‘Of course not,’ I said indignantly. ‘As if I’d tell them anything.’ I kept staring at her, afraid she might lose interest and change the subject if I took my attention off her for a second.
She didn’t say anything for a moment, looking down into her glass and swilling her drink around. I wanted to prompt her, to ask again, but something told me to hold back and give her a minute.
‘He was my boyfriend,’ she blurted out eventually. She didn’t look mischievous any more. She seemed nervous. She looked at me carefully, her eyes serious.
I frowned. ‘Who? What?’
‘Richard.’
16
I pushed my hair away from my face. ‘Huh? Really? I thought he was horrible? And how old was he?’
‘Forty –’
‘Forty!’
‘Five. Forty-five. I know it sounds old but …’ She let the sentence trail off. It did sound old. It was old. ‘He hadn’t been friends with Mum and Dad for that long. Really it was his wife that they were friends with. Jane …’ Bert looked down, her hair falling over her eyes.
‘His wife? He was married? You … you can’t have a married man as your boyfriend!’
Bert picked at a loose thread on a cushion. ‘That’s what Mum and Dad said,’ she said quietly.
I just stared at her. Everything was spinning and fuzzy round the edges.
‘But he was.’ She chewed on her bottom lip. ‘He was my boyfriend. Just for a little bit. But then he broke up with me. And then I … broke his windscreen.’
I tried to take it in, to think it through. But thinking felt like wading through glue.
I grinned suddenly. ‘You’re joking, aren’t you? Bert! Stop messing about!’
But Bert just scrunched her mouth up and moved it from side to side like she was swilling mouthwash around. She shook her head and my smile fell.
‘I don’t … I don’t understand …’ I whispered.
So Bert explained.
She told me that Jane was her mum’s friend from some artists’ guild and whenever they did exhibitions together Richard and Jane would have dinner at their house. As Richard was a marine biologist he’d offered to tutor Bert in science and Bert’s parents had jumped at the chance of the help because Bert was ‘such an absolute dumbo’ when it came to the sciences. She told me that when the two of them started spending time alone together, they’d hit it off straight away. He had crazy hair and beautiful teeth and such an enthusiastic way of talking that she felt anything was possible when they were together.
‘He told me Jane was a nightmare to live with – always in a bad mood about her work and taking it out on him. He said they should never have got married in the first place. He said he liked talking to me, that he felt I understood him better than Jane ever had. He was ever so kind to me, you know. He never made me feel like I was younger than him or anything like that.
‘And then one day, we were talking and he just leant in and kissed me. I mean, I think he was as surprised as I was, but straight away it just felt so right, you know? We did try to leave it there, to stay away from each other, but it was just so hard. And then after a while we just thought, well, why not? Why can’t we be together? Jane had already ruined their marriage anyway by being such an unbearable grouch, and the age thing … well, in countries all around the world girls are married long before they’re fifteen. It’s only silly old England where everyone makes such a fuss about sixteen being a magic number. As if people suddenly turn into adults overnight! And to be perfectly honest about it I’ve probably seen and done a lot more than most people three times my age. That’s what Richard always used to say anyway …’
I didn’t speak at all during Bert’s confession. I just stared down at the cushions of the Egg, steadily drinking my champagne one big gulp after another. I could feel the tips of my ears burning.
‘We still had to do our lessons. We had to keep it professional. But we’d meet up at the weekends. He’d come round when Mum and Dad were out.’ She smiled shyly. ‘We’d sit up here for hours,’ she said. ‘Talking and … everything.’
I looked down at the Egg. Suddenly I didn’t want to be in it any more, all squashed up against the cushions. I didn’t move though, I just stayed there. And Bert told me how after a couple of months Richard had started to get cold feet.
‘We’d been planning to tell Mum and Dad – I didn’t like sneaking around in secret, I wanted to tell them – to tell everyone – how in love we were. I thought Richard felt the same but he kept stalling. He just got scared, I think,’ she said. ‘Started talking about how he’d get sent to prison, that the whole thing was a mistake and we had to end it … But I wouldn’t have it. I wouldn’t take no for an answer.’ Bert looked down, embarrassed for a moment. ‘So then he started to get nasty. He said I had to forget it all, said he was going to move away anyway and not even be my tutor any more. He called me silly once. “Silly kid.” I think that’s when I got really cross. When I threw the brick through his car window. And then of course Mum and Dad wanted to know what the hell had got into me and I … I’d had enough. I was exhausted. All the emotion. All the lying. I’m not used to keeping secrets, especially not from Mum and Dad. I just crumbled. Told them everything.
‘I tried to make them understand, to explain how it was real, pure love, not just some silly fling, but they were furious. They wanted to report Richard, go to the police, but in the end he managed to persuade them not to. Kept asking them to remember how hard it would all be on Jane if it came out …’
‘Maybe he should’ve thought of that first,’ I said. I was surprised by how bitter my voice sounded.
Bert didn’t reply. She just sunk back into the cushions and brought her knees up to her chest, curling herself in a little ball.
I don’t know if it was the champagne or the surprise of it all or what, but I was just so angry. I couldn’t stop thinking about them both – Bert and slimy, disgusting Richard – curled up in the Egg. In our Egg. Their hands and legs entwined, talking and laughing and … ‘everything’. It made me feel sick.
We stayed like that for ages. Me just sitting upright, staring at the wall, steadily making my way through my drink. Bert curled up, cowering in the corner.
‘Birdy?’ she said eventually, in a voice almost too quiet to hear. ‘Please don’t be cross.’
‘I’m not,’ I said in a voice that came out too loud. I tried to make myself smile, to soften the atmosphere, but it just didn’t come. I think I was just shocked to discover that she’d had this big secret. This huge thing had happened in her past and she hadn’t wanted to share it with me before now.
‘I know it was … silly,’ she said, still quiet. ‘But it was … I mean, haven’t you ever felt like that? Like as long as you can be with that person, just sitting close to them, then everything will be OK? Like nothing else mattered?’
I made a hard ‘hmph’ sound, as if to say, ‘Don’t talk rubbish,’ and we were quiet again.
After yet more sitting and staring and not talking, Bert shifted and I felt her warm, soft hand on mine. She prised my clenched fist open and curled her fingers around mine. We sat there for ages, just holding hands. I felt my anger seep away. I just couldn’t be bothered with it. I wanted to forget it. I didn’t want to let revolting Richard spoil our evening. I wanted to go back to how we were before.
‘Shall we open the other bottle?’ she said, sitting up and smiling.
‘We can’t … your parents …’
Bert climbed out of the Egg. ‘It’ll be fine,’ she said with a wave of her hand and she galloped down the stairs to get it.
I can’t remember much after that. I know we put the music channels on loud on the big TV and that we danced around the den. It could’ve been for minutes, it could’ve been for hours. I just remember that at one point, I’d stopped to get my breath back. I’d watched Bert trying to bounce on a beanbag and getting her legs tangled up. She’d fallen over and we’d both laughed and laughed and at that mome
nt I remember thinking that being drunk was the best feeling in the world and that I couldn’t believe people weren’t drunk all the time.
And then a feeling of triumph crept over me. Look at us, Richard, I’d thought. Look at Bert, here with me, having the time of her life. You’re gone. I’m here now. This is my time.
We fell asleep in the Egg itself, which shows how drunk we must’ve been because it’s really not the right shape for one to sleep in, let alone two. The next morning, the light streamed through the skylight and straight into my brain like a laser. My mouth felt like I’d drunk a pint of sand. I tried to heave myself out of the chair, feeling like my head was going to explode. The movement made Bert stir. I guess she had a similar set of symptoms because she let out a long groan.
‘Oh God,’ she said. ‘Need water.’
We shuffled to the edge of the Egg and perched on the side, looking at the detritus around us. Cushions were strewn across the floor and crisps were ground into the carpet. Our eyes stopped on the two empty champagne bottles. One was lying on its side, a tiny trickle of liquid escaping from its neck.
‘We should get rid of those before Mum and Dad get home,’ Bert said.
I nodded and reached down to pick one up. It stunk like chemicals and vinegar and made me want to puke.
The smell of coffee and toast wafted up as soon as we opened the door to the den.
Bert turned to me, her eyes wide. ‘No!’ she said. ‘They must’ve come home early! We’ll have to sneak straight out the back, dump the bottles there.’
I nodded, my eyes barely open. I just wanted to climb into bed and pull the duvet over my head.
We were halfway down the stairs when Charlie appeared in the hall. He was wearing a dressing gown and his face was covered in bright ginger stubble. He curled his hands around his mug and looked up at us. Bert and I froze. I turned to her, my heart beating.
‘Well,’ Charlie said. ‘Good morning.’
We didn’t reply. I just stared at him. My brain wasn’t working well enough to process this development, and anyway, Charlie’s expression was impossible to read.
He nodded towards the bottles in our hands. ‘Put those with the recycling, then come and join us in the kitchen please.’
Bert nodded and we got rid of the bottles in silence. I didn’t know what was going to happen to us. I didn’t know how much I cared at that point. I felt like someone else had taken possession of my body. I was just watching, from the outside.
Charlie and Genevieve were sitting at the kitchen table. There was a pot of coffee and a plate of croissants in front of them, Charlie in his navy towelling robe, Genevieve in a long white nighty. I half-wondered what Nan would make of that. In our house, we weren’t allowed to wear pyjamas downstairs at all – ‘If you’re up, you’re up. You’re not lazing around here like it’s a dosshouse.’ She’d probably have had a heart attack at the thought of people sitting down to a full meal in their nightwear.
Bert and I stood in the doorway, looking down. ‘I thought you were … were out all night?’ Bert said in a small voice.
‘Came home late last night,’ Genevieve said, looking at us over the top of her coffee cup. ‘Thought we’d rather sleep in our own bed. I did look in on you two but you were out for the count.’ There was the slightest raise of her eyebrows.
‘I’m sorry,’ Bert mumbled.
Suddenly Genevieve let out a loud, posh laugh. ‘I bet you are, now!’ she said.
Charlie’s expression cracked too, and a smile spread over his face. I just stared at them, looking from one to the other.
‘Sit down, for heaven’s sake,’ he said. ‘Have some food, soak up the alcohol.’
I looked at Bert and we skulked over to the table. The sound of the chair scraping back cut right through me. We chewed our croissants in silence.
‘I do wish you could’ve chosen something from the wine rack, rather than pinching the champagne, you know,’ Genevieve said after a while. ‘That stuff was probably sixty quid a bottle.’
Bert didn’t say anything.
Charlie laughed. ‘Expensive tastes, eh? That’s my girl.’
Genevieve drove me home. For one awful moment I thought she might come in and tell Nan everything that’d happened, but she didn’t. She just gave me a wry smile and said, ‘I’d get back in bed, if I were you,’ and I nodded and thanked her and dragged my sorry self inside.
As you can imagine, Nan really isn’t the kind of person to let people get into bed in the daytime just because they fancy it. The only exception is genuine and serious illness. Luckily, I felt confident that I couldn’t have felt more awful if I’d had a life-threatening debilitating condition so I had no trouble convincing her that I’d ‘picked up a bug’ from the museum. I lay under the covers, shivering even though I had a thick jumper on over my pyjamas. I felt terrible. Not just physically, but in my head too. It was like there was a black cloud hovering above me, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on what it was.
I could only remember snapshots of the night before. Every time I thought about Bert and Richard I felt that hot wave of anger again. It was all so confusing. Was I angry with her? Was she angry with me? Why did it all matter so much anyway? I suppose part of me was just so hurt that this huge gap had emerged between us suddenly – she’d had this proper, adult lover and I’d never even had a real friend before her, much less a boyfriend. It made me feel like a little kid, left behind. Embarrassed. In the end I decided that my anger was probably meant for Richard. I was angry at how he’d taken advantage of Bert. He’d treated my best friend badly and so it was only natural that I’d be furious with him about it. Yes, that was it.
I felt a bit better once I’d decided that and eventually I fell asleep. By the time I woke up, it was dark outside.
17
The next week or so at school was all about the lead-up to Christmas. Tinsel sprung up in the classrooms, draped along windowsills and framing the board, kids and those teachers who liked to think of themselves as ‘fun’ started wearing Santa hats, mobile phone ringtones were set to tinny renditions of Christmas songs. Bert joined in the festivities with gusto, declaring Christmas her ‘absolute most favourite’ time of year, but despite her cheerful exterior, despite the foam reindeer antlers and the flashing Christmas tree brooch, I still felt there was a little bit of an atmosphere between the two of us.
Neither of us had mentioned our drunken night since that weekend, and neither of us had mentioned Richard. Her confession was definitely on my mind though, and I had a feeling Bert was thinking about it too. There was something about the way she was around me – sort of tentative and on edge – that told me she was nervous. I thought perhaps she was worried that I’d get cross with her again. Or maybe she was just scared that I might give her little secret away and everyone at school would realise what she was like.
I didn’t like it, that uncomfortable feeling. We were still the best of friends on the outside but it felt like there was an invisible wall between us and I couldn’t work out how to get round it. But then, quite by chance, something happened that seemed to break the wall down. Something that flung us back together again.
We’d just finished maths and we’d headed over to our lockers to dump our textbooks and collect our painting shirts before going up to art. Bert was moaning about trigonometry and how it was all totally pointless and I was nodding along and agreeing even though to be perfectly honest I’d never had any problems with it. She was so up in arms about the whole thing that she didn’t even see it at first. She just grabbed her lock and started fiddling with the combination. It was only because I was staring at it that she looked up at all.
It was written across her locker, right from the top to the bottom, the words scratched into the paint in angry, spiky letters:
Stuck up bitch!!!
The exclamation marks were an odd choice, I thought. Made the message look a little bit too enthusiastic, made the person who wrote it seem more excitable than menacing.
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‘Oh!’ Bert said, reeling back. She turned to me. ‘What’s this? What’s happened? Who would do this?’ Her brow furrowed. ‘And why would they?’
I looked at the words, my eyes narrowed slightly, trying to work through the possibilities.
‘Don’t know,’ I shrugged eventually. ‘Could be anyone.’ Then I realised how that sounded. ‘Well, I don’t mean anyone as in lots of people might think … I just mean … Oh, I don’t know, Bert.’ I shook my head. ‘People are idiots. It probably doesn’t mean anything. It might not have been for you at all. Might just be a random thing.’
If I’m being completely honest I wasn’t totally convinced of this myself. If it’d said something else – just the ‘bitch’ perhaps – then maybe it might have been a random attack, but if there ever was anyone to criticise Bert – and as I’ve said before, there weren’t many who did – ‘stuck-up’ would often be the phrase that was used. It wasn’t totally fair, I didn’t think, but I could see where it’d come from. It was that slightly plummy way of talking she had, the little bit of haughtiness about her. I suddenly felt very protective of her. Poor old Bert, so cheerful and innocent. Why pick on her? It was like kicking a puppy.
I could see Bert still fretting about it as we shared a tray of sausage rolls and potato smiley faces in the canteen at lunchtime. I wasn’t sure what to do to put her mind at ease.
‘Bert,’ I said gently. ‘You’re just going to have to forget it. Everyone gets that kind of crap at some point. It’s not a big deal. Let it go.’
She looked down sadly at her plate, picking at a bit of pastry.
‘I just … I just try really hard to be nice to people. Why would they be so … so mean? I just don’t know what I’ve done to deserve this kind of treatment.’
I sighed. I felt sorry for her but I also worried that she was making too much of it. I mean, I’d seen some quite vicious stuff at school – harassment campaigns going on for years, violent attacks, the works – so I knew that a bit of casual graffiti was pretty small fry. And I knew that the truth was, she needed to learn to be a bit more resilient if she was going to really fit in at a place like Whistle Down. I realised that a good friend would tell her that. I had to be careful about how I phrased it though. Tough love didn’t really work on people like Bert and I really didn’t want to upset her any more when she was already feeling fragile. I realised I was going to have to go for a softly-softly approach.
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