Loads of girls fancied him. Some boys too. But I didn’t want to be one of them.
‘You like him, don’t you?’ Kat had said to me one day, about a month after Reuben had started at school. We were huddled in a corner of the playground. Reuben had been sent to the Head – again – by his arch-nemesis, Mr Monroe, and was now holding court in the playground, surrounded by admirers who were asking him about it.
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Like every other girl in the school, apparently.’ She sighed. ‘And a few of the boys. Well, I’m sure he’ll get round to you one of these days; he seems to be working his way through the very long list of anyone who’s up for it. Why does everyone always fancy the people I think are utter knobs?’
‘I didn’t say I fancied him,’ I said quickly.
‘Don’t you?’ Kat said, curious.
I shrugged. ‘Nah, not really.’
‘In other words, yes you do. You want to go out with him. Hattie and Reuben sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G—’
‘Shut up. He’s not my type,’ I said, casually chewing on an apple. ‘I just think he’s – interesting.’
Kat raised an eyebrow. ‘He’s a knob,’ she said.
‘Well,’ I said. ‘Knobs can be interesting.’
Kat snorted.
‘I didn’t mean it like that,’ I said.
‘Well, I’ll have to take your word for it, Hats,’ she said. ‘Not really my area of expertise.’
And we both laughed so much I inhaled my apple and Kat had to thump me on the back, just as Reuben and his gaggle of groupies were walking past.
‘You all right, babe?’ He was clearly amused, presumably by my red face, tears and general inability to speak or breathe.
‘Fine,’ I tried to say, but couldn’t, thanks to the piece of apple firmly lodged in my trachea.
A groupie giggled and they all trailed off after him.
‘Knob,’ said Kat, emphasizing her point by whacking me so hard on the back that the piece of apple flew out and landed on the spot where Reuben had just been standing.
I can’t exactly say in all absolute, total, swear-on-your-mum’s-life honesty that I didn’t fancy Reuben even one little bit. But I didn’t want to go out with him. Well, not exactly. Okay, so maybe in a way I sort of did want to. But I knew if I had it would have made me just like everyone else. And I didn’t want to be like everyone else was to Reuben. I wanted to be special.
I wasn’t special to Reuben for a long time. He’d smile at me if he saw me in the corridor and say, ‘All right, Holly, how’s it going?’ and I’d say, ‘Fine thank you, Rupert’. He always sat next to me in History (when he bothered to turn up) because Ms Horace always made him – presumably in case my ability to listen and write essays that did not suggest sausages as one of the causes of the Second World War rubbed off. (It didn’t.) But he was always too busy trying to annoy Ms Horace, or impress Soraya or some other girl who wasn’t me, to pay me much attention other than when he needed to copy my notes.
The only time we ever really talked to each other was on the bus home from school. Loads of people would pile on the bus outside the school gates, but most people lived pretty nearby. We both lived further out, so after all his groupies had got off the bus Reuben would come and sit next to me and we’d talk. He was different, I noticed, when other people weren’t around. He was still rude and funny and full of himself but less swaggering, more willing to have an actual conversation about something that wasn’t him. We never had that long, just five or ten minutes before it was my stop but I found myself looking forward to it every day. On the days he wasn’t there because he was skiving or in detention (which wasn’t unusual) I missed him.
‘Why are you such an arsehole at school?’ I asked him one day when he’d been particularly awful, reducing a supply teacher to tears.
He smiled. ‘It’s just the way I’m made.’
‘But it’s not. You’re not like it now. When it’s just us you’re nice. Why can’t you be like that all the time?’
He shrugged.
‘No, don’t just shrug.’
He stopped smiling. ‘Okay. Well, if you really want to know, it’s because it would be so unbelievably boring.’
I stared at him, my heart pounding with anger. ‘Are you saying this is boring? Are you saying I’m boring?’
‘Yeah, maybe I am.’
‘Fine. Well, I’ll put you out of your misery then. This is my stop,’ I said. I got up and pressed the bell.
I went home via the convenience store on the high street to buy a magazine and some sweets and to give myself a chance to calm down. I tried not to think about Reuben, told myself I couldn’t care less what he thought. But when I came out of the shop, there was Reuben, leaning against the wall smoking a cigarette.
He smiled when he saw me.
My stomach may or may not have done a little flippety thing. Let’s just assume for now that it didn’t. ‘Are you stalking me?’ I said, trying not to sound pleased.
‘I just came to say, no. You’re not boring.’
‘You needn’t have bothered,’ I said, unwrapping the chewing gum I’d just bought and popping it in my mouth. ‘I knew that already. I don’t need you to tell me, thanks very much.’
‘What I mean is, I’m sorry,’ he said.
We walked along the road back towards my house.
‘Good,’ I said.
‘Anyway, I was thinking about what the real answer to your question is, and I suppose it’s that I’ve got a reputation to uphold.’
I rolled my eyes.
‘And anyway,’ he said, kicking up dried leaves that were scattered along the pavement and avoiding eye contact. ‘What if no one liked the real me?’
‘I do,’ I said.
After that Reuben and I hung out together more. He’d quite often get off the bus at my stop and come round to my house and hang out for a while. Sometimes I’d force him to do homework. Sometimes, if Mum was working late, we’d cook (he was surprisingly good at it). Usually he’d just sit and watch cartoons with the twins or go and smoke in the garden with Mum giving him ‘I wish you wouldn’t’ looks through the kitchen window.
‘It’s nice here,’ he’d say.
‘Is it?’ That wasn’t the word I’d use. ‘Nice’ sounds like matching curtains and cushions and everything tidy and calm and painted cream like in magazines. Our house is noisy and there’s always Lego on the floor waiting to spring at you when you walk barefoot. It usually smells a bit of burning, either because of forgotten toast or Alice’s ‘science’. There are yellow stains on the hall wall from when Alice filled her water pistol with custard and fired it at Carl because he’d upset her in some way.
‘Yeah,’ Reuben said. ‘It’s . . . normal.’
‘Jesus, Reuben.’ I laughed. ‘If you think this is normal, what the hell is it like at yours?’
When I finally went round to his, I found out. It did have matching curtains and cushions, and everything was very tidy. It had security gates and lights that came on as we walked up the drive on a dark November evening. It had a gleaming marble and chrome kitchen, which opened out onto a glass box that overlooked the garden. But it wasn’t ‘nice’. Reuben’s home life was like an unexploded bomb. Everything everyone said was laced with frustration or resentment or undisguised dislike. His dad was still living there then. He had a tan, even in November, and very white teeth. When he spoke to Reuben (which was just to ask him who I was) his tone suggested he found Reuben intensely irritating. Reuben was politer to him than I’d ever seen him be to anyone else. I thought his dad was a tosser. He gave me a nod. ‘Pleased to meet you,’ he said, with a brief gleaming smile that didn’t look pleased at all. ‘Always a delight to meet my son’s friends.’ He slapped Reuben on the back and Reuben flinched slightly, not in a scared way, more in response to his words, I think. There was a passive aggressive tone there. Then he turned to Reuben’s mum, who was lying on the sofa and seemed completely out of it. Not drun
k; hazy, removed from everything. She was beautiful but it was as if she wasn’t really there, responding slowly, if at all, to anything that was said to her.
‘I’m going out,’ Reuben’s dad told her. It’s hard to imagine how you can get as much hatred into three innocuous words as he did. ‘I’ll be back late, if at all. Don’t wait up.’
She showed no sign of having heard him.
‘Don’t know why I bother,’ he said, flashing that smile at me again, apparently joking but his tone said otherwise.
‘Is your mum okay?’ I asked Reuben when we went up to his room. Even his bedroom seemed weirdly impersonal, almost like a hotel room or something.
‘I never stayed here much till this year,’ he explained. ‘I was at boarding school from the age of eight, don’t forget.’
‘What was it like?’
He shrugged. ‘Not great. But maybe it was better than being here. At least there people took an interest in me.’
The bomb exploded not long after that. Reuben’s dad left for the south of France where they had a house and stayed there.
‘You can’t really blame him,’ Reuben had said to me. ‘I’d go if I were him.’ I could blame him, quite a lot.
I could also understand why Reuben came round to ours.
‘Just goes to show,’ Carl said, when I was telling Mum about it. ‘Money can’t buy you happiness.’
Alice wasn’t convinced.
‘I bet their house is wicked, though,’ she said. ‘Did it have a helipad?’
Gloria is sleeping when I leave her. I lay her back on the pillows and pull the duvet up around her. She looks smaller now she’s asleep, more fragile. I feel protective of her suddenly, although I try not to because I know she’d hate it.
I lean over and kiss her lightly on the forehead.
‘Night, Gloria,’ I whisper before I tiptoe out. Her eyes flicker open and she smiles.
‘Night, Gwen,’ she whispers.
When I get back to my room I’m restless. I try to read a book but I find I’m just reading the same page over and over again. I can’t stop thinking about Gloria. She’s so different when she’s talking about the past, more open, everything so clear and vivid. She seems more certain somehow. It’s as if she’s really there, inhabiting the past. And yet it’s as if she sees it in flashes. If I ask her about what happened next, or about where she was, or the order that things happened in she closes up and I can’t tell whether it’s because she doesn’t know or because she doesn’t want to be pushed. Is it because she wants to be in control or because she feels lost? It’s as though she’s only showing me pieces of a jigsaw; I don’t know how they fit together and I can’t see the whole picture. And I’m not sure if she’s keeping the missing pieces back or if she’s lost them completely.
I decide I’d probably better email Mum and tell her what’s going on. I’ve been putting it off but I keep getting text messages from Carl saying things like: Hey Hats, just to let u know the venue may call about numbers 4 the evening do, can u tell them we think about 80? and Has the florist got back with a quote yet? We r missing u x Also telling her feels like sharing the responsibility somehow. I know she’ll be angry.
I take a deep breath and type, trying to think of the best way to ensure that Mum doesn’t go mental because I’ve taken her car and driven across England in it:
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Hola!
Hi!
Hope you’re all well and enjoying Spain.
Just thought I’d let you know that I’m having a holiday of my own. You know how I went to visit Dad’s aunt Gloria? Well, she decided to take a little break and she wanted a bit of company so I said I’d go with her. She wanted to visit some of the places she’d been when she was young and it would have been impossible for her to get to all of them without a car. So I knew you wouldn’t mind if I borrowed yours and drove her as it’s for such a good cause, what with her having dementia and everything and soon she will be unable to remember any of these places. It is quite tragic and I knew you wouldn’t be so cruel as to want her to miss out on the chance to see them one last time just because she didn’t have a car.
I read it through. Have I gone too far with the guilt trip? Or not far enough?
I’m not sure of all the places we’re going but we’re in Cambridge at the moment and apparently the next stop is the Lake District! We’ll be back by the time you are back from Mallorca, don’t worry!
I will send you a postcard!
Anyway, love to all and see you soon. Don’t drink too much Sangria!
Hxx
Later, as I’m going to sleep I hear an email arrive in my inbox. I think about not looking at it, as it’s bound to be Mum giving me a hard time. But it’s not. It’s from Reuben.
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: you’re the one that I want
HATTIE!
I’m sittng outdide a bar overlooking the sea and you’ll never guess what song is playing RIGHT NOW Hats – only You’re the one that I want! it’s our song ,right? remember we sang it at that mad basement karaoke place – Kat made us go there and then disappeared off without singing a single song because that girlfriend of hers called and she just took off? I was John Travolta and you were Olivia Newton John remebmerer? Oh it was beautiful. A beautiful beeeaauuuutiful thing. You were a bit off key, not to mention a bit staggery and slurred what with all the double vodkas, but I didn’t let that put me off because like Travolta I am a born performer and a spectacular dancer. It was a truly moving occasion until you managed to inhale your drink and spit it all over the microphone and I had to hit you on the back and then you started hitting me back you maniac and it all descended into more of a brawl than a cheesy love ballad. ah Hats. great times.
I was trying to explain to Camille why it was so funny but she didn’t get it. Well I had to mime most of it and anyway I guess you had to be there really. Anyway she doesn’t really understand English and you know how well i (don’t) speak french. for some reason the words I mainly remember are boite ouvert (tin opener) and chapeau (hat) and cochon d’Inde (guinea pig) and none of these have proved very useful in my conversations with the divine Camille. Of course we speak the international language of lurrrve but after we’ve finished that, it would be nice to be able to have a laugh. I miss having a laugh. Camille doesn’t do all that much laughing. What is the french for laugh I wonder? You probably know don’t you, bloody smart arse that you are.
Aaaaah Hats. i won’t lie, a few refreshing beverages have been consumed, but I’m sitting outsied here at this bar by the sea and I’m humming Take That and I feel. i dunno. It’s not really like i thought it wold be. travelling i mean. I misss you HAts. I do. I thinkTHat’s all I wanted to say. not very profoudn i know.
xR (JT)
I try not to think about what Camille does a lot of instead of laughing; she probably smokes Gauloises, and looks effortlessly chic and sexy, and reads Sartre and is intellectual but also fantastic in bed in ways I can’t even imagine. I bet Camille’s hair has never been either lank or prone to frizz, let alone both.
And obviously Camille would never be stupid enough to get herself accidentally up the duff. She’d be far too much of a woman of the world for that.
But I’m better at laughing than her. Which might actually cheer me up if didn’t feel so very much not like laughing.
I do remember that night. We decided to walk home afterwards – all the way from town, what were we thinking? Half-way home I was desperate for a wee, so I went behind a tree in someone’s garden. I ran all the rest of the way home with my skirt tucked in my knickers something Reuben didn’t tell me till the next morning. In fact, it was the next morning by the time we got home. It was starting to get light and the birds were singing. And Reuben joined in singing ‘Endless Love’ – both the Diana Ross and Lionel Ritchie parts – which made u
s laugh again.
I’m overwhelmed for a moment with how much I miss Reuben. We’ve shared so much. Not just stupid karaoke. Real stuff.
I remember one day a couple of months after Reuben’s dad left. We were sitting in the garden at ours, while he had a cigarette. It was early spring, still freezing, our breath puffing out as we spoke. I was holding a cup of tea to keep me warm.
‘He hasn’t called me once since he left,’ Reuben said. ‘He sent me an email to say Happy Christmas.’
‘That’s pretty lame,’ I say. I wanted to say more, but didn’t trust myself not to offend Reuben. He has a bit of a blind spot about his dad.
‘He did say I could go and stay with him if I wanted.’
‘Do you think you will?’
He shrugged.
‘Do you miss your dad?’ he said suddenly.
I thought about it and decided to be honest in a way I’d never been with anyone else who’d asked about Dad. ‘Not exactly,’ I said. ‘I want to, though.’
He smiled. ‘Same,’ he said. He reached out and squeezed my hand briefly. ‘Shit, isn’t it?’
‘Yeah,’ I said.
Oh, Reuben. I wish he’d just come home. I can’t let him know that, though, obviously.
I nearly write:
Sing some dodgy backing vocals for me will you?
But then I realize that the song will have finished ages ago. Reuben will have forgotten all about it and me and the karaoke and how I make him laugh and that he sort of sometimes misses me a bit. He’ll be back in the club now, or back at his apartment speaking the language of lurve with Camille.
So instead I type:
The French for laugh is ‘rire’. Je ris. I laugh. Xxx
But I don’t. Je pleure. I cry.
How Not to Disappear Page 15
