‘A video, maybe?’ Killian Morrow suggested. It wasn’t loud enough for Mr Lawton to hear, but Iris caught it. Clearly, a few of her classmates did too – there were giggles and snorts. Killian was such a dick. Iris knew this. But it hurt even so.
Ignore them, Tom scribbled on a piece of rough paper as soon as Mr Lawton had turned his back.
Iris nodded. But it was impossible to ignore the reactions of her fellow pupils. Tom was the only one on her side. He thought Josh should be expelled. She hoped he would be. Then she wouldn’t have to face him. She was terrified of bumping into him. She was fairly sure she’d spotted him earlier – at break. It was from a distance, but the sight of him still made a pain shoot through her tummy.
So far, Josh hadn’t even been suspended. Mum was furious about this. She kept saying Josh would get what he deserved in the end. Mum believed in karma. What goes around comes around and stuff like that. She often said you got what you had coming to you. Iris wasn’t so sure. After all, what had she done to deserve this? And her family, too. None of them had done anything wrong and yet they were all affected. Even Margo, who didn’t understand what had happened, but who suffered from all the stress it was causing.
Iris didn’t take in any of the lesson. She used to be one of the most active students in this class, but she didn’t put up her hand once. Mr Lawton didn’t ask her any questions either, thank God.
He kept her back after the lesson, though. ‘How are you holding up?’ he asked.
‘OK,’ Iris lied.
‘Did Tom say something nasty to you?’
‘No, sir. He was being kind.’ Iris didn’t add what she was thinking. That Tom was the only pupil who had showed her any compassion all day. This included Millie, who was supposed to be her best friend.
By lunchtime, Iris had had more than she could take. She couldn’t concentrate in her lessons anyway. So what was the point? She should never have agreed to come back to school. She hid in the loos for the second time that day and rang her mum. She was crying – again! – down the phone and couldn’t get the words out.
‘Go and see Mrs Hamilton,’ Mum said, ‘and tell her I’m on my way to pick you up and take you home.’
Mrs Hamilton and Mr Brook waited with Iris in Mr Brook’s office. When Mum got there, they told her that Iris should take as long as necessary.
‘Iris’s teachers have told me that her latest marks are good, not quite as good as usual, but still perfectly satisfactory,’ Mr Brook said. ‘Iris can continue to catch up on her lessons and send in her homework and we’ll see how she’s coping in a few weeks’ time.’
Iris wassorelieved she could stay at home, even if it was only a stopgap. She’d have to go back to school properly one day.
‘Maybe we should get her away from here,’ she overheard Mum saying to Dad on the phone that evening as they discussed her failed attempt to go back to school.
Did she mean move away? Did Iris want that? She had no friends here anymore. Even Millie was keeping her distance. Perhaps it would do her good to start over, somewhere no one knew who she was, somewhere no one had seen the video. The glimmer of hope she felt was quickly replaced by a pang of guilt. Even if Mum could work anywhere, Daniel would never agree to uproot Margo and come with them. And it wasn’t fair on Olly. And Iris couldn’t move away with Dad. He had a good job here and he couldn’t move away from Olly and Mum because of her.
But it turned out to be another temporary solution. They meant get her away for a fortnight, not permanently. A change of scenery. They were sending her to her grandmother’s house in Cumbria. Granny Ashford had Wi-Fi and Iris could just as easily do her schoolwork there.
Granny Ashford was eighty-one and lived out in the sticks in the Lake District. The nearest village was Hawkshead, a pretty village, but also tiny and kinda dead. Iris felt as isolated there as she had at home. Her gran, who was actually quite lively for her age, did her best to cheer Iris up, taking her for walks and to visit nearby tourist attractions – those that were open despite the off-season. Iris had already visited them when she was a bit younger. They ate variations of a ploughman’s lunch at one in the afternoon and cooked together in the evenings. A couple of times, they went for a pub meal.
The first time Iris deliberately made herself vomit it was because she felt so sick after the first pub meal. She’d never done it before and it took several attempts. She pushed her forefinger and middle finger further and further down the back of her throat and retched until it worked. Afterwards, she did it every evening after dinner. Iris had already lost weight – she hadn’t stood on the scales to check, but she could see she’d got skinny. It was because she’d had no appetite since she’d become a local porn star. Now, even though she was worried she’d lose more weight, she couldn’t break what was becoming a nightly habit.
After a few nights, her gran noticed. She made Iris promise she’d stop making herself sick. Iris tried. She really did. One evening, her gran ambushed her as she came out of the bathroom after throwing up her meal.
‘I’m going to have to phone your mum and dad, Iris,’ she said.
Her parents decided to drive up that weekend to take her back to Crooked Oak Cottage, where Mum could keep an eye on her.
Iris got up the next day before her gran. She left a note to say she’d gone for a walk and would be back soon. She walked, like, two miles to the nearest hairdresser’s. She’d been careful to stay off socials, but she’d looked up online how to donate her hair to make a wig for a young ‘princess’ with cancer, then she’d rung the salon about it. She was supposed to call back and make an appointment, not just show up, but she thought she’d have more time.
The salon was over some grockle shop and you had to go up these dodgy metal steps that looked like a fire escape to get to it. It was calledA Cut Above. Iris thoughtCurl up and Dyewould be more apt for how she felt right now.
She had to wait for half an hour and it was the trainee who cut and dyed her hair. Afterwards, Iris stared at herself in the mirror. Her long, blonde hair was totally gone. In its place was a short, dark bob. Iris was thrilled with the transformation. She looked completely different. She was unrecognizable, even to herself.
Chapter 25
Ash
NOW
Carla has something on her mind, Ash can tell. She’s sitting next to him, in the passenger’s seat, biting her lower lip and picking at the skin around her thumb. She’s unusually quiet. Iris, who’s in the back – she didn’t want to drive – isn’t particularly talkative either, but he puts that down to her driving test. They’re on their way to the driving centre. He took the morning off work and offered to take Iris in to Barnstaple. He thought he’d better show willing – Carla often complains, quite rightly, that she’s expected to do all the taxiing around simply because she works at home and is on hand – but when he arrived at Crooked Oak Cottage, only a few minutes late, she announced she was coming too.
‘Feeling confident, honey?’ he asks, to break the silence, looking at Iris in the rear-view mirror. He can’t think of anything better to say.
