by Louise Voss
“Funny how Melanie’s uncle turned out not to be in Madness at all, wasn’t it?” said Sam.
“Mmm. Not much of a surprise, though. She’s such a fibber. Good fun, but …”
I paused, thinking of my other school friends, the ones who Sam would now inevitably get much closer to. I found I didn’t wish to talk about them anymore.
“Don’t forget about me, will you?” I said abruptly.
My father came down the hallway, carrying golf clubs. “Not getting in the way, I hope, are you, girls? Helena, don’t you have things to do?”
“No. My case is all packed. We’re not in the way.”
“Jolly good, jolly good. Almost time for lunch,” he muttered absently. “Now, where did I put my nine iron? ”
Sam patted my shoulder, waiting till Dad had gone before answering me. “Don’t be daft. How could I possibly forget my best friend? ”
We sat in silence again, both of us choked.
“Are you still all right about me keeping the Hel-Sam box?” Sam asked eventually.
“S’pose so. It’s a good thing there isn’t much in there yet. You’ll need the space to keep all my letters.”
“But where are you going to put my letters to you?” Sam wailed, and she suddenly burst into tears. I couldn’t comfort her.
Mum called us down for lunch: cheese and pickle sandwiches, Marks & Spencer pork pies, a six-pack of crisps, and orange squash. We had to eat in the garden off paper plates because everything from the kitchen and dining room had been packed up, so Sam and I lolled on a hairy tartan travel rug, sniffling and flicking ants off each other’s thighs, while my parents sat on sherbet-striped picnic chairs.
Mum and Dad had linked fingers with each other across the red plastic arms of their chairs and were eating with their free outside hands. Emotions were beginning to run high all round.
“Oh, George,” said my mother, surveying her rosebushes, “I’ll miss this garden so much.”
There was a quiver in her voice, so she took a hasty slurp of squash out of a plastic cup to hide it.
“Our new house will have a lovely garden, too, you’ll see. We might even be able to afford someone to come in and mow the lawn,” said Dad soothingly, squeezing her hand.
“They don’t call them gardens in America. They call them yards,” Sam mused thickly.
I was irritated. “Well, that’s ridiculous! How can a yard have grass and flowers and stuff? A yard is concrete!”
“Don’t yell at me. It’s not my fault. I’m just telling you,” Sam snapped back.
“I wasn’t yelling. I just don’t think it makes sense.”
“Girls! Simmer down.” My mother had recovered her composure. “If you’ve finished your lunch, throw your plates and cups in the outside bin.”
“Can I go over and say good-bye to the Grants, please?”
“Yes, dear, if you’ve packed. We have to leave in about an hour, so don’t be long.”
An hour! I couldn’t bear it. I trailed miserably down the garden path behind Sam, who was neatly rolling up her paper plate and stuffing it into her cup. I looked around the garden, at the wiry grass creeping up between the paving stones, the apple tree, the little pond. I knew I would miss it as much as my mother would. A sparrow hopped across the lawn in front of me. Did they have sparrows in America? I wondered, already nostalgic.
Sam turned round when she reached the gate. “Come on, hurry up, Augenbrau,” she said. “I’ve got a present for you.”
“Here,” she said, once we were in her bedroom above the pub. She thrust an album at me: Blondie, Parallel Lines.
I took it, speechless for a moment. “Sam—not your Blondie record! That’s your favorite!”
“I want you to have it,” she said bravely. “I want you to have something of mine that I really, really like, because that makes it a better present.”
“Thanks,” I said, thinking fast. “I’ve got something for you, too.”
I undid the seed pearl necklace Mum and Dad had given me for my twelfth birthday and put it around Sam’s neck.
“This is for you because it looks like the one Debbie Harry is wearing on the record sleeve. If you put it on with your mum’s white petticoat, those high-heeled slippers of hers, and a little bandage tied round the middle of your arm, you’ll look the spit of her. Well, at least you would if you had blond hair.”
Sam was touched and awestruck, by both the gift and the comparison. We were both desperate to have eyes as incredible and cheekbones as pointy as Debbie’s.
“Really? Your necklace? Didn’t your parents give you that?”
“Yes,” I said nobly. “But, like you said, it’s the more personal things that make the best presents. Just don’t wear it when you come and stay with me in America. Have we got time to listen to the record once more?”
I went over to the stereo and plopped the album onto the turntable. Sam’s record player was the coolest I’d ever seen: It played both sides of an LP without you having to get up and turn it over manually. Its needle was on an arm that, when side A finished, skimmed across the surface of the vinyl, turned a laborious and creaky 180-degree angle, and played the B side, upside down.
So we closed an era with Parallel Lines, summoning up the emotional reserves to dance around Sam’s bedroom for one last time, in a New-Wave, imaginary-microphone kind of rite of passage. But we were just going through the motions. It wasn’t any fun.
“Do you really think I look like Blondie?” asked Sam as we pouted halfheartedly in front of the mirror to “Sunday Girl.”
“I’ve told you before, Sam, Blondie’s the band, not the singer. And yes, you could pass as her little sister.”
I sighed. Much as I, too, wanted to look like Debbie, I knew that in reality I bore a closer resemblance to Velma from Scooby Doo. I wasn’t at all sure if I even possessed cheekbones. Sam picked up on my train of thought.
“You know what? If your hair was a bit longer, I think you’d look quite a lot like Kate Bush,” she remarked kindly.
Mrs. Grant knocked on the bedroom door. “Helena, your mother’s on the telephone. She asked me to tell you to come home straightaway. The taxi’s there already.”
Sam turned off the record in the middle of “Sunday Girl,” and I felt as if all the music in the whole world had stopped, forever. I had a sudden childish desire to run into Sam’s wardrobe and hide there among all her clothes, clothes that weren’t being ripped off their hangers and crushed into packing cases to be carried halfway round the world. All the blouses that I’d borrowed; all the jeans that I couldn’t fit into. Her Olivia Newton-John nightie, which was so staticky that it could power a small generator. The shirt she’d worn when Martin Trubshaw tried to kiss her. The school skirt with the wonky hem that we’d taken up ourselves. The thick bottle-green gym knickers that she’d still have to endure and I wouldn’t. I thought I’d even miss those hideous knickers.
I felt myself crumple up from the inside.
Mrs. Grant hugged me, stroking my hair and pinching my cheek gently, as if I were six years old. “Oh, Helena, love! What are we going to do without you? Sam is going to be a right old misery-guts, I bet! Sam, please tell me you won’t start moping round here sulking all day, like that brother of yours.”
Sam managed a wavery smile and made a face.
“Don’t worry, girls, a little ocean between you won’t ruin your friendship. It would take a lot more than that. I wouldn’t mind betting you’ll be back before you know it, Helena. You’ll keep in touch, and time will fly by, you’ll see.”
“Thank you, um, C-C-C-Cynthia.” As usual, her name wouldn’t come out without a struggle, and I felt foolish and emotional.
Sam took my hand and we all walked back downstairs in silence.
Mrs. Grant gave me a final hug and kiss at the door. “Well, I’d better get back to the bottling up. Mind how you go, sweetheart, and we’ll see you soon, okay? ”
Mr. Grant flapped his tea towel at me and said, “Lo
ok after yourself, love—keep in touch,” to which I responded with a tiny smile and a sad little wave.
I couldn’t remember ever feeling this bad in my life.
Back at the house, everything was gone. Only our bulging suitcases sat in the hallway, lined up like fat policemen on parade. My mother was leaning exhaustedly against the kitchen counter, peering into an open compact, primping up her hair and powdering her nose.
“Oh, good—there you are, Helena. I think we’re almost ready, so you and Sam should say your farewells. The taxi’s already here, so make it as quick as you can, dear. Heavens, look at me—I’m worn out! This moving business certainly is tiring.” She snapped the compact shut and put it back into her cavernous patent-leather handbag.
Sam and I went upstairs, to the room that had been my bedroom since I was a baby, and would probably be some other girl’s bedroom within the next couple of months. We sat down cross-legged in the middle of the floor, and I stared at the faint Blu-Tack marks on the wall where my John Travolta posters had stuck.
The wallpaper in my room was comprised of thousands of tiny air-filled pockets, as though the walls were papered with yellow-painted bubble wrap. I used to deflate these pockets by pressing them with my fingertips—the wall all around where my pillow had been, in the radius of the length of a child’s arms, was an inverted sweep of pressed-in paper bubbles, like grass that gets flattened from being picnicked on. I had a sudden urge to pop a few last ones, for old times’ sake.
Neither of us could speak for a while. “Don’t forget me, either, will you,” Sam said eventually.
The hinges of my jaw were aching so painfully from the effort of not crying that I could hardly reply. “Now you’re being daft.” I had a sudden thought. “Do you think we’re too old to cut our thumbs and mingle our blood in a friendship pact or something? ”
“Yeah,” said Sam, wrinkling up her nose. “Definitely too old. Besides, it would hurt.”
I was relieved. I hadn’t much liked the idea, either, but it seemed appropriate. “Okay. Well, I’ll write to you all the time, and we’ll see each other for holidays, and …”
My voice cracked, and I couldn’t hold back the sobs any longer. This set Sam off again, too, and we wrapped our arms around each other, rocking back and forth in our misery. We were interrupted by my mother’s heavy tread on the stairs.
“Oh, you poor dears!” she said when she saw us. “I’m sorry, the taxi’s here. We’ve got to go.” She came over and knelt down beside us, putting an arm around each of our shoulders. I breathed in her distinctive smell, lipstick and wool. Sam rested her head against Mum and cried even harder. She let us stay like that for another minute or so, then pulled a pack of paper tissues from her pocket, giving us each one.
“Come on now, have a good blow. This isn’t easy for any of us,” she said, standing up and pulling us gently to our feet. We blew our noses, wiped the tears off our faces, and traipsed reluctantly out of the house.
Dad was in the front garden smoking a pipe, having finished loading the cases into the boot of the taxi. He came over and gave Sam a hug when we appeared at the door, which prompted fresh floods. The taxi driver, elbow out of the window, drummed his fingers impatiently on the roof of his car as Mum fussed around with keys and passports and plane tickets.
Finally we were all set, and Mum and I climbed into the backseat of the car, Dad in the front. Sam was standing on the bottom bar of the iron front gate, swinging backward and forward, crying.
As the taxi pulled away, I twisted around to look at her out of the window. She raised a forefinger to her face and traced her eyebrow with it. “You’re one helluvan eyebrow, girl!” she yelled suddenly.
The car turned the corner at the end of our street and she disappeared from view.
My mother looked at me, a puzzled expression on her face. “One hell of a what, did she say? ”
I wept ceaselessly all the way up the M3, all the way through dinner that night in a hotel near Heathrow Airport, and halfway across the Atlantic the next day.
FRIENDS
TOBY CAME TO SEE ME AGAIN THE NEXT DAY, CARRYING TWO STYROFOAM cups of tea.
“I checked that the coast was clear. Want to come and sit in the garden?” He offered me his forearm.
I was relieved to see him. “God, I thought you might not dare to come back after meeting my mother. I’m really sorry about that, by the way.”
“Oh, don’t worry, your mother’s fine. It’s you I’m scared of. Are you coming, then, or what? ”
I laughed and then stopped, not entirely sure that he was joking. “Okay. Let me just get my disguise on first.”
I donned my dark glasses and a long blond wig that I’d made Mum bring in from home. It was an Abba wig from a fancy dress party Sam and I went to years ago—she’d worn the matching brunette wig. I wondered what had happened to it.
Toby chuckled when he saw me.
“Wow! ‘Voulez-Vous’?”
Yes, please, I thought. “How did you know it’s from an Abba costume?” I said instead.
“Come on—all straight blond wigs are Abba wigs, aren’t they? ”
We walked slowly along the corridor and took the lift up to the hospital’s little roof garden. It was lovely to see nothing but shrubs and sky, and to feel warm air on my stitches.
“Is your mum always that, um, keen to meet your friends?” Toby asked as we sat down on a wooden bench.
“Basically, yes—the male ones, anyway. She’s just desperate to get me hitched. She’s already been hopeful that I’ll get something together with the physio, the shrink, or the surgeon. It’s so embarrassing.”
“Don’t worry,” Toby said. “Mothers will be mothers. So haven’t you ever been married? ”
I took a slurp of tea. “No. I almost came close to it once—quite recently, actually. But thank God I saw the light. Vinnie was a serial-philandering, commitment-phobic, dishonest asshole.”
Toby laughed. “So you’re obviously still fond of him, then.”
I managed a smile, a rare reaction to the mention of Vinnie’s name. But I didn’t want Toby to think I was a freak for never having been married. “I know, mad, isn’t it. I picked a right dud. Of course, I had loads of, like, casual boyfriends and stuff, when I was in the band—no shortage of offers—but we were on the road for so long, it seemed a bit pointless having long-distance relationships. We just had no time to ourselves. And men did sometimes try and take advantage. I suppose I never really wised up to their little tricks.… ”
I trailed off awkwardly, but Toby didn’t seem to mind my slagging off his gender. I changed the subject. “How long have you been married, then? ”
“Five years,” Toby replied. “We were together for four years before that, too.”
“So Kate wasn’t the girl you were with when we met before, after that interview?” I asked cautiously, remembering the silly slapper who’d been all over Justin.
Toby laughed hollowly. “Thank God, no. That was Lorraine. My first nightmare relationship.”
“What happened?” I wondered if “first nightmare relationship” meant “first of many nightmares” or “first relationship, which just happened to be a nightmare.”
“I bought a flat so we could live together. It was a lot more than I could afford, but she insisted we get it and said she’d pay a third of the mortgage. To cut a long story short, I ended up paying for everything because she said she was skint. Next thing, she announced she’d saved up two thousand pounds and was off to New York on holiday without me.”
I was appalled. “That’s outrageous!”
“Yeah, I suppose it was,” said Toby glumly. “Plus it turned out she was having an affair, although by the time I finally kicked her out, I didn’t even care. I just wanted rid of her. But it was fine in the end, because I met Kate quite soon afterwards.”
I felt a pang in my chest at the mention of his wife. Suddenly I didn’t want to hear any more about Toby’s love life.
�
��Toby?”
“Yeah?”
“Do you have many, you know, friends? ”
Toby considered the question. A sparrow hopped onto a nearby tub of crocuses and watched us suspiciously.
“Well, not really. It sounds weird, but Ruby’s my best friend, and she’s two. And Kate, of course. The pair of them have always been enough for me, in the friends department. I have a good mate called Bill, who was my best man, and a couple of university friends I see occasionally. And that’s about it—Kate’s much more sociable than me. That’s why I’m here now, actually; there are two of her art school buddies in with her and it was getting a bit crowded in there.”
Nice, I thought. Glad that I could provide a bit of backup entertainment to pass the time. I’d been sort of hoping that he might include me in his list of friends.
“What about you?” Toby asked. “You’ve got tons of cards in your room. I bet you’re really popular.”
I snorted. “Oh yeah, and my room’s overflowing with visitors—not. Apart from my mother, who doesn’t count. What does that tell you?”
Toby looked in my eyes. “It tells me that you and Sam were so close, and you were so tied up with the band from such a young age, that you might not have had the time or the inclination to make any other friends, and now maybe you’re regretting it.”
I stood up, suddenly annoyed. Bloody Toby and his bloody perfect life (well, I never said I was rational). “I don’t need the amateur psychology, thanks. I get enough of that from the psychotherapist, and he’s a waste of space. Anyway, I’m a bit tired now, so I think I’ll get back to my room. Maybe see you around, if you’ve got the time.”
“Ruby’ll be here tomorrow, too. I’d like to bring her in, if you don’t mind.”
I shrugged and walked away, back inside the hospital. As I pressed the button to summon the lift, a blurry reflection in the metal doors loomed up behind me. Toby had followed me in. He dropped our two unfinished cups of tea into a nearby bin with a soft slosh, reached out his hand, and gently squeezed my fingers.
