by Lisa Jewell
‘What – the sex?’
‘Yes.’
‘Probably. I can’t remember.’
‘And then what?’
‘Well, we just sort of kissed and hugged.’
‘And?’
‘Oh, God, Cass.’ He glanced at his watch. It was a quarter to twelve. ‘Can we stop this now? It’s getting really late. I want to go to bed.’
‘No, no, no,’ she said, bounding towards him. ‘No. Don’t go to bed. I need to know more about this girl. What was she like? Was she pretty?’
‘Yes, she was very pretty. She was very nice, very sexy and very pretty, and losing my virginity to her was the best thing that ever happened to me. Now – can I go to bed?’
‘Α-ha! Finally, we’re getting somewhere. So, you have this perfect night with this perfect woman who then disappears overnight, and you never see her again and you never find out why. I would say that that is the root of all your woes. You’ve been left in limbo by this girl – for whatever mysterious reasons – and you’ve not been able to move on since. You’re stranded in this perfect moment that nothing else will ever live up to. God, it’s so tragic. You’ve got to find this woman!’
‘What!’
‘Seriously. You’ve got to find her and talk to her and find out why she left.’
‘Cass,’ Vince said, getting to his feet and running his fingers through his hair, ‘I appreciate your enthusiasm and everything, I really do, but it’s nearly midnight, this is a totally stupid conversation and I’m going to bed.’
‘No! We’ve got to make a plan! We’ve got to find Joy Downer! We’ve got to – Madeleine!’ They both turned at the familiar sound of the cat flap creaking open. ‘Madeleine! You’re home!’ Cass suddenly dropped the note she’d been waving in the air and flew towards the back door, scooping up an indifferent-looking Madeleine and holding her aloft. ‘Oh, God, where’ve you been, you bad girl? We’ve been so worried about you.’ – Vince raised an eyebrow at his unfounded inclusion in this statement of concern – ‘We’ve looked all over Finsbury Park for you. Oh, you smell all funny. You smell of… ‘ She stuck her nose into the cat’s profuse fur and took a deep sniff. ‘Urgh – Obsession. God, I hate Obsession. I used to have a flatmate who didn’t wash her bed sheets – just squirted them every now and then with Obsession. Ever since I’ve just – urgh. You stink, Madam Madeleine. Stink, stink, stink. I can’t believe you’ve been sitting in someone else’s house all cosy and warm, getting cuddles off some stinky perfumed woman while we trawled the streets for you in the freezing cold… Honestly!’ She put the cat down on the floor and went straight to the cupboard where she kept her food. ‘You’re a bad girl. A very, very bad girl. Now, how d’you fancy a nice bowl of tuna flakes… ?’
Vince retrieved the rain-spattered little note from the middle of the kitchen table and quietly slunk out of the kitchen, making his escape while the irrepressible Cass’s attention was focused elsewhere.
He felt totally drained as he slipped under his duvet a few minutes later. If only that ridiculous cat hadn’t gone missing he’d have been able to redeem a truly crap day by watching a video, downing a couple of beers and having an early night. As it was he felt like his ego had been pulled through a mangle, bottom first. Not only had he suddenly been made to realize that he was a total dullard and a source of great disappointment to every woman he’d ever met, but also he’d been forced to revive memories he’d really rather have left loitering in the past. Memories of having his heart ripped out of his chest and put back in upside down. Humiliating memories of giving his entire self to another person for the first time in his life and having it returned to him the next morning, like a shirt that didn’t fit.
As he lay in bed, torturing himself with negative thoughts, his door slowly opened and a shaft of light fell across his duvet. There was then a gentle thud and crackle of cotton as something landed on his bed, followed by a loud and contented purr that rippled through the darkness like aural bubbles. And even though Vince didn’t share Cass’s enthusiasm for the creature, in his current state of emotional delicacy he couldn’t help but take comfort from the fact that tonight, for the very first time, Madeleine had chosen to favour him with her nocturnal presence.
Thirteen
Vince was heading home for Kyle’s third birthday party that afternoon and, as ever, had left it until the last minute to get his present. It didn’t seem possible that it had been three years since Kyle was born. It felt like yesterday. Kyle’s arrival into the world on 9 September 1990 had been one of the most incredible days of Vince’s life. Chris had phoned him at six-thirty in the morning to tell him that Kirsty was six centimetres dilated and that if he wanted to get a hot-off-the-press viewing of his little brother or sister he should get to the hospital immediately. He’d been in a state of a shock for a few moments, not entirely sure what it meant to be six centimetres dilated, but presuming that it meant that some hole or other was readying itself for a head to come through it. And then the adrenalin had kicked in and he’d suddenly realized what was happening. He was minutes away from no longer being an only child.
It was just gone eight o’clock when he was told that his mother was in surgery, that the baby had been in distress so they’d taken her in for an emergency Caesarean. He’d waited outside the operating theatre pacing back and forth in a wholly clichéd manner until Chris had emerged ten minutes later, dressed head to toe in green scrubs and cradling a white bundle in his arms that looked way too small to be a baby.
‘It’s a boy,’ he’d said, wiping away a tear from the corner of his eye. It’s a lovely little boy. Look.’
And Vince had peered down into a small opening at the top of the blanket bundle and seen a pair of enormous blinking eyes, a squishy nose and a squiggle of damp dark hair and had thought that his little brother was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen in his life.
And now Kirsty was pregnant again. The baby was due in January and Vince wasn’t quite sure how he felt about it. What if it was a girl? He didn’t understand girls of his own age, let alone tiny ones that came up only to his knee. What did little girls want to do in the back garden on a sunny afternoon – did they want to be spun round till they were nearly sick? He doubted it. They’d probably want to play tea parties. He looked at his watch and realized that he was in danger of being late and, although he was late for 90 per cent of his appointments, Kyle’s birthday party was not going to be one of them, so he picked up the first lump of brightly coloured plastic his eye fell upon and ferried it briskly towards the till.
Chris was piling ice into the kitchen sink and burying cans of Budweiser into it when Vince came through the back door at two o’clock.
‘Where is he?’
‘He’s just had his nap. Kirsty’s getting him up. He’ll be down in a sec.’
‘Fuck,’ he said staring at a pile of brightly wrapped gifts on the kitchen table. ‘Wrapping paper. Have you got any?’
‘Over there.’ Chris wiped his hands off on a tea towel and indicated a carrier bag hanging off the back of the pantry door.
‘Excellent.’ He pulled out a roll of paper with balloons printed on it. ‘Sellotape?’
‘That’s in there, too. And scissors.’
‘Cool.’ He sat down at the kitchen table and set to work wrapping Kyle’s present, rapidly and very badly.
‘So,’ said Chris, pulling the ring pulls off two cans of lager and placing one on the table next to Vince, ‘what’s new with you?’
‘Not a lot.’
‘How’s the beautiful Magda?’ Chris had a real thing about Magda; had described her as ‘fucking spectacular’ the first time he met her.
‘Hmph,’ Vince muttered.
‘Trouble in paradise, is there?’ He pulled out a chair and sat himself down.
‘Yeah – well, we’re not together at the moment. It’s a kind of break thing. A trial separation.’
‘What the fuck d’you wanna go and do that for?’
�
�Oh, God – I dunno. It’s complicated.’
‘Bloody fuck. You need your head fixing, you do.’ He tutted and knocked back a glug of lager.
‘Yeah, well, things aren’t always as simple as they appear, you know? Just because she’s gorgeous, doesn’t make being with her any easier.’
‘Yeah, but she’s not just gorgeous, is she? That’s the whole point. She’s the full bloody works, a total cracker in every department.’
‘Yes, I know,’ he muttered, trying to break off a strip of Sellotape with his teeth. ‘I can’t explain why it’s not working out, OK? It just isn’t. End of story’
‘OΚ, OK. Fair enough. You got anyone else lined up?’
‘No, I haven’t. Look, it’s not over with Magda – just on hold, that’s all.’
‘God, I don’t know. You young ‘uns – you don’t half make your lives complicated these days.’
‘I don’t think it’s got anything to do with my age. I think it’s just me.’ His voice grew smaller as he said this, and Chris’s body language changed subtly as he left the bonhomie behind, hearing the need for counselling in Vince’s tone.
‘What d’you mean, it’s you?’
‘I mean… hold that down for me, will you?’ He indicated the edge of the wrapping paper. Chris placed his thumb on it. ‘I mean, I think there’s something wrong with me.’
Chris furrowed his brow at him and threw him a look of bafflement.
‘It’s just… I was talking to Cass about stuff on Monday, and you know she’s a bit… you know, spooky. Into astrology and all that shit. And she did a tarot reading for me and she reckons I’ve got a problem with relationships because nothing lives up to…’ He paused as he tried and failed to find a more convoluted way of putting it. ‘Joy.’
‘Joy? I don’t get you.’
‘Remember that girl in Hunstanton. You know?’
‘Oh, aye. Joy. The little Gothy lass who popped your cherry. Oh, I remember her all right. But what’s she got to do with anything?’
‘Well, you know…’ He battled for a moment with another piece of Sellotape, which folded against itself. He screwed it into a blob and threw it down in exasperation. Sellotape and heart-to-hearts didn’t go. ‘She was my, you know…’
‘What, mate?’
‘She was my first love, kind of thing.’ He blushed a little and peeled more tape off the roll.
Chris looked at him in surprise. ‘Was she?’
‘Yeah. It was kind of intense, but yeah, we were, you know, in love.’
‘Fuck me, I didn’t see that one. You didn’t tell me. I thought she was just getting it out of the way for you, you know, a means to an end.’
‘No,’ Vince shook his head, ‘it was more than that. It was the real thing.’
‘Blimey – that was quick work.’
‘Yeah, I know. Like I said, it was intense. And I’ve tried not to think about it too much over the years, but now Cass has put it in my head and I can’t get it out and I just feel like, you know, if she hadn’t disappeared, if we’d stayed in touch and gone out together properly, we’d probably have ended up getting married or something.’
‘Whoah!’
‘Or maybe not married necessarily, but we’d definitely have been together for a while because, Joy, she really got me. D’you know what I mean?’
‘No. Explain.’
‘Fuck, I dunno. It’s like, like she was a female version of me. We just understood each other. And ever since, it’s like no other woman gets me like she did. And I definitely don’t understand them. I just can’t communicate with them the way I could with her. Being with her, it was so easy. And I know it was only a few days, but it felt like we’d known each other for ever.’
‘So if you felt that strongly about her, why didn’t you swap addresses or something?’
‘Well, because she disappeared, didn’t she? We didn’t have a chance.’
‘Oh, yeah, that’s right.’ Chris stroked his chin, ‘I forgot about all that. Bloody hell, that bloke, her dad, remember him?’
‘Alan.’
‘Yeah. Alan. That’s right. Fuck, he was a slimy piece of shit.’
‘Yeah.’
‘I broke his nose.’
‘What?!’
‘Yeah. Whap!’ he thumped his fist into the palm of his hand and laughed.
‘You broke his nose?! When?’
‘Shit – I forgot you didn’t know anything about all this, did you.’
‘Er, no.’
‘Yeah. Your mum didn’t want you to know.’ ‘Where was I?’
‘You’d gone off with whatsername. Remember? That night we had the barbie and you two stropped off into the sunset. And – oh yeah! That was the night, wasn’t it? The night you two, you know…’
‘No, no, no. I don’t understand. What do you mean, you broke his nose?’
‘I mean, I smacked him one in ‘I the face and his nose went splat.’
‘Yes, but why?’ The top of Vince’s head felt as if it was going to burst open with the enormity of this bizarre revelation. But he was going to have to wait for his answer, as just then there was a clatter of tiny limbs hurtling down the hallway and ten seconds later there was a small overexcited little boy on his lap, telling him that Mum had made cakes in the shapes of clowns (his favourite thing) and wanting to know what was inside the big parcel on the kitchen table and was it for him.
Thirty people of various shapes and sizes, from newborn babies to elderly relatives, arrived over the next half an hour, and the house was swallowed up with noise and activity. Vince threw himself into the afternoon’s activities, helping Kyle unwrap his presents – each of which was forgotten the instant it was opened in favour of the next one on the pile – arranging fairy cakes and Marmite sandwiches on plates, getting drinks for the grown-ups and entertaining the other children.
He disappeared to the pub later that afternoon with Chris and Chris’s ‘best Southern mate’ Charlie, then came back to help his mum clear up and get a totally exhausted Kyle off to bed, so it wasn’t until nearly eight o’clock that night that he finally got a chance to ask Chris about breaking Alan’s nose.
‘I suppose it doesn’t matter any more,’ said Kirsty, after chastising Chris for spilling the beans. ‘It was such a long time ago.’
‘What?’ said Vince. ‘Will you just tell me.’
Kirsty sighed and passed her hand absent-mindedly over her bump. ‘That night, we were all really hammered. Remember? And that Alan, he’d been getting really flirty.’
‘Yeah – I remember that,’ said Vince, ‘Joy was really pissed off with him about it’
‘Yeah, well, about an hour after you two left I went inside to go to the toilet, and he followed me in. He was waiting outside the toilet door when I came out.’ She took a deep breath. ‘And he made a pass at me.’
‘A pass!’ scoffed Chris. ‘He grabbed her tits and stuck his hand down her shorts.’
‘Chris!’
‘Well,’ he said, ‘Vince isn’t a kid any more. There’s no point in playing it down. That bastard sexually assaulted you. Let’s not pussyfoot around.’
‘Oh, my God,’ said Vince, not quite able to believe what he was hearing, while simultaneously feeling entirely unsurprised. ‘Christ – what happened?’
Kirsty opened her mouth to reply, but Chris got in first.
‘He actually had her pinned up against the door – imagine that? A tiny little thing like your mum? I heard Κ shouting and I came in and there was actual slobber on her cheeks where he’d been licking her fucking face. I just lost it. Frogmarched him out of that caravan and threw him on the ground.’
‘He kicked him in the gut,’ Kirsty interjected, her cheeks flushing slightly.
‘Yeah – I kicked him in the gut, but the bastard still came back for more. Stood up and called me an “oik”!’ he laughed. ‘And then he said something unspeakable about your mother, so I just flattened his nose into his face. He backed off the minute he saw blood. Sta
rted talking about the coppers and taking me to court. I just said, “go on, then, report me. Actually, I’ll come with you. I’ve got a serious case of sexual assault to report.” That shut him up. Then that Barbara drove him off to the local emergency ward and that was the last we saw of them.’
‘But… but…’ Vince tried to find words to form questions while pennies dropped in his head like winnings from a fruit machine. ‘I remember you two were being really weird when I got back that night – and I asked you what was going on. Why didn’t you tell me? I mean, that must be why she left. That’s why she was ashamed. I don’t understand why you didn’t tell me.’
‘Fuck,’ Chris said, as he flung an arm round his shoulder, ‘I wanted to tell you what happened, but your mum wouldn’t let me – she thought you’d be too upset.’
‘Christ, you could see how upset I was. I can’t believe you thought that would make it any worse.’
‘Vince, I’m not being funny or anything, but you didn’t tell us how upset you were. I mean, you were a bit quiet and everything, but, to be honest, I just thought maybe you were relieved – you know, that you’d got it out of the way with a really nice girl, but didn’t have to take it any further ‘cos she buggered off. I didn’t know you were in love with her. You never said.’
‘Yeah, well, I was. And all these years I thought she’d fucked off because she was ashamed of what happened between us and now it turns out she was ashamed of her dad and if I’d known I could have… I would have…’ He stalled for a moment as he tried to think what exactly he would have done if he’d known the real reason for Joy’s midnight flit. ‘I dunno what I’d have done, but at least I wouldn’t have felt like it was my fault she went.’
But was there anything else he could have done? Any other path he could have pursued? And what was it that stopped him? He thought back to those few weeks of summer after the Downers had left Hunstanton, remembered mooching about, feeling bewildered, hurt and vaguely guilty. He remembered trying to talk to Chris about it, but feeling for once as if he couldn’t confide his true feelings to him and mumbling something stupid and macho about how it was probably just as well it hadn’t worked out with Joy because he was starting college in the autumn and how there’d be loads of women there to take his mind off her, and Chris had patted him on the back and said, ‘That’s right, look to the future. There’s no point harking back to things that didn’t work out.’
