by Mary Hooper
B: I go into London and catch the 10am train out. It gets to Hurley at 11.30. Will U meet me at the station?
Z: U bet!
B: I get the 8.15pm train back, OK?
Z: I thought you were staying the night.
B: I never said that.
Z: Aaahhh. I’ve got all sorts of good stuff planned. Know what I mean?
B: Sorry!
Z: I thought we were spending the whole weekend together and you’d go back on Sunday.
B: Can’t. Not the first time – my mum and dad would have an eppy.
Z: Maybe I’ll persuade U when U get here …
B: No. Really.
Z: OK, Babes. Whatever you say.
I felt a bit peculiar when I went to bed that night. Some of the things he said had sounded strange. And I wasn’t sure if his name really was Adam, or whether it was Matthew all along and he just didn’t want to admit that he’d told Sexylegs his real name before he’d told me.
I was worried about him trying to make me stay the night, too. If I didn’t, then obviously Sexylegs would be there like a shot.
In the problem pages there’s one that crops up over and over again: ‘I love my boyfriend but I just don’t feel ready to sleep with him. He says he’ll pack me up if I don’t, though, so what shall I do?’
Before, I’d always felt pretty scornful when I’d read those. I mean, why be forced into doing something you don’t want to? If you don’t want to sleep with him, then you don’t. End of problem. I didn’t think I’d ever be worried about something like that. But I was now. I didn’t want to lose my brand new boyfriend to Sexylegs.
Section 7
Pause for break and sound check. Recording resumed at 2.50pm
‘Up you get, Amy-Bee. It’s a lovely morning,’ Mum said, coming into my bedroom early on Saturday. ‘Where are you meeting Serena?’
I gestured vaguely down the road. ‘At her place,’ I said.
She nodded. Luckily she was just about to go downstairs and open the shop so she was a bit preoccupied. ‘I won’t expect you home until late, then. Mind how you go – double-check your train times. It’s the five past nine train you’re catching from London, isn’t it?’
I nodded.
‘And get a taxi back from the station tonight. I’ve left some extra money on the kitchen shelf for you.’
I nodded, feeling a bit awful. Of course, I’d told her a few little lies before, and once I’d bunked off school with Bethany and Lou and she’d never found out, but this was the most deceitful thing I’d ever done by miles. I knew that if she discovered what I was doing she’d never forgive me.
‘Keep your mobile on you. And ring me up sometime during the day.’
I nodded.
‘Just so I know that you got down there OK.’
‘I have been out without you before, you know.’
‘I hope you two get on all right,’ she said, and added, smiling reassuringly, ‘she seems a nice girl.’
‘Yeah,’ I said, thinking: just go.
‘And maybe if you go round with her you won’t need these Internet people,’ she added.
‘I’m just going out with her for the day, Mum,’ I said. ‘I’m not marrying her.’
‘Oh, well,’ she said, ‘I hope you have a nice time.’ She went out of my bedroom, clattering down the stairs to the shop, and I carried on getting dressed, trying to justify what I was doing.
What I was thinking to myself was that Mum and Dad just didn’t understand. I mean, I knew they meant well but they didn’t realise how quickly you could get to know someone these days with the Internet. People made friends instantly, people all over the place. The world was getting smaller – I was always reading that. You didn’t have to end up with someone you went to school with, and marrying the boy next door was old hat. Life was much more interesting now, it was cool that you could get to know different people, people you might never have bumped into in a million years in the ordinary run of things.
Obviously I was taking a bit of a risk, but I wasn’t daft. I’d seen the Soaps. If I got there and saw a guy waiting for me who was different from the photo, who wasn’t what I was expecting, then I’d be back on the next train like a shot. I wouldn’t even speak to him unless he looked all right. And as for going to his flat – well, I’d decided I wasn’t going to do that, either. Not unless I was completely and utterly certain about him. The thing was, I’d never had a boyfriend with a flat before, so it was new and uncharted territory. If you said you’d go back to someone’s flat, did that mean you were up for sleeping with them? I wasn’t sure, but I thought it probably did, so I reckoned it was better not to go there in the first place. Even with the threat of Sexylegs hanging over me I wasn’t going to sleep with him. Not yet, anyway.
I couldn’t decide what to wear. It was a warm day but I’d be arriving back quite late, so I needed some sort of jacket. The trouble was, the only decent jeans I had didn’t really go with my denim jacket. And my tee-shirts were all last year’s ones and were a bit wavy around the edges. After trying on and throwing off ten different outfits, I eventually settled on my denim skirt, with a strappy white vest over the top, and a white cotton shirt over that.
I found my moonstone ring and silver armband, put on some make-up, borrowed Mum’s heated brush thing to make my hair go a bit bouncy, and looked at the finished effect.
Not too bad. I put on a bit more dark-grey eye shadow, thinking that maybe he was used to going out with older girls who wore a lot of make-up, and sprayed myself with perfume, then I put a few things in my rucksack: sun cream, lipstick, tissues, magazine, denim jacket. As I made all these careful preparations, I forgot all the things I’d been worried about and began to get more and more excited. A day at the seaside with my boyfriend. I never thought I’d be saying that so soon.
Getting the train out of London was brilliant. I bought a newspaper but I didn’t look at it, or my magazine, just stared out of the window thinking about the day ahead. I’d hardly been anywhere by train – not a long journey – and there was something really exciting about it. I felt that anything could happen; I could meet anyone. Of course, I was nervous as well, but that just added to the thrill of it all. I was travelling out of my own life and into someone else’s. I might be meeting the love of my life, or I might be meeting a complete nerd. Either way it was something different and was a hell of a lot better than hanging around the shop all weekend and – big highlight of Saturday – wondering if there would be any decent boys on Blind Date.
My feelings were jumping about all over the place by the time the train neared the station at the other end. Suppose he didn’t turn up? Suppose he didn’t like the look of me and made an excuse and left? Suppose all Mum’s warnings came true and he was a pervert? You got good-looking perverts, didn’t you? They weren’t all shifty old men with hair slicked across their bald spot.
We’d arranged to meet by the bookstand but as I got off the train and gave in my ticket, I could see that there were two bookstands. I walked out and just stood still for a moment, not knowing which one to make for. My legs shook, my stomach churned, and I was all set to fly out of the booking hall and back to London if anyone approached me who looked at all dodgy.
‘Buzybee. Amy!’ someone spoke behind me and I wheeled round, saw him, and felt like bursting into tears of relief. It was OK! It was him – the same him in the photograph. ‘Hi!’ I said, laughing a bit hysterically.
He leaned forward and kissed me on the cheek and then we stood back and looked at each other, smiling.
If I’m honest, my first thought, after – phew, it’s OK! – was one of disappointment, because although he was wearing cool gear – what looked like designer jeans and a decent shirt with white tee-shirt under – he didn’t look nearly as good as he had done in his photograph. He was probably a couple of years older than when he’d had it taken, and his hair was cut much shorter, almost cropped, which made his face look pudgy. In the photo he’d been smiling slightl
y with his mouth closed, but now he was showing teeth and gums, and the teeth were discoloured and uneven, with one eye-tooth crammed high in his front gum and making the other teeth twist round it. He was never 5′8″, either. He was just about the same height as me.
But still … Following the disappointment came another feeling – that maybe it was better that he wasn’t gorgeous. I wasn’t gorgeous either, and it would have been difficult to keep him if I wasn’t up to his level of attractiveness and he had girls after him all the time. Besides, being good looking was all very well, but it was what a person was like on the inside that mattered. Mum was always telling me this.
‘Train all right?’ he asked.
I nodded and he slung a casual arm round my shoulders. ‘It’s great to have you here, Buzybee!’ he said, squeezing me.
‘My train back goes at eight-fifteen,’ I said. I wanted to get that bit in straight away. ‘I’ve got to get it to make sure I get the last train out of London back to Watford.’
He nodded. ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘I’ll make sure you catch it.’
Relieved, I gave him a beaming smile. So far so good: he’d turned up, he seemed pleased to see me, he looked like his photo and he’d accepted that I wasn’t going to stay the night. Four ticks out of four. I’d listened to Mum so much she’d practically brainwashed me into thinking he was going to be a complete psycho-maniac.
On the other hand, it wasn’t love at first sight. Not for me. That was a bit disappointing. But perhaps love would grow. I wanted it to, I really did. He was my one big hope in the world and I wanted him to be everything I’d dreamed he’d be.
We went for coffee in one of those places with sofas and easy chairs. It had computers with Internet access, too, and we had a laugh recounting the teen chat rooms and all the things we’d seen people write. We were sitting really close on a leather sofa and I was very conscious of his leg pressing up against mine. I felt OK with it. He was my boyfriend; having a boyfriend meant getting close to each other.
‘I never go into chat rooms now,’ I said.
He shook his head. ‘Me neither. They’re useless.’
‘I thought you found Sexylegs in a chat room?’
‘Oh, yeah, I did go into one recently,’ he said. ‘It was down as one of my Favourites and I went into it by default.’
Mmm, I thought. I wasn’t sure it happened like that. ‘She sounds fun, doesn’t she?’ I said lightly.
‘She sounds like sex on a stick.’
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘I wonder what her real name is?’
‘Probably something quite ordinary. Maureen. Janet. Joan!’ he said with a laugh.
‘And yours is really Adam?’
He nodded. ‘But I like Zed best,’ he said.
‘So shall we stick to calling each other by our chat room names?’
‘That’s how we know each other best, isn’t it?’ He grinned. ‘Besides, Zed and Buzybee sound really cool. Cooler than Adam and Amy, at any rate.’
‘That settles it, then,’ I said.
When we came out of the coffee place it was still quite warm out, but the sun had a sort of mist over it and the sky looked hazy.
‘It’s better when it’s not too hot,’ Zed said. ‘On a really blistering Saturday you get coachloads of day-trippers coming in and you can’t move without falling over windbreaks and kids’ fishing nets.’
‘So what have you got planned for today?’ I asked, and then, thinking that that might sound as if I expected a non-stop series of happenings, added, ‘Not that we’ve got to do anything, really. Just going somewhere new is good. Being here is great.’
‘Going somewhere new – and meeting up at last,’ he said, giving my shoulder another squeeze.
‘Have you ever met anyone else you’ve got to know through the Internet?’ I asked.
He shook his head. ‘Only you.’ He pulled me close. ‘And I tell you, Babes, I just knew you were going to be really special, right from the beginning.’
I smiled at him. He was nice. Really nice.
I found I was saying this to myself over and over again as we walked through the town and looked in various shops and had different landmarks pointed out. He’s nice. Really nice. Almost as if I was trying to convince myself.
I found that I liked him best when I was walking on the side of him that didn’t show the misshapen eye-tooth. Maybe, I thought, when we knew each other better, I could persuade him to go to the dentist and have it taken out.
‘Do you live quite near?’ I asked him. I’d decided earlier that I wasn’t going to ask, that it might lead to him saying that he’d show me his flat, but it just came out as a natural thing to say.
‘Yeah. Not too far,’ he said. ‘My landlord’s in my flat this weekend though, decorating, so we can’t go in.’
I was relieved – and then I thought of something. He’d told me he lived in a brand new flat and that he had a mortgage. So, if it was new, why was it being done up already? Also, if he was buying it, why did he have a landlord? Of course, I couldn’t ask things like that – it might have sounded as if I was checking up on him.
‘I’ve got us a picnic,’ he said. ‘I bought it earlier but I didn’t want to drag it round town, so I took it into my office and left it there.’
‘You’ve got the keys to your office?’ I asked, surprised.
‘Sure,’ he said. ‘I often go in at the weekends. Valued member of staff, me. Key member of staff – ha ha!’
I laughed.
‘I thought you might like to see where I write to you from. Then you can picture me tapping away … ’
We seemed to have done a complete circuit of the town by then. I’d seen the cinema and the playhouse, the pier and the small quay. We’d passed the hospital where he DJ’d, which was a big old building with a series of Portakabins tacked on each side, and we’d even gone down the back roads and seen two or three streets of tall, shabby buildings, with peeling paint and broken windows.
‘Dumps,’ Zed had said, glancing at them briefly. ‘Bed and breakfast places. Where the down-and-outs live.’
I’d looked up at them. Some were fairly OK, but others were crumbling to bits, with newspapers or old towels up at the windows. One had a bag saying HM Prison papered over a broken pane, and another had a pile of sagging mattresses in the front garden and a wardrobe blocking the doorway.
Going out of the town we went up a hill past some fairly new blocks of flats, and then into an estate of office blocks and small factories. A board at the front of the estate said: GLOBAL BUSINESS PARK.
His firm was called Burlington Office Supplies and seemed to be a stationery firm, which was a bit of a surprise because the way he’d spoken of it – all high finance and big deals – I’d thought it was going to be something to do with stocks and shares or foreign banking. Even Beaky had said that he sounded such a whiz-kid it was funny he wasn’t working in the City. The office was on the second floor of a block and seemed quite ordinary, really: a big open space, with desks and computers and screens sectioning off one desk from another, like in the background of the photo he’d sent.
‘Where do you sit and write to me from, then?’ I asked.
‘Oh, those two work stations,’ he said, pointing.
‘Two work stations?’
He waved his hand. ‘We hot desk,’ he said.
‘What’s that?’
‘Well, we sit where we like and access our files from wherever. Depends who’s in and who’s out.’
On one of the desks stood a big blue plastic picnic box. ‘There we are,’ he said. ‘All ready and waiting.’
‘Brilliant,’ I said. ‘I’m starving.’
‘D’you want to log on or anything while you’re here? Check your emails?’
I shook my head.
‘I just want to look at a few things. Work stuff,’ he said. ‘Big deal going on.’
He switched on the nearest machine and while I waited, I looked around the place. He’d once mentioned the Best
Salesman board and it was there with Burlington High Flyers along the top and lots of small pictures of men – and two women – around the edge. There was a big chart with a zig-zag line and more photos, and I looked for Zed’s photo but couldn’t see it. I wondered why, but didn’t like to ask. Perhaps, because he was some sort of manager, they didn’t go up there with the ordinary salesmen. Or maybe he’d done really, really badly that week and wasn’t even in the running.
I went into the loo, brushed my hair and put a bit more lipstick on, then sat around thinking about what I’d say about my day to other people – to Beaky or anyone who’d listen: Popped into my boyfriend’s office first – he had to pick up a few important messages. And then he’d made this gorgeous picnic and we took it on the beach and just chilled out.
He was online for a while and I was dying to see what he was doing, but didn’t like to look. I think a bit of me was scared that I might find out that he was writing to Sexylegs. When he’d finished we got the cool box and he locked up, then we walked down the hill towards the sea front. We didn’t go towards the busy, main stretch with the amusement machines and novelty shops, because Zed said he wanted to take me to a much better place, up near the sand dunes. He said we’d be away from all the day-trippers there and wouldn’t be disturbed.
It was then that I felt a tiny bit of – not panic – but worry. If we were going to the sand dunes we’d be pretty remote, so would it be OK to be on my own with him, completely on my own? Was it safe? And then I glanced at him chatting away – so nice, so relaxed and ordinary, really, and told myself that of course it would be all right. I wasn’t in a Soap or a TV serial, this was real life. What is it that they always say on the police crime programmes – that all the things they’ve been dramatising are rare, that you can sleep easy in your bed because the bad things hardly ever happen?
I then started to have other worries: would we have enough to talk about once we were alone? Was there going to be any snogging? If so, would it be OK? Would he kiss all right? Would he think I was a complete beginner? He was a few years older than me, he was bound to be more experienced and I might make a complete idiot of myself. Following the kissing – would he try it on? If so, what was I going to do? Was I letting myself in for it by going up to the sand dunes with him? Would he take it as some sort of signal that I was up for it?
