by Jenny Colgan
‘That’s my friend you’re talking about,’ I said, trying to look taller than five foot four.
‘Really?’ said the first one quickly. ‘Does she know him then? Can she get us backstage?’
I wasn’t to find this out right away, as, when the song ended, and Stanzi received a big, sweaty hug and a kiss, which she seemed disinclined to let go of, she wasn’t sent back into the crowd with me, presumably in case she got torn limb from limb by twenty thousand ravaging teenage beasts. They sent her off sideways, presumably smuggling her through a side exit, and I had to watch the rest of the gig on my own.
I didn’t care, though. In fact – ooh, it suddenly occurred to me that if someone from school were there we might even get some cool points for this. Yeah, then we could start changing things around here; that would be great! I jumped up and down to ‘Colourblind’ in the encore with everyone else, excited.
I was sixteen all evening. And it was great.
I didn’t really come down – and I didn’t think Stanzi was coming down, ever. Hyperventilation was clearly going to be a way of life from now on. No backstage passes for us, alas, but she did get her Darius T-shirt – for free – and a big cuddle and kiss from the man himself, which is really quite a lot better than sex when you’re a virgin teenager in love with a pop star, and she was jumping like a pogo stick when Dad and I found her round the side. Full-fat Coke at Pizza Express didn’t help.
‘It’s love,’ I said.
‘I can’t eat,’ declared Stanzi dramatically. ‘I will never eat again. I will fade away to nothing and die for love because nothing in my life can ever again be as glorious as tonight.’
‘Can I have your doughballs then?’
‘No!’
We had to drop her off when she became too incoherent to talk straight and I had to promise to Dad a million times we hadn’t been drinking or taking anything we shouldn’t.
I had an odd feeling when I woke up the next day. An absence of complete and utter dread. In fact, I felt almost … jolly. The sun was shining, my thighs were slim, pop stars loved us, what could be as bad as Monday? I almost had a spring in my step as I kissed my dad goodbye outside school.
‘Oof,’ he said. ‘Been a while since you’ve done that.’
‘Well, as long as you’re on your best behaviour, you’ll get another one,’ I said, cheekily, enjoying his surprised face as I hopped out of the car. I’d decided to go for levity. If someone was making nice in our family, maybe the rest of them wouldn’t be so horrible. I didn’t put much hope in my theory, but at the moment it was the only thing I had; I had thought the fish and chips might have helped, but the stony breakfast silence hadn’t changed at all.
Then I noticed someone at the school gates, and stood still. Looking the picture of agonised misery, slouching around trying not to be too obvious, straight ahead of me was Olly.
Crap. Crap. I should have called last night. How could I just leave him on his own to stew like this? I felt terrible.
‘Ol,’ I said. ‘Ol.’
‘I can’t believe you’d make me do this, Flora,’ he said, hands deep in his jacket pockets.
‘Can’t you pretend you’re a supply teacher or something,’ I said unhappily.
‘Yeah. Well, unfortunately all my clothes match.’
‘We can’t stay here,’ I said. ‘I’ll get in trouble.’
‘I’ve got the car,’ he said.
‘Yeah, I’m going to get into an adult stranger’s car outside the school gates. That’s what I’m going to do now.’
‘I really wish you were enjoying all this a little less,’ he said.
‘What, being tagged like a young offender. I can assure you I am not.’ I gestured at him to walk and steered him into the dodgy little grocer’s that appear to be close to most schools and still sell single cigarettes and chocolates without any chocolate in them.
Tiredly, he looked at me over the penny chews display.
‘Is it over?’ he said starkly. I don’t know what I’d been expecting, but 01 is a very good lawyer. I swallowed abruptly.
‘Tell me what happens in a month,’ he said, ‘at the wedding. There must be something.’
I shook my head.
‘Tell me.’
‘I can’t.’
He picked up a fistful of lollipops, impotently, and put them down again.
‘Well, I suppose that means we’re through then.’
The fat old lady behind the counter, whose entire life had clearly insisted on a total ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy, deigned to look up from the Daily Star at this.
‘Ol,’ I said. ‘Olly, I’ve changed.’
‘Oh, for fuck’s sake,’ said Olly, hitting the nearest box of Walkers. ‘I can’t believe you’d trot out that hoary chestnut.’
The fat old lady looked on the brink of phoning the police.
I took a deep breath. This was it. I was going to do my first chucking, destroying a four-year relationship, throwing away a pretty much guaranteed shot at marriage, a family, a life that I’d expected; at some stage wanted. I was going to break Olly’s heart, and wreck his dreams as well as my own. And I was going to do it in a school uniform. Avril Lavigne has nothing on me.
‘Olly.’
‘Are you two going to buy anything?’ said the fat lady.
Olly glared at me.
‘Erm … flying saucers?’ I said, panicking.
He tutted and put a handful on the counter. The woman eyed him up suspiciously and waited, arms folded, until we left the shop, me beadily checking up and down the road to see if anyone was looking out for us. Then I thought, sod it. This isn’t fair. And I went up to Olly and I took his arm. I had to lean up on my tiptoes to get to him.
‘I’m so sorry,’ I whispered into his ear.
One hand went to his head, and with the other he pushed me away.
‘Oh God, Flora.’
‘It’s impossible.’
‘You won’t be like that for ever. Will you?’
‘Who knows?’ I said. ‘I didn’t get a manual.’
‘Well, maybe when you come back, we can see again then.’ His voice cracked a little.
I shook my head. ‘I don’t know.’
He held me at arm’s length. ‘Do you know, I was thinking about—’
‘I know,’ I said.
He turned away. ‘I knew it,’ he said. ‘I knew it. That’s what made you do it, isn’t it? That’s what brought on this whole bloody … JESUS!’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Counselling? No. Telling me what was the fucking matter? No, too tired. A holiday? No, I think I’ll just go for the full body time travel.’
‘Olly, maybe I wasn’t that happy.’
‘We were happy enough.’
‘Maybe that wasn’t enough.’
He stared at me. ‘I know why you’ve gone back to being sixteen.’
‘Because I never left it?’
‘Because … yes. That’s exactly what I was going to say.’
We were both quiet now, staring at the ground.
‘I even thought …’ He coughed, after a false start. ‘I thought it would be cute. You know, if you were thirty and I would be forty-eight. And you would call me “old man”, and play with the children, and run around, and we could do everything differently, and you wouldn’t have to work if you didn’t feel like it. You could potter, or go to art school, or …’ He trailed off, and blinked hard.
I swallowed a lump in my throat. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘You’re not,’ he said, straightening up. ‘I think you’re too selfish to be sorry. You’ve bent the whole fucking world to your will, Flora. Enjoy it on your own.’
And he walked off, his herringbone overcoat flapping in the suddenly chill breeze.
Chapter Nine
I just about held myself together through history – by not saying anything, and keeping a very straight face. Beside me, Stanzi was too busy writing Mrs Constanzia Danesh very carefully o
n the cover of her exercise book and basking in the admiring murmurings of the other girls to notice.
At break, I almost ran out of the classroom, I was so desperate to avoid speaking to anyone I didn’t have to. Stanzi, at any rate, was being mobbed, and was hardly going to miss me.
As far as I remembered, round the back there was a stairwell, close to the staff room – too close for the smokers and snoggers to hang around, but still not a place teachers were likely to go if there were free biscuits on offer upstairs. It was practically always deserted. Tashy and I used to come here to hide and play cards and keep out of the way of bullies. I finally let myself sit down and cry. I felt as if I’d cut the line tethering me to the mainland of my old life. Maybe I had. Maybe I’d just condemned myself for ever. This was it now. I wasn’t going to be heading home at night for one of Olly’s famous shepherd’s pies, which made him rosy-cheeked, like a stout farmer. Or taking his first corporate credit card and immediately getting drunk on it (Olly paid it all back, of course). Or that time we had in Morocco … or when he used to bring me the papers on a Sunday, then read all the good bits first. All the times I’d looked at him and thought, of this funny, gentle man, yes, this is it. This will do.
No love affair ever lasted that started with ‘this will do’.
I fiercely rubbed my still heavily mascaraed eyes from last night (which is absurd, because if you’re going to start living your life over again, you really should clear your bad habits, such as not taking your eye makeup off properly) on the side of my sleeve, and sniffed loudly, a proper, snot-filled trumpeting, luxuriating in, for once, being on my own.
‘Jesus Christ, this sounds like the elephant house at the zoo.’
Justin was standing at the bottom of the stairs, looking at me in a half-amused, half-concerned way.
I did that awful, painful choking thing you do when caught crying and are desperately trying to calm yourself down. That didn’t sound too attractive either.
‘Are you all right?’ he said, coming out of the shade, and presumably noticing the ruination of my face. ‘I had to go to the staff room.’
‘Actually I’m practising for a play,’ I said quickly.
‘A tragedy?’
‘Yes.’
‘Oh. You’re good.’ He moved towards me gingerly. ‘What’s up?’
‘I split up from my boyfriend,’ I said, staring at the floor. ‘I might have ruined my life.’
‘Oh.’
For a moment he looked slightly disappointed that it was a girly emotional problem, as if he’d hoped I was going to say ‘my dad just got eaten by a tiger’, which is the kind of thing boys like, and his cute face looked suddenly extremely young.
‘I didn’t know you had a boyfriend.’
‘You wouldn’t know him,’ I said, still hiccuping a bit and hoping my face wasn’t as dirty as my fingers were from where I’d been rubbing at my mascara.
‘I might. What school’s he at?’
‘He’s not at school.’
‘Why did he dump you?’
‘He didn’t,’ I said. ‘I dumped him.’
This was clearly confusing. Let’s face it, the least popular girl in school was hardly likely to be chucking boys old enough not to be in school. If it wasn’t for the fact that I was hiding in here for my cry, rather than storming about the playground in floods, engulfed in a coterie of secretly jubilant other girls, in time-honoured fashion, I think he might not have believed me at all. Instead, he gruffly patted me on the shoulder.
‘Why are you upset then?’
‘Because you don’t just wave goodbye to four years, which nobody around you has the faintest possibility of giving a shit about, without feeling anything at all.’ I hiccuped again. ‘No, I have to sit and have dinner with my parents, and casually never ever mention the man, who my mother thought was the best thing ever to happen to me, and the fact that he was about to propose. Jesus.’ I realised I was crying again.
Justin sat. ‘Calm down,’ he said, clearly astonished.
‘You have a bloody long-term relationship finish at my age and tell me to calm down!’
He was quiet after that.
‘My brother was asking after you,’ he said finally. ‘Do you have some kind of unbelievable effect on old guys that the rest of us can’t see?’
‘Your brother isn’t old!’ I said, still snuffly and not quite right in the head.
‘Do you know him?’
‘Um, no. But he didn’t look that old.’
‘He’s ancient! He’s sixteen years older than me.’
I swallowed hard. ‘Oh. Oh God, really? Maybe I didn’t see him properly.’
‘Well, he was certainly looking at you. He asked if you were still working in the Co-op.’
‘Just gave it up,’ I said.
‘You know, you aren’t at all the kind of person I thought you would be,’ said Justin. ‘You’ve quite the secret mystery life.’
I had to choke back a hysterical gasp of laughter. ‘You have no idea.’
‘Do you know where to get drugs and stuff?’
‘Yes. But I’m not telling you.’
‘Oh,’ he said.
‘They make you very boring,’ I said.
‘Well, I’m very bored, so I’d take a chance.’
The bell rang. I couldn’t get used to the bells at all; I instinctively ignored them. Justin, however, moved like a well-trained dog.
‘Are you sure you’re OK?’
‘Much better, thanks. Sorry. It’s been a tough old day.’
‘Yeah, breaking up with someone’s hard. I broke up with Sonya Heeley, and that was really bad.’
‘How long did you date Sonya Heeley?’
‘Two weeks,’ he pouted. ‘But that’s not what matters, is it?’
‘No,’ I said slowly, getting to my feet. ‘No, it isn’t.’ I headed for the top of the stairs.
‘Um, I’m kind of having a party on Saturday night,’ Justin said suddenly, embarrassed and staring at the ground. ‘You can come if you like.’
‘Um, yeah, alright,’ I said, without thinking. If I was here, I was here. ‘Can I bring Stanzi?’
‘Who?’
‘The—’
‘The nutty Italian you hang out with.’
‘She’s not nutty.’
‘She looks nutty.’
‘OK, she’s nutty. Can she come or not?’
‘Sure,’ he said. ‘Just … you know. You’re not allowed to bring any of those boy grown-ups you know.’
That won’t be a problem,’ I said, blinking hard.
My dad’s face was like thunder. I didn’t even notice when I got back, completely distracted with my own predicament. I walked straight past him.
‘Flora Jane Scurrison!’
I slowly turned round. He was furious.
‘We are talking NOW! Your mother’s in there, crying her eyes out.’
Mum came to the door. ‘Flora, darling. What have you been doing?’
‘Nothing, Mum.’
My mother was looking at me, quivering. Her face was white. ‘Flora, we know you’re not a baby any more, but we really need to have a serious talk about your behaviour. Dad saw that man this morning.’
Oh, for Christ’s sake. So much for our sweetshop subterfuge.
‘Yes, yes,’ I said. ‘Does it have to be now? Please? Can we have it, but just in a couple of days? Please?’
‘Sit down!’ said my dad. ‘This family is going to have a chat together once and for all!’
Suddenly my crappy day and my anger caught fire. ‘That’s rich coming from you!’ I screamed.
There was silence. There was a distinct power imbalance in the room.
‘What’s his name?’ my dad went on.
My mother was wearing that unhappy, downtrodden face that I was to get to know so well over the next sixteen years and I couldn’t bear it for one minute longer. Nothing could be worse than that. Puce-faced and entirely het up with rage and upset, I let it out.
‘I’m amazed you even noticed,’ I spat. ‘You’re never here. How would you know? All you do is shout at Mum. Or ignore her. Or go out. Don’t think I don’t see what’s going on. Don’t ask what’s his name. What’s hers?’
There was a huge silence. My mother went even paler, if that were possible.
My dad was glaring at me. Within two milliseconds, it became too late for him to splutter out a knee-jerk denial of something that wasn’t true. I noticed his fingers were shaking. I didn’t want to make my father’s hand shake. Oh God. Was there anything today I couldn’t fuck up absolutely completely? We stood in a frozen triangle, staring at each other. I took the only path I could remember. I marched out and slammed the door. As soon as I hit the cooling autumn night, I realised how stupid that was. Red-faced I stuck my head back round the door.
‘I’m going out,’ I said. ‘I’m not going to do anything bad, so don’t call the police. I’m not going to see a boy, so don’t panic.’
And I set off into the night.
A passing car hooted at me as I walked down the road towards Tashy’s flat. Oh, thank you, Britney, for making everyone in a uniform fair sexual game. I kicked ferociously at every pile of leaves in my path. Bugger this and bugger everything. Well, I’d pissed on my chips in every conceivable direction. What was left for me – single, aged sixteen, having dumped a man who was prepared to marry me whatever age I was, and off to see my girlfriend preparing for a marriage I’d provoked severe doubts about, whilst watching my parents go through another civil war? One I’d just chucked a bomb into.
How on earth was I going to live in an Audrey Hepburn apartment in New York? Not now. Not ever, probably. I wasn’t going to be anyone’s muse in Paris.
I tried again to snarl at the moon. It came out as a kind of small growl.
‘Grrrr!’ I shouted. Quietly.
Just because my age was different. It wasn’t going to change a damn thing.
‘GRRR!’
Nobody was on the street. Nobody turned round.
‘AAAAARRRRRGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH!’ I yelled suddenly.
