by Stella Duffy
“Us lot?”
“Young mothers. It’s all guilt-tripping, advertising’s to blame, no one even knew about organic food when you two were little, didn’t do either of you any harm. I remember you used to love those tins of processed peas.”
“Mum! OK. I’ll take some beans. Next time we’re over.”
“All right then, I’ll put some aside. Now you must let me get on, your dad’s starving.”
“No wait, I called for a reason.”
“Oh?”
“You remember Daniel Carver? Who I went to school with?”
“Judy Carver’s boy?”
“That’s it. I need to get hold of him. Someone mentioned a reunion thingie.”
“I wouldn’t have thought you’d be interested in anything like that, you were so glad to leave that school, you couldn’t get away fast enough. And we were so proud when you got in … ”
“Yes, I know, Mum.” Saz covered. “And I don’t know that I am interested really. It’s just this thing, I heard about … anyway … do you know what he’s doing now?”
“You know I do.”
“Mum, how would I know?”
“I told you all about it, why don’t you girls ever listen to me? I bumped into Judy Carver when he was just starting to retrain.”
“As what?”
“A teacher, Sarah, I told you. Full of it she was, how well he was doing, what a good move it would be. Well, you know how she used to go on and on about him when he moved to America. Quite the big filmmaker she said he was, doesn’t sound like that panned out though. Still, must be much nicer having him home near her.”
“He lives over here?”
“Judy said he’d moved back out that way, over where we used to live. She’s still there too, I think. Houses are so much cheaper if you don’t insist in living in the centre of town … ”
“Yes, Mum, we know. Do you know where he’s working?”
“I think Amy had him last year for something or other … ”
“Amy? Daniel’s teaching at Amy’s school?”
“Not anymore. And it’s not a school, it’s a college, sixth form college, Amy’s very touchy about that. I told you last time you were over, Cassie said she hates it when we call it a school. She’s very particular about it. Not that I can tell the difference. Although I don’t know if she still wears a uniform … ”
“Mum, what else did Judy Carver say?”
“Oh, you know, the usual ‘my boy’ fuss. She’s always indulged him, that one. Apparently he was the drama teacher. At the college. Who’d have thought a boy like that would become a drama teacher? Thought you’d need to be a bit more sparky for something like drama. I remember him as a quiet boy, clever yes, but quiet. Not like Ross Gallagher – did you see him last week?”
“What?” Saz was horrified.
“He was on breakfast telly, talking about something he’s done. Still good looking, isn’t he? Still full of himself too if you ask me … ”
“Yes, Mum, please, Daniel?”
“Oh yes, well he was at Amy’s college and then he moved on. But she might know where to. They seem to know so much these young ones, don’t they? Not that you and your lot were any different of course. Or you could ask Judy? I’m sure I’ve got her number somewhere.”
“No, I don’t think so, I’ll try Amy first. Mrs Carver still scares me. She was always so … ”
“Judgemental?”
“Yeah. And arrogant. Looked down on us.”
“She still does. I take it with a pinch of salt. I’ll ask her if you like?”
“No, really, it’s fine.” The last thing Saz wanted was to get Judy Carver’s version of Daniel’s new life. She couldn’t imagine Daniel was any more truthful with his mother now than he had been when they were younger, nor did she want him to know she was trying to find him. Surprise had always been a better way to deal with Daniel Carver than reasoned argument. “Thanks, Mum. I’ve got to get Matilda’s lunch now too. I’ll speak to you later, yeah?”
“All right then, lots of love to your ladies.”
Saz’s subsequent conversation with her niece Amy was far faster.
“Why?”
“I think I used to go to school with him.”
“You did.”
“How do you know?”
“You went to that school near your old house, right? Where you and Mum grew up? The ones that are flats now?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, he said he did too. And he must be about your age. He told one of the girls I know. Like it would impress her, that he comes from round here and then went off to America. He thinks he’s so cool because he made some fuck-off film in New York or something and then when he can’t get work anymore he comes back here. And becomes a film studies teacher.”
“Mum said it was drama?”
“Whatever. Maybe both. I don’t know, I don’t do that stuff. Anyway, why do you care?”
“I just thought it might be good to get in touch with him again.”
“Oh, Saz, don’t, he’s a wanker. Everyone hates him. He was going out with one of the girls in his class, that’s why he left school.”
“Really?”
“That’s what I heard. When the other teachers found out he had to move.”
“Where to?”
“How would I know?”
“Well, maybe I could I talk to her? The girl he was going out with? Could you arrange for me to meet her?”
“Could do. I’ll find out. But I don’t think you’ll like her much.”
Two days later, Saz left Matilda with Carrie again. Carrie was exhausted from three nights playing with her new fling and very happy to spend an afternoon at home, and Saz made her way over to her London-edge home ground. In their telephone conversation, Saz had told Will that she thought it very lucky Daniel Carver should have moved home to teach, and that he was having an affair with one of her niece’s friends.
Gallagher’s theory was that it had nothing to do with luck. “No, both things are typical Daniel. He might have had that one success, but he’s always been the kind of guy who’s far more comfortable in a small pond than a big one. And there’s no pond smaller than the one you grew up in.”
“So how does that fit with him having a relationship with a student?”
“He had his big success young. And nothing since then. He’s probably one of those people who’ll spend the whole of their thirties wishing they were nineteen again. Then again, if this girl is young and eager … who could blame him?”
“Fuck off, Will. Blokes always think it’s fine for another man to go out with a woman years younger than himself, I bet you wouldn’t be so keen on the idea if Daniel were seeing a boy student instead of a girl.”
Will shrugged, “Might be right. Doesn’t negate my point though; he was always way happier when he could kid himself he was in charge. I doubt that’s changed.”
Saz couldn’t disagree with him, but nor was she keen to get involved in a dissection of Daniel Carver’s failings. It was all too clear to her that anything either of them could say about Daniel’s aberrant youthful behaviour twisted straight back to their own. They agreed Saz would find out what she could about Daniel, and Will suggested the two of them should try to meet up with him together.
“Safety in numbers. You know, he’s as likely to want to see you as you were when I turned up on your doorstep.”
“You make it sound like I’m OK about seeing you now.”
“No, I don’t. But we don’t have a choice. If we want to stop Janine Marsden telling all – and I take it you do?” Saz flinched, her stomach twisting as unbidden pictures flashed into her mind. She couldn’t answer, but Will was pressing her. “You do want to stop her talking, right, Sally?”
She let out a quiet “You know I do.”
“Good. Then we’re all going to have to get to know each other again. Daniel just doesn’t know it yet.”
Saz was about to hang up when another thought occurred to
her. “Have you heard from her – from Janine – since last time?”
“She called last night. I told her I was on to it, but she needed to be patient. I said that getting the lot of us to meet up after all this time wasn’t going to happen overnight.”
“And?”
“She repeated I’ve got until the end of the month to get us together and then to see her, or she’ll go to every newspaper and radio station and TV news reporter in the country. Thereby fucking up my wedding, my career, and everyone else’s happy little lives as well.”
“Is that what she said?”
“In as many words. The bit about everyone else’s life is mine.”
“I thought it might be.”
“Listen, Sally, if you think I’m going to let her fuck it all up for me and not the rest of you, you’ve got another think coming.”
Saz laughed, “Believe me, Will, I’d never think that of you.”
“Good. So we’ve got until the end of the month.”
She looked at her watch. “That’s two weeks away.”
“Twelve days.”
“Shit.”
“Indeed.”
They were quiet then, until Saz ended their conversation with a final question. “And she did say all of us? All five?”
“Yep, she was very clear. You, me, Andrea, Daniel and Ewan.”
“Oh.”
“She asked about you too.”
“She did?”
“Specifically. I told her you were my first port of call. She sounded pleased.”
Getting to the sixth form college was easy, Saz knew the route backwards, had walked past the building often enough throughout her childhood. Twenty years ago it had been the grotty boys’ school up the road from the grotty girls’ school that she would have far preferred to go to, much preferring a supposedly bad school with most of her mates, to following her sister to the grammar school full of posh kids and rich kids and other kids just too damn clever for Saz’s liking. But she did get in, and Hazel and Patrick were determined she go and take advantage of the chances neither of them had had. Since then there’d been a shifting of local borough priorities, a slew of financial cutbacks, the boys’ school was knocked down to make way for an expanded shopping mall, the girls’ school rebranded as a sixth form college, the grammar school turned into luxury apartments.
Saz’s parents had long since moved away, further out to where buses were less frequent and hills more common. Cassie and her family had moved back to the area eight years earlier when property prices were on the edge of a leap and moving out of the central city meant they could exchange their three-bedroom flat for a whole house, with garden. The classic London compromise – central urban versus suburban sprawl. Cassie had promised Saz she’d understand the need to move out of town when she had more kids, wanted space and good local state schools. Saz had promised Cassie she’d understand the desire to stay in the city when she was one half of a lesbian couple with a Scottish-Asian partner, a mixed-race babyfather, and a brown baby.
Getting to the college was easy, walking up the street full of students was not. While she was often told she looked young for her age, Saz realised as she walked that the people who said so were mostly around her own age – neither they nor she had looked at her reflection recently from the perspective of the average seventeen-year-old girl. A girl to whom all women over twenty-five were in that nebulous range between mother and crone, where around thirty might as well have been around forty, maybe fifty, not quite sixty. The middle ages as seen from the middle teens.
Saz realised when she pulled up near the school and parked round the corner that the nerves she was feeling were to do with hoping she might pass. She hadn’t really thought what she intended to pass as – an older sister perhaps, a potential teacher come for an interview, fairly young and not-too-distant, easy to talk to, to confide in. But one look at the young people milling outside on the street told her she’d got it wrong. In the street outside the school buildings, where a storm of sixteen-, seventeen- and eighteen-year-olds were gathered for their own lunch, Saz was as painfully obvious as if she were a ten-year-old trying to fit in reverse. She walked slowly up to the first group she came across, all too aware that in trying to look like them she looked even more different. She’d have done better to wear a suit and pretend to be a journalist, a sensible skirt and nice shoes and come as one of their mothers or a history teacher. They might ignore her just as easily, but they weren’t likely to both ignore and threaten in the same moment. As they were now doing. As she walked towards them. As the tallest of the perfectly highlighted girls turned to face her. And started to laugh.
TWENTY
They laughed at us, that first day going to big school. All those other kids and some of them so grownup, they looked like adults, like teachers. And we weren’t like most of them, not skiing-holiday material, her or me. But we had got in, had a right to be there, that’s what my dad said to her mum. And we knew each other sort of, from primary school, and our houses weren’t too far apart, so we walked there together. Then time passed and they all laughed too loudly and then she joined in, was like them, became one of them. They were different too, but different on their own terms, their own choice. The choice to stand out, in torn black jumpers, reading books no one else read, movies no one else watched, music everyone else hated. They made their own place and then she was with them and I wasn’t welcome anymore. So they weren’t laughing at us, they were laughing at me, and she was laughing with them. I tried to behave as if I didn’t care. But I did. And she knew I did. And she laughed with them anyway.
Of course I know why she did it, I’m not stupid. She saved herself. They were never going to stop and she understood that sooner than I did – she was always way cleverer than me. So she went over to them, joined in with them, perhaps she really did like those boring fucking foreign films they used to watch. And she was probably right to go to them, maybe I’d have done the same. Or maybe not.
There are some new choices to make now. I wonder how they’ll decide what’s right this time?
TWENTY-ONE
Saz heard the laughter first, then looked up at the group in front of her. It all flooded back as she stealed herself to keep walking, recalling as she did the ghastly teenage years of working out who to be and how, finding herself in a group of misfits who eventually turned weird into cool-select by force of desire as much as anything else. Force of Will’s desire, of Daniel’s, and she just hanging in there as long as she could, scared to be part of them, scared to be apart from them. Scared and hiding it – as they all had – with black-and-blue clothes and a don’t-care-anyway carapace.
Standing beside them, adult eye to teenage eye-liner and allowing herself to look at the various groupings of young people with adult awareness instead of many years’ worth of her own fear of massed youth, Saz allowed herself to breathe out, she realised this lot weren’t too bad. There were the obvious idiots, the ones she’d have hated to have been at school with herself. The kind of kids she’d learned about within her first term at junior school, the ones she quickly learned to get on with as soon as possible so they had no reason to pick on her for the rest of their shared days. Nine to four is a long day in which to suffer, and Saz had been better than many at appearing to fit in when all she felt inside was how little she matched the others. Now of course, with adult knowledge, she knew that no one, not even those who seemed totally at ease had ever really belonged. Every grownup she knew admitted to feeling apart, not only during their childhood, but in much of their adult lives as well. The difference was that while not fitting in, being different, standing out, was ghastly for most children, for many of the adults she knew, it was now how they earned their living. For the likes of Carrie, individuality was prized and praised – but not until the school gates had long closed behind them.
Saz walked past the first group, eyes down, colour up in her cheeks, and twisted away from the image of herself at the same age. There were a couple
of noisy boys and louder girls, increasing the volume of their conversation as Saz passed, certainly for her benefit.
“No! You didn’t?”
“You fucked her?”
“You must have been so off your face.”
“We had some speed. So?”
“Yeah, well she must have been really pissed to shag you!”
Chorus of laughter, corps of sly looks, Saz moving on. And even as she thought it, she looked round for some wood to touch and save her from Matilda becoming a moody grumpy sixteen. Or worse, a sly-mouthed seventeen with an eager chorus of her own.
She rounded a group of lads, none of them prepared to step out of her way, Saz was forced off the curb to get by, and then presented herself to a couple of girls standing off to one side, together alone. It only took three texts from the ever so helpful – for five quid – Hannan to Eleanor to Ysmahan before Saz was directed to Becky. Who, everyone knew apparently, would be in the pizza place for the second half of lunchtime. Saz followed their directions and went to wait, turning down the house offer of a teacher-special lunch deal as she did so. Clearly the new old-look jeans, pink gingham All-Stars and dark purple T-shirt she was wearing marked her out as yet another teacher. Saz was disappointed. Despite the kids’ reaction, she’d thought she looked better than that.
Twenty minutes later, Becky Allicott came in with a small group of girls, most of them looking a little younger than Amy. But not Becky, at that distance she looked a very grownup seventeen. She left her friends hanging by the door, sat down in front of Saz and shouted back over the counter for a skimmed milk latté. Up close Becky still looked grownup, but it seemed more of a look and less of a truth. Saz was forcefully reminded of Daniel Carver at that age, pushing hard against the boundaries of child and adult and not knowing where to stop. She found herself wishing Will was with her. Will was the kind of man – even without the fame of his Ross-incarnation – who would have this girl wound round his little finger with one curling gesture. But his fame was exactly the reason he wasn’t there. And she was.
