Lia's Guide to Winning the Lottery (23 page)

‘Oh, right, Lia, sorry. . .'

‘Five minutes,' I said, and put the phone down.

I timed him. He knocked at the door three minutes later.

I sprang to open it. ‘What the hell?' I said. ‘What's going on?'

He walked in, looked around. He seemed a bit spacey . . . almost as though he didn't know where he was or how he had got there. He was pale, sure, and there were dark shadows under his eyes, but dead?
Dead?
Surely not.

‘Why did you ignore me when I was with Olivia?'
I asked. ‘Why are you here?' There was a little scratchy lump in my throat.

He shrugged. ‘I didn't know what to say. I wasn't expecting to see her. I've got something to tell you.'

‘What do you mean, you didn't know what to say?'

‘I needed to see you and she took me by surprise.'

‘If you had something to tell me, why didn't you phone?'

He looked surprised. ‘Oh. I don't know. I never really use my phone.'

Maybe he was a ghost from the nineteenth century? They didn't have mobiles then.

My phone rang. Olivia. ‘We're all downstairs waiting for you. Are you going to be long?'

‘You know, Olivia, I don't think I'll come,' I said. ‘I'll probably never get into these clubs – too many people know me from the papers and the one thing they know about me is that I'm only sixteen. I might as well have had my age tattooed on my forehead. And anyway, I'm really tired. That was an intense day.'

‘Are you sure? Oh well. See you in the morning.'

I turned back to Raf. How could I find out if he was dead or not? I had to touch him.

I walked slowly towards him. I put my hand on
his arm. He felt alive, all right, a bit chilly, but solid. I touched his face, stared into his eyes. He still had the end of the bruise, I noticed. Surely ghosts didn't bruise. He had a tiny blackhead just at the edge of his hairline. OK, obviously angels don't have blackheads.

‘Lia,' he said, ‘I wanted to explain. . .' And then he kissed me. If he were a vampire, then surely now would be the time. I closed my eyes, waited for the cold, sharp feeling of fangs sinking into my flesh, blood spurting. . .

But all I could feel was his mouth on mine, and his tongue, and his hands curving round my back and resting at the base of my spine.

And that's all it took to know
exactly
how I was going to test whether Raf was really alive or not.

After all, I felt twenty-three at least, and the hotel room was sleek and modern and stylish, like a magazine, like a penthouse flat, like a flash-forward to the rest of my life. And Raf was part of that. He was magically there with me. It was almost too exciting to be real.

We broke off from the kiss.

‘I. . . Lia . . . I need to explain,' he said. ‘The other day . . . Camden. . .' He looked around my room. The bed, with its perfect grey satin cover, shiny,
white cotton sheets, the sofa, its purple cushions, the flat-screen TV. I remembered his lumpy mattress, his plans to paint the walls.

‘I'm really glad you came to the hotel,' I said.

‘I need to tell you—' he said, but I kissed him silent. His lips were soft and cold, and he reached his hand to my cheek, touching it so gently, it was as if he thought I wasn't real, and he wanted to make sure I wasn't about to disappear.

We kissed. We breathed. We kissed again. No fangs. No zombie rotten flesh. No angel wings – I ran my hands under his shirt to check that his back was smooth and feather-free.

‘Do you want a drink?' I asked. ‘There's a whole bar of stuff.'

We looked in the little fridge, with its miniature bottles of whiskey and rum and wine, its packets of Pringles and knobbly Toblerone. I love Toblerone, but it's a bugger to break up. What would a twenty-three-year-old drink? What would a ghost? I unscrewed a miniature bottle of Bacardi and sloshed it into a glass with some coke.

‘I shouldn't—' said Raf, and then, ‘Oh, what the hell. This is a dream, isn't it?' He broke up the Toblerone with one hand (‘I've had a lot of practice,' he said,
mysteriously.) He took another mini bottle of Bacardi, but he drank his neat. In one gulp. And then he was kissing me again, hot with rum, sweet with chocolate.

It didn't take long to move from kissing to touching. It soon became clear that we'd be much more comfortable lying down on the bed. I felt more relaxed than I'd ever felt before – the Bacardi? – but more awake too, tingling and brave. I was very, very sure what I wanted. I was more certain than I'd ever been about anything.

I wanted Raf, dead or alive. I wanted to get naked. I wanted to feel every bit of him next to every bit of me.

So I peeled off my top, and I pushed up his T-shirt, and as we touched, I felt his body shaking. As though he were scared. His eyes were closed. I felt a surge of incredible energy charging through me.

I could make a boy like Raf shiver with desire. I could solve the problems of the world.

I loved myself just then, as much as I wanted him. I loved the whole sexy grown-up feeling of being alone with the boy I'd been dreaming about, in our very own piece of my future. I loved the hotel room, the Bacardi, the way we moved together. I was in control enough to take risks. I was dictating my own adventure.

And we were in the bed, clinging together when we felt the chill of the sheets, and pushing, touching, stroking, closer and closer, skin to skin. We couldn't have been any closer. I felt I knew everything about him – his taste, his smell, the way his skin stretched as I stroked his hair away from his face, the sheer blissful joy on his face as he stared at me.

‘You're beautiful,' he whispered. ‘Lia. You're so beautiful.'

And there were no limits, nothing stopping us, no parents lurking or sisters in the same room, or brothers next door, or people at school. Completely alone together. Nothing to stop us exploring and touching and moving together. . .

‘Lia,′ he murmured, breathless in my ear. ‘Lia . . . I haven't, you know . . . I'm not . . . prepared. I didn't think. I'm sorry. Oh, Lia. . .'

‘Don't worry,' I said, shifting my pelvis, reaching down with my hand, showing him, touching him, guiding him. ‘Don't worry. It's fine. Don't worry.'

And he didn't. And we did. And it was completely and absolutely and totally the most amazing experience of my life so far.

Apart from winning the lottery. Damn.

Chapter 24

You'll still have problems that money can't solve.

Afterwards we cuddled up together, and I concentrated on the way my body felt, the slightly hazy, drunken way I wanted to laugh and laugh and the mad, loopy smile I knew was plastered all over my face. I could still feel the memory of him. Little echoes in the darkness.

Then I looked at Raf's face, his big eyes, his crooked smile. All the sadness had dissolved. He was lit up with happiness, like that moment when a Christmas tree turns from a scraggy fir with tinsel to the most beautiful thing in the world.

If he were a ghost, he'd certainly enjoyed feeling completely alive. But so close to his warm skin, his smell, his eyelashes, I could only think that Olivia had just got completely muddled up.

I dropped some words into the silence. ‘That was kind of special.'

He grabbed my hand, kissed my palm. ‘It was very special.'

I stretched. ‘I feel really
alive
,' I said, experimentally.

He nuzzled my neck. ‘I've never felt so alive.' His voice was slightly muffled.

I hugged him tighter, loving the warmth of his body, the soft touch of his skin, the sharp bones underneath, so strong but somehow so fragile.

‘You should've told me you were going to be at the hotel,' I said.

‘I didn't want to . . . you know . . . look like a stalker. . .' he said. ‘But I needed to explain. That whole thing in Camden. I'm worried he's going to come and see you.'

‘Who?'

‘Him. Nick. My dad.'

‘He's your
dad
?' I said, although I could have guessed if I'd thought about it.

He nodded. ‘If he comes to see you, Lia, just ignore him. Don't listen to him. He's . . . he's . . . don't trust him. There are rules about how he is. He doesn′t keep them.'

‘Oh,' I said. I had no idea what he meant, but Raf's face was so bleak suddenly, that I needed to kiss him again.

‘OK . . . Raf? Olivia said. . .' How to put it? ‘Olivia said you were at school with her brother, Freddie, but. . .'

‘Oh yeah, good old Freddie.'

He said the name –
Freddie
– as though he were spitting out a piece of rotten food.

‘I thought he was your friend. She said you stayed at their house.'

‘He wasn't my friend. They all had to have me to stay. It was like a rota. Like charity.'

He was moving away from me. I wanted to jump on him, pin him to the bed, hug him even tighter. I didn't, obviously, because that would have been a bit OTT.

Instead I gently stroked his face. ‘Why didn't you spend holidays with your family?'

‘I don't have a family,'

‘Your dad? Jasper?'

He sighed. I could feel the breath lift his ribcage. He breathed! He was alive!

‘I never even knew Jasper until a year ago. And my dad, he was always too busy. He used to take me to hotels sometimes. Hotels like this one. But mostly
I was left at school.'

‘How could he leave you at
school
?'

‘Boarding school. There are always some kids there for the holidays. But mostly it was because they were from Malaysia or somewhere else far away. Anyway, I was just used to it. Then I started getting invited to people's homes. I was pleased at first; it felt like . . . like I'd made some friends. But then I realised . . . someone said . . . that they'd been asked to have me. After that. . . It's difficult, you know, when you're not that friendly with someone during term time and suddenly you're in their house, having to meet their parents, talk to their sisters and brothers. It used to kill me, really. I'd feel like I'd lost the ability to speak.' He half sighed, half laughed. ‘It still happens sometimes. I'm sorry.'

‘Oh Raf, you've had a really difficult time.' I felt terrible for him. ‘Your brother works you like a slave. I hate him.'

‘He thinks it's good for me.'

‘How can it be good for you?'

‘That's what he says. He thinks I should keep busy. So I do.'

I didn't think so at all. ‘I wish you'd told me this ages ago.'

‘How could I? I only ever saw you at school, and you can't start talking about personal stuff in the middle of Science, can you? And you always had loads of friends around you. I really liked you; I really wanted to talk to you. I thought about asking you out, loads of times. But there was your boyfriend, Jack—'

‘Jack is
not
my boyfriend,' I said.

‘And your friend Shaz, she's a bit scary too. I could never see how to get you on your own. I even followed you home once, but I wasn't . . . I didn't. I didn't want to screw up so badly that you stopped being nice when we did see each other.' He swallowed.

‘I think I really love you, Lia,' he said, almost under his breath.

When people talk about unprotected sex, they're warning you about babies and disease. When you have sex you're risking your health and your future. You could end up as a mother. You could end up dead.

You can save yourself from all that by using a condom.

But there's no condom you can use against the other sort of unprotected sex. The kind of sex you have when you don't know the person too well. You haven't protected yourself against their personality,
your emotions. You don't know if they'll post videos on the internet, or rate your performance in a text to all their mates.

You don't know if you'll fall in love. You don't know if he's in love with you already.