Hold Your Breath by Caroline Green

feet in the footwell. It was crammed with a large sports bag and a
rolled-up towel that looked as though it had been there for ever. Tara was fizzing with nerves, wondering if she should question Leo, but she had no idea what to say. Plus, she was hyper-conscious
of his strong, tanned arm near hers as he clipped in his seatbelt, which obviously was just
wrong
of her, she knew.
    He’d just turned the engine on when a panicked, disembodied voice filled car, making Tara jump.
    ‘
They’re coming outta the walls! They’re coming outta the goddamn walls!
’
    As Leo switched off the engine and fumbled in his pocket, Tara realised the sound was the ringtone on his mobile.
    He glanced at her, flushing a little. ‘It’s from
Aliens
,’ he said, a bit apologetically, and then answered the call.
    ‘Papi, I’m busy right now. What’s . . . ?’ he sighed. ‘Are you all right? Don’t move, I’ll be right there.’
    He put his phone away and looked at Tara, his expression concerned.
    ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I have to stop off before I take you home. My dad . . . he’s disabled and he’s got himself stuck getting out of the bath. We’re on Foley
Road so it’ll be a quick detour before I take you to yours. Do you mind?’
    ‘No, that’s okay,’ she said, as the car pulled out of the park.
That’s interesting,
she thought, gathering her courage to speak again. ‘Don’t you
live with Mel then?’ She was aiming for ‘nonchalant’ but feared she’d ended up with something closer to ‘stiff and weird’.
    Leo shook his head. ‘No, we’ve never lived in the same house, thank God. Our family’s not exactly your usual two-point-three kids thing,’ he said as he expertly pulled
onto a roundabout, one forearm resting on the open window in that cocky lad’s way.
    ‘Oh?’ said Tara, trying not to sound as interested as she really was.
    ‘Our mum, Hope, well, she was what they called a wild child in the Nineties. My pa— my dad’s Italian and she met him on holiday in Sicily. He gave up everything to come over
here and then she left him when I was a baby.’ This had the air of something that had been said so many times that all bitterness had been soaked away by the passage of time. ‘Dad
stayed here and brought me up,’ continued Leo. ‘Hope hooked up with Adam Stone and was pregnant with Melodie before I was even walking.’
    Tara slid a look at him.
    He shrugged. ‘That was Hope for you. Or so I’m told.’
    ‘Oh,’ said Tara. ‘Is she . . . ?’
    ‘Dead? Yeah,’ said Leo. ‘It’s okay though, because it’s not like I really knew her or anything. She died of a drug overdose when I was three. I don’t remember
her.’
    ‘And Faith’s an aunt, right?’ she said with a boldness she wasn’t feeling.
    Leo slid her an odd look. ‘Yeah, she’s Hope’s sister. She got custody of her because, at the time, Adam was in no fit state to look after a baby. He was in rehab
himself.’ He grinned. ‘I know what you’re thinking . . .’
    Tara gulped. ‘Er, you do?’
    ‘Yeah,’ said Leo. ‘Faith and Hope. Yes, their parents were hippies.’
    Leo glanced at her again. ‘But don’t you know any of this already?’
    ‘What?’
    ‘Doesn’t Mel tell her friends
anything
?’
    Tara froze. She’d forgotten about the lie she’d told, that she and Melodie were friends. There may have a been a moment before now when she could have said, ‘Actually, when I
say friends, I just mean we sit together in English’, but now it was too late. Instead, she found herself saying, ‘You know what she’s like.’
    Leo sighed. ‘Yeah. Too well.’
    No one spoke for another minute or so, and Tara had the sensation of having missed an opportunity that wouldn’t present itself again.
    They soon turned down a road of terraced houses not far from Tara’s school. The houses were small and made from red brick. Many had broken walls at the front. It was a busy main road and
traffic thundered by. Leo pulled