‘Oh sorry, sweetheart, no. He’s at work. He won’t be back for another couple of hours yet.’
‘Work?’
‘Yes. At the rink.’
Ram has a part-time job working as a skate marshal at Nottingham ice arena.
‘I didn’t think he usually worked on Thursdays,’ I say.
Thursday used to be one of our designated date nights. We’d watch Netflix, or, if we could be bothered and had the cash, go to the cinema, or out for a Nando’s.
‘He’s been doing some extra shifts over the holidays,’ Cheryl says.
‘Oh. OK.’
‘Why? Is it anything urgent?’
‘Er, not exactly,’ I say. ‘I just kind of need to talk to him about something.’
‘Oh yes?’ Cheryl says, her eyes sparkling with interest.
‘Nothing to do with us,’ I say quickly. ‘It’s about a, er, mutual friend.’
‘Oh, I see,’ Cheryl says, her disappointment clear.
‘Frankie!’
I turn towards the doorway. Roxy, dressed in her pyjamas, hurtles towards me, flinging her wiry little body into my arms. In addition to being a hit with Cheryl, I got on like a house on fire with both his sisters, especially little Roxy. When we broke up, she even made me a card. She covered it with sticky lipstick marks and scrawled the words ‘I’ll miss you!’ across the front in red felt-tip pen, insisting on posting it through my letter box by hand.
While Roxy smothers me with kisses, Laleh emerges from the garden, her long dark hair tucked under a faded baseball cap. When she sees me, she breaks into a wide smile, the metal from her newly acquired braces glinting in the dipping evening sunlight.
‘Oh my God, Laleh,’ I say. ‘When did you get so tall? You look like a supermodel or something!’
Laleh giggles and looks at her feet, proud and bashful in equal measures.
Wow, I’ve missed them. All of them. I hadn’t realized how much. That’s the sucky thing about breaking up with someone. It’s not just them who you break up with.
‘Do you love my brother again?’ Roxy asks.
I hesitate, my face reddening. The last thing I want to do is give any of them false hope.
Cheryl saves me. ‘Let Frankie finish her drink, Rox,’ she says.
I throw Cheryl a grateful smile and ask them to fill me in on their news. They happily oblige. I quickly learn that Laleh has been chosen to represent the county in cross country running, Roxy broke her wrist and had to wear a sling for two whole weeks, and Cheryl has started going to Spanish classes at the local college. She tries some out on me but I’m not much of a linguist and we don’t get very far, collapsing into giggles over Cheryl’s hilariously bad attempts to ask for 500 grams of minced beef.
‘Your turn, Frankie,’ Cheryl says. ‘How has life been treating you?’
‘Yeah, fine. Same old, really.’
‘Still acting?’
‘Yep.’
I tell them a little about the production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream our school put on in the spring (I’d played Helena opposite Jojo’s Hermia) and my nine in drama.
‘I always said you had star quality,’ Cheryl says with a grin.
I glance at the clock. As much as I’m loving being back in the Jandus’ cosy house, it’s already gone eight and I’m still no closer to Swindon and Jojo.
I finish my drink and make my excuses.
‘Do you want me to tell Ram you were here?’ Cheryl asks, standing up.
‘That’s OK,’ I say. ‘I might just go down to the rink and see if I can catch him there.’
‘Will you come back again soon?’ Roxy asks, her eyes big and full of hope.
I glance at Cheryl. She nods encouragingly.
‘Sure,’ I say.
‘Yay!’ Roxy cries.
Cheryl walks me to the door. ‘It really was good to see you, Frankie,’ she says.
‘Same.’
‘I hope everything works out. For your friend.’
‘My friend?’
‘The mutual friend. Of yours and Ram’s?’
‘Oh! Oh. Yes. Me too. Thank you.’
She envelops me in a tight, floral-scented hug. ‘Don’t be a stranger now,’ she says.
‘I won’t,’ I promise.
Chapter 8
I take the bus to the rink. When I arrive, there’s a girl I don’t recognize behind the reception desk. I take a deep breath and plaster on an approachable girl-friendly version of my very best smile.
‘Hiya,’ I say. ‘Are you OK to just let me through the gate? I’m not skating.’
‘Sorry, skaters only,’ she says in a bored voice.
‘Seriously? I can’t just pop up?’
‘You can only spectate if you’re accompanying someone who’s skating.’
‘Please,’ I say. ‘I’ll literally be five minutes.’
She fixes me with a suspicious look. ‘You want to spectate for five minutes?’
‘Yes. Well, no. I need to talk to someone who’s up there.’
‘Sorry,’ she says. ‘No solo spectators allowed.’
‘But I really need to talk to them!’
‘If you’re that desperate, then you can pay to skate.’ She points at the screen advertising the admission prices.
‘Seriously? You’re going to make me pay seven quid just to go through the gate?’
She shrugs. ‘I don’t make the rules.’
Time for a change of approach.
‘Listen,’ I say, ‘If you really must know, I’m here to see Ram Jandu.’
She snorts. ‘You and half the female population of Nottingham.’
‘But I am,’ I say indignantly, resisting the temptation to slip in the fact he was, for a full seven and a half months, my bona fide boyfriend.
‘He expecting you, is he?’ she asks.
I hate the way she’s looking at me – like I’m a massive chancer – her lips twitching with amusement.
‘Not exactly,’ I begin.
‘Not that it matters either way,’ the girl says, talking over me. ‘You could be Ram’s mum for all I care. If you wanna go through the gate, you’ve got to pay.’
I get my purse out of my bag and slam a ten-pound note down on the desk.
The girl is entirely unmoved, handing me my change and a receipt before letting me through the gate.
I haven’t been to the ice rink in ages. Not since Ram and I broke up. I haven’t missed it especially. I never was a natural, despite all the hours I clocked up here. I’m all legs and my centre of gravity’s too high – ‘like a giraffe on ice’, Ram used to say.
I push open the double doors, my nostrils immediately assaulted by the stench of feet. I’d forgotten how bad this place reeks, especially the moment you first walk in. I take a deep breath, holding it until I’m safely past the skate hire desk, the main source of the smell.
The rink is packed. It doesn’t take a genius to work out why. This is probably the coldest I’ve been in weeks, goosebumps breaking out on my arms and legs.
On Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights, eight till nine is ‘disco’ hour. Justin Bieber is blaring, and darting multi-coloured lights illuminate the ice. I make my way around the edge of the rink, peering through the Perspex barrier for Ram.
It doesn’t take me long to spot him. I just have to follow the besotted gazes of the various groups of girls dotted about the ice. I swear, Ram should go to the manager of this place and demand a percentage of the takings for all the business he brings in.
To put it lightly, the boy is beautiful – a tall, dark handsome cliché of a teenage dream – fifty per cent boy band member, fifty per cent brooding male model. One hundred per cent drop-dead gorgeous.
And for over half a year, he was all mine.
Ram and I initially met as little kids, under the care of the same childminder – an unfailingly jolly woman called Diana. Ram was a school year ahead of me, but there was actually less than six months between us and we often played together. Unlik
e Luca, who’s always been almost aggressively masculine in his interests, Ram was quite happy to play ‘schools’ and ‘mums and dads’ and help me build dens out of old bed sheets, and prepare pretend picnics. For a while we were as tight as anything, then, when I was about six, my school started offering an after-school club and we stopped going to Diana and I more or less forgot about Ramin Jandu.
I didn’t see him again until spring last year when his school’s football team played ours at home. I didn’t usually make a point of watching matches but I’d recently started fancying the boy in goal so I persuaded Jojo to come with me. I didn’t recognize Ram right away but I most definitely noticed him. All the girls did, and some of the boys too, their nudges and whispers racing down the side-lines like a Mexican wave. I was as shocked as anyone when, at the end of the game, he jogged straight over to me and said, ‘Hello, stranger.’
‘Er, hello,’ I replied, slightly confused.
‘I thought it was you,’ he said, a grin on his face. ‘Then I heard you laughing and I knew for sure.’
That was when the penny dropped. The gorgeous creature standing in front of me was the dark-haired little kid who played ‘Dad’ to my ‘Mum’ all those years ago.
We swapped numbers and met in town the following weekend. It was only supposed to be for coffee, but we ended up hanging out for the entire day.
I made him laugh. A lot. More than anyone had in ages, he said. And I loved that, played up to it, always ready with a quip or impression or funny observation.
We slipped into a relationship easily, with little discussion or negotiation. Somehow, our friendship as kids created a foundation that allowed us to skip a lot of the weird awkward stuff that comes with the territory when you first start going out with someone. We were comfortable with each other from the start. Perhaps too comfortable. It’s only now I realize this was probably our downfall.
Ram is flying effortlessly around the rink, his dark eyes on alert for possible injuries or reckless skating. Unlike several of his colleagues who are clearly in the job primarily to show off and pick up girls, Ram has always taken his position as a marshal very seriously.
‘Ram!’ I call as he whizzes past.
But it’s too noisy, my voice swallowed up by the thumping music and squeals and shouts of the punters on the ice.
Eventually, Ram glides to a stop at the opposite end of the rink, his hands on his hips, a whistle dangling from his lips as he keeps a close eye on a group of boys mucking about in the centre of the ice.
I will him to stay where he is and start to make my way around the perimeter of the rink. I reach the exit closest to where he’s standing.
‘Ram!’ I yell. ‘Ram!’
I swear he’s about to turn in my direction when one of the boys shoves his mate. The boy goes flying into a group of girls, sending them scattering.
Ram blows his whistle and skates over, helping up the girls and scolding the boys. They’re probably only a couple of years younger than him but they take their telling off, their heads bowed, before skating off, looking sheepish. Ram stays where he is, in the centre of the ice. There’s no way he’s going to hear me from there. I wave my arms but the rink is way too busy for me to stand out enough to attract his attention.
I could go and hire some skates, but I don’t have any socks with me, and the idea of putting my bare feet into a pair of those gross smelly boots makes me want to vom.
There’s only one thing for it.
Gingerly, I place a flip-flop-clad foot on the ice. Then another. It’s unsurprisingly slippery. I put out both my arms for balance and shuffle my way towards Ram, feeling more than a little vulnerable with so many blades whizzing past my bare toes.
I’m maybe two metres away when he finally notices me, his face clouding with confusion. His gaze falls to my feet.
‘You’re missing something,’ he says.
‘Ha ha,’ I reply. ‘I’m not here to skate.’
‘I can see that.’
‘I need to talk to you.’
‘I’m working, Frankie.’
‘But it’s urgent.’
He raises an eyebrow. ‘Genuinely urgent or Frankie urgent?’ he asks.
‘Genuinely urgent!’ I cry, pouting.
And just like that, I’m reminded of one of the (many) reasons why Ram and I split up – his complete and utter lack of patience for my tendency to exaggerate a teensy bit every now and then.
‘I’m serious, Frankie,’ he says. ‘I’m working right now. I can’t be distracted.’ His eyes dart over my shoulder.
‘You used to let me distract you,’ I point out in a teasing voice.
‘Yeah, well, I used to do a lot of things, Frankie.’
‘Ouch,’ I murmur.
‘Look, I don’t know why you’re here, but you can’t be on the ice in a pair of flip-flops. It’s dangerous.’
‘But I need to talk to you.’
‘There’s nothing left to talk about, Frankie.’
Oh, wait a second. He thinks I’m here to talk about ‘us’.
True, in the immediate aftermath of our break-up last October, despite being the one who initiated it, there were a couple of slightly undignified episodes where I attempted to lure Ram back. But that was absolutely ages ago now. Does he seriously think I’m still harbouring feelings for him, all these months later?
‘It’s nothing like that,’ I say.
He doesn’t look convinced.
‘It’s about Jojo,’ I add.
‘Jojo?’ he says, his face softening slightly.
‘Yes,’ I say.
‘Well, what is it?’ he asks, his protective big brotherly instinct kicking in, just as I knew it would the second I mentioned her name. ‘Is she OK?’
‘I don’t know. I hope so.’
‘What do you mean?’
I lower my voice. ‘I can’t tell you here.’
‘Why not?’
‘Too many people.’
His frown deepens. ‘You better not be messing with me, Frankie.’
‘I’m not. I swear.’ For good measure, I swipe my finger across my heart.
He glances up at the massive digital clock mounted above the rink and sighs. ‘Go wait over there,’ he says, pointing up at the plastic seating surrounding the rink. ‘I’ll be with you in ten.’
Chapter 9
‘OK, let me get this straight,’ Ram says. ‘You think Jojo has kidnapped a baby.’
‘Not any old baby. The baby. Olivia Sinclair.’
‘OK, so you think Jojo has kidnapped Olivia Sinclair and taken her to Swindon, of all places. And now you want me to drive you nearly two hundred miles so you can bring them both back.’
‘In a nutshell, yes.’
There’s a beat before Ram bursts out laughing.
‘What?’ I say. ‘Why are you laughing?’
‘Why am I laughing? Are you seriously asking me that?’
‘Yes!’
‘Oh my God,’ he splutters. ‘You’ve come out with some crazy shit in your time, Frankie, but this? This really takes the biscuit.’
‘But I’m serious. I honestly think Jojo’s gone off with this baby.’
He laughs even harder. There are actual tears in his eyes.
‘Stop it!’ I cry. ‘It’s not funny.’
‘Oh, yes it is.’
‘On what planet? She could get in real trouble over this!’
‘No she won’t, because there is no way on earth she’d do something as batshit crazy as this. Now, if it was the other way round and Jojo was sitting in front of me telling me she thought you’d legged it with someone else’s baby, it might be a different story …’
‘Oh, I should have known you’d act like this,’ I snap.
‘Like what?’
‘Like a patronizing arsehole.’
Ram’s face falls. ‘Oh, come on, Frankie, I was only messing.’
‘Yeah, well, it wasn’t funny.’ I fold my arms and look out over the rink, empty now apart
from the ice resurfacer chugging around in circles.
Ram sighs. ‘Look, I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘That was a low blow. It’s just kind of hard to take seriously, that’s all.’
‘Is it, though?’ I ask. ‘You only have to look at the evidence!’
‘What evidence?’
For the second time I go through the timings, the multiple lies, the weird phone call, the baby crying in the background.
‘But she said it was the TV, didn’t she?’
‘Only it wasn’t,’ I say. ‘If the TV was on, I’d have heard it before then. And the crying was really loud and clear as anything, like it was right there in the room. I swear to you, Ram, it was a real-life baby.’
‘OK, fine. But we don’t know the baby was Olivia. Maybe she just happened to be walking past a baby when she was talking to you.’
‘No,’ I say. ‘She was indoors, I could tell.’
‘OK, then maybe she’s gone to stay with someone who has a baby.’
‘She doesn’t know anyone with a baby. Plus, if she was visiting people, why would she be in a hotel? Surely she’d just stay with them.’ I shake my head hard. ‘I’m telling you, Ram, Jojo has Olivia.’
He sighs again.
‘C’mon, you have to believe me,’ I say.
‘Well, I can’t. Yes, Jojo is clearly acting a bit weird at the moment, but your “evidence” as you put it is flimsy to say the least.’
‘It’s more than that,’ I say. ‘It’s a feeling.’
‘A feeling,’ he repeats.
‘Yes. In here.’ I pat my belly.
‘Maybe she just wants a bit of a break from stuff,’ Ram says, shrugging. ‘And made up the lie about being at her dad’s to buy herself a bit of time.’
‘She’s spent most of August ill at home. How much more time out does she need?’
‘She’s been ill?’ Ram asks.
‘Yeah. Since the beginning of the month.’
‘Anything serious?’
‘Just a virus. It properly knocked her out, though. I didn’t see her for like three weeks.’
He frowns. ‘That doesn’t sound like Jojo.’
He’s right. It doesn’t. Despite her delicate appearance, Jojo hardly ever gets ill. Tacked on the inside of her wardrobe door is her impressive collection of 100% attendance certificates, one for every school year since reception. She even managed to avoid the mass chickenpox outbreak in Year Two, baffling everyone with her superhuman immune system.
First Day of My Life Page 5
