by Laura Tait
I admit it’s probably a tad romantic.
I complete one more left turn and there it is: my new school. I stand rooted, absorbing my surroundings. The principal building is a huge box with three layers of concrete and three layers of windows. Some of the kids gawp at me as they walk past, no doubt wondering who the fella with the massive grin is – but I can’t help it.
A receptionist leads me to my head of department, Mr Cotton, who has arranged to spend the morning outlining protocols, pastoral care and other such matters.
Once all this is done he asks how I’m feeling about my first lesson this afternoon.
‘Eager, keyed up, lots of other adjectives that don’t quite suffice. I suppose a little bit scared as—’
‘You’ve got your year nines first, I believe?’
I examine my timetable, even though I could recite it verbatim. ‘Yep, I think so.’
‘Well, don’t let them see you’re “a little bit scared” – they’ll eat you alive.’
I laugh at his joke but Mr Cotton’s face remains stony. His sallow complexion, comb-over and long, rigid nose make him look like a character from Guess Who?.
‘I’m deadly serious,’ he says as the bell tolls, standing and ushering me towards the door with an outstretched arm. ‘That lot were one of the reasons your predecessor left.’
‘Settle down please, settle down. My name’s Mr Tyler and I’ve taken over from Miss Marsden.’ Someone at the back of the room yawns. ‘Now, I know it’s difficult getting a new teacher at this stage of the school year but hopefully together we can make it work.’
A pale boy with a gravy stain down his shirt and a sovereign ring on the middle finger of his right hand draws an elastic band back from his Biro. He holds, aims and fires into the forehead of a classmate three seats across. I scan the electronic register. Gareth Stones.
‘Come on now, Gar—’ A latecomer breezes in. Even with an afro, the boy is a good few inches short of five feet. He limps past me in an oversized blazer that doesn’t bear the school crest.
‘Kenny’s gonna get in one of the lockers at the back, sir,’ warns a girl whose bleached hair hangs from jet-black roots. Juliette Jacobson, according to my screen.
Flustered, I shuffle from behind my desk and glance at the teaching assistant, Ms Pritchard, but she looks as bewildered as me.
‘Can I ask what you are doing?’ I enquire, but it’s like he’s in his own little world, a world where it’s perfectly normal to manoeuvre yourself into a metal box. He fits with room to spare.
‘Look, can you please come out of the locker?’
Still nothing. Gareth pings another elastic band, this time into Juliette’s cranium, while I walk tentatively over to the lockers.
‘Come on,’ I implore, pulling open the metal door that has swung shut. The boy recoils, banging his elbow on the back of the locker.
‘You hurt me,’ he bawls. ‘I’m calling Injurylawyers4U.’
‘Oi, Mr Tyler!’ shouts Gareth in a voice somewhere between cockney gangster and camp TV entertainer. The rest of the class are distracted from their copies of Hamlet. ‘I was just wondering where you is from? Harvey reckons Newcastle, Stacey reckons Uranus.’
Most of the kids laugh and I decide to use the same tactic that worked with Jack Couchman at Mothston Grammar: letting Gareth be the centre of attention for a moment rather than taking every opportunity to admonish him.
Gareth sinks further into his chair and cackles into his hand when I tell him where I’m from, a not uncommon response. It’s the way it sounds: Mothston. I suspect the people of Grimsby and Bognor Regis get the same reaction.
‘Where’s that, then?’
‘It’s in Yorkshire.’
Gareth straightens himself once more and adopts a northern accent: ‘It wa’ either teaching kids in London or down t’pit.’
The class erupts, and Gareth celebrates by standing up and taking a bow.
‘Very good, Gareth.’ I smile. ‘But down t’pit is where you might end up if we don’t do some work.’
For some reason this causes another round of raucous laughter, and by the time they’ve all quietened down our hour is up.
Once my year nines have disappeared, I draw my phone from my pocket and am faced with one new message from a number I don’t recognize.
Chapter Seven
HOLLY
A load of passengers pile into my carriage at Canary Wharf and I notice the woman who’s just got on and started clutching my headrest is wearing a BABY ON BOARD sticker. Everyone else in seats pretends to be engrossed in their Evening Standard so I jump up.
‘Here, sit down.’ I shuffle into the aisle to let her in. She’s at that stage where she could easily go either way in the Pregnant or Fat conundrum. I wouldn’t have risked it if it wasn’t for the sticker. She thanks me with a grateful smile and eases herself down with her hands on her belly, and I can’t help but think she’s milking it a bit.
Still, she’s welcome to the seat. There’s no baby on board THIS commuter.
If there was even a flicker of doubt about the accuracy of the rather blunt NOT PREGNANT result on my test, it was knocked on the head by the arrival of my special friend, strolling in two hours later like it was no big deal. Only me – sorry I’m a bit late . . . What did I miss?
I waited for relief to hit me, but nothing. Guess I’d got carried away with the idea. Just as well Richard wasn’t there to share the moment after all – what if he’d been overjoyed at the prospect of being a daddy? I’d have felt terrible.
I don’t know if it was my promise to my mum or my need of a distraction that made me get in touch with Alex, but if the latter, it has worked.
Looking forward to it. Holly x
That’s how I signed off my last text to him. It’s what you say to someone when you’ve just made arrangements to see them. It doesn’t matter if it’s been eleven years since you last saw them, or that you barely know a thing about what they’ve been up to since, or even that you parted on quite dodgy terms. It’s just social etiquette, isn’t it? And generally politer than the truth.
Not that I’m dreading it exactly. It’s just that I don’t know what to expect.
Alex is two different people in my head. There’s the sweet, loyal, self-conscious, a bit OCD, clever, funny Alex who always had my back. Then there’s the slightly odd, bit creepy Alex who went all laddish at the first hint of sexual attention from a girl.
There are far more memories of the first Alex.
But the second Alex was the one I saw just before I left Mothston, and has stayed with me since. And what if that was just the beginning of the change? What if he carried on in that direction for the next eleven years and he’s just a big old slime-ball now?
Slightly daunted by it. Holly x
That’s what I’d have said if I was being really honest.
Or: Hoping it’s not awkward. Holly x
‘It’s quite straightforward,’ Jemma insisted earlier. ‘Why don’t you just check him out from the other side of the road, and if he’s a total minger then text him and tell him you’re too ill to come, then just never arrange to meet him again?’
‘Well, Jem,’ I countered, ‘my reasons are threefold. Firstly, we’re meeting inside the pub, so I won’t be able to see him from across the road. Secondly, I’m not a terrible person. And thirdly, you’re totally missing the point. I don’t care what he looks like. It’s not a blind date – he’s an old mate and I’m just scared we’ll have nothing to talk about.’
‘Oh, come off it. You’re single and you’re meeting up with a guy you haven’t seen for years, who also might be single. I dinnae believe for a second you haven’t wondered what he looks like.’
OK, she’s right. Not about me being single, obviously, but I do wonder what he looks like. Eleven years is long enough to acquire a pot belly and a receding hairline. But what if he is still nice-looking? How will I feel when I see him? The sisterly way I did for the early years of our friend
ship, or the tingly way I used to feel standing close to him after I started teen-crushing on him? Not that it makes a difference either way – I’m all good on the man front. But it’s hard not to wonder.
A few days after I last saw him, I spent the car ride from Mothston to London convincing myself I’d got my feelings for him wrong. Never has a journey felt so meaningful. I didn’t just feel like I was leaving Mothston behind – I felt like I was leaving behind the girl I’d been there. It was a journey into adulthood. But being an adult wasn’t as exciting as I always thought it would be – it had responsibilities and consequences. The carefree me dancing in Ellie’s garden just a few days before was like a stranger to me, and I hadn’t seen her since that night. And what I’d felt for Alex wasn’t real, grown-up love – it was that girl’s young, naïve idealism of it. Probably.
I was telling Jemma the truth. My biggest worry really is that we’ll have nothing to talk about, which is ironic because we never stopped talking back then – he loved to talk things through. It was his thing. But what if all we’ve got in common is our history? I don’t want to spend the night talking about the good old Mothston days. I shut a door on that part of my life a long time ago, and it’s not one I particularly want to open again.
I’d talked myself in and out of cancelling by the time I got on the DLR at Bank. The fact is, I do kind of want to see him. I’m curious as to how he turned out. Mum had mentioned he was a teacher but she didn’t seem to know any details. Is it what he expected? Or is he one of those disillusioned teachers who secretly hates all the kids? I can’t picture that, but I’m guessing I’m not how he pictures me either. He probably expects me to still have mental hair. Thank God GHDs were invented. And he has no idea I discovered the gym so he’ll be expecting more junk in my trunk. It’s going to be a bit like the big reveal on one of those extreme makeover shows.
I feel good until I catch two girls on the train squeal as they recognize each other and then meet in the aisle for a kiss, which gives me a whole new thing to panic about. How should I greet Alex? A hug? A handshake? We never really had a habitual greeting for each other back when we were mates.
It’s not that we weren’t tactile – we’d sometimes hug each other if one of us was upset, and give each other a kiss on the cheek on our birthdays. But we never really felt the need to have a thing. Not like Ellie – good old air-kissing Ellie. Every time we said hello and goodbye the air two inches either side of my face was treated to a red-lipped smacker from her, and an exaggerated vocal mwah. What was the point in that? A high-five would have been more intimate – at least it involved actual bodily contact.
What a weird week. Yesterday I was facing the possibility of jumping forward several stages in my life. Being a mother – that’s proper adult stuff. And now, as the DLR hurtles into Cutty Sark station, I feel I’m on my way back into 1999, where I’m eighteen again.
I don’t know which is scarier.
Chapter Eight
ALEX
Even as I amble into the pub at eleven minutes to seven, a portion of my mind is adamant that I’ve made some kind of error, that I’ve dreamt Holly’s text message, and that in half an hour I’ll be ambling out again, past the unsubtle sniggers of those who witnessed my folly.
I survey the room and am happy with my choice of venue. When Holly suggested Greenwich for a proper drink instead, this place sprang immediately to mind. The one time I’ve walked past it was full of girls wearing polka-dot dresses with Doc Martens, and boys cultivating various lengths of beard. I figured it was the kind of quirky place Holly would like.
I pay for a glass of red wine and sink into one of the not-as-comfy-as-they-look sofas. The clock hanging above the bar reads eight minutes to seven.
I decide to call someone, a diversion to anaesthetize my nerves. All I’d get from Kev is ‘Make sure you give her one from me’, so I continue to R in my contacts.
‘Alex, mate,’ says Rothers enthusiastically. ‘It’s been too long. How’s London?’
When Holly emigrated from my life, I didn’t have anyone to confide in. I remember my second year at York. Holly hadn’t been in touch and I was finally ready to meet someone new. Along came Charlotte McCormack, with her vertiginous legs, ironic glasses (she would deny they were ironic) and biography of Chairman Mao on her bedside table. I thought we might get married one day, but a week after we donned our caps and gowns Charlotte announced that she needed to ‘go find herself’ in Thailand. Eighteen months later and where had her journey of self-discovery led to? A council house in Bradford where she resides to this day with her two little boys, but that’s not the point. The point is that after she left I couldn’t finish a meal for a month. Loneliness isn’t something you can comprehend as a kid. You feel boredom and you feel longing, but you are never alone, not truly, and especially not in a town like Mothston. And if I did need a hug, Holly was around. But after Charlotte left I was alone. I’d always missed Holly but until then I hadn’t understood how much I’d lost when she absconded. I’d call Rothers at his digs in Manchester but it wasn’t the same.
‘Yep, good – it was my first day tod—’ I say.
‘JACOB, PUT THAT VASE DOWN, WILL YOU? Sorry, Alex, Megs is away at a conference and Jacob has decided now is a good opportunity to turn into one of the Children of the Damned. What were you saying?’
‘Nothing, just that it was my first day at school and then tonight I’m—’
‘I WON’T TELL YOU AGAIN, JACOB.’
A group of eight or nine students skulks into the pub, each of them hanging back from the bar so as to not get stuck buying a round. Eventually they break away in ones and twos to get their own.
‘Look, shall I call you back another time, mate?’
‘No don’t be— RIGHT, IT’S THE NAUGHTY STEP FOR YOU, YOUNG MAN. THIS SECOND, PLEASE. Sorry, Alex – it might be best if you call back. Sorry.’
Rothers is the only person I know whose life has gone precisely to plan, and so whenever I dial his number I always feel a little bit like a pest. I can’t remember the last time we spoke for more than a few minutes now he’s back near Mothston with a wife and kids and a partnership at a legal firm in York.
I dispatch the phone into my pocket and, without any distractions, my body becomes overwhelmed with angst, as though I’m about to sit an exam. I inspect myself. What a stupid idea to leave my work suit on. I had plenty of time back at the flat to get changed but reasoned that I look better in a suit than in any of my casual clothes. Now I feel hopelessly overdressed.
Two minutes to seven.
A reunion with my childhood sweetheart – or the girl I wish had been my childhood sweetheart. Instead, I had to make do with being best friends, but over the years I’ve wondered if perhaps I got that wrong too. Did I exaggerate the frequency of those nights we spent chatting until the early hours? And why did she never call if we were as close as I thought?
I look again at her final text message from this afternoon, reassuring myself that this really is happening. At least she seems excited now, and I feel excited too. I feel curious, about the past and the present. I feel nervous about what could happen in the future.
My phone seems to vibrate but when I look, no one is calling and no one has messaged.
Eleven minutes, eleven years; they don’t seem so different right now. Sometimes, when we were teenagers, it felt like I’d spend my whole life waiting for Holly Gordon.
I take a large gulp of wine to settle myself, place the phone back in my pocket and, as the clock above the bar strikes seven, set my eyes anxiously on the door.
Chapter Nine
ALEX
September 1997
I loiter outside Mr Sawyer’s store, waiting until I see Holly turn the corner of her road so that I can time my walk to coincide with hers, and so that our paths will cross at the start of Brickfield Road and we can walk to school together.
I feel like an idiot standing here like this, but I haven’t seen Holly for two weeks, a
nd I haven’t spoken to her because it was late when she got back last night, and I couldn’t wait until lunchtime or tonight to see her.
When she eventually turns the corner, running late as usual, dressed in our brand-new sixth-form uniform, adrenalin floods through my body. I set off, quickening my pace after a few seconds and getting to the corner of Brickfield just in time for it to look like pure coincidence.
‘Hey. How was Turkey?’ I open casually, not quite sure how to greet her after so long. ‘Thanks for the postcard.’
‘It was fun,’ Holly says. ‘I just wish my dad didn’t insist on going all-inclusive. You travel all that way and end up seeing nothing but the hotel.’
She looks at me properly for the first time. ‘Anyway,’ she says, smiling. The holiday sun has brought out a cute little cluster of freckles around her nose. ‘It’s good to see you, Al. How’s your dad bearing up?’
My mum and my dad. No one else mentions Mum dying, or asks how Dad is coping. I think they’re worried I’ll start to weep on their shoulder. Holly is the only one who doesn’t seem worried.
She’s always been there, an only child like me, someone to sneak off with at family parties. That’s how we met: Holly’s family had just moved to Mothston and Mum decided to throw a party so Mr and Mrs Gordon could make some friends.
Holly was like no one I’d ever met. When I was little, Mum would complain that I’d take too long to eat my tea. I’d spend ages deciding which item on the plate I liked the most so I could save it until last. Holly was more of a scoffer. I don’t mean in an Augustus Gloop kind of way, she just didn’t think about things. She got on with it and, even then, even though she was only eleven, she seemed to have her entire life planned out. I’ve been trying to make myself a part of her plan ever since.
