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“I think that this would be good for you,” Elinor said, looking up from her notepad where she had been writing. “It gets you out into a more controlled environment with a male figure who isn’t related to you or dating one of your sisters.”
Lydia readjusted the pillow she’d been hugging throughout most of her session. “I think it would be, too? Kitty and Gigi have already vetted him, and Jane was in Secondary with his cousin.”
“Is anyone else coming with you to the amusement park?”
“Everyone,” Lydia admitted, a little embarrassed. “Even Mary.”
“Well then,” Elinor said, smiling a little and leaning back into her chair, “let me know how it goes. I’ll see you next week.”
“So you’re meeting him there then?” Mary asked, glancing up from her book.
“Yeah,” Lydia confirmed, focusing on the curling iron currently in her hair. “Kitty’s going to be dropping me off by the ring toss. We, Maxwell and I, I mean,” Lydia looked briefly at Mary as she corrected herself, “decided to start with the games rather than any rides. Can you do my back?”
Mary set her book down, folding the top corner of the page she’d been reading, and took the curling iron that Lydia held out. As she started separating the locks of hair at the back of Lydia’s head, she said, “Rides after you’ve eaten, presumably? Interesting choice.”
“Well,” Lydia said, keeping her head still, even as she looked down at the floor, “I don’t think I’ll be much up to eating anything, really.”
Mary hummed a note of understanding, carefully unravelling the newly curled lock of hair. “Are you sure you–”
“I need to, Sān-jiě,” Lydia said, eyes pleading for her sister to understand. “I need to, to,” she took a breath, “I need to feel normal again. I want to have fun without feeling like he’s looking over my shoulder the entire time.”
“Ài’ér,” Mary said, setting the curling iron down carefully on the vanity, her hands coming to rest on Lydia’s shoulders. But the sister who’d been (jokingly) voted “Most Likely to Speak, Even After Death” found herself grasping for anything to say.
Lydia just leaned her head against Mary’s right hand. Dark eyes, both her and her sister’s, bore into the mirror. “I know,” she said softly. “I know.”
“Gods, this place is loud,” Will muttered, a hand coming up to shield his eyes from the sun, even though he was already wearing sunglasses.
“Okay, old man,” Lizzie teased, hugging his free arm.
“Aren’t they sweet,” Lydia heard her Mum say behind her.
“Gross,” Kitty whispered to Lydia, a joking tone to her voice. “C’mon, let’s find Maxwell!”
“Alright,” Lydia said, already being dragged towards the entrance to the park. She could hear her family’s voices behind them, until they blended in with the rest of the crowd.
“Remember, we’ll all be nearby if you need us, right? Just shout.” Kitty reminded her as they walked towards the games area. “Well, at least one or two of us will be. I’m sure we’ll lose Jane and Charlie to the teacups.” The teacup rides were the ones Charlie was most vocal about going to; he and his sisters, Lou and Caroline, used to ride them all the time until Lou decided that they were too old to.
Lydia let out a snort, focusing on the sunshine and the sounds of laughter and excited screams and ringing bells, rather than the dread that had been sitting at the base of her spine since this date had been arranged. “Make sure there are pictures. I heard that Char wants to get into scrapbooking again.”
The ring toss booth was ahead of them, crashing tin cans and slams of rubber mallets getting louder as they approached. Lydia grasped her sister’s hand, needing the comfort. “He’s surprisingly fit given who his cousin is,” Kitty said offhandedly, chattering about Maxwell pseudo-aimlessly. “He almost looks like he fell right out of the Bingley family tree, y’know, ‘cos he’s a ginge.”
“Yes, I do know what he looks like,” Lydia side-eyed Kitty, “given that he’s in my Year.”
“I know,” she said, rolling her eyes, “but you’ve only seen him in his uniform. He’s bound to look different in, say, trackies or something.”
“If you’ve set me up with a secret chav, I might genuinely push you into the Thames.”
“Isn’t that how Ed Gamble says he got his diabetes?” Kitty asked, frowning as she tried to remember what his stand-up routine was.
“I’m pretty sure Jacaster or Nish said that,” Lydia corrected, silently willing the path to the ring toss to get longer rather than shorter, as it was currently wont to do.
“Never getting over the fact you call him Jacaster,” Kitty giggled, doing a poor job of not looking a little moon-eyed about her celebrity crush.
“Never getting over the fact that you audibly squeaked when you saw him in that one Mock the Week episode,” Lydia fired back as only little sisters can.
“Oh my god, shut up, I didn’t!”
“Right,” Lydia pretended to agree, “and Jimmy Carr doesn’t whiten his teeth.”
With her other hand, Kitty pinched Lydia on the arm, slightly above her elbow.
“Oh fuck off!” Lydia exclaimed reflexively, letting go of Kitty’s hand to pull herself away from her sister. “That hurt, you c–”
“Er, Lydia?” Someone asked off to her right.
She abruptly shut her mouth and dropped her arms to her side. Turning to the voice, she was greeted by the sight of Maxwell Carroway, not wearing trackies, thankfully. He did have on a pair of corduroy trousers on, a dark green colour that Lydia thought looked nice on him. He was wearing a brown cardigan and underneath it was a light green button down. The greens and browns complimented the mustard yellow and white skirt she was wearing with a white cardigan and light brown blouse.
“You did this, didn’t you?” She whispered to Kitty before turning properly to Maxwell. “Hi, Maxwell!” She forced a smile onto her face.
“Hi, Catherine,” he greeted her sister, as well.
“Hi, Maxwell,” she said, a more honest smile on her face. Under her breath, she said to Lydia, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Liar,” Lydia fired back immediately. Kitty pushed her, whether to get her moving towards Maxwell or as revenge for being called a liar, she didn’t know.
Lydia stumbled, but recovered quickly and made a joke to keep Maxwell from asking if everything was alright. “You two sound so formal talking to each other. It’s like meeting your Nana’s friends at the local gardening centre.”
Both Maxwell and Kitty were silent for a moment, just staring at Lydia. Her eyes darted back and forth between them, trying to figure out where she went wrong. The tension inside her mind was broken by Maxwell’s snort that then turned into laughter.
“Fair play,” he said between laughs, “you’ve nailed us on that, yeah.”
Kitty’s own huff of laughter joined the ranks, and Lydia tried to keep her sigh of relief in. “You can call me Kit,” Kitty told Maxwell. “Most everyone does.”
“And you can call me Max,” he replied, though he was looking at Lydia.
“Well then, Max,” Kitty said sweetly, “I’ll leave you and Lydia to your date. Have fun, kids!”
“We’re only a year younger than you,” Lydia called at her sister’s back, as Kitty quickly disappeared into the crowd and left Lydia and Max alone. She looks at him, fidgeting with the hem of her cardigan. “What, ah, what would you like to do first?”
Max gave her a smile, and she felt her cheeks flush. He was fit, no doubt about it. He had a nice smile and warm brown eyes and excellent posture. His dark red hair was curly and fell about his face, framing it nicely. A change from the normal messy look he tended to sport at school. “Have you ever tried to throw balls at milk jugs that are rigged to be incredibly difficult to knock down?”
A smile grew on Lydia’s face, a small one, but nonetheless a smile that she hadn’t done in a while. “Lead the way.”
“Are you sure you haven’t been secretly practising in the lead up to today,” Max asked, half-teasing and half-in awe, as the person running the game pulled the giant plush red panda down from the top shelf.
“Thank you,” Lydia said to the game runner with a smile, gently pulling the stuffed animal into her arms. She turned to Max, her head barely visible behind the ears of the toy. “Our cousin Bill decided one year to take up rugby in a very misguided attempt to impress Will’s older cousin, Catherine. She didn’t really care for rugby, but me and my sisters, well, we were the ones Bill had to practice with because…” Lydia paused, her mind going blank. She could smell his cologne. But, no, that couldn’t be right. Will and Gigi had ensured that he would never come up this far north again.
It… It couldn’t be him.
Right?
Max, unaware of Lydia’s growing anxiety, prompted, “Because?”
“Hm,” Lydia asked, blinking a few times and refocusing. “Sorry, don’t know what came over me. He, uh, he had to have us practice with him because no one else at his school liked him all that much, really.” As she spoke, she knew that her attention was becoming more and more divided. She felt like someone was watching her. She looked around subtly, but there were too many people, too many things going on, and she couldn’t tell if anyone was watching her.
Max frowned, picking up on the change in Lydia’s mood. He looks around as well in an attempt to see if he could help in some way. Maybe it was the crowd and the constant noises and flashing lights? He knew that one of his cousins got like that after a while. Perhaps Lydia was similar? He decided that the best way to help was to get her away from the games and go somewhere less crowded.
He reached out to gently take hold of her elbow and guide her away from the chaos, just as he would with his cousin. Her eyes were glassy and unfocused in the same way, so he figured this was the best move. The minute his hand closed around her arm, Lydia flinched away so violently that she stumbled a few steps from him.
“Lydia? Are you alright?” He asked, keeping his hands visible. He made no move to stand next to her again.
She doesn’t answer, just squeezes the red panda closer to her. Her knuckles are white from where they poke out of the sleeves of her cardigan.
“Lydia?” Someone else asked from behind Max. He turns around and sees another young Asian woman who looks similar to Lydia. When Lydia doesn’t respond to her, the woman tries again. “Àirán–mèi, shì Yìrán–jiě. Nǐ néng tīngdào wǒ ma?”
“Sān-jiě?” Lydia’s voice sounded weak, and Max couldn’t help wincing, not having heard her sound like this before.
“Yes, it’s Mary.” Mary confirmed, “Come on, let’s find a place to sit, hm?” She wraps an arm around Lydia’s waist, guiding her in the direction Max had been going. With a jerk of her head, she motioned for Max to come with them.
A few minutes later, Max was sitting with the rest of the Bennets, and the two oldest sisters’ partners. He looked vaguely uncomfortable, though whether that was due to him feeling like he did something wrong with Lydia or whether it was due to sitting there with mainly strangers was up in the air.
“Can you tell us what happened?” Lydia’s oldest sister asked kindly. She had one of the ginger man’s hands between two of hers.
“I, uh, I don’t really know what happened,” Max started. “She was telling me about your cousin Bill and rugby and then she stopped and was unfocused. I thought it might be the crowd and the flashing lights and loud noises, so I was going to go take her over this way, actually.” He frowned a little as he recalled how scared Lydia had looked when he touched her arm. “And then Mary showed up,” he finished, leaving out how Lydia had flinched and appeared to look right through him, as if he wasn’t there.
Lydia’s second-oldest sister asked, “Was there anything that happened between her telling the story and then her…” She trailed off, not knowing how to end that sentence.
“I don’t think so?” Max said, “Just a bunch of people moving around us. Some blokes in a group, and what might have been their girlfriends ahead of them? A few kids running around. There wasn’t anything special to me.”
The oldest sisters shared a look before focusing on Max again. “Thank you for trying to keep her safe,” the oldest said. “It wasn’t your fault, you know, that this happened.”
“I have a cousin who does this when they get overwhelmed,” Max explained, “so I was just trying to do what I would normally do with them.”
“Well, that was very quick thinking, Max.” Mrs. Bennet said, her eyes not straying from her youngest daughter. “Thank you for taking care of her.”
“Is she,” he started, suddenly feeling all of the being just fifteen, “will she be alright?”
Mrs. Bennet looked at him, understanding in her dark brown eyes. “She will.”