was the sight of Becky with a supermarket trolley full of food that could have fed the five thousand that stopped me – that and the woebegone expression on Alex’s face. It screamed, ‘Don’t leave me here, I don’t know what to do.’ So I turned round. It sounds dramatic, but I knew then that I was stuck there, for better or worse.

  The minicab driver unglued himself from his plastic seat and reluctantly helped fill the boot. We couldn’t fit it all in and we had to sit squashed up between all the groceries, Alex in the front, Becky silent in the back with me.

  Come to think of it, we were all quiet, except for the minicab driver. Another captive audience and, on his chest, stuff that needed to be got off it. ‘I was telling your friend here,’ he said to the rear-view mirror, ‘I was telling her about the artist, the famous one with the painting that was shown up in London.’

  Alex said, ‘I’m sorry, I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  I could see that detail wasn’t going to stop the minicab driver; it just gave him the opportunity to say all over again what he’d said to me.

  ‘Rex Muller,’ said Alex.

  ‘That’s him,’ said the minicab driver.

  ‘Rex Muller?’ repeated Becky, coming out of her trance. ‘His work is amazing – he did that album cover for the Megabytes. You say he was Lazarus’s brother?’

  ‘That’s the one,’ said the driver. ‘But he didn’t paint his brother, he painted Icarus.’

  I wanted to say, ‘Shut it, gobshite,’ but I knew he wouldn’t. He changed gear and waited for us to be impressed. The drive from Saxmundham to Orford was going to be long enough for him to puke it all out. Becky was wide awake.

  ‘Wait,’ she said, when she realised that she hadn’t been listening properly. ‘Start again.’

  She pulled her feet up onto the seat and stared at the back of the driver’s hairy head.

  ‘It was the summer after Icarus pushed Lazarus and his girlfriend off St Paul’s,’ said the driver.

  ‘What was?’ said Alex, irritated. ‘What are you on about about?’

  ‘Quiet,’ said Becky, then to the driver, ‘Just tell us.’

  ‘The painting was shown at the exhibition, and this lady came from Somerset for the day to see it. The painting was called Icarus Falling. Though he wasn’t, not in the painting: he was standing upright. Didn’t have wings. The lady collapsed in front of it. She was taken to hospital – dead the next day.’

  ‘How old was this lady?’ said Alex.

  ‘In her eighties,’ said the minicab driver.

  ‘It was probably just a coincidence,’ said Alex. ‘Nothing to do with the painting.’

  ‘That’s what you think,’ said the driver. ‘The next day, two other people collapsed – and they weren’t old.’

  ‘And did they die?’ said Alex.

  ‘No. Not that I remember.’

  ‘And how many people saw the painting and didn’t collapse?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said the minicab driver. ‘All I know is what I read in the Sun. Three weeks later, five people had been taken to hospital, complaining of visions.’

  Alex sighed. ‘Is that it? Sounds to me like mass hysteria. If you’ve finished, could you turn on the radio?’

  Becky said, ‘No – go on – I’m interested.’

  ‘Then there was that school party. All the kids collapsed in front of the painting.’

  ‘Did they die?’ said Alex.

  ‘No, but they were in hospital, comatose, for ten days. When they came round they all said they’d had dreadful headaches the minute they looked into Icarus’s eyes. That’s what did it.’

  ‘Did what?’ said Alex.

  ‘They saw another world,’ said Becky. ‘And it blew their minds.’

  I was in the worst mood by the time we arrived back at the cottage, and that grub of a minicab driver tried to overcharge us by goodness knows how much. I was so pissed off, I was gagging for a fight. I didn’t care how much he moaned on about distances and having to go back empty. I refused to pay him what he asked and slammed the car door.

  Becky didn’t unpack the food. She took a KitKat and said she wanted to do some writing. Alex had taken himself off upstairs to look up the Icarus painting on his dad’s computer when the phone rang.

  ‘Sorry to bother you, but is Alex there? It’s his mum.’

  I shouted up the stairs and put the phone down when I heard him lift the receiver.

  I’d just about got everything put away when Alex came down.

  ‘Do you want to go for a walk?’ he said.

  We walked for miles in silence until at last we stopped and sat on an upturned boat. Alex took my hand.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said.

  ‘For what?’ I said.

  ‘For not leaving us – not leaving me.’

  I tried to look casual and said, ‘That’s OK.’

  To my surprise he kissed me.

  I hadn’t realised how much I needed that kiss or to feel his arms round me. At that moment the heavens opened. We might as well have been standing under a power shower. He pointed to a barn in the distance.

  ‘Race you there,’ he said.

  We ran until we were out of the rain. We were soaking wet and, without thinking the wrong or right of it, he took off my top and I took off his.

  Mr Jones, you don’t need to know more.

  That’s a strange question. What did I feel? … Well, you know what it feels like when you’re with someone you really fancy, don’t you?

  No, I wasn’t in love with him then – no, that happened later. I was in lust. Come on, you’ve been there, haven’t you? He was lovely, and we fitted together. Oh hell, how we fitted together. That afternoon, while Mother Nature gave us one of her more spectacular thunderstorms, he made love to me. It was bloody amazing. He wasn’t like the other boys I’d been with – he was kind, caring, not embarrassed. Anyway, that’s not what I was going to say. It’s just what happened.

  We’d forgotten about the time and had to make a bolt for The Jolly Sailor. By then the sun had come out and Orford was a picture-postcard pretty English village.

  Becky was sitting in the pub garden with a packet of crisps and a shandy. I was so relieved to see just her sitting there and no sign of Icarus. All right, I was also relieved that she didn’t ask where we’d been or why we’d been so long. I noticed that she was wearing make-up and looking good, even talking more than usual. By nine o’clock I was thinking about swallows – I don’t see swallows in the city – and had forgotten the reason we were at the pub in the first place.

  Then I saw hi
m and everything stopped. Alex was in the middle of telling a joke and he too stopped before the punchline. Becky beamed and stood up.

  ‘I knew he’d come,’ she said.

  He was tall, dark-haired, wore jeans, a white T-shirt and sunglasses. He looked like a film star. Everyone stared at him. There was no doubt it was Icarus: he looked like all the pictures I’d seen of him. I thought, those glasses aren’t going to fool anyone.

  ‘You came,’ Becky said, her voice almost childlike.

  ‘Of course – I said I would,’ he said. ‘Did you eat lunch?’

  ‘Yes, I actually felt hungry.’

  ‘Good. That’s a start.’

  I must have been staring at the two of them open-mouthed. He was talking to Becky as if he’d known her all her life.

  ‘You’re Jazmin,’ he said. ‘And Alex. Good to meet you both.’

  ‘Do you do this a lot?’ I asked.

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘Walk out of prison and go to the pub?’

  ‘Sometimes,’ he said.

  ‘How?’

  ‘I walk through the walls,’ he said.

  ‘Is that a joke?’ I said.

  ‘Drink?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. What was he going to do – go to the bar where surely he’d be recognised straight away? ‘Yes,’ I said again.

  Becky smiled at me as he went in. ‘You think he’ll be recognised?’

  ‘Yes. Double yes and yes again.’

  ‘No and no and no. Because Icarus would be about forty-two.’

  She had a point.

  ‘Then who is he?’ I asked.

  ‘Icarus,’ she said.

  He came back with the drinks, said he’d ordered food, then sat next to Becky and began to talk to her. I watched them – Alex and me both watched them. This is the thing, Mr Jones: there was something very genuine about Icarus. Becky talked to him in a way she didn’t talk to us. He understood, he listened. And all that was vulnerable in her seemed to be held in his gaze. And I felt that she did the same for him. Alex’s hand found mine under the table and squeezed it. I sort of forgot about what Icarus was supposed to have done and all the crazy shit from the minicab driver. You know, sometimes you have to enjoy what you have. No point fighting it, I told myself. Whatever this was, Becky had that look on her face, one that told you she’d inherited the earth.