by Fiona Neill
‘What do you think I’m replacing?’ he asked, interested in this new angle.
‘Contact with real women,’ I said. ‘You need to connect physically with me. Not just visually. You need to use all your senses. Smell, touch.’
He kissed me and told me how much he adored it when I got scientific on him.
I got more direct. I said that we needed to try and be more like normal people, and he looked worried and said defensively that there was no such thing as normal. I told him I understood that he was scared of trying in case it didn’t work but that I was his best chance of being cured. ‘I’m not ill,’ he said. His tone had definitely got more defensive recently.
‘Addiction is a disease of the brain,’ I replied. ‘If you don’t stop this it might ruin your ability to ever properly love another human being.’
‘But I love you, Romy,’ he insisted. It was the first time anyone who wasn’t family had told me that they loved me but although I wanted more than anything for it to feel right, it didn’t. He didn’t seem to get it. Later it occurred to me that he didn’t want to get it. And later still that he couldn’t get it. It was first love with complications, and that stays with you for ever.
I turned to Mum for comfort. I could only pose the most oblique questions. I wondered if there was a moment in her life when she felt she had finally become an adult and everything made sense. She said that everyone was just muddling through as best they could, and that as the years went by you just learned to do a better impersonation of being a grown-up. I wanted to warn her that Dad was doing a particularly poor job on this front but instead found myself giving her a hug and promising always to be there for her. The important thing, Mum said as I held her, was to try and avoid making any decisions that I might regret down the line. She said that she thought it was a mistake not to apply for medical school and that I should at least try and get some work experience before making such a dramatic decision. I couldn’t face an argument about this so I retreated.
‘It’s good to take things slowly,’ said Becca, sensing I was struggling. ‘More romantic. He’ll have more respect for you. Virginity is so retro chic, like vinyl and Polaroid cameras. In the long term less is definitely more with boys.’
I couldn’t work out if she really meant what she was saying or was still working through some residue of resentment towards Marnie. If Marnie hadn’t been there I might have told Becca about Jay. Not only was Becca completely trustworthy, she was also unshakeably unshockable. She would have told me to walk away. That Jay’s problem was bigger than I was. She would almost certainly have told me to get rid of the video. It seems crazy now but the only thing I didn’t worry about was other people seeing our film. I trusted Jay absolutely.
I pulled the dress I had borrowed from Marnie over my head and was freaked out by how short it was. It was made of a floaty material that would billow in the breeze. But it was too late to do anything about it. Becca crimped my hair. She drew three silver stars on my cheek while Marnie applied a cherry-black lipstick. I put on a pair of heavy black leather cowboy boots to balance the delicacy of the rest of the outfit.
‘You look like someone from Game of Thrones,’ said Becca. ‘Forget taking it slowly. When Jay sees you like this, he’ll throw you over his shoulder and take you straight up to his bedroom.’
‘Really?’ I asked, because despite what Mum thought I dressed for myself not other people.
‘God, how am I going to pee?’ Marnie shrieked. ‘I hadn’t thought that through either.’ She had forgiven us. As I was soon to discover, that was one of Marnie’s best qualities: her ability to forgive and forget so quickly. Although, as Mum said, perhaps if she forgave a little more slowly, she wouldn’t forget so quickly and might learn more from her mistakes. Becca and I rashly promised that one of us would accompany her to the toilet at all times.
Ben came in to tell us excitedly that there were so many lights flashing in the Fairports’ garden that the astronauts would be able to see the party from the International Space Station when they orbited over Norfolk later that night. Mum had already left for her teachers’ party at school so I instructed Ben to tell Dad that we had gone. I guessed Dad was probably downstairs in his office. There was no way that I ever wanted to set foot in that room again.
Ben was right. The Fairports’ garden glowed in the dark. Fairy lights had been threaded through the hedge adjacent to our garden and around the trunks of trees on the edge of the wood, so that it looked as though a million fireflies were watching over us as we headed towards the party. Lanterns hung from the branches of trees, some so high that Marnie claimed it gave her vertigo just to look up at them. The path was flanked by tall candles that stood erect like a guard of honour. We walked between them together, sisters in arms. No inkling of what lay ahead.
In the distance the sweat lodge pulsated with music, and the lights seemed to twinkle in time to the beat. Pink and green beams streamed through the roof into the night sky. I let Marnie and Becca drift ahead and stood still, craning my neck upwards. It was a clear night. The sky was shrouded with stars. I didn’t see Jay approaching in the dark. He grabbed me from behind and pressed himself against me. Someone turned up the music. Daft Punk was playing.
‘You look amazing. I love your hair,’ he whispered in my ear. ‘Whichever world you come from I want to come and live in it with you.’ He kissed me on the nape of the neck and my entire body shivered.
Marnie and Becca had gone into a field, where a flock of matronly-looking sheep had been spray-painted in fluorescent colours. Marnie crouched beside a sleepy bright pink ewe that perfectly matched her outfit, while Becca took photos of her striking different poses and uploaded them on Instagram.
‘What were you thinking about as you looked up at the sky?’ Jay asked.
‘Honestly?’
He tightened his grip around my shoulders and I stroked the muscles on his forearm, noticing for the first time how his arms were painted with strange black hieroglyphics.
‘I was thinking about how the universe isn’t infinitely old, it’s fourteen billion years old, and that because the speed of light is constant you can only see objects that are less than fourteen billion light years away.’
‘Is she for real?’ Jay shouted across to Becca and Marnie. They all laughed and I joined in. Someone turned up the music and the fluorescent sheep started bleating.
‘They’re singing,’ Marnie giggled, flapping her wings in time to the music. Jay and I swayed to the beat, bare arms entwined above our heads. It was the first time we had danced together and it felt completely instinctive. Marnie had a theory that if you danced well with someone it was a sign of sexual compatibility. Becca had pointed out that Marnie danced best with the boyfriend who had turned out to be gay. I remembered that Dad couldn’t dance at all and he was obviously sexually compatible with the woman on the other end of the text messages. Maybe she couldn’t dance either. Mum, on the other hand, was a great dancer. It was all so confusing.
‘What do they mean?’ I asked, tracing my finger across the lines on his arms. I wanted a night off from thinking about my mum and dad.
‘One’s a Navajo symbol of hope and redemption,’ he said, nuzzling the side of my neck. ‘The other is the aum sign.’ He touched my head, his fingers running through my hair. ‘I’m culturally promiscuous. Like my parents.’
Marley came over holding two murky green cocktails, one in each hand.
‘It’s a love potion concocted by Wolf and Loveday,’ he announced. Marley never called his parents Mum and Dad. He looked as though he had been dipped in burnished gold, and as he got closer I realized that his entire body had been spray-painted. Even his lips and earlobes. His soft fuzz of chest hair was as stiff as candyfloss. He held two curly straws, the kind Ben loved, between his teeth. Marnie floated towards him. She stood provocatively right in front of him, so close that her breasts almost touched his T-shirt, and slowly slid the straws from the side of his mouth.
‘Stuar
t surely is a lucky man,’ Marley said. I sighed, imagining how long Becca and I would have to spend analysing this comment later. Did this prove he was interested in her? Or did it reinforce the idea that he viewed her as his friend’s girlfriend, which put her off-limits to him? What was the significance of the use of the adverb surely? This would be analysed more closely than any passage in her English A-level syllabus.
Marley presented one drink to Becca, telling her how pleased he was that she could make it to his party and the other to me. He gave me a long hard look but said nothing, probably regretting that he had invited his younger brother’s girlfriend. He was wearing a loose sleeveless T-shirt. Even his underarm hair had been spray-painted.
‘Loving your wings, Marnie,’ said Marley, trying but failing to catch the edge of one of them between his fingers as Marnie danced sprite-like from his grasp.
‘And I love your headdress,’ she replied, jiggling from one foot to the other.
‘Luke’s grandfather got it at an auction years ago.’
‘I’ve never seen it before,’ I said, sipping the cocktail. It had a bitter taste. Probably something healthy like kale, I thought. Loveday put kale in everything. Even chocolate mousse and mashed potato.
‘Do you know Luke?’ he asked me, tilting his head to one side so that the headdress slid down his forehead. I realized that he didn’t recognize me.
‘It’s me. Luke’s sister. Romy,’ I said, feeling embarrassed because contrary to what everyone said afterwards I really didn’t like being the centre of attention. He did a double take.
‘Wow,’ he said, moving right in front of me. He took my hand and lifted my arm and led me away from Jay towards the light so that he could see me properly. His hand was enormous. The flames from the candles flickered in the breeze, throwing shadows across his face. ‘You really look like you’ve come from the Kingdom of the Fairies.’
‘I cut my hair off.’ I looked down at the ground self-consciously and made circles in the dirt with the toe of my cowboy boot.
‘Shall we go and get more cocktails?’ Marnie asked him, linking her arm through his.
‘Sure,’ said Marley.
They walked back towards the house together.
‘Smooth,’ I said admiringly to Becca.
‘Smooth,’ she agreed.
‘Dance?’ asked Jay.
‘Dance,’ I agreed.
It was sweaty inside the sweat lodge, an observation that made Jay laugh. The music was too loud to speak unless your mouth was right next to someone’s ear. Everyone was dancing in one glorious mass of swaying bodies and waving arms. There were a few outliers among the crew, throwing wild moves. I saw Marnie grinding against Stuart, one eye fixed on Marley, who was working the decks. The heat had made the feathers in the headdress wilt and the gold paint start to dissolve in patches so that he looked like a Friesian cow.
Luke was doing hip hop, which he had learned from the cool kids at school back in London. When he paused, Stuart offered him a plastic bottle. Luke shook his head. Stuart took a couple of tiny sips like a baby with its first bottle and put it back in his pocket. They did a complex version of a high five. Everyone was barefoot and I could feel the ground beneath my feet sticky with spilt drinks, sweat and mud. For a split second I thought of Ben worrying about the floor he had helped to lay, but what could I do?
Wolf and Loveday were the only couple dancing together in the old-fashioned way, Loveday’s head resting on Wolf’s shoulder. At one point it looked as though they were doing a waltz. No one seemed to notice or mind. Loveday was wearing a halterneck dress with a geometric pattern. She occasionally threw her head back in sheer exuberance. At least once or twice Wolf leaned over to plant a kiss just where her breasts cleaved. The music stopped for a moment. Loveday glided over towards us.
‘We’ll go in now so we stop cramping your style,’ she shouted in my ear.
‘I don’t think anyone’s style is being cramped,’ I replied.
She brushed my cheek with her lips. ‘You look fabulous, Romy. Really beautiful.’
‘Thanks. So do you. It’s a great party,’ I said. ‘So lovely with all the lights in the trees and the full moon in the background.’
‘A party needs a full moon. That’s why we chose this date. The solar yang and the lunar yin are in harmony, which means the atmosphere is supercharged but also balanced at the same time. Our vaguest desires can become realities. Did you know that people sleep less during a full moon?’
‘It’s because it’s lighter, which means people produce less melatonin,’ I explained. ‘You need melatonin to get to sleep.’
She looked disappointed. ‘Both our boys were conceived beneath a full moon.’
‘That’s too much information, Mum,’ Jay interrupted. ‘Romy really doesn’t want to know how I came to be.’
He was right. His parents weren’t like other people. But then neither were mine.
Things I learned about parties that night: they were subject to the same subtle changes in atmospheric conditions as the weather; there was hardly anything more fun than dancing with your girlfriends; and drink and drugs brought out the best and the worst in people. Some time halfway through, the party transmogrified, to use Luke’s favourite word from World of Warcraft. Groups of people peeled away and subgroups formed and pulled apart again. ‘Like nuclear fission,’ I told Becca, explaining how new and different energy was generated when the nucleus of an atom splits, to release more neutrons.
‘Just what I was thinking,’ she teased.
We stuck around chatting outside the sweat lodge while I tried to locate my cowboy boots. There were unclaimed shoes everywhere. Stuart came up to us and asked if we wanted a couple of bumps of 2C-B and how it would kick off nicely where the E left off. At least that’s what I think he said. He sounded like a Chemistry lesson. I wouldn’t even take a swig of Coke from a can if Stuart offered it to me. So I said something about how I didn’t want anything to get between the party and me. Becca told him he should stick to the Ritalin. Fortunately whatever he was taking had mellowed him out and he didn’t react. I wondered where Marnie was but didn’t want to ask in case she was with Marley.
I realized that I hadn’t seen Jay in a while and told Becca that I was going to look for him in the house. I headed back up the path. Time had become elastic. It could have been anything between midnight and four in the morning. The only way I knew that we must have been there for hours was that the six-hour candles had burned down almost to the end of the wicks so you could only see people walking past from the calf down. I thought I spotted Marnie but when I called out her name no one responded.
I went into the house through the front door. It smelled sickly-sweet, grass mixed with patchouli oil and vegetable curry, I guessed. The sitting-room door was half open. Luke and a group of his friends were sitting around the table. He was cross-legged, expertly rolling a joint with one hand. They were totally licked and rambling on about how Google knew more about our lives than our parents did. ‘And I mean every site you have ever visited, Luke,’ joked a girl from his English class. Someone said that 90 per cent of the world’s data had been created in the past two years. Luke asked for her empirical evidence. He sounded just like Dad. She said she’d read it on the Net. Where does it all go? someone else asked. It gets stored in the cloud, Luke explained.
‘Have you noticed how they always give comfortable names to uncomfortable concepts?’ he asked. ‘Cloud sounds so cute and fluffy but really it’s a giant spy system.’
‘It’s all about the I not the T,’ agreed the girl. I noticed that they were holding hands. I could have gone in and joined them. Luke was a good older brother like that. He never made me feel unwanted. ‘Skins, please,’ he said to the girl, pointing to a packet of Rizlas on the table.
In the kitchen another group was serving themselves vegetable curry and rice from two huge saucepans on the cooker. One of the girls waved and offered me a plate of food. In the other hand she whirled a ladle ro
und and round like a baton, obliviously spraying sauce across the room. She was wearing a shimmery pair of disco trousers and a jean jacket with all the buttons done up. I recognized her as one of the girls that Luke had brought home earlier in the year, when Mum and Dad were going through their liberal parenting phase. Even though she had famously left her knickers under Luke’s bed, I suddenly felt exposed in my short dress with spaghetti straps and wished that I had a jacket to throw over my shoulders.
‘Have you seen Marley’s brother, Jay?’ I shouted to her through the gap in the door. She shook her head.
‘Sorry, Romy.’ She pronounced my name as though it had a hyphen between the two syllables, making the boys sitting at the table giggle.
‘Row-me, Row-me,’ they imitated her. ‘Row, row, row your boat gently down the stream …’ They fell about laughing.
There was no malice intended, but their teasing made me blush and intensified my sense of loneliness so I closed the door and went upstairs. The layout of the house was identical to ours and I wished for a moment that I was heading up to my own bedroom and could get into bed and go to sleep with Lucifer purring by my side.
By this time the party had spread throughout the house. There were clusters of people on the stairs. I dodged half-empty glasses, a pair of shoes and an abandoned mobile phone. A soaking ball of kitchen roll lay in the middle of a puddle of green cocktail that had spilt on one of the steps. The intention to clear up was sincere but the execution was poor. According to Marnie, Stuart had a stash of Es, which would explain the bottles of water everywhere. On the landing halfway between the ground and first floors I stopped outside the toilet, possessed by an urge to be on my own for a while.
I turned the handle a couple of times but it was locked. I could hear water running from a tap and the sound of someone being sick. ‘I’m all right. I’m all right,’ a voice slurred on the other side.
The door to Jay’s bedroom was closed. I remembered New Year’s Eve and the shock of Mum bursting through the door. Now that I knew what had been going on between her and Dad, her edginess made a whole lot more sense. I turned the handle like a burglar and slowly pushed it open.
