by Jenny Colgan
I escaped at lunchtime. I’d forgotten in all the excitement that I’d arranged to meet Tashy. I was becoming an expert at slipping out of the school gates, but really, sneakily, I’d kind of wanted to catch up on all the gossip, and spread some.
I ferociously wolfed down a cheese toastie and a chocolate milkshake – I was so hungry, all the time – while Tashy looked on miserably sitting in the small condensation-filled atmosphere of the little caff.
‘Do you remember when I used to be the jolly one and you used to be the worrier?’ she said.
I pulled myself back from my obsessive thoughts about having snogged a seventeen-year-old.
‘I am worried!’ I said quickly. ‘I have twelve days before I meet up with myself again and evaporate. Or maybe my other self will adopt me. Can I have another toastie? Have I told you about my A?’
Tashy looked away and let out a big sigh.
‘Can we talk about this, or are you just going to stuff your face and act like you have no responsibilities in the world?’
‘OK, Tash,’ I said. ‘Don’t marry him. Please. Don’t. You’ll meet someone else; of course you will.’
‘It’s not that,’ she said.
‘People call off weddings all the time. After a few years it becomes an amusing story.’
‘It’s not that,’ she repeated. ‘Stop being so … so young.’
I stuck out my lower lip.
‘Do you know what?’ she went on. ‘I’d almost say fuck the thirteen thousand pounds.’
‘Thirteen thousand pounds!’ I said. ‘Are you nuts? You could have gone round the world sixteen times for that!’
‘Yes, thank you. Olly pointed that out too. You try telling my mother to de-invite Aunt Nesta.’
‘Well, it’s money well spent,’ I said hurriedly. ‘And Nesta gets drunk and falls over during the speeches.’
‘Really? Well, that does make it all worth it, I suppose.’ Tashy’s tone was hard.
‘Yeah,’ I said.
‘No,’ she said suddenly, ferociously playing with the Sweetex. ‘It’s not that. It’s none of that. I see that now. I spent all night crying, just lying beside Max. He’d spent the entire evening on the phone geeking off to one of his friends about computers.’
‘Communications skills,’ I said.
‘And I thought: I can’t put up with this. I can’t do it. I can’t go to supper with this man, or take him out to meet friends and have him be so dull, and so unsupportive and so un-me.’
I reached out and took her hand.
‘Your hand is very greasy,’ she said, glancing round in case she looked like a preying paedophile.
‘Sorry,’ I said. I wiped them on my school skirt, feeling as if I’d been given a telling-off by a grown-up. Then I realised I was being daft.
‘OK then, do it,’ I said. ‘Look at me. It’s obvious the world is full of surprises. There are twists of fate every step of the way. You have to follow—’
‘Flora,’ she said, her tone serious. ‘This is important. Do you want to come back?’
This took me by surprise. ‘I thought we were talking about your life,’ I grumbled.
‘I mean it, Flo. This is very important.’
And I thought about it. Hard. I thought about the accountancy firm. And I thought about my thirty-two-year-old body. And I thought about art school. And I thought about Justin. And I thought about Clelland. And I thought about possibilities — to do it differently, to change it. But most of all I thought about my mum and dad.
‘Oh God,’ I said.
‘What?’ said Tashy. ‘What?’
‘Well, yeah,’ I said. ‘I mean, sure.’
Tashy didn’t say anything for a moment, just kept staring at me with an unnerving intensity. Then: ‘You don’t sound so sure.’
‘But my mum, Tash. My mum. I haven’t seen her like this … I mean, you know her, but you don’t have to deal with her like I do. All those tears, all those calls … I think my dad is leaving – the first time round I left her alone. I went to university and left her to it. I nearly destroyed her.’
We stared at each other.
‘So what are you saying?’
I realised we were both leaning over, desperately sincere about this. It was serious – very serious.
I thought of Clelland’s amused-looking face at my predicaments. He would be off to Africa again soon with Madeleine and I’d never see him again anyway, and I’d be back to Belsize Park, completely on my own, spinster city beckoning …
‘Oh God, Tashy, I don’t … I just don’t … can’t we think about this nearer the time?’
‘In a week and a half?’ Tashy seemed troubled. ‘Look, Olly and I have been talking about this.’
‘Uh-huh?’
‘The thing is. The thing is – I can’t call off the wedding.’
‘Why not?’ I had the feeling I was being a bit slow, but couldn’t quite see where.
‘If you can only get back by wishing on my cake …’
Suddenly the penny dropped. My mouth opened.
‘Oh, no,’ I said.
‘But I couldn’t do that to you,’ she said. ‘You don’t know yourself. Heck …’ Her voice took on a kind of strangulated choking sound. ‘What’s a small divorce between friends?’
‘Please don’t marry him.’
‘And condemn you to sit your whole life again, in someone else’s world? I couldn’t do that. I can’t do that. Sorry, missus.’
‘It … it’ll be fine,’ I said.
‘Unless I get married, it doesn’t look like you have a choice either way.’
I stared at her. ‘And Max eats soft-boiled eggs and farts in bed for the next sixty years,’ she said quietly.
Then I took her hand and we looked at each other blurrily, through tears. All this time … I mean, yes, I hated being here, I did, but it wasn’t the worse thing that could possibly happen to me, was it? Even if it wasn’t where I belonged. Something struck me.
‘I should stay anyway though,’ I said. ‘For Mum.’
‘You don’t know that. You don’t know how you’re going to feel on the day. You don’t know, OK?’ She was angry. ‘And if I take that window away, that’s it. Game over. Hockey sticks and driving tests till kingdom come.’
We sat in silence, tears dripping down our cheeks.
‘What’s wrong?’ said Justin, playfully kicking at leaves as he caught up with me as I was leaving school. His feet were enormous in his trainers, I noticed, completely out of proportion to his skinny legs. That made me smile.
‘Nothing,’ I said, shaking my head. Nothing I was going to inflict on this innocent.
We headed up to the caff. Stanzi, Kendall and Ethan were squeezed into the faded upholstered booth. Stanzi was playing with the big red plastic tomato full of ketchup, clearly delighted to be the centre of attention with two men.
‘Hey, hey,’ said Ethan as we went in, and I sat down. I looked around. This place was as dingy as I remembered, with tinfoil ashtrays and curtains held together with grime. The cracked tiles were stacked with dirt. But, picking up the sticky laminated menu, I didn’t care. Here we were, on the high street, kids on the town, drinking Coke floats. The world couldn’t be as bad as we thought, could it? Tash was going to be alright, wasn’t she? I looked at Justin, who was buying me my drink from the filthy-looking waitress. Kendall and Ethan were talking about what they wanted to do when they left school.
‘Space programme,’ Kendall was saying earnestly. ‘They need good engineers.’
‘They need better ones than they have,’ Ethan agreed. ‘St Martin’s for me, I think.’
‘Ooh, me too,’ I said without thinking.
‘Really? Art college? For you?’
‘Are you calling this lovely lady a swot?’ said Justin, adding white sugar to the top of his float.
‘No,’ said Ethan. ‘We can discover our inner debauchery together.’
‘Maybe not strictly together,’ I said.
�
�No,’ said Ethan.
‘I’m going to be fashion designer,’ said Stanzi. ‘All the great designers are Italian.’
‘Except for the French ones,’ I said.
‘I am going to be Di Ruggerio Designs. Fantastic.’
‘I don’t want to be rude,’ said Justin, ‘but you wear a Darius T-shirt over your school shirt every single day.’
Smiling, I looked out the window. Fallon was walking past, on her own. She looked annoyed and was kicking a leaf out of her way. I soon realised why: she’d clocked us all, sitting in the window. I stared at her until she lifted her gaze and saw me.
‘Come over,’ I mouthed, beckoning. She flipped me the bird and I smiled at her. This was nuts.
‘Come in!’ I mouthed again.
After a pause, she turned into the caff.
Kendall and Stanzi budged up for her, after Stanzi shot me a ‘what the hell are you doing?’ glance.
‘Coke?’ I asked pleasantly.
‘Diet,’ she said.
It was fun. It really was. It took me out of myself, my choices. We were invincible, we could do anything, we were all ready to take on the world. And as Justin and I walked home in the golden evening sunlight, I really was just a schoolgirl, swinging a book bag, tugging at the tie I once again tied without thinking about it.
‘What are you thinking?’ Justin asked me.
‘Um, I …’
But before I could answer, he leaned over and kissed me, right in the middle of the street. It was a stupid thing to do. We were just across the road from his house. In the daytime. Anyone could walk past. My parents, Tashy, Clelland … After a second I squirmed out of his grip.
‘This is silly,’ I said.
‘Silly how?’ he asked and bent back over.
‘Just … silly.’
He rolled his eyes and looked surprised.
‘Silly … how? And he smiled again and gently stroked my neck in a way that felt oddly familiar. I closed my eyes. I could feel he was gradually moving in towards me. I kept my eyes closed. He gently kissed me on the side of the neck. It felt wonderful. The sunny autumn day was reduced to a dazzle behind my eyes as I gave in to the feeling of Justin’s lips and his body pressing up against me.
I gave myself up to it completely. His soft, young lips, his seventeen-year-old body. I felt the lean hard muscle through his T-shirt, well on his way to becoming a man. His mouth was salty and soft and hard at the same time and tasted as good as … as good as … no, I was not going to think about the last time I’d been kissed like this, under an autumn sky. I closed my eyes and let the feeling wash over me.
I heard him give out an agonised gasp as he clasped my high young breasts. How long had it been since I’d so excited someone they’d gasped, and kissed me as if they were drowning, or would die if they couldn’t feel my body against theirs? A bit bloody long.
‘What the hell are you two doing?’
Clelland was storming out of a little black Fiesta that had pulled up to the kerb. Maddie was sitting behind the wheel, looking incredibly disapproving. He was looking from one to the other of us in disbelief.
I swallowed hard. What the hell was I doing?
‘Chill, bro,’ said Justin. ‘Just chill.’
Clelland looked murderous. Then, and you could see it happening in his face, he swallowed heavily as if to draw the anger back in himself. His eyes were black, though, furious and burning. He turned to me and I felt my heart sink.
‘Get away from him,’ he said.
‘Erm, yeah, excuse me, just ignore me, I’m just here for nothing,’ said Justin, desperately trying to look unfazed.
‘Stay away.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I just got—’
‘I can’t … I can’t believe you would do this, Flora. I just can’t. I mean, it’s like … it’s … with everything …’
‘I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I didn’t … I didn’t mean—’
‘What would this have been like if you were a boy, and he was a girl, eh? Have you thought about that?’
‘Eh?’ said Justin.
‘It would be different,’ I said. The tears from lunchtime started to wend their way up again.
‘No, no, it wouldn’t, Flora. Do you understand?’
‘But—’ I began.
‘You’re disgusting. Is this some kind of twisted revenge? On me?’
‘No!’ I said. ‘Definitely not. No.’
‘That’s not what it looks like.’
‘What the hell’s going on?’ said Justin, looking scared. ‘Is there something going on?’
‘No!’ we said in unison.
‘God,’ said Clelland. ‘You’re just … I’m just so ashamed of you.’
Justin looked at me, then at him. I was shaking, I really was.
‘Come on, Justin. You really don’t want to be anywhere near her.’
Justin looked back at me with a longing in his eyes.
‘Goodbye,’ I said, choking just a little.
‘Oh, look at the little girl crying,’ said Clelland. ‘How deserving of our sympathy. She’s only naïve. So new to the world. So many mistakes to make. So fucking many.’ He glared at me.
I stared at him, open-mouthed.
‘Will you tell me what on earth’s going on?’ Madeleine had got out of the car and was standing by the door, looking at the three of us.
‘Nothing’, barked Clelland. ‘Nothing you’d understand.’
‘You think?’ she barked back at him. ‘No. Because I don’t understand anything, do I, John? Except trying to do the right thing, of course.’
She got back in the car and slammed the door. Clelland manhandled Justin towards it, they got in and drove off without a backwards glance.
Chapter Fourteen
For the next four days, as the wedding ticked ever closer I kept my head down in the pillows, crying myself into a teenage frenzy yet again, as my parents worried about me downstairs. I felt alternately sorry for myself and utterly ashamed. Mum brought me up cups of hot chocolate, which made me cry even more, whilst feeling ridiculously grateful for the existence of someone in the same house who would bring me hot chocolate.
No phone call from either of the boys. Well, of course not. What on earth was I expecting? Justin to suddenly transmogrify into a terribly thoughtful grown-up? Clelland to rethink that actually, no, it was pretty cool for a thirty-two year old to cop off with his baby bro? And it hadn’t even occurred to me that he ever thought about us for a moment. Not in that way, not at all.
Clelland was right. It was disgusting to snog a seventeen-year-old boy. Or was it? I felt defiant suddenly. Kylie got to snog Justin Timberlake, and she was nearly old enough to be his mum. Rod Stewart was always going out with teenagers. It was just because it was Clelland’s brother that he was coming over all Mr ‘I’m so protective, wooh!’ on me.
I’d been carried away. No doubt about it. But Clelland wasn’t the one living in the body of a teenager. And it was him who’d said I had to take this life as a gift, take it and enjoy it to the full, because, more than ever, nobody knew what was coming next …
Guess that didn’t mean seducing his cute little brother. I was musing, sniffily, alternating between remembered pleasure at Justin’s young limbs and fresh sweet smell, and the absolute conviction that I’d done him no psychological damage whatsoever. Then I thought of Clelland, and what it must have been like to see the girl he used to kiss kissing someone else. Well, he should have thought of that before, I thought, mutinously. Pre Aberdeen might have been a good time.
I wasn’t paying attention to anything around me. My mum had gone away to see her sister, and I seemed to manage to avoid running into my dad at all. Maybe this should have set alarm bells ringing.
‘You know, marriage isn’t easy,’ he said meditatively, doling out crispy pancakes on Saturday morning.
Talk to someone who doesn’t know, I thought.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It’s a struggle.’
I
eyed him beadily. ‘One you’re definitely winning,’ I said firmly.
He grunted.
My little phone rang to the chimes of ‘Colourblind’. Perhaps I should change that. I picked it up warily and headed upstairs with it. It was Tash.
‘Don’t fall out with me,’ I said immediately. ‘If I lose anyone else who recognises me, I’m going to cease to exist altogether.’
‘What?’ said Tash. ‘Why would I fall out with you?’
‘Because I’m forcing you into marital slavery.’
‘Actually, I’m sorry.’
Her voice was muted.
‘You’ve called off the wedding,’ I said, excited. ‘It’s OK. I understand. You’re right, in fact. It’s good. I’ve been farting about for far too long, this way and that way, coming back or staying here. But I should stay here. I’ve got an application to art college to finish. Fortunately, as I’ve worked on interview panels for five years, mine’s absolutely perfect.’
‘Hang on. I haven’t cancelled the wedding,’ she said quietly.
‘Oh. I mean, Max is a lovely man.’
‘Shut up. I have, however, bumped up the wedding insurance.’
‘That’s probably wise.’
‘Anyway. It wasn’t that.’
‘What wasn’t what?’
Tash let out a sigh. ‘Actually, be glad. I’m very glad you weren’t there.’
‘Weren’t where?’
‘Look, Flora, there’s no way I could introduce you, and it would have been so awkward, and you would have cramped people’s style and …’
I almost laughed when the penny dropped and I realised what she was talking about.
‘You didn’t invite me to the hen night?’
‘No,’ she said ashamedly. ‘I’m really and truly sorry.’
I did laugh. At last I felt distracted from my miserable problems.
‘Who gives a flying fuck about the hen night?’
She sighed dramatically.
‘OK, I’ll pretend to,’ I said. ‘Were there L-plates?’
