by Sara Barnard
We stand there nodding at each other.
‘Shall we go in?’ he suggests.
‘Yeah!’ I open the door and gesture for him to walk in front of me. ‘How are you?’
He shrugs. ‘OK. You?’
‘I’m good. I mean, just fine. Still getting over exams being finished and me being free, you know?’ He’s walking straight over to the bar and I follow, wondering as I speak whether I should remind him I’m only sixteen, and it’s probably safest if he gets me a Coke. ‘I’ve waited for this moment for so long, and now it’s here, it’s actually pretty weird. Did you feel like that after exams?’ I remember only after I say this that Dawson was home-schooled, so I add, before he can say anything, ‘I guess it was different for you anyway. But still, it’s a milestone, isn’t—?’
Shit.
I’ve been so busy trying to take in all of his face as we go, I’ve walked straight into a chair, and oh shit, I’m falling. I’m falling over the chair. This is a disaster. This is a nightmare. This is . . . Ow.
‘Shit!’ I hear Dawson say, and there’s a lot going on in that ‘shit’. There’s, ‘What is wrong with this girl?’ and, ‘I shouldn’t have come,’ and, ‘Who falls over a chair?’ and, ‘This is so embarrassing. I hope no one’s looking at me!’ and, finally, a hint of, ‘I hope she hasn’t hurt herself.’
I tell myself, as I get to my feet and pull the chair up with me, pushing it under the table, that a hint is better than nothing.
‘You OK?’ Dawson asks in a voice that sounds more wary than actually concerned.
‘Yeah,’ I say, trying to make my voice light. I want to make a joke, but I can’t think of one. I hate how he’s looking at me, and I just need to say something, anything, to change that expression, anything but . . . ‘I have a sight problem!’ I blurt it out. Oh God. God, no, Kaitlyn – why?!
‘Oh,’ he says. Rabbit in headlights. ‘Ah . . . OK.’
It’s not even why I walked into the freaking chair! I walked into the chair because I was looking at his stupid face! Why did I mention my sight? Whhhyyyy????
We both stand there in an incredibly awkward silence for a full minute, before he finally says, ‘Shall I get the drinks in?’
‘Yes, please,’ I say.
He gets me a vodka and Coke, and I’m too embarrassed to say anything about being underage, so I just sip it gratefully. I feel like I might cry if I try to talk. Why, after a whole year of avoiding the subject, of trying to decide the best way to tell Dawson without him changing his opinion of me, did I just blurt it out in the middle of a pub? After tripping over something? There literally couldn’t be a worse way or time to do the big reveal. I’m such a disaster.
‘So, uh, Hugo’s bash,’ Dawson says. He’s drained half his drink in one go. ‘What do you reckon; cringey posh-boy wankfest, or over-the-top try-hard blowout?’
‘Andorboth,’ I say, and he laughs, which makes me relax a bit. ‘Bet you ten quid it’ll be catered or something.’
Dawson’s smile tightens. ‘I take that bet, but let’s not sully the occasion with something as common as money,’ he says.
‘What, then?’
‘Honour,’ he says. ‘Indebted with honour. If it’s catered, you win, and I owe you one. If there isn’t, I win, and you owe me one.’
‘That sounds vague,’ I say.
He grins. ‘Exactly.’
‘So basically, whoever wins calls the shots?’
He nods.
‘OK, cool,’ I say. It’s weird, but it has potential, plus having Dawson in my debt means keeping him in my life. And even if I lose, being in his debt doesn’t sound all that bad to me.
I sneak a glance at Dawson over his glass and can’t help smiling. I know Dawson’s got a lot of crap over the last few years for how he went from being super attractive to, well, not-so-super attractive, but since I’ve got to know him, I’ve come to really like his face. Plus, if he was still super famous gorgeous Dawson, maybe he’d never have been in the lift, and we’d never have met. And I’m glad that we’ve met.
‘It might be good,’ I say. ‘We might have fun.’
Dawson twists his mouth in a wry half-smile and shrugs. ‘We might,’ he says.
We stay at the pub for half an hour before we head to Hugo’s place together. It’s only a ten-minute walk, but Dawson still suggests we get a cab.
‘I’m fine to walk,’ I say.
‘You sure?’
‘Yeah.’
I’m not sure why he seems so uncertain, until he smiles awkwardly and says, ‘Do you, um, want my arm or something?’
A smile blooms over my face as I shake my head. ‘No, I’m fine. But thanks.’ He doesn’t look sure, so I add, ‘Just let me know if there are any bumps in the pavement, OK?’
We walk slowly, and I tell him a little bit more about Stargardt disease, making sure to keep it light, playing down how completely it has derailed my life. I ask him about his acting, but he shrugs it off, telling me that it’s going great, just great, but he doesn’t want to jinx anything by talking about it.
When we finally get to Hugo’s, we both stop at the end of the drive, looking from the building to each other.
‘Look, maybe we should just blow this off,’ Dawson says, and then he makes a weird kind of face, like he wants to swallow the words back up again. ‘I mean, give it a miss.’
I look at him. ‘Is that what you . . . ? Do you want to?’ Does he mean he just wants to spend time with me? Alone? Helium right into my heart. ‘We can go somewhere else, yeah,’ I say. ‘We could go back to the pub.’
Dawson looks at me for a moment, but in the growing dark I can’t quite make out the expression on his face. ‘Er, I guess we should show our faces,’ he says. ‘Since we’re here.’
‘Yeah,’ I say quickly. ‘And we’re here for Steven, aren’t we?’
‘Yeah, for Steven,’ he agrees. ‘We’ll say hi to the crew, toast Steven, and be on our way.’
I smile. ‘Are we a crew?’
He laughs, surprisingly self-conscious. ‘Nah, I don’t know why I said that. Let’s just go in, shall we?’
Dawson was right. The party isn’t catered.
But there is plenty of wine.
And I am drunk.
The six of us are in Hugo’s living room, and it’s nothing like as bad as I thought it would be. I’m sitting on the floor by the giant TV, talking to Velvet about my hair. I changed the colour of the stripe from blue to pink after my GCSEs, and it looks awesome, if I do say so myself. Velvet thinks so too, and she keeps reaching out a hand and touching it, saying, ‘But it’s just so cool!’ She’s a bit drunk as well.
‘You should get one!’ I say. ‘What’s your favourite colour?’
‘Hey, ladies,’ Hugo says, sinking down on to his knees beside us. ‘What are we talking about?’
‘Kaitlyn’s amazing hair,’ Velvet says. ‘Isn’t it great?’
Hugo glances at me, his face making it very obvious that he doesn’t think it’s great. ‘Uh, sure,’ he says. ‘Kaitlyn, Dawson’s looking for you.’
‘Is he?’ I say, my voice going up a key.
Velvet notices and grins. ‘Aw, you and Dawson . . . ?’ she asks.
‘We—’
‘It seemed pretty important,’ Hugo interrupts. He leans in and grins at Velvet. Oh, OK. ‘How are you? Do you need a top up?’
I leave them to it and get up to go and find Dawson. The lights are dimmed low, and Hugo’s flat is still completely unfamiliar, so manoeuvring around isn’t an easy task. I keep my hand on the wall as I walk along the hall, my vision blurred through the alcohol and, well, being my vision. I make a mental note (that I’ll probably forget) to tell Dawson that, in the future, him ‘looking for me’ should actually involve just that, not the other way around.
‘You OK, Kaitlyn?’ a boy’s voice asks, and I turn hopefully, even though the accent is all wrong, which means the voice belongs to Joe, not Dawson.
‘Do you know where Dawson is?�
� I ask.
‘He was out on the balcony of the bedroom,’ Joe says. ‘Are you OK?’ he asks again. ‘You’re hanging on to the wall a bit.’
‘It’s a blindness thing,’ I say.
‘Oh!’ he exclaims. ‘Are you, um—’
‘Just kidding!’ I call over my shoulder, spotting the bedroom door. ‘I’m fine!’
I walk into the room and head straight for the balcony. I can just make out the outline of Dawson, the sound of him talking. He must be on the phone. ‘Josh, please,’ he’s saying.
I step on to the balcony beside him just as he hangs up with a frustrated growl, shaking his head at nothing, shoving his phone back into his pocket.
‘Hi!’ I say.
Dawson looks at me, and I try to make out his expression. Confused, a little annoyed, I think.
‘Everything OK?’ I ask.
‘What are you doing out here?’ he replies.
‘You were looking for me,’ I remind him, even though it’s a bit weird for him to have been looking for me out here on the balcony, while he was on his phone. But whatever. ‘And here I am.’
‘Do you want to leave?’ Dawson asks.
‘No, I like it here,’ I say. Through the open balcony door, I hear a shout from inside the house, and then laughter. My friends, I think. My crew. ‘With you.’
‘With me?’
Another step closer. ‘Yeah.’ I lift my face, close my eyes, ready for the first kiss.
There’s a pause, and then the worst sound in the world. The sound of Dawson saying, ‘Oh no. Oh no, Kaity. It’s not like . . . Oh shit.’
I open my eyes, then immediately regret it. I don’t want to see the face he’s making.
‘I’m not . . . It’s not you – it’s . . . Shit. Shit.’
‘Never mind!’ I say, pushing down the agony and pasting a smile on my face. ‘My bad. The wine.’ And me. Me being stupid. Me being stupid enough to risk hope. ‘Hey, you know what, I think I will leave. So . . .’
He grabs my arm. ‘Don’t go. I’m sorry. I do like you, I do. I feel like we . . . we can be good mates, can’t we?’
Ow. Ow. A hundred knives of ow.
‘Sure,’ I say. ‘Of course. I’m just gonna go.’
‘Kait, no, wait.’ He screws up his eyes in frustration, groans and then says, eyes still closed, ‘I’m gay.’
Silence. I try to stare at him through the dark. ‘You’re what?’
‘I like men, Kait,’ he says. ‘I’m gay.’
SASHA
The poshest person I thought I knew was Georgia Darwich, who lives in the loft extension of a big four-bed semi, and has her own forty-three-inch HD telly with Sky, Netflix and Amazon Prime.
Obviously I was wrong. Hugo’s flat could be the set for Made in Chelsea: The Manchester Edition. The floors are wood, the sofas leather, and the pop art on the wall isn’t the sort of thing you can buy in IKEA. This place is so posh, there’s no knowing what telly they have because it’s recessed into the ceiling waiting to be summoned with a clap.
I try another sip of my drink and do my best not to pull a face. Every Christmas – whether it’s the whole Harris clan, or just the usual suspects of me, Dad and Nan, who see each other all the time – my nan pops a bottle the second her first guest arrives. Only my drink is always more orange juice than fizz. On its own, champagne tastes disgusting.
Not that any of the others seem to think so – everyone else has necked their first glass in nanoseconds and Hugo’s popped at least another bottle since.
‘Is there anything to eat?’ Velvet says, her skirt riding even further up her legs as she glances round looking for Hugo.
‘Let’s see.’ I put my glass down and hurry across to the kitchen. When I get there, I’m disappointed to find that Velvet hasn’t actually come with me. She’s wrestling with the massive doors that lead out on to the balcony and yelling at Joe to give her a hand.
‘The view will be lush!’
We’re seventeen floors up, so it will be. I wonder whether anyone else climbed the stairs rather than risk the lift.
One year on, and I still carry the shopping up to our third-floor flat rather than take the Metal Box of My Worst Nightmares. Told Dad it was a fitness thing.
The kitchen’s as flashy as the lounge. The stove is one of those flat-glass jobs, so shiny I can see my chins as I frown down at it, wondering how you’re supposed to turn it on. The cupboard underneath has exactly one frying pan and one normal pan. Lifting one up, I find a price label on the bottom. Does anyone actually do any living here?
‘And you’re looking for what, exactly?’ Hugo’s public school drawl startles me, and I smack my knee in my haste to shut the cupboard door.
‘Food.’
‘Of course.’ He’s looking at my body when he waves towards the shiny steel fridge. ‘Take whatever you want.’
There’s a lot of alcohol, even though there’s a separate wine fridge next to it. Beyond that, it’s a choice of Harrods grapefruit marmalade, smoked salmon mousse and a tub of enormous green olives.
I opt for the olives because I don’t want to have to ask Hugo where the bread is.
‘It’s not for me.’ My explanation sounds more like a defence. ‘Velvet said she hadn’t eaten and—’
‘She doesn’t need to.’ Hugo drains his glass and raises the bottle he’s holding. ‘Liquid lunch.’
‘It’s not lunchtime.’
‘You’re tons of bloody fun, aren’t you?’ Hugo sneers, topping himself up, then swigging back the dribble that’s left in the bottle and beckoning for me to pass him another. ‘No, that’s cava – no one drinks that shit. The Veuve.’
I don’t know which one is the Veuve.
‘The one with the orange fucking label.’
I pass him the one with the orange fucking label. He doesn’t make any move to open it or offer me any, just points to a cupboard and tells me that’s where I’ll find the bowls, then leaves.
I hate him. The way he talks, the way he looks through me like my existence barely registers.
Tipping the olives out into a glass dish, I pop one in my mouth, then spit it right back out into my hand. It tastes like it’s been marinated in Cif.
I guess that’s how the other half live. With a telly you can’t see, and food you can’t eat.
Back in the lounge, Hugo’s taken the bottle out on to the balcony where Velvet and Joe are leaning over the wall ogling the lights of Manchester. There’s only Kaitlyn and Dawson in here with their heads close together like they’re having the deepest of meaningfuls.
‘I found olives,’ I say, setting them down in the middle of the glass coffee table.
Kaitlyn looks up with a vague smile, like she isn’t even seeing me, but Dawson doesn’t so much as register my existence.
‘They’re disgusting anyway,’ I say.
No one cares.
All of a sudden, I want to cry. I hate it here. I don’t know these people. Why did I even come? Why are we drinking champagne and listening to Kendrick Lamar? Isn’t this supposed to be a sombre occasion? Steven Jeffords died, for God’s sake, and everyone here seems to be using it as an excuse to party.
I get up so abruptly that even Dawson notices.
‘Where’re you off to?’ he asks as I step quickly across the rug, heading for the hallway.
‘The loo.’
The first door I open is a cupboard with hardly any coats in it. The second is a bedroom that looks like no one’s ever slept there. This place is more like a show home than a real home, and I wonder how much time it takes to clean. Two Saturdays working for Klean Sweap and that’s how I measure houses, now, apparently: in cleaning hours.
‘You’re tons of bloody fun, aren’t you?’
Hugo’s voice sends a spike of rage right through me, even though I’m only hearing it in my head. People like him might not need to take a Saturday job on minimum wage, but not all of us have rich, powerful parents. Some of us have a financially questionable parent who
se courier career moved seamlessly from temporary to chronic, and another who only exists as Facebook posts that I have to copy and paste into Google Translate to find out she’s pregnant. Again. Two half-sisters I’ve never met. And a half-foetus.
Tomorrow, someone like me will come here and clean up whatever mess we make, but after a shift at Klean Sweap, I’m the one who has to clean our house; I’m the one who has to make a decision between watering down the bleach to last another fortnight or going without furniture polish. People like Hugo don’t spend hours dismantling the vacuum to pick out a rogue hair grip before patching the hose up with gaffer tape – they just order the latest Dyson from John Lewis and charge it to Mummy’s credit card.
The last door I try leads to another bedroom so big and empty that I’m drawn inside, my bare feet sinking into the pile of the same thick rug that’s in the lounge. Opposite, there’s more expensive art hanging over the enormous bed, and to my right there’s a wall of floor-to-ceiling windows leading out on to yet another balcony. Turning to my left, I come face to face with a bathroom. Right there, standing on a marble step like the altar of a heathen church, there’s a pair of sinks, a freestanding bath, and a frosted screen hiding what I guess must be a shower. Or a toilet? I hope not. That would be gross.
Not believing it will work, I clap my hands . . . and the lights come on!
I hop up to inspect the fancy bottles lined along the two sinks, picking each one up to read the label. Hugo’s mum has eight different sorts of moisturizer. I use Superdrug’s own-brand hand cream.
A mirrored box reveals a cloud of cotton wool nestled inside when I was half expecting a stash of prescription drugs. Nestled on top is a pair of diamond studs.
They might belong to Hugo’s mum, but it’s my mum they remind me of. Her taking me to Claire’s Accessories just after I turned six.
‘My little girl.’ Mum had cradled my chin and kissed my forehead. I’d long learned not to cry at anything if I wanted to make people happy. ‘So grown up. And grown-up girls deserve diamonds.’
She’d reached for a pair of glistening studs just like the ones she always wore. I’d asked if they were real, because I’m an idiot, and Mum had laughed and kissed me again as we walked up to the counter.
