Never afraid of talking to people either. I suppose you just get used to that living at a hotel. I was shy about talking to strangers, but not her; she’d happily talk to anyone, although she was half in her own world anyway, so she probably didn’t really hear them.
By the time we entered our teens we had free-reign to roam where we pleased. The summer we turned thirteen I remember quite well; I ran down to her from the hotel, she was there, sitting on the stone wall, looking out over the sea as usual. We went that evening to the arcades, with a tenner from our parents, which seemed like riches in those days. We had chips down by the pier, or what was left of it after the great fire. A seagull came down and lifted a chip right out of her hand – we were so shocked. I went around swinging my coat at the seagulls to frighten them off. I felt so heroic, protecting her from the feathery menace.
Yes, by that time we were growing up and starting to feel like more than just friends. But it was all quite innocent. We were allowed out unsupervised; we hired bicycles to roam up and down the promenade and beyond; spent an afternoon building dams down on the beach – she didn’t seem to mind the shallow water running down to the sea, as long as we never went near the wash.
We spent an afternoon at Frontierland – Britain’s most decrepit theme park. Nothing ever changed there; same rides, same shows, only more tired and old-looking each year. They used to have this runaway mine train ride; it was done so all the carts made really sharp jolting turns, designed to make you feel like you might tip off the tracks. Looking back, perhaps that wasn’t intentional; maybe there really was a risk of someone going over the edge! It’s a shopping centre now I think. No great loss to the world.
I never said it, but by then I was really starting to think of her as being like my girlfriend. There was always so much unsaid between us. We’d have these late night walks along the seafront: she, always in her world, humming along to her own inner-song; and me, desperate to say to her how I really felt…
My parents had already detected that we were becoming more than just friends, and I started to get some very knowing looks from Mum and Dad that made me embarrassed. But it could’ve been worse. They were very hands-off parents; I was never smothered growing up. Lily’s gran, however, was a little more prodding in our relationship, and gave more winks and nudges than my folks did. Her dad on the other hand, he never seemed to really like me. He was never overt in his dislike, but I could tell he wasn’t so keen on me. Especially as I got older. I suppose any father with a daughter is bound to be the same.
That was the last summer of my childhood. The next year, well… everything had changed. Although I suppose I hadn’t changed that much, she had. She entered her terrible teens and suddenly she wasn’t the Lily I knew. I came up for the summer expecting it to be just like it was before. But she was so suddenly different. Suddenly she’d gone all punk.
No wait, grunge – the early nineties… Suddenly she was fashionable, and I was… I was still a kid. Some dorky, geeky pre-teen who wasn’t part of the incrowd.
Suddenly school yard politics were here in Morecambe too. She wasn’t there on the wall looking to the sea that year when I went looking for her; she was off with her friends. It wasn’t like she hadn’t had friends in all those years I’d known her, but for those two weeks she spent most of her time with me; we hardly ever had others join us.
Now she had a gang, three or four girls and a few guys. When she was nowhere to be found that first day, her gran directed me to where I could find her. She’d reached that age of growing up where you find yourself hanging around shops. She was by a late-night Spar with her new friends, pooling money together to try and buy cigarettes and then moving on to the next shop when they were turned away.
I was a nervous weirdo to them. I looked so square in my old jacket and jumper compared to their torn jeans and band T-shirts. She talked to me a little, but it was clear that I was now an embarrassment. She was desperate to fit in and in particular wanted the attention of this tall guy with a long face and spiky hair.
I sort of hung around with them, not saying much. They were too busy talking school gossip and listening to tapes on their Walkmans, pushing their heads together to hear the music on shared head phones. I didn’t really know any of the bands; I never really paid much attention to music back then, at home all I had was cassette tapes of old Dad’s Army episodes my dad had given me.
I would’ve thought she was an imposter, a completely different girl if it wasn’t for the walk home. I went with her back to the hotel and for a brief while she was that same girl with her head in the clouds I used to know, humming along to a tune only she knew. In the past I’d found it endearing, but now it seemed like a barrier. I was dejected and disappointed; the girl I thought I loved was someone else now.
For the rest of that holiday I hardly saw her. She actively avoided me. I was embarrassing to her; I used to think of us both as outsiders together, but she was on the inside now. It was just me still looking in. I was so upset I moped that fortnight away. I spent virtually the whole time stuck with my parents, and they got pretty sick of my whining and complaining. But honestly, after six years what were we exactly going to discover in Morecambe that was new? All the same places, all the same attractions. I was getting pretty sick of it. The only thing I wanted was no longer within reach.
I think Mum was probably tired of it too, but my father wasn’t one for change. Like all truly stubborn people, he’d dig his heels in for no good reason and refuse to accept change. That’s why they divorced in the end. He became so inflexible that he wasn’t just stuck in a rut, he was lost in one.
We were good friends with the hotel staff by this time and Lily’s grandmother and I always seemed to get on. She was annoyed that Lily had been so mean to me; I don’t think she liked Lily’s new crowd very much, but I suppose it was understandable that parents might get a bit concerned when you start listening to Nirvana and Happy Mondays and start dressing like you don’t wash any more.
By then she was becoming more of a parent to Lily; her father was drinking more and more. The business was struggling and his alcoholism was getting worse and his behaviour was rubbing guests up the wrong way, my dad included.
But Lily’s grandmother, I think she must have told her off, because on that last night we were there, she invited me to go the cinema with her. I think she probably planned to go anyway, there were a bunch of her other friends there, she was probably just being charitable.
We went to see Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves, even though none of them seemed bothered about seeing it – generation X types, everything was so ‘lame’. They were all older than us too, I hadn’t noticed before, but this gang of hers were a few years ahead.
I can’t stand to watch that movie now, but at the time I thought it was pretty cool. The guys we went with spent most of the time sniggering about it and making jokes, annoying everyone in the auditorium. I was more annoyed by the spikey-hair guy’s arms around Lily. It was hard to follow the film and I wished I’d stayed at the hotel.
Most of the gang snuck out more than half way through, leaving me with Lily and spikey. Then, just as the film was reaching the end, they too snuck down to the fire exit at the bottom of the auditorium and bolted. They’d ditched me as well.
I stayed until the end and then moped my way out of there. Hurt and feeling betrayed, I planned in my head how I would say to my parents that we should stop coming to Morecambe, that it was a miserable and boring place and we should find somewhere else to go on our holidays.
But no sooner had I walked a few feet from the front entrance did I hear Lily’s voice again. She shouted my name, or at least, she’d tried to. It had been cut off – she’d been stopped from shouting, abruptly. I turned my head and swore I saw someone disappear from view, hiding behind a wall, just down a driveway leading behind the cinema.
The drive led to a small car park for employees and deliveries. I knew I hadn’t imagined hearing her, and although it was rain
ing, I could hear movement; the scrape of heels on the ground.
I started off slowly, but ran as I realised there was a struggle going on. Just as I turned the corner, I spotted them tucked behind a metal skip bin, next to the ramp to the fire escape. I saw spikey-hair, pinning Lily to the wall with one hand clamped over her mouth and the other stopping her body from sliding from under his, telling her to be quiet.
He saw me and was about to tell me to back off. But before he did, I did something, to this day, I can’t imagine myself doing: I went right up to him and lamped him one, right in the chops. I think he was as surprised as I was – he fell back and landed against the ramp railing. I didn’t know what to do then, but I only paused for a second before I decided the safest thing to do was kick him in the balls and leg it.
Her top was undone and her bra was unfastened. After we’d run down the street and around a corner, we stopped to get her properly dressed. She was cold and shivering – she’d left her coat there, behind the theatre. Neither of us wanted to go back for it. She cried. I put her head on my shoulder and held it there for as long as she wanted. I gave her my coat and took being soaked on the way home like a gentleman.
We walked back home along the seafront, just like the old days. Only this time she wasn’t quiet because she was in her own world, it was because she didn’t want to talk about what had just happened. I didn’t know what to say either, so we walked back in silence.
We got back to the hotel and I asked her if she was going to be ok. She nodded and thanked me for lending her my coat, which she gave back to me. After another awkward moment of quiet, she asked if I was going tomorrow. I said yes and then she said goodbye and that she would see me again next year probably.
We waved sheepishly to each other and parted. It felt like we should’ve hugged or said something more meaningful, but neither of us could think of anything to say. But as I turned to walk away, I heard her call my name again. I turned back and suddenly she was there in front of me.
She kissed me.
My first kiss.
I don’t want to get cheesy but it was… it was like moving to Technicolor. I felt like I drifted inches up off the floor and didn’t come down again for about an hour. She didn’t even say a word; she just kissed me and went swiftly through the door to her room.
As we packed to leave that year all I wanted to do was stay. Lily didn’t seem to be around that morning and I was so desperate to find her and say how much I didn’t want to go. But my father wasn’t going to let me interrupt his schedule and I couldn’t let him know how desperate I was for us to stay longer because of youthful embarrassment.
We packed up, paid and left. But just as we were leaving, I got one final glimpse. She was there, climbing the steps to the hotel with some shopping.
She waved to us as we left and I waved back. I carried that image with me for a hundred miles home with a tear in my eye. The thought that I wouldn’t see her now for a whole 12 months hurt so bad; it dug right into my soul and made my chest ache. But what could I do?
She was forever on my mind for the rest of the summer and into the new school term. I wanted her. I wanted her to be mine.
But how could I do it? I wouldn’t see her again for a year, how could I stop someone else from making a move on her during that time? What if spikey-hair apologised and weaselled his way back into her heart? I didn’t think she was that foolish, but who knew? I sometimes wondered if I really knew her at all. I only saw her for two weeks a year.
I decided after much fretting and worrying that I would write to her. It took weeks; I had to pluck up the courage to do it and then I had to decide what to write. Then it took weeks to write it, draft, redraft, tear up, throw away, start again… it was months before I had something ready to post, but I didn’t want my parents to know, so it took me ages to find the address of the hotel. There was no internet then; I had to do my research and visit the library to find a listing and address for the hotel. It was almost the end of October by the time I finally posted the letter.
I’m not even sure what I put in the letter – something probably cringe-worthy about longing and wanting to see her every day. I didn’t want to put her off by going too far, but I tried in a clumsy way to tell her just how much I loved her and how I hated that it would be so many months before I would see her again. Most importantly, I wanted to know how she felt about me and whether she cared and thought about me as I thought about her.
I almost chickened out before I sent it; I was so afraid of rejection. I had forgotten how dismissive she had been of me during those two weeks. How she’d been part of a new crowd that would look down on someone as terribly unfashionable and gawky as me.
Weeks passed, then months. Getting an answer was frightening enough, getting no answer was worse. By the time Christmas approached, the chance of getting a response looked bleak and I had already resigned myself to the fact that we would never be together.
My parents’ marriage was falling apart; they were barely on speaking terms. Normally my aunt and uncle and cousins would come over and we’d spend Christmas together. But my cousin Aaron had already suggested that they might stay away that year; that my parents’ arguments had already almost spoilt it last year. There would have to be a reckoning between them before the big day. I made myself almost sick with worry not knowing when the explosion might come.
And then the letter came. It was just as school was breaking up and I was still wary about what might happen at Christmas…
I wish I still had that letter. It was just… I was so unhappy and so low and it was exactly what I needed. It brought me comfort and hope and a glimmer of happiness.
Lily thanked me for writing to her; she was happy to receive my letter which had ‘shone some light on a dark time’. Her handwriting was so beautiful, so elegant, it practically danced across the page. I’d never realised she was such a gifted writer. It was as if for the first time we were really talking. All the awkwardness, the half-gazes, the things unsaid during those brief visits… suddenly we were communicating honestly, fully, completely…
Though the letter gave me hope, it was far from happy reading. Her father had become worse: he was drinking far too much and now he had suffered from a small stroke, followed by a serious fall down some stairs, breaking his leg.
He’d spent many weeks in hospital and she had worried that he might die. She had already lost her mother and was terrified of losing him too. He was home now, but needed constant care as he was still out of sorts and not fit to run the hotel. She was having to help out more and was struggling with her schoolwork but was managing to get through as the hotel was not busy. But this too was a problem; her gran and cousins were afraid because they just weren’t getting enough guests on season to cope with the quiet off-season.
After going through all her problems, she finally came to my letter and to my utter excitement said she often thought of me too. She was sorry for how she had been when I last visited. She had been fighting with her father and had tried to make new friends and tried to be like them, but realised that it was a mistake and that she would never really fit in with them.
She was sorry she had been cruel to me because, really, we were more alike than she was with any of them. And that, in fact, was one of the things she liked best about me; that she could just be herself and didn’t need to worry about what anyone else would think.
She was sorry that we couldn’t see each other more often, but now, more than ever, she had little time to herself, having to look after the hotel and do her coursework. We were both heading towards GCSEs and the pressure was on.
She said she would look forward to me writing again and I duly started on a new letter that very night. We became confidants for each other. Each revealing our true and honest thoughts through our letters. I wrote of my worries about my parents, how they were, apparently, starting afresh, giving their marriage one last chance and my doubts that they could ever really change things, my dad especially.
She wrote of her father’s loneliness and his struggle with drinking. She thought he had never gotten over her mother’s death and that he blamed himself for it, and that had stopped him from ever remarrying. Now his business was failing, she worried too he might sink deeper into depression, because of the years he’d put into the hotel. That summer would be decisive, if it did not make money it would not, in her opinion, survive another year.
We wrote to each other every month. By Easter a great plot had been hatched: our exams were around the corner, but after that we would have months before we had to start college. What if I were to come to Morecambe to work for her father at the hotel? We could spend the whole summer together. I could live there at the hotel, get paid a small amount, as they couldn’t afford much; it would help her father and most importantly, we could be together.
I floated the idea to my parents and they said yes. As long as I revised hard, they were all for it. Her father gave the go ahead too – although I bet he needed some convincing.
So I revised hard and did my best. My parents were on their best behaviour, for my benefit, although you don’t need raised voices to be affected by that kind of tension.
I couldn’t wait to get away. And within a few days of my last exam ending, I was on a bus up to Morecambe. My parents were going to join me mid-August, as was our tradition now that potters’ holidays were no longer observed.
I worried a great deal on the way there, self-conscious and nervous as always. I knew her now better than I’d ever known her. But still, seeing somebody for only a few weeks every year made it difficult. Everything had changed so much; we weren’t just occasional friends any more. We were something more. Both almost 16 now; there was pressure and my mind was not unexpectedly on sex, although that still seemed like a far-off possibility.
Eleven New Ghost Stories Page 17
