Growing Up Twice

by Rowan Coleman

  Rosie laughs, quite unnecessarily loudly, in my view.

  ‘No, darling, because your mobile’s been going every five minutes for the last half hour and you’ve had about ninety text messages. I was going to read them but then I thought it was probably nicer to bring you the phone and then sit over you while you read them yourself. Have you got a secret boyfriend, lady?’

  ‘Chance’d be a fine thing,’ I mumble, genuinely grumpy enough to be able to get away with bad acting. Looking at my phone I can see that, sure enough, it does show twelve text messages waiting for me. I guess that half of them are from my messaging service telling me I have a phone message. I open the first one. It’s not from Michael’s usual number, but it must be from him. ‘I’ll see you soon,’ is all it says, spelt out in full with none of that funky text abbreviation the kids are all so fluent in these days. Michael must have taken pity on my total inability to suss it. Either that or he’s trying to impress me with his ability to spell. I dial my messages and Michael’s voice crackles into my ear.

  ‘Hi, it’s me. It’s nine thirty and I’m just on the way to the station. I think I’ll be at yours around eleven, OK? Call me if the coast isn’t clear. I missed you last night. Anyway, bye!’ I catch myself smiling soppily and Rosie studies me intently. I decide not to pick up the rest of the messages as I’m pretty sure they are just a chain reaction caused by my diligent little phone trying to tell me someone was calling. I switch it off.

  ‘What’s the time?’ I ask again, but this time with words.

  ‘Coming up to ten. Why, have you got to be somewhere?’ She thinks that just because I murdered half my brain cells last night she’ll be able to catch me out.

  ‘No, but you’ve got a train to catch, haven’t you?’

  ‘No, smarty-pants. Josh offered to take me. He said the last thing I needed was a stressful train journey on top of everything else. He really is a lovely bloke, you know.’ She stresses the last sentence as if I haven’t known Josh for just as long as she has and aren’t perfectly aware of how nice he is. Good old Josh, so nice and helpful for no reason at all, oh no, just because he’s nice. I’m peeved.

  ‘Josh! Ha! He might be nice but no one is that nice for no reason. Haven’t you worked out his ulterior motive yet? Haven’t you wondered why he’s suddenly always round here, doing stuff?’

  Rosie nearly falls off the bed in hysterics.

  ‘Of course I have, have you?’ she laughs incredulously. I think she’s being a tiny bit harsh on him; his crush on her isn’t a laughing matter.

  I’m about to tell her off but then the doorbell chimes and I put down the coffee and dive under the duvet.

  ‘I’ll talk to you about this when I get back,’ Rosie says sternly for no good reason. After a couple of moments I hear Josh’s deep tones in the hallway accepting Rosie’s offer of a quick coffee before they go. I’ve got to get up and face them. For starters, I’ve got to begin getting my face sorted out – I’ve only got an hour – and secondly, I have to make sure they leave here pretty quickly, I don’t want anything to go wrong. I reach under the bed and pull out my pyjamas, use a baby wipe to take off most of my make-up and drag a brush through about as much hair as my pain barrier can bear. I shuffle into the kitchen. Josh has had his head shaved again, it makes his head seem strangely appealing. I resist the urge to touch it and sit next to him at the table.

  ‘Good night?’ he asks with that wry little smile he has.

  ‘Mmmm. After a fashion. You? Did you go to the family do, or did you manage to escape?’

  He suddenly looks about as guilty as a man can get.

  ‘Um yeah, I went,’ he says.

  ‘Ha! You snogged someone, didn’t you?’ I can’t resist taunting him in front of Rosie, who obviously thinks she’s got him wrapped around her little finger, but at the same moment I find am horrified by his infidelity. Josh! Our Josh snogging women left, right and centre when he’s supposed to have a crush on Rosie. It’s very uncharacteristic.

  ‘Me? No! I … well, I did go. That’s all.’ His dark complexion has taken on a rosy tint and I settle back in triumph. I try to pin down why I feel so pissed off at him; after all, I’ve already decided that he and Rosie wouldn’t work out, but that doesn’t mean I think he should keep his options open in the mean time. Josh isn’t meant to snog other girls. He is meant to be Josh, the bloke in my life who doesn’t snog other girls. He’s supposed to be neutral, damn him. Either that or my befuddled brain has lost all ability to work cognitively. I like the sound of that option, I’ll go with that.

  Rosie shakes her head at me from over his shoulder. She really is excelling at smug soberness this morning.

  ‘Right, I’m off to get my bag. Are you ready, Josh? It really is nice of you to give me a lift. You really are a nice man.’ She looks pointedly at me again and Josh shrugs a bit and looks self-consciously at his coffee.

  ‘I like your pyjamas,’ he says into the silence. I stir my coffee. For some hangover/hormone-related reason, I’m sulking.

  ‘Do you still want to come to my exhibition when it opens? Not so long to go now – I’m getting a bit nervous about being ready in time. I reckon it’ll be good.’

  ‘Yeah, probably,’ I mumble.

  ‘I didn’t snog anyone, you know.’ He seems to feel that he needs to make his point, and something in his tone makes me believe him.

  ‘Josh, you big lug, I don’t care if you did!’ My sulk evaporates as quickly as it came and I cave in to the urge to stroke his head across the table as the weight of my hangover lifts momentarily. We smile at each other stupidly for a second before Rosie appears in the doorway.

  ‘Right, come on.’ Josh sets down his cup and takes her bag from her.

  ‘Will you be all right?’ I ask her, remembering to be a good friend for five minutes.

  ‘What, you mean in a luxury six bedroomed “cottage” with a fridge full of gourmet food and satellite telly? I reckon.’

  ‘Well, call me if you need me. And don’t make any rash decisions until you’ve spoken to me and Selin, OK?’ If it wasn’t for the fact that I absolutely have to get her out of the house before Michael gets here I’d give her another full lecture on the 101 reasons why Chris’s hospitality is the only thing she should accept from him, but that’s going to have to wait until she gets back.

  ‘OK.’ She rolls her eyes and we hug. As I close the door on them I realise I never got to ask her about Jackson. Talking of whom, I hope I didn’t do anything too embarrassing with him last night – that would be awkward.

  I look at the wall clock. 10.22. I’d better get moving.

  Chapter Thirty-five

  It’s actually 11.22 when the doorbell finally chimes and for once I don’t mind Michael being late. I have only just stepped out of the shower, my wet hair is drizzling down my back and the big towel that I have haphazardly wrapped around myself is very damp.

  ‘Hello?’ I suppose I’d better check it is Michael and not Rosie returning because she’s forgotten to pack enough pairs of really big maternity knickers.

  ‘All right? It’s me.’ I buzz him in, put the door on the latch, run to the hall mirror and hastily examine my face. There are shadows but they aren’t too deep. I do look exceptionally pale but maybe that will add to the brunette version of pre-Raphaelite charm that he’s always banging on about. I grab another towel from the radiator and give my hair a quick rub over when he politely knocks on the flat door before entering.

  ‘Hello there,’ he says in the style of Leslie Philips, looking me up and down.

  ‘Hi, sorry about this. Woke up a bit late.’ I go to him and try to kiss him whilst still holding up my towel. The texture of his clothes through the cotton feels rough.

  ‘Listen, never apologise for being practically naked. In fact, you should be damn sorry you’ve got anything on at all.’ With a wicked smile he grabs my wrists and forcibly raises my hands so that the towel drops to the floor.

  ‘You bastard,’ I manage to say
as he looks me up and down again, devouring me with his gaze and then shoving me against the hallway wall, my arms above my head, taking both wrists in one hand and allowing the other to explore. The feeling of his cold hand and his clothes running the length of my body makes me forget everything but the feel of his fingers.

  ‘Bedroom,’ I whisper in his ear and he leads me into my room.

  He pushes me on to my bed and I watch him watching me as he finds his way out of his clothes. Outside, the traffic rumbles up and down Green Lanes, some kids yell and shout at each other and someone with a radio tuned to a Turkish station parks outside. When all his clothes are in a pile on the floor he climbs on top of me and pushes my legs apart with his knee.

  ‘Later on,’ he whispers, ‘I’m going to spend hours and hours practising all of the fantasies I’ve dreamt up on you. But right now you look too good for anything else but this.’ I arch my back to meet him and sigh as he enters me. We move together quickly, my fingers creating valleys in his back and before I realise what’s happening I come just before him, in a quick explosive burst of pleasure. A second later he too is still, his face buried in my wet hair.

  For a moment we are silent. Out of the window I watch a tumult of white cloud slowly drift across a blue sky. I can hear the clock ticking in the hallway and the central heating click on.

  Michael raises his head and looks at me. ‘I feel as if I’m never going to get enough of you,’ he says.

  ‘That was something else,’ I say, not really sure what to say when he’s being romantic. ‘I mean you really … you made me feel really good.’

  He smiles down at me and rolls on to his side.

  ‘But I just went for it, like no foreplay or anything.’ Sometimes I wish he’d stop being so literal.

  ‘Foreplay doesn’t matter when you’re already turned on. You turned me on in seconds. Although that does not mean that I don’t expect you to carry out your promise on every last inch of me, OK? That concludes the lesson for today.’

  His smile deepens as his hands travel lightly over my breasts. ‘OK. The first thing I wanted to try is this.’

  Somewhere behind the clouds the sun moves across the sky and turns the morning into afternoon. Finally evening begins to tint the daylight and we lie quietly together, drifting in and out of sleep.

  ‘How was your party?’ I ask him at last.

  ‘It was OK. Cool. Eight people threw up. Mum and Dad gave me a car. Now all I need to do is learn how to drive.’

  ‘Cool,’ I say, trying to remember if I used to count incidents of vomiting at my teen parties. Michael’s face is inches from mine and I can tell by the look in his eyes that he doesn’t want to discuss vomiting contests any more.

  ‘Listen, you remember the other day on the phone. I said I think that I love you?’

  I blink awake and chew my bottom lip. ‘Did you? I don’t remember. I was probably in a bit of a rush.’ I had hoped we’d forgotten about that. He props himself up on his elbow, and his smile is so sweet and shy I just want to stop him speaking but my fingers aren’t fast enough.

  ‘I do, you know. I do love you. I realised it last night at the party, and even more when I saw you this morning. You are like no one else. I love you and want everyone to know about us. I want you to come back to my house tomorrow and I’ll introduce you to my mum and dad as who you really are. My girlfriend.’

  Now probably isn’t the right time to reflect back on the several moments in my life when I have made the same or similar speech to various men and they have replied with the same deafening silence that I am now inflicting on Michael, or to think about how I’d try and save face by saying something like, ‘You don’t have to say anything. You don’t have to say you love me. I just love you and wanted you to know, no strings.’

  Exactly as Michael has just done.

  ‘But I …’ I sit up and look at him, think of how much I missed him in the bar last night, how much I wanted him from the first moment I set eyes on him this morning and how much I need him at the moment, need him to reflect the me I used to be before Owen ripped me up.

  ‘I do love you,’ I say. Not because I do, but because I don’t want to hurt him the way all of those various men hurt me.

  Michael buries his head in my neck and I look down at the crown of his head and his strong fingers circling the tops of my arms, and I feel every one of the eleven years between us.

  Fortune interrupts the silence by sounding the doorbell and I leap out of bed perhaps a little more quickly than is polite just after such a mutual revelation. I don’t especially want to see anyone right now, but I do want a break from the tension and pathos of the moment.

  ‘Hello?’ I enquire into the whistling feedback of the intercom.

  ‘Hi? Jen? It’s Ayla here.’ Her voice sounds very young and distant from three floors down.

  ‘Ayla! Hello.’ I’m surprised, I haven’t seen her since Mrs Selin cooked us dinner.

  ‘Um, can I come up?’

  ‘God, of course you can, sorry.’ I buzz her in and race back into my room to pull on a pair of jeans, a bra and a top.

  ‘Selin’s little sister,’ I whisper to Michael as I race out of the bedroom and pull the door shut behind me.

  ‘Hello,’ I say again as I open the door to her. She towers above me in her Nike Airmax and bends to kiss me on either cheek, brushing an ironed shiny strand of hair behind a multi-pierced ear as she stoops.

  ‘This is a nice surprise, fancy a coffee?’ I lead her into the kitchen and pick up the kettle to fill it.

  ‘No thanks.’ She wrinkles her nose. ‘Got any juice or Coke?’ I check in the fridge, find some of Rosie’s organic apple juice and pour her a glass.

  ‘This is a really nice place,’ she says, looking around. ‘It must be great to have your own place.’ As she speaks she nods her head with quiet contemplative persistence. I make myself a cup of instant and settle down next to her.

  Just as I wonder what the likelihood is of Michael making his presence known and beginning his new policy of outing our relationship, he strides into the kitchen. At least he had the good grace to get dressed first.

  ‘Hello, I’m Michael, Jenny’s … cousin.’ I can’t work out if his last-minute denial of our love was a general back-down or if he merely revised the status of his devotion to me when confronted with a beautiful girl much closer to his own age. The latter definitely figures if the long assessment he has bestowed on her person is anything to go by.

  ‘This is Ayla, Selin’s sister. We were just talking through girl stuff, weren’t we, Ayla?’ I say briskly. Ayla stands up again, her cheeks burning with the unexpected heat ignited by an unknown foxy boy in her presence.

  ‘I’m sorry, Jenny, I’ll go, I didn’t realise that you had company,’ she says, but I reach out and gently push her back into her seat.

  ‘Nonsense. Michael is just passing through. Michael, go and watch TV.’ He nods and backs out of the kitchen. ‘See,’ I psychically transmit to him, ‘I talk to you more like your mother than your mother does, and you think you love me!’

  ‘See you around then,’ he says to Ayla, treating her to one of his playground-special smiles and ignoring my telepathy. A few moments later we hear the theme tune to Blind Date blare out, switch briefly to The Generation Game and then back to the Blind Date tune again.

  ‘He’s pretty cute, your “cousin”,’ Ayla says with an impish smile; I can’t work out if she’s being sarcastic or not. I choose to ignore any possible undertones given that she’s sixteen.

  ‘Is he? I’ve known him since he was a kid, you know, so I don’t really look at him that way.’ I thank God for the first time that one thing Michael can’t give me is stubble rash. I hastily change the subject.

  ‘Well, how’s it going with that chap, thingummy?’

  ‘Jamie? He asked me out!’ Her voice rises in a little high-pitched squeal at the end of the sentence and her solemn face breaks into a grin.

  ‘Cool!’ I say genuine
ly impressed.

  ‘Yeah, but I can’t go out with him.’ Her face falls again. ‘Tamsin says she’ll break both my legs if I do.’

  ‘Tamsin? Isn’t Tamsin your mate who you went to Ibiza on a family holiday with in the summer?’ I can understand the tremulous tone to her voice. Ayla has had ‘friends’ turn on her before.

  ‘Yeah. But since term started everything seems to have changed.’ She drops her head so that I can see the hours of work that went into the perfection of her zig-zag parting.

  ‘But she was joking, right?’ I ask hopefully. For her to be involved in another incident like this could really knock her confidence for good.

  ‘No.’ She lifts her face to look at me and her beautifully lined eyes are full of imminent tears.

  ‘I’m in big trouble, Jen,’ she whispers and the first big fat tear runs down her face.

  ‘Oh, darling,’ I say, dragging my chair next to her and flinging an arm around her shoulder. I’m thinking teenage pregnancy, drug addiction, shoplifting ring?

  ‘It’s Tamsin and the others. They h-hate me.’ Her tears break into full-blown sobs now and her head drops to her forearms. I hand her a piece of kitchen roll.

  ‘I’m sure it’s not that bad, if you’ve just fallen out. They’re probably just miffed because all the boys fancy you and you don’t get spots. Ever. Do you?’ I have always wondered what genes the Mehmet family carries to avoid any type of teenage acne whatsoever, not even the sort of outbreak I’m still prone to from time to time – and I’ve got six grey hairs.

  ‘It’s worse than that.’ She looks at me again and takes a couple of deep breaths. ‘When I first met them, right, they were really nice to me and like, that lot, Tamsin and Aisha and everyone, they are the coolest in the year. So I was really chuffed when they asked me to hang with them. Lots of the other girls didn’t like them, but I thought they were just, you know, jealous.’ I nod as she speaks, recognising a scenario from my own school life, but with more expensive trainers on.

  ‘Anyway, after I’d known them a while they started messing around with the juniors, teasing them and that. And then they started to nick their dinner money off them and threaten to beat them up if they didn’t pay. I did too. I was there. We’d go and spend it on lipstick and fags. I don’t smoke though!’ she adds quickly in an attempt to negate the rest of her confession.