the classroom that day?’
‘The teacher had had the assignment for a week. So I was on edge, waiting to see if I’d passed or not. By then it had become something more than just wanting to go to the soccer camp. She handed out the marked essays, desk by desk. She saved mine for last.’
‘You should have easily passed. By that time we’d spent so much time on it—you really understood it.’
‘I thought I’d understood it, too. She got to my desk. Held up the paper for everyone to see the great big “Fail” scrawled across it. Told the class I was a cheat. Read out my grade and added her comments for maximum humiliation.’
The look on that teacher’s face was still seared into his memory.
Before he’d studied with Zoe he would have made a joke of it. Clowned around. Annoyed the teacher until she’d kicked him out of the classroom. But not that time. He’d deserved better.
‘What happened?’
‘I snatched the paper from the teacher’s hand and stormed out.’
‘To find me lurking outside in the corridor. Pretending I was waiting for a class to start in the next room. Ready to congratulate you on a brilliant pass. Instead I got in your way.’
He noticed how tightly she was gripping on to her glass. No wonder. He’d vented all his outraged adolescent anger and humiliation on her. It couldn’t be a pleasant memory.
‘Instead I behaved like a total jerk.’
‘Yeah. You did. You...you thrust the paper in my face. I can still see that word written so big in red ink: “Plagiarism”.’
‘She thought I was too stupid to write such a good essay. And I took it out on you.’
He’d yelled at her that it was her fault. Told her to get out of his way. Never talk to him again. Had he actually shoved her? He didn’t think so. His words had been as effective as any physical blow.
He’d seen her face crumple in disbelief, then pain, then schooled indifference as she’d walked away. She’d muttered that she was sorry—she’d only been trying to help. And he’d let her go.
Worse, a half-hour later he’d encountered Zoe again. This time he’d been hanging near the canteen, with his crowd of close friends and his girlfriend, Lara. Zoe had obviously been startled to see them. Startled and, he’d realised afterwards, alarmed. She’d immediately started to turn away, eyes cast down, shoulders hunched. But that hadn’t been enough for Lara, who hadn’t liked him studying with another girl one little bit.
‘Buzz off, geek-girl,’ Lara had sneered. ‘Mitch doesn’t need your kind of help. Not when he’s got me.’
Then Lara had pulled his face to hers and given him a provocatively deep kiss. Her girlfriends had started to laugh and his mates had joined in, their laughter echoing through the corridors of the school.
He’d just kept on kissing Lara. When he’d finally pulled away Zoe had gone. It was only later that he’d realised how he’d betrayed her by his silence and inaction.
That had been ten years ago. Now she smiled that wry smile that was already becoming familiar. ‘Teenage angst. Who’d go back there?’
‘Teenage angst or not, I behaved badly. And after ten years I want to take this opportunity to say sorry. To see if there is any way I could make it up to you.’
* * *
Digging deep into feelings she’d rather were kept buried made Zoe feel uncomfortable. She found it impossible to meet Mitch’s gaze. To gain herself a moment before she had to reply, she put her glass down onto the table and tugged her dress down over her thighs.
‘We were just kids,’ she said.
Though Lara’s spite had been only too grown up. And the pain she’d felt when Mitch had ignored her hadn’t been the pain of a child.
Truth was, the episode was a reminder of a particularly unhappy time in her life. She’d rather not be reminded of how she’d felt back then. That was why she had tried to avoid Mitch earlier on, when she’d first recognised him.
‘I was old enough to know better,’ he said.
Now she turned to face him. ‘Seriously, if you hadn’t always been popping up in the media I would have forgotten all about what happened. I’m cool with it.’
He persisted. ‘I’m not cool with it. I want to make amends.’
She wished he would drop it. ‘If it makes you feel any better, my experiences at Northside made me stronger—determined to change. No way was I going to be that miserable at my new school. I decided to do whatever it took to fit in.’
‘Your piercings? Which, by the way, I used to think were kinda cute.’
‘Gone. I wore the uniform straight up—exactly as prescribed. Put the “anything goes” lifestyle I’d enjoyed with my parents behind me. Played the private school game by their rules. I watched, learned and conformed.’
And it had worked. At the new academically elite school she hadn’t climbed up the pecking order to roost with the ‘popular’ girls, but neither had she been one of the shunned.
‘Was it the right move?’
Again she was conscious of his intent focus on her. As if he were really interested in her reply.
‘Yes. I was happy there—did well, made some good friends.’
One in particular had taken the new girl under her wing and helped transform the caterpillar. Not into a gaudy butterfly, more an elegantly patterned moth who fitted perfectly into her surroundings.
‘I’m glad to hear that. But I want you to know I feel bad about what happened. I want to right the wrong.’
Zoe shrugged, pretended indifference, but secretly she was chuffed. Mitch Bailey apologising? Mitch Bailey maybe even grovelling a tad? It was good. It was healing. It was—she couldn’t deny it—satisfying.
‘Consider it righted,’ she said firmly. ‘Apology accepted. You were young and disappointed and you took it out on the first person who crossed your path.’
‘I tried to find you,’ he said.
‘You did?’ she said, startled. That he’d remembered the incident at all in such detail was mind-boggling.
‘After the soccer training camp I went away on vacation with my family. When I got back to school you weren’t there. I went around to your house. Your grandmother told me you didn’t live there any more. I thought she was going to slam the door in my face.’
‘Sounds like my grandmother.’
‘Remember how she always made you leave the door open and patrolled outside it? I felt like a criminal. Did she think I was going to steal the silver?’
‘She was terrified you’d get me pregnant.’
Mitch nearly choked on his beer. He stared at her for a long, astounded moment. ‘What?’
Zoe waited for him to stop spluttering, resisting the temptation to pat him on that broad, muscular back. She probably shouldn’t have shared that particular detail of her dysfunctional relationship with her grandmother.
She felt her cheeks flush pink as she explained. ‘I told her we were just friends. I told her you had a girlfriend. That the only thing going on in that room was studying.’
Not to mention that Mitch Bailey wouldn’t have looked at her as girlfriend material in a million years.
‘Why the hell did she think—?’
‘She wasn’t going to let me—’ Zoe made quote marks in the air with her fingers ‘—“get pregnant and ruin the future of some fine young man”