“Why? What happened?”
“She didn’t say, and I didn’t want to ask. It felt like prying.”
She starts down the stairs. This feels strange and the thought of being here with him is the thought of an empty evening, of depression creeping in.
“I should say goodbye,” she says. She wants to beg Jemma to stay, or to ask Jemma’s mum if she can go with them.
He moves between her and the door, not completely, not so he’s blocking it, but a little, so that she would have to go around him to reach it. There’s plenty of room, but she’d still have to make that extra effort. She frowns.
“Her mum was waiting for her in the car outside. They’ve already gone.”
“I didn’t hear a car.”
“Perhaps it’s one of those electric ones. They’re practically silent, you know.”
Perhaps, Imogen thinks. But they’re not really that sort of family.
“That happened quickly,” she says. It feels strange, almost unbelievable that everything she was looking forward to tonight has gone up in a puff of smoke. The disappointment is severe and the possibility that Jemma might go to the party without her hurts. Especially if Matt’s there. And there’s no way Imogen can go alone because it’s being held by another friend of Jemma’s brother and Imogen doesn’teven know where it is. This feels like one more thing in a long line of things that have happened this year and are crushing her.
He shrugs and smiles, and she hates it because it’s like he thinks this is nothing. “So,” he says. “Just you and me again.”
“Sure,” she says.
They stand in silence. She wants to go back upstairs and disappear into her room, but she needs to find her phone first. Perhaps she can call Jemma to see what happened and try to work out a way they can go out tonight anyway. And she’s thinking of calling the place where her mum is staying to see if they can bring Edie to the phone. Because she wants, all of a sudden, to hear her mum’s voice.
“I lost my phone,” she says.
“Oh! Can I help you find it? Where did you last see it?”
“In the bathroom I think but I already looked there.”
“Perhaps you brought it down? Let’s have a look, shall we?”
In the sitting room he pulls every cushion off the sofa and armchairs, slips his fingers into the crevices where the covers are tucked and runs them around. He does it twice.
Watching his eager efforts, she feels queasy, as if he’s choreographing a performance, just for her. Her thoughts cycle. It’s unlike Jemma not to say goodbye. I need my phone. Panic rises at the thought they might not find it.
She wonders now if it was worth getting out of music camp. She was playing really well. She even had a solo in the concert. I’ve let them down, she thinks. But she also knows it would have been impossible to play, without crying for her dad, and that would have been humiliating.
“Imogen?” He’s staring at her so hard she finds herself blinking.
“What?” Her voice is whisper quiet.
“Are you feeling upset about the phone?”
Wariness of him has crept up on her out of nowhere. She’s not sure why. It’s in her gut, and it stops her from fully sharing her feelings. “A bit,” she says, hedging.
“Maybe it fell underneath the sofa.” He drops to his knees, his backside in the air, buttocks straining against the seat of his trousers and uses his own phone to illuminate the dark gap.
“It’s okay,” she says. She wants him to stop searching because this feels weird.
“What?” He turns back to her, his voice too loud, his face too red.
“It’s okay. I think I left it upstairs. I’ll go look.”
“I can help.”
“No! It’s fine. I’ll do it myself.” He looks rumpled when he stands up. The redness leaches from his face.
