by Laura Tait
I was nineteen when I discovered that Mr Gaffney’s diagram of the female perineum was as helpful as Google to a Chinese dissident searching for the truth, because the things I learnt during sex education bore no resemblance to what I was presented with in bed with Sarah Cross. I managed to get through it without feeling too humiliated – but I never got undressed with my back to her again, because she never returned my call.
I’ve slept with seven women since Sarah but, if I’m totally honest, I’ve never got to a point where it hasn’t felt like I’m blagging it – and I’m worried that one of these days I’m going to get found out. What if it’s tonight?
I fix my eyes on the red neon lights of the meter, trying to relax and ordering myself to stop being a prat. This is good. This is what I wanted. And Cassie obviously feels the same. By £7.60 she is nibbling my ear; at £21.00 the button to my jeans has been undone. Before I know it I’m telling the driver to keep the change from £30 and I’m considering it money well spent.
Chapter Nineteen
HOLLY
The house is quiet when I wake up so I get myself a coffee and make a start on my room. After twenty minutes of emptying cupboards, pulling stuff out from under my bed and turning drawers upside down I realize something.
I was a HOARDER. Seriously. Did I not throw anything out AT ALL in the first eighteen years of my life? There’s so much crap. One cupboard alone produces a belted snakeskin-patterned coat I’d never be seen dead in again even if it wasn’t too big for me; too-small ice skates that can’t have fitted me for the past twenty years; CDs from boy bands that, quite rightfully, disappeared into oblivion; eight ugly troll dolls with varying hair colours and outfits; cinema tickets; a bottle of Lou Lou Blue perfume that I might even have saved deliberately when it was discontinued but now smells rancid; and a cork. Why did I keep a cork? What kind of useful or sentimental reason made me think that one day I’d reminisce over a cork?
I hate clutter these days – I toss everything I no longer have a use for. But for some reason I have to force myself to be ruthless here. Filling more bin bags than boxes, I work my way through it until 10 a.m., when Mum pops her head in to offer me a fry-up.
‘Just a little bacon sandwich then?’ she offers when I say I’m not hungry.
Eventually I concede to toast, which she brings on a tray with a cup of tea, a glass of orange juice, a slab of butter, a small jar of jam and a jar of Marmite.
I try to turn on my old FM radio but after a frustrating five minutes twiddling the dial, I can’t find a clear station so I pick up a CD from the top of the pile. Bad Boys Inc. I can’t for the life of me remember what they sang, but I recall fancying all of them so let’s roll with it.
I’m rediscovering Ace of Base by the time I pull down my pin board and sit cross-legged on the floor, unpinning the photographs and dropping them into one of the boxes to store at Mum and Dad’s new place. There’s a strip of passport photos of me and Alex that makes me laugh, so I tuck it into my handbag to take home.
The final tattered picture is of me and Ellie, dancing at a house party. Ellie is looking at the camera, one hand on her hip and the other pointing at the photographer, with me just behind her, arms in the air, hair whipping, eyes closed and clearly unaware I was having my picture taken. I don’t recognize the house but that’s not unusual – familiarity with the host was never necessary. As long as the parents were away, it was fair game. I remember the night, though. It was the first time I snogged Dean Jones. Nausea grips the pit of my stomach and I tear the photo in two before tossing it in one of the black bags, before getting up to shake the pins and needles out of my legs.
All that’s left on the walls now is the world map. The memory of Mum presenting me with it in my newly decorated bedroom with a dramatic ‘Ta-dah!’ makes me smile. I was preparing myself to politely thank her for hideous frilly cushions, so when this turned out to be her ‘surprise’ I was ecstatic. We stood and marked everywhere I’d been on holiday. A cluster of pins mark Turkey, Mallorca and the Canary Islands – Dad vetoed anywhere unlikely to have a British or Irish bar – with the furthest flung pin in New York. I update it with the places I’ve visited since I left Mothston, which takes all of five seconds, my smile fading as I run my hand over the pin-free expanse of Australia, Asia, Africa, South America – all the places I was itching to cover in pins at the time. My eyes well up unexpectedly. What happened to my dream of travelling the world?
Oh grow up, Holly – you’re not married to Mark Owen, either. No one does all the things they dreamt about when they were young.
I pull out all the pins, take the map off the wall, roll it up and, after a few moments’ deliberation, chuck it in the bin.
A few sweaty, dusty hours and crap CDs later I look around at my room, neatly boxed up – no clothes slung across the mirror or bottles scattered across the dressing table – and feel a pang of sadness. All that’s left is a BHS carrier bag that had been tucked under my bed. As soon as I empty its contents on the carpet, I remember what it is. Alex left it in my porch the morning after that final visit to see him, full of stuff I’d left at his. I’d barely looked at it before shoving it somewhere out of sight, still stinging from the hurt and humiliation of his rejection and having resolved that after everything that’d happened in those few days, I needed to close a door on Alex and Mothston and that part of my life.
Hair clips, a bracelet that was once silver but is now a greenish colour, Frizz-ease hair serum and a clip frame containing a picture of the two of us. The picture was actually his mum’s, but he clearly had no use for it once his mum was no longer around – and he was always a bit embarrassed about it. It was taken at my fancy-dress twelfth birthday party. I’d made Alex be the Jason Donovan to my Kylie Minogue and the pair of us are sporting stonewash jeans – his teamed with a white T-shirt and black leather jacket and mine with a little black suit jacket, my hair blow dried curly and held in a side ponytail with a scrunchie. If that wasn’t quite humiliating enough for him, I then talked him into singing a duet with me, making him copy down the words to ‘Especially For You’ from the back of my old Jason Donovan LP and learn them off by heart, and in this picture we’re looking at each other, singing into our microphones.
I grin and am about to add the photo to one of the boxes when I notice there’s something stuck to the back of it. It’s an A4 sheet of lined paper folded four ways and it comes away easily from the dry, yellowing Sellotape attaching it to the frame. I unfold it, and as I read the words my heart catches in my throat. Written in faded blue Biro in Alex’s unmistakable teenage scrawl are the lyrics from ‘Especially For You’, with an additional scribble written sideways in the margin.
Sorry I was a moron yesterday, Hols. You were trying to tell me something and I wasn’t listening. What was it? I know you’re leaving today but I just went and bought a mobile so that if you want to talk – any time, any place – then you have my number: 07588876098. Yours always, Alex xxxxx
Chapter Twenty
ALEX
Cassie is lying with her back to me, duvet tucked into her neck, knees craned towards her belly. I decide not to spoon her. Let her sleep.
To think I was worried about Ted Rodgers. What kind of name is that anyway? Ted Rodgers wouldn’t be able to identify the print on her bedroom wall as The Lady of Shalott. Nor would he be aware of the poem of the same name by Tennyson. How could he? He’s a PE teacher.
Ted Rodgers. Pah!
Here I am in Cassie’s immaculate bedroom, where the pastels of cushions and rugs and sheets are still suffocated by the cinders of night. The sun will rise soon, and maybe then I’ll ask Cassie if she fancies doing something together. A day out in London. The British Museum, perhaps. A first proper date.
I lie there for several hours, content, listening as she breathes slowly against her pillow until finally, just before 10 a.m., she yawns herself awake.
‘Morning, sleepy,’ I say, placing a hand gently onto her elbow.
S
he twists her body around, eliminating any contact between us, and uses both hands to rub the sleep from her face. Her eyes remain closed.
‘Did you sleep OK?’ I ask, but a reply isn’t forthcoming.
Minutes go by without either of us uttering a word. The wail of a baby can be heard from another house down the street. It is Cassie who speaks next.
‘I was so drunk last night.’
Unsure where she is heading, I follow her lead.
‘Yep, me too.’
Cassie groans and sinks back into the duvet, once again tucking it into her neck. The silence becomes unbearable but I cannot think of anything appropriate to say. I find myself pianoing my fingers against the bed-frame to punctuate the quiet.
For fifteen minutes we remain dormant, and then Cassie announces that she’s getting in the shower, and when she returns she asks me to look away while she gets dressed. Me who saw every inch of her pale body just a few hours ago, albeit under the shadows of her duvet. Me who stroked the thighs I’m now banned from seeing and who caressed the breasts that are now covered by a defensive right arm.
Crestfallen, I convince myself that she’s just embarrassed about the whole situation: sleeping with a colleague, a proper teacher, someone she sees every day and who could influence her career. I should have guessed she’d feel a little uncomfortable afterwards. We were bound to end up sleeping together eventually, but Cassie isn’t this kind of girl any more than I’m that kind of guy. Obviously we got carried away with the occasion.
I decide the best course of action is to give her some space. Then we can resume whatever this is next week.
Cassie smiles gratefully when I tell her I need to leave. She trails me out of her room and down the stairs, accepting a kiss on the cheek and a hug goodbye, while simultaneously reaching for the door latch.
I sense her eyes tracking me as I pass through her iron gate until, a little sooner than expected, her door slams shut.
‘I feel like I’ve been used,’ I say wryly, taking a chip between my finger and thumb and examining it.
‘She’s probably just embarrassed about sleeping with you on a first date. And the fact she’ll now be working with someone who has seen her vagina.’
The barmaid asks if everything is OK with our food. Holly is treating me to a pub lunch to say thanks for feeding Harold, even though she already brought me round some of Mrs Gordon’s famous biscuits last week.
‘You weren’t in our English class last Monday. She didn’t say a word to me for the whole hour. I don’t understand how a woman can go from inviting me into her bed to treating me like I’m on the Sex Offenders’ Register.’
‘This is just like old times – me listening to you over-analysing everything.’
‘What do you mean, over-analysing everything?’
Holly laughs tenderly. ‘Look, did you try to speak to her?’
Fair enough. I didn’t speak to Cassie either, but I did attempt eye contact several times, and of the two smiles I executed, one elicited a contemptuous swerve of the head and the other was ignored completely. To compound my embarrassment, the latter was witnessed by Gareth Stones, who, having spied us together on the train that time, took it as a cue to pelvic thrust into his desk.
‘He sounds funny.’
Holly rests her chin in both hands. It’s the first time since I moved to London that I’ve seen her without make-up. I want to tell her that she looks better for it but, worried she’ll take it the wrong way, I refrain.
‘Funniest of all was last week when he handed in his assignment on Hamlet, and all he’d written was “SMD”.’
‘SMD?’
‘I had to look it up on youthslang.com. It stands for “Suck my . . .”’
Holly bites her lip to suppress a laugh.
‘I suppose it is quite funny, but I’m worried that I’m totally out of my depth down here. My big idea was to implement a seating plan, except then it became a choice of Gareth and his mates sitting next to each other and talking or Gareth and his mates shouting across the room to one another.’
Holly listens intently, nodding when nodding is appropriate and offering advice here and there.
‘It’s as if most of the boys have already decided they’ve failed: they’ve given up. Like Kenny. His mum died when he was little and he’s got so much aggression in him, but you can’t do anything. It’s not like Waterloo Road where you can go around and talk to their parents. I’d get fired. Everything has to go through the pastoral team and ours is diabolical. What an idiot, thinking I could have an impact in a school like this.’
Holly takes her opportunity to interject. ‘You should sit him down. Kenny. After one of your lessons. Tell him you’re on his side. Shit, you of all people should be able to connect with a kid like that.’
I look at her doubtfully. Sure, my mum died when I was young but that’s about the only thing I’ve got in common with Kenny. It’s hardly going to be credible if I try the old ‘I know what you’re going through’ routine.
‘What have you got to lose?’
‘I don’t know,’ I say weakly. ‘I guess it’s not just school. It’s not even Cassie. She’s hardly up there with some of the heartbreaks I’ve had.’ As soon as the words leave my mouth I realize it’s too close to home, but, mercifully, Holly doesn’t respond. ‘I can’t believe I’m saying this, but for the first time this week I actually missed Mothston. Everything’s weird down here. I haven’t met one Londoner who knows anything about the geography of the rest of Britain. Pubs think they can get away with serving you four chips by describing them as chunky and triple cooked.’ I pick up my last remaining chip, which has somehow become a symbol of my discontent. ‘And no one queues at bus stops, which along with wanting to avoid Gareth Stones on the train, is another reason I’ve bought a bike.’
Holly steals the chip from my fingers and pops it into her mouth, whole.
‘So you’re still loving London then, yeah?’ she says, and her smile proves contagious. We both shake our heads at my ridiculousness and Holly reaches over and places a hand on mine. It’s just for a second or two before she retreats and signals for the bill, but in that moment, moving to London doesn’t feel like such a dumb move after all.
I gaze outside, where the sunset has turned the sky the colour of Fruit Salad sweets. It is Spring Bank Holiday – summer is not far away now. I watch Holly wrap her navy blue cardigan around the back of her chair, exposing bare arms that are thin and goose-pimply.
‘What are you staring at?’ says Holly, checking her forearms.
I snap myself out of it. ‘Nothing. I was just thinking that navy always was your colour.’
Holly reviews me with intrigue but I pacify her with a blank expression until she gives up and changes the subject.
‘Another thing you’ll find with London. People who visit are either afraid of everything here – the tube and the roads and the people – or else they dismiss everything by saying, “That may be the way things are done in London . . .”’
‘Your dad?’
Holly nods, but I can tell she wouldn’t have it any other way.
‘How’s yours?’
‘Loving life on water. Except for his barny with the Mothston Barge Association. They won’t accept his membership until he changes the name of his boat. They’re supposed to be called things like Lady Rosebery or Haste Away or The Duchess of York.’
‘And what’s his called?’
‘Terry’s Barge.’
Holly claps her hands together in delight.
‘And you say Kev’s met a girl too?’
‘Well, he had sex.’
‘So maybe it was you holding them back?’
Holly greets me with two mischievous eyes as she downs the rest of her drink.
‘Come on, let’s go find an old man’s pub. Somewhere the regulars will stare at us when we walk in. It’ll be like you’re back in Mothston.’
‘Aren’t you in work tomorrow?’
Holly ignores
me and leads us on to the street.
‘Talking of work,’ I say, reminded of the friend request I received a while back. ‘Your workmate added me on Facebook.’
I’d anticipated a reaction – it was clear at the quiz that Holly isn’t Melissa’s biggest fan – but she accepts the information with little more than a nod. She’s busy eyeballing a STOP sign ahead of us, mirth hatching from the corners of her mouth.
‘What?’ I say.
‘Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten?’
Holly regards me expectantly until at last the memory surfaces. We must have been thirteen or fourteen. Holly had persuaded me to share a plastic bottle of White Lightning under a three-quarter moon in Weelsby Park – Holly matching each sip of mine with a gulp of her own – and we were on our way home when Holly produced a black permanent marker from the pencil case in her school bag.
‘Give us a leg-up,’ she said, surveying the STOP sign in front of us.
‘What are you doing?’ I whined.
‘You like school work, don’t you, Al? Let’s call this an art project.’
She removed the lid from the marker, rebellion drawn across her face.
‘Someone’ll see,’ I protested while simultaneously locking my fingers to create a step. It was Holly, after all, and to this day I remember how, as I was straining to hold her in the air, I found myself getting an erection, and I couldn’t make it go away no matter how much I thought of Grandma, but I think I got away with it, because by the time she disembarked we were both too absorbed in her handiwork.
STOP, HAMMER TIME
‘Your turn now,’ she said, thrusting the marker pen into my belly. ‘What’s it going to be?’
We traipsed around for half an hour before another sign caught my attention. I’d never done anything that could have got me into serious trouble before but I didn’t want to disappoint Holly, so, with her as a lookout, I approached McDonald’s and commenced work on their Drivethru banner, meticulously adding a roof to the ‘u’ so it became an ‘o’. Then, one by one, I scribed the ‘ugh’ so the sign was now dictionary perfect: ‘Welcome to McDonald’s Drivethrough’.
