by Dyan Sheldon
And I ran out of the room and out of the flat as fast as a person on six-inch heels could.
Happy Birthday to Me
If I’d had somewhere to go, I’d’ve gone there.
But I didn’t. We never saw my dad again after he left, so he was out. My half-sisters, Charlene and Dara, both lived south of the river, and my nan lived in Hastings, so they were out, too. So was Shanee, because even though she lived just down the road she’d gone away for the weekend.
I marched through the boring streets of northwest London on automatic.
I was back on the Titanic, pushing through the hysterical mobs, looking for Jack. I was wearing the bomber jacket he’d put around me. I was still soaked from the icy waves that broke across the ship as she sunk deeper and deeper into the endless water, but my soul was on fire. I would not die without seeing him one more time. “Jack!” screamed my heart. “Jack! Jack! Jack!”
A door blocked my way. I pushed it open with my last desperate burst of strength.
McDonald’s was warm and bright. A pub would’ve been more suitable for my mood, but I was too young to go to a pub, of course. Yet another disadvantage of youth.
My dress was stuck to me like a wet tissue. It was like wearing nothing and a really tight, uncomfortable bodysuit at the same time. Blisters were already throbbing on my feet. But I didn’t care. I didn’t even glance at myself in the glass door as I marched through, that’s how much I didn’t care.
There were maybe a dozen people in the restaurant, including the bored-looking kids behind the counter. I strode through the empty tables as if I was going up to get my Oscar, but instead of an Oscar I got a Big Mac, large fries and a chocolate milkshake. None of those things are exactly great for your skin, but I didn’t care about that just then either. What was the use of having good skin and knowing how to dress and wear make-up if you never had a chance to show yourself off a bit? There wasn’t any use, that was what. If my mother had her way, I’d still be wearing a Babygro and sucking on a dummy.
I sat at a table by the window, so I’d have something to do besides cry while I ate.
Some bloody birthday.
McDonald’s is all right, but it isn’t Planet Hollywood. Without the mothers and children it was pretty dead. Like a film set between takes. And it was too bright, brighter than usual. It reminded me of a hospital. You know, all cheery with yellow walls and fluorescent lights so no one will notice that they’re dying.
I turned my back on the hanging plants and the posters advertising the latest Disney blockbuster, and stared into the rain.
Happy Birthday to me, I thought as I took out my burger. Happy Birthday, dear Lana, Happy Birthday to me.
I bit into my Big Mac. It tasted like cardboard with ketchup and a slice of pickle on it.
A couple stopped on the other side of the window, trying to keep dry while they waited for a bus. They had their arms linked and he was holding the umbrella over her head. They looked really happy.
I felt like I was going to choke. I dropped my burger and bit my lip.
Don’t cry, I told myself. Wait till you get back outside.
I’d never thought about it before, but I reckoned that was why people in songs were always walking in the rain, so nobody could tell that they were sobbing their hearts out.
I opened my tiny tub of ketchup and dipped a chip in it, thinking about all the other girls in the world whose birthday was on the twenty-fifth of October. They were having parties with all their friends laughing around them. They had heaps of presents and everybody was hugging them and telling them how terrific they looked. Their mothers loved them. Then I thought about a girl I’d read about who died at her own birthday party. When I first read it I thought it was really sad and depressing, but just then, dripping in one corner of McDonald’s, I would have changed places with her like a shot. I mean, so she was dead, so what? At least she’d had a good time. It was a lot better than dying of pneumonia with the smell of stale grease on your breath.
I stuck my straw in my milkshake and took a sip. The couple on the other side of the window were snogging. The umbrella banged against the glass.
I gave up and let the tears come. Sip … sip … gulp … gulp … sip … sip … gulp … gulp…
I felt like a trapped animal, as if no matter what I did I was never going to escape. I was always going to be Hilary Spiggs’ little kid, being yelled at and told what to do.
I was crying so much that I didn’t even know he was there, sitting at the table beside me.
And then I heard his voice.
I looked over, trying to suck back a few thousand tears.
He couldn’t’ve been there long, because he hadn’t even unwrapped his straw yet. He was leaning towards me, holding out a pocket packet of tissues. He looked embarrassed.
“Are you all right?” He jabbed the tissues in my direction. “Your—I—”
I couldn’t speak.
Partly this was because I was trying to stop crying, but partly it was because of him. He wasn’t Leonardo DiCaprio, but he wasn’t bad. He was tall, dark and slim. He didn’t have spots, or wear glasses, or dress like his mother still bought his clothes. In fact, he was a pretty sharp dresser. I’d seen John Travolta on a chat show wearing a shirt almost the same shade of blue as his. And he was wearing a top-of-the-range Baby G. Plus, he was well over twenty. It was like Sleepless in Seattle the first time Tom Hanks’ and Meg Ryan’s eyes meet. It was a dream come true.
He leaned a bit closer, still waving the packet.
“Your make-up,” he said. “I thought you might need these.”
I was so touched by his incredible kindness and sensitivity that I nearly started crying again. I took a breath and smiled. It was the smile I always practised in the mirror: sunny but sexy. It was the best smile I had.
“Thanks.” I kept the smile, but looked down at the table so he’d know I was shy and embarrassed, too, and not in the habit of having nervous breakdowns in public. “I’m sorry—”
Our fingers touched as I took the tissues from his hand. Maybe if they hadn’t, I’d’ve mopped my eyes with his tissues and that would’ve been the end of it. But they did touch. Electricity shot through me. I didn’t want him to go.
“It’s my birthday,” I snuffled. “I had a fight with my mum.”
“Your birthday? Really?” He smiled. “Well, Happy Birthday—”
“Lana.” I laughed and snuffled at the same time. “Lana Spiggs.”
He held out his hand. “Les,” he said. “Les Craft.”
We just sort of stared at each other for a couple of seconds.
“So, which birthday is it?” he finally asked.
I didn’t hesitate for even a nanosecond. I didn’t want to put him off because he thought I was too young.
“My eighteenth.”
He smiled. “Well, Happy Birthday, Lana Spiggs.”
Happy Birthday to me.
Les Craft was twenty years old, kind, sensitive and intelligent (he had two A levels). He wasn’t exactly a babe, but he was good-looking in a quiet way, and he had two gold hoops in his left ear, and he did dress very smart. Plus, there was no grease on his hands. Les was assistant manager of the Blockbuster on the high street.
“I thought you looked familiar,” I fibbed. I wanted him to know he was special, not some dork a girl would never notice. “I go in there all the time.”
He smiled. In my opinion, Calvin Klein could’ve made millions if he bottled that smile.
“I know.”
He’d noticed me! I couldn’t believe it. I hadn’t noticed him – I didn’t really look at the boys who worked at Blockbuster because they tended to have bad skin and only recommend action films – but this attractive man had noticed me.
I told him all about my most recent fight with the Curse of Kilburn while we ate our burgers. He dipped his chips in the ketchup just like I did.
Les was very understanding. He had a mother, too.
“They have a lot
of trouble letting go,” said Les. “My mum’s the worst. I won’t let my mum in my flat, because she’d start tidying up the minute she got through the door.” He smiled his break-your-heart smile. “And she’s always after me to cut my hair.”
“Oh, don’t do that.” It was long enough to hang sexily over his collar, but not so long that you’d mistake him for a girl from the back. “It’s lovely.”
Sunshine flooded McDonald’s.
“OK. I’ll tell my mum Lana likes it like this.”
I felt like someone was pouring hot fudge sauce through my veins. Lana likes it like this… It was as though we’d known each other for ages. That had to mean that I’d see him again.
Les stuffed the chip packet and his napkin and the straw wrapper into his burger box. There wasn’t one crumb or blob of ketchup at his place.
“I’ve got to get back to the shop,” he said. He made it sound like he’d rather go anywhere else. “Do you want to come with me and hang out?”
I didn’t have to think even once, never mind twice. “Yeah, sure.”
Let the old bat worry that I’d been raped or run over by a car or something. It served her right.
Les took me home when he finished work. I couldn’t believe my luck. He not only had a job and a flat (well, a room in a flat), he had a car. It wasn’t a Porsche or a Jeep or anything cool like that, but it wasn’t an old banger like Charley’s van that you had to park on a hill so you could get it started the next day, either.
It had gone midnight by the time we got to my road. I made him let me off at the corner. In case she was hovering behind the curtains.
“Are you sure you’ll be all right?” asked Les. “I could come in with you if you want.”
He sounded really concerned.
“No, I’ll be fine.” I undid my seat belt and took hold of the door handle. “She isn’t violent. She’s just a pain.”
The last thing I wanted was for him to meet Hilary. Women often end up looking just like their mothers. Oprah did a whole programme on it. What if Les took one look at her, decided that was what I was going to end up like, and I never saw him again? Plus, she’d be sure to tell him I was only fifteen. Probably before I’d even introduced him. “You know she’s only fifteen,” she’d say. “Do you want to go to prison?”
I pulled on the handle. “She’ll be in bed now anyway,” I lied. “It’ll be all right.”
Les grabbed my right hand.
When you’re little, you think a lot about whether or not you should kiss a boy on the first date. Will he think you’re easy? Will he think you kiss every boy you meet like that? Will you catch something?
But since we hadn’t technically been on our first date yet, I didn’t worry about it. As soon as I felt his skin on mine I turned to face him. I’d practised kissing my pillow and stuff like that (so I’d know what to do), but kissing Les was not like kissing my pillow. His lips were warm, and soft as the centre of a chocolate cream. I was melting from within. I didn’t even jump or gag or anything when he stuck his tongue in my mouth. It was hardly slimy at all.
“How about Sunday?” he whispered when we came up for air. “I’ve got to work Saturday and Sunday night, but we could do something in the afternoon. After lunch.” He stroked my hair. “If you’re not busy.”
He had to be joking. I would never be busy again in my life.
She was waiting up for me, of course. She’d ruined the first part of my birthday for me, and now she was determined to ruin the last part as well. She must’ve sensed I was having a good time somewhere. I always said she was a witch.
She launched herself from the window as soon as she saw me come down the street and popped out of the living-room like a cuckoo in a clock as soon as I stepped into the hall.
“I’d like to talk to you,” she said in this dead flat voice.
She was a bit drunk. Alcohol’s meant to make you jolly, but she always gets really earnest and serious when she has a bit to drink.
I didn’t meet her eyes. I wasn’t going to let her spoil what had turned out to be the best night of my life. I was going to go to bed and pretend that Les was beside me, holding me tight, telling me how wonderful I was.
I locked the front door and marched past her.
“Lana. Did you hear me? We need to talk.”
I opened the door to my room. “Talk to yourself,” I said. “I’m going to bed.”
“I’m your mother,” she said. No one could ever accuse Hilary Spiggs of being original. “I think I have a right to know where you’ve been all night.”
“Selling my body,” I said. “Where else?”
I would’ve slammed the door in her face, but she’d wedged herself against the frame.
“Lana, look, I know I overreacted—”
She touched my shoulder. I jumped as if she’d stabbed me.
“Get your hands off me,” I ordered.
She got her hands off me. She must’ve been more drunk than I thought, though, because she almost looked like she was going to cry.
“I’m sorry, Lana. I don’t want things to be like this.”
Maybe if I hadn’t had the best birthday of my life, and maybe if I hadn’t realized I had enough power to make her cry, I would have broken down then and said I was sorry too, and everything would’ve been different. That’s what I think now, at any rate. But it’s not what I thought then. I didn’t care that she was sorry. I was chuffed I could make her cry. And I didn’t give a stuff what she wanted. I was like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, standing on the yellow brick road with the Emerald City shimmering in front of me. Only it wasn’t the Emerald City I saw, it was my future. It was nearly six feet tall, had a tongue like a lizard’s, and drove a Ford.
“Well, that’s the way they are,” I told her. And I gave her a shove that knocked her against the wall and slammed my door behind me.
My mother always told me that love wasn’t like it is in films and songs and stuff like that. Meaning that it wasn’t like that for her. Charlene and Dara’s father died when they were little. Hard though it was to believe, the Spiggs had been madly in love with him. She married my father because he was the best she could get with two children and cellulite and her lousy personality. Charlene and Dara’s father was God’s gift to the earth; mine was a reminder that God likes to punish people.
“You don’t just meet someone and BOOM, you’re in love,” my mother had told me. “Real life isn’t like in films.”
I didn’t believe her when I was twelve, and now that I was fifteen I knew she was lying. She wanted me to have the same miserable life she had, that’s why.
Love was exactly like it was in films: BOOM.
One minute you’re just an ordinary person, waiting for something great to happen, and the next minute – BOOM – something great has happened. You feel happier than you’ve ever felt before – than you ever thought you could feel.
I’m not sure if I fell in love with Les when he kissed me, or if it happened before that, when we were talking in McDonald’s. Not that it mattered. I knew that first night that he was the man I’d been waiting for since I was born.
After she stopped shouting at me through the door and finally staggered off to her own room, I put a Celine Dion CD in my Discman and lay on my bed, staring at the glow-in-the-dark stars I’d stuck on the ceiling. I went over everything Les had said. I imagined every detail of his face, and the way he laughed, and the way he ate, and the way he drove, and the way he looked at me and how he tasted in my mouth.
So this is love, I thought. L-O-V-E: LOVE.
The CD ended and a really old song floated into my head. After my dad escaped when I was four, me and Hilary went to live with my nan for a few years. The Spiggs threw herself into rebuilding her life, so it was Nan I spent time with. Most afternoons we’d get out her box of old records and we’d play them on her ancient record player. This song was one of my favourites because it made me feel really happy. I made Nan play it all the time. And years later they
had it in that film. Lying in bed that night, I could hear it exactly the way it sounded on her old record player. Scratchy and old-fashioned.
“Just blahblah and me … and baby makes three … we’re happy in my blue heaven…”
I didn’t really understand it when I was little, but I did now. Now I knew what the singer meant.
I drifted off to sleep, softly humming my nan’s song. At last I understood what life was all about.
Love Will Set You Free
Les said I was pretty, fun to be with, and that I made him laugh. I couldn’t believe it.
“Me?” I’d say.
And he’d say, “Yes, you.”
Like me, Les had had a hard time at school. He was quiet, and teachers and other bullies picked on him a lot. Plus, though it was hard to believe now, he’d been fat and unpopular. So he was always shy with girls. He said he never even thought about girls in secondary school, all he thought about was getting out and getting a job and having a life. Also like me. He only moved out of his mother’s and down to London that summer, so though he’d been out with a few girls he’d never even had a real girlfriend. Before now.
“You kiss like you have,” I told him.
Les laughed. “Beginner’s luck.”
Les liked the way boys looked at me in the street, like they wished they were him.
“Green with envy,” he’d say as we passed a group of them. “Green with envy.” He’d give me a hug. He was really chuffed.
I’d hug him back.
I was really chuffed, too.
Les also liked that I was really feminine and into make-up and stuff. He was a musicals freak. He said I was like some song in some old musical, I enjoyed being a girl.
“I do now,” I said.
There were tons of things Les knew about – sports and cars and videos and who originally starred in Oklahoma!, that sort of thing – that I didn’t know much about. I loved to listen to him explain them to me. And he loved to explain them.
“You’re sure I’m not boring you?” he’d ask.
