“Oh, it’s obviously way out of bounds,” says Henry, “but who’s going to know?”
He shuts the door behind me, and I wonder what we’re doing here. Sandy gravel crunches under our feet. I raise my head as Henry shines the light over the walls and ceiling. We’re in some kind of passage.
“There are tunnels under the whole school, but most of them never get used.” He beckons me to follow him. “They say that thirteen pupils went missing down here once.”
“Ha-ha,” I murmur.
“Fine, there were only eleven of them. There’s even a dungeon under the church.” He glances at me. “I bet your old school never had anything like this.”
“You’re right, it didn’t,” I admit. “Do you have a school ghost too?”
“Yeah, his name’s Simon.”
“No, can’t be, I’d have heard about it,” I say.
“Is that right?”
“My mum would have mentioned it for sure.”
“He’s new,” he explains. “My parents never met him either, and they went to school here too.”
I prick up my ears. His parents were at Dunbridge Academy? At once, my head is full of questions. How old are they? Do they know my dad? Might Henry even know my dad? I’m just wondering about the subtlest way of finding that out when Henry points to our left, where the passage branches out into tunnels in several directions.
“So what’s the story?” he begins, and my stomach ties itself in knots. Don’t ask. Don’t ask aboutthat. Please, just let it go. “Were both your parents here at the school, or just your mum?”
Of course. But I can’t really hold it against him—I’d be interested too if it were me.
So I nod. “They met here.” I just keep staring ahead down the dark passage and don’t look at Henry’s attentive face. It’s a bit easier to explain things if I don’t have to make eye contact with him. “My mum came here from Germany in the second form, and my dad’s from Glasgow.”
“And you all live in Germany now?”
I gulp. “Just Mum and me.”
Henry doesn’t ask any more questions. But suddenly I’mtelling him. “He walked out when I was eleven, and I never heard from him again.”
I’m psyching myself up for some platitude. Something like, “Oh, I’m sorry,” or “Whoa, that’s tough,” but Henry doesn’t say anything. Small stones scrunch under the soles of our shoes, and then there’s his voice again.
“Do you often think about him?”
“No, not really.” Well, that’s a flat-out lie.Yes, every day. Way too often to be healthy.That’s what I ought to say. I swallow. “Only sometimes.”
“It must be weird, being here,” says Henry. “Where he used to be too.”
“It is weird.”
“Do you want to get in touch with him?” Henry asks, and that’s the whole problem. Part of me wants to say, “Yes.” Loud and clear. It’s the part that can’t watch those sappy dramas—the “I’m going to find my dad, and he’s going to love me even though we barely know each other” kind without crying hot, angry tears. The other, bigger part of me knows that it doesn’t work like that in real life. That I’m way too let down and hurt. That I don’t want to find him just so he can act like he actually has any interest in me. Because he can’t, or he wouldn’t have left. I only want to find him so I can ask him questions. Fucked-up, uncomfortable questions. Why was everything else more important than Mum and me? Why did he choose to do it, and why doesn’t he care about me?
“I want to find him,” I say, without considering whether or not it’s wise to tell Henry that. Dark tunnels, echoing footsteps. And me wanting Henry to know everything. “I can’t ask mymum about him. She wants to make sure he can’t let me down again. And I thought that here I might find out who he was. And where he is.”
These are things I’ve never told anybody. Not Noah, not Isi. Nobody. But I’ve told Henry, and in the end, I’m only doing this because I know that he’s a stranger. Someone I’ll be spending a year in supertiny classes with, ducking out early from secret midnight parties to go on nighttime walks in spooky tunnels with, and telling the truth to. And then I’ll never see him again.
“My parents were at Dunbridge too,” says Henry. “I could ask them. They might know him.”
“What are their first names?” I ask.
“Catherine and Tom,” says Henry, and the tiny spark of hope inside me is blown out again. Their names mean nothing to me, and if my dad knew them, Mum would too. And she’d definitely have mentioned them to me.
I nod all the same, because that’s easier than explaining why there’s no point. “Did they meet here too?” I ask.
