“Isn’t the cat sweet?”
“It’s all right,” I say, refusing to let myself dwell on the treacherous softness of her paws wrapping around my arm, her wet little nose nuzzling against my thumb. In the kitchen, the cake is golden and perfect. I put it on the wire rack to cool, then take out the bread for sandwiches. What if James and Marianne become friends? What might he tell her? What then? Marianne helps me with the margarine.
“I tell you what,” I say after a minute. “Tomorrow, let’s go to the beach.”
“Seriously?”
“Of course seriously.” If I keep Marianne out of James’s way for a day or two, perhaps she’ll lose interest. Or perhaps he’ll think better of it and stop encouraging her. “What do you think?” Or perhaps he’ll die. That would work too, I think, surprised by my own malice.
“But what about the list?”
“It’ll be fine. I’ll work twice as hard the next day.”
“But won’t Dad be mad? I don’t like it when he’s mad with you.”
“Dad’s too far away to find out,” I say, which is a terrible answer, but the only one I can summon. “We’ve earned a day off and we’re going out. That’s the end of it.”
Of course, Marianne’s right. If Daniel finds out I’ve frittered away a whole precious day at the beach, he’ll be upset. Nonetheless, I’d thought Marianne was still too young to notice tensions between adults, or to resist the promise of a day spent on swimming and sunshine. Instead, she looks sad and anxious, until she sees me watching her and flashes me a bright smile that’s almost real enough to be convincing.
Chapter Fourteen – Lily
“And I hear you’re a musician,” Lily says, passing Daniel a slice of cake.
“I want you to meet Lily,” I say, as we lie, resplendent and sweaty, in his room in a shared off-campus house. I have my own room in my own shared house, but I’m in it as little as possible. My housemates joke that if Daniel decided to murder me, they wouldn’t notice for weeks.
“Who’s Lily again?”
“My grandmother. My dad’s mum.”
“Oh yes, I remember, down in the South West. Do we have to?”
“Yes we do.”
He kisses my shoulder.
“I’d rather stay here in bed.”
Daniel takes the plate, rewarding Lily with the smile that melts my heart and loosens my joints. Her answering smile is smaller and more guarded than I’d really like.
“So, how did you and Jen meet?” she asks, correct and sweet.
Oh God, I think. She doesn’t like him.
The Students’ Union, sweaty and crowded, a roomful of uncertain young adults trying to prove themselves. Everyone’s stricken by the irrational terror that if they don’t meet people right now, tonight, this instant, they’ll be alone in their rooms for ever. I say they as if I’m immune to this, but seeing it in others doesn’t stop you feeling it yourself.
Nonetheless I’m determined to take my time and be choosy. Unlike everyone else, I don’t have the excuse of being distracted by the noise. My attention snags on a tall boy, fair-haired and green-eyed, long-lashed and pretty in the way musicians often are. He’s at the centre of a group who look vaguely alike, as if they’re all siblings. I can tell from the casual way he takes the drink offered by the girl on his left that he’s used to adulation.
Why are the good-looking ones always such tossers? I wonder.
“So when I saw this gorgeous girl looking at me, I was stoked. I mean, you know, really pleased. And then she just smiled and looked away again.” Daniel is quick to sense other people’s moods. I can feel his anxiety, aware that he’s missing the mark. “So obviously that made me want to talk to her even more.”
“Naturally.” Lily nods. “I wonder, why did you look away, Jen?”
I accept a drink from a boy who I’m sure told me his name at some point, and who keeps touching my forearm in a well-meant attempt at non-threatening contact. He’s decided the way to impress me is to painstakingly list the names and academic histories of everyone he’s met so far. I nod and smile as he works his way round the bar (‘That’s Josh, he’s on my corridor and he’s doing PPE, he applied to Cambridge but didn’t quite get the grades and this was his second choice, that’s Liz and she’s doing Sociology, she nearly chose Durham instead but she thought the campus here looked better.’) and try out various labels to see if they’ll attach themselves to my companion. Hi, I’m Dave and I’m doing English Lit. Hi, I’m Andrew and I’m doing English Language with French. Is that a real course or did I make it up? I’m sure English came into it somewhere. Hi, I’m Steve and I’m doing English with Linguistics. The fair-haired musician and his coterie have vanished into the crowd.
Daniel leaves the room to use the bathroom. Lily waits for me to speak.
I look at her, and she looks at me, but for the first time I can remember, I have no idea what to say.
Dave-or-Andrew-or-Steve is at the bar when Daniel finds me, materialising by my elbow like a magic trick. He looks shy, uncertain. I have to remind myself that good-looking people don’t need to worry about first impressions, that this is simply an act he’s learned works.
“I know this’ll make me sound like a twat but you look really nice and I wondered if I could talk to you,” he says, and despite my resistance I can’t help finding his expression appealing.
“Daniel’s a musician,” I say at last, hoping this will gain Lily’s approval. She already knows this from my letters, but perhaps now we’re together, I can explain Daniel so he’ll make sense to her in the same way he does to me.
“That’s very interesting. What sort of music does he play?”
“I’m going to write a whole new kind of music,” Daniel tells me when we’ve known each other for a week. “It’ll be based on vibration and sensation – playing with sound waves to create an experience. They’ll be songs you’ll hear with your whole body.”
“What will that sound like? To everyone who can hear, I mean?”
“That won’t matter. It’ll be just for you.”
“Just for me? Not very commercial.”
“I don’t care about money. It’s the music that matters.” He kisses my naked shoulder. “And you.”
At this point everyone else asks the obvious question. Some people come straight out with it; others dance delicately around the edges; but they all want to know what a musician is doing with a girl like me. The implication is generally that I’m the lucky one.
In Lily’s hand is a smooth green pebble, striated with rings like a tree. She turns the pebble over in her hand and watches me with eyes as bright as a bird’s.
“Lie here,” Daniel says. He’s sweating with the effort it’s taken to move the furniture, roll back the carpet, rearrange his kit on the bare floorboards. “Next to the amp.”
I stretch myself out, unsure what shape to make. Do I curl up like a newborn, or cross my hands like a corpse?
“Can I have a pillow?”
“No, it’ll absorb the vibrations. Close your eyes.”
The unshaded light shows me the blood vessels in my eyelids. I feel exposed and ridiculous. I breathe deeply and try to concentrate. There’s a faint vibration beginning beneath me.
The rhythm is insistent, growing in complexity. I lay my palms flat so I can feel more intensely. I open my eyes and see Daniel watching me and smiling.
“This is amazing,” I tell him, unsure if he’ll be able to hear. He smiles victoriously. The door opens and Daniel’s housemate Nick glances in.
“Bloody hell,” he grumbles when he sees what we’re doing. “Can’t you two just stay in bed all day and have sex like you normally do?”
Still holding the pebble, Lily raises her cup to her lips, watching me over the top of it.
“And does he make a good living?”
“I’ll make our fortune,” Daniel tells me. The sunlight is thick and honey-coloured as it pours in at the window and pools onto the floor, lending loveliness to
everything it touches, even the dust, even the discarded plates, even Daniel’s socks. “And we’ll build our own house. Nothing like this one. A beautiful clean white house with a massive studio. Out in the country so no one can bother us.”
“How will I get to work?”
“You won’t need to work by then. I’ll take care of you.”
I don’t want a huge white house in the country. What I want is for time to stand still so I can keep what I have right now. I want to live for ever in this golden autumn, in the arms of the man I love, watching his face as he spins his dreams into our future.
Lily puts down her cup, reaches out and takes my hand for a minute, then lets it go again.
“I can see how much you like him,” she says. “So tell me, does he make you happy?”
Christmas separates us for the first time in ten weeks. We sob shamelessly on the station platform, oblivious to the spectacle we’re making, and write to each other every day, counting hours and minutes until we can be together again. The long erotic fantasies he sends me make my skin flush. On Christmas Day, frantic because there’s no post, he calls my parents and asks them to tell me he’s thinking of me. On Boxing Day there’s no phone call, but I dream he’s being dragged naked through snow by two angry giants in matching hats and scarves. The day after Boxing Day, I fling myself onto the first train and race down the platform to meet him.
Three minutes after we arrive at his parents’ house, he tumbles me onto his bed, tearing frantically at my clothes. I’m not really ready but he crams himself inside me anyway. I’ll be sore and tender afterwards. It doesn’t matter. I don’t care. We’re back together. I bite his shoulder, matching his ferocity with my own.
“I’m so sorry,” he says as we gasp for breath afterwards. “I know that was too quick. I just missed you so much. You can’t ever be away from me that long again. I can’t compose without you. It feels like I’m missing my soul. And I’m sorry I couldn’t call yesterday. I was thinking about you, I swear. But my—”
“—parents made you go out with them,” I say. “For a long walk. You were freezing but they made you do it anyway.”
“How do you do that?” I shrug. “You always know things before I tell you. You’ve got second sight.”
“No, I haven’t.”
“Yes, you have. I wish I had it too. I want to be able to watch you when you’re not with me.”
He kisses me again, his lips rough and insistent, almost too rough. I’ve never felt so needed, so longed for, so loved.
“Have some more cake.” Lily’s silver cake slice makes a neat sharp division in the buttery sponge. As Daniel passes his plate, a fat crumb falls onto his knee and he brushes it absent-mindedly to the floor. Lily doesn’t pause, doesn’t flinch, doesn’t miss a beat.
“Do you think you two might get married at some point?” My dad, vague and gentle as he always is when our conversations turn personal, seeking only a quiet life, with a moderate and conventional happiness for those he loves. I wonder if my mother has told him to ask.
“I don’t know. We might one day.”
“Not that it matters these days, of course.”
“Well, we might do, okay?”
“And you’re keeping up with your work? Course you are, you always have. Only, you know, make sure you enjoy yourself as well.” His smile is crooked. “Do all the terrible things we wouldn’t let you do while you were living at home.”
“That’s not really me,” I say.
“I know.” My dad pats my shoulder, his hand damp and soapy from the washing-up. “You’re having a good time though, aren’t you? Not studying too hard? Making the most of it?”
Daniel and I, lying in bed in the stolen quiet of a Saturday night, briefly rich from Daniel’s weekend of busking, eating strips of rare steak with our fingers, bloody juices dripping onto the sheets.
“And what are your plans after graduation?”
“Jen’s got a place on a grad training scheme so that’s sorted out where we’re living. It’s a bit further north than I’d have liked but the train connections are good, so I can commute to London for meetings and stuff.”
“Commute to London? Goodness, that’ll be expensive, won’t it?” Lily blinks benignly at him, the perfect facsimile of a sweet old lady. And all the while her bright sharp gaze, skewering him like a lab rat ready for dissection. “Or perhaps there are, I don’t know, grants or something? I’m afraid I’m out of touch.”
“We’ll be fine,” says Daniel, reaching easily for my hand. “We’ll live on Jen’s salary while I get started, then when I’m making decent money she’ll leave her job and I’ll look after her.”
“I see.” Lily’s eyes twinkle with what looks like merriment, as long as you don’t look too closely. “Well, things have certainly changed since my day!”
“It’ll be perfect,” Daniel tells me as we stand shivering in the snow, throwing bread to the ducks. Later we’ll go into town to choose luscious uncomfortable underwear to dress me up in. I want him to save what was left from the steak dinner for his share of the electricity bill, but he insists that’s what his overdraft’s for and this is bonus money, to be spent on frivolities. It’s only since I’ve known him that I’ve understood what spending money like water really means, or how much fun it can be.
“But what if I fail my exams and they fire me?”
“Of course you won’t fail, you’re brilliant.”
I want to ask But what if it doesn’t work out for you? Instead I break off more bread and throw it to my favourite duck, a foolish orangey creature with a tufted back and a startling ring around his eyes, like white eyeliner. My trust, my confidence, mean everything to Daniel. And I do believe in him. I do.
Can he tell she doesn’t like him? Why doesn’t she like him? Even my mother understands that we come as a pair now, that our lives are utterly intertwined and there is no having one without the other. If even she can accept this, why can’t Lily?
“It was so lovely to meet you, dear.” Lily kisses Daniel goodbye, then rests her hand against his cheek for a minute. Her nails gleam in the sunlight. For a minute I think she might scratch him.
“She hates me,” Daniel says.
The cider is cold and delicious and the scent of cooking meat is tantalising. Perhaps if I bury my nose in my glass and let the bubbles burst on my tongue, I can pretend not to notice what Daniel’s saying. A hand reaches across the table and takes my glass away.
“I know you’re listening, Jen. She hates me.”
“She’s just difficult,” I hedge. “She’s not good with new people. She’ll love you when she gets to know you.”
“No, she won’t. She thinks I’m not good enough and I’ll sponge off you for the rest of our lives and I’ll never amount to anything and you should get rid of me right now.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” I’m amazed how well Daniel has read Lily’s mind. “Hey, you’re not upset, are you?”
“Suppose I took you to meet someone who really mattered to me.”
“Like who?” I don’t mean to say this out loud, but I’m upset and defensive too. I want Daniel to tell me it doesn’t matter if he and Lily get along or not. Instead he’s giving me those frightened puppy-dog eyes, begging for validation. “You don’t care what anyone in your family thinks.”
“That’s not fair. I do care about them, but I care about you more. You’re the most important person in my life.”
“And you’re the most important person in my life.”
“You mean that?”
“Of course I do.”
“And if she made you choose—”
“That’s ridiculous, how could she possibly make me choose?”
“But if she did?”
“I’d choose you.”
He strokes my fingers then, his huge green eyes fixed on mine, and lifts my hand to his lips. I see the woman on the next table sigh with envy. He looks at me for a minute longer, then pulls me to my feet.
&nb
sp; “Come on. We’re going back to the B&B.”
“What? Now?”
“Right now.”
“But we’ve ordered food.”
He fumbles money from his pocket to the table.
“But I’m hungry.”
“Oh, so am I.”
“But what’s the hurry—”
His kiss is so deep and sudden I can hardly breathe. For a minute I think I’ll die of embarrassment at being kissed so needily in public – we’re in our twenties now, we’re getting too old to behave like this. Then his fingers tickle the back of my neck and all I can think is yesyesyes. We run back to the B&B hand in hand.
“And you don’t think she’s right?” he asks me afterwards. “You believe in me?”
“You know I do. You’ll be a superstar. You’re going to set the whole world on fire.”
He falls asleep with his face in my hair. I consider moving him so I can go for chips from the takeaway down the road, but I don’t want to wake him. So instead I admire the planes of his face, so innocent and boyish when he sleeps. To everyone around us, I’m the one batting above my average. His need of me is baffling, but irresistible.
There’s something pressing against the base of my spine. Trying not to disturb Daniel, I wriggle one hand beneath me and find Lily’s green pebble. It’s malachite, found occasionally in the deep mines whose wealth once built Lily’s house, and said to be good for dreams. Lily has sent me home with a dream in my pocket. I’m not sure I want to know what she’s given me, but its fat shape fits so comfortingly into my hand.
I fall asleep and find I’m at the bottom of the hill that leads to Lily’s house. I’ve promised her a visit, she’s waiting for me, but Daniel is kneeling on the pavement, his face buried against my legs. He clings to me like a child and begs me not to leave him. As I watch him weep, the knowledge suddenly comes to me that Lily has made me a promise that I can live with her for ever, but only on condition that I kill Daniel. When I wake up, my face is wet with tears.
Chapter Fifteen – Monday
So what’s happening? How’s the list going? Are you still coming home tomorrow?
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