By the end of her shift, Julie had worked out what she would say to Luke after Mark and Charlotte had gone home that night. She’d point out all the differences between herself and Charlotte, like the way they both felt about the weather. Knowing Charlotte hadn’t exactly made Julie fear the weather less. So, she sat in the sun more – that didn’t mean she wasn’t still terrified of rain, fog and, particularly, storms. Charlotte loved extremes of weather and experiences – Julie was the total opposite. Charlotte liked motorways; Julie would rather die than go on a motorway. Charlotte hated TV; Julie loved it. So they were hardly the same person.
To this day, Julie has never seen Happiness or Pleasantville, because they were the films she’d picked up for that night. When she got to Luke’s everything seemed different, and Charlotte wasn’t there.
‘Charlotte’s not here,’ said Luke, when Julie walked in.
‘I’m sorry,’ Mark said, looking at the floor. ‘Things aren’t, I mean . . .’
‘What’s going on?’ Julie, putting the videos and pizzas down on Luke’s bed.
Luke looked at her in a funny way. ‘Charlotte’s at your house.’
‘Oh.’ Julie glanced at Mark. He seemed sad. She looked at Luke, and he looked back at her, and she knew something wasn’t right between them but she didn’t know what was going on. ‘Why’s she at my house?’
‘She said she’d see you there,’ Luke said.
And even though something in his voice was daring her not to go, she still did.
‘I’m breaking up with Mark,’ Charlotte said simply.
She’d made herself at home on Julie’s bed and was drinking a cup of tea.
Julie sat down at her desk and looked at Charlotte, then, seeing tears in her eyes, looked away. Through her bedroom window she could half-hear and half-see movement in Luke’s room. A few moments later Julie saw Mark leave, cross the street and walk into his house.
‘Does Mark know?’ Julie asked.
Charlotte shook her head. ‘No. He suspects, but he doesn’t know.’
‘Are you leaving?’
‘I guess I’ll have to.’
‘Wow.’
‘This sucks, Jules. I’ve fucked up bad.’
‘Is there someone else?’
‘Maybe.’ Charlotte looked at her in a funny way. ‘I just don’t know . . .’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Things have got pretty stale with me and Mark, you know.’
‘I didn’t know,’ Julie said.
It was never easy to know how Charlotte was feeling. You always told her everything without realising she’d told you nothing. In all the time Julie had known her, Charlotte had never been this open about anything. Sure, their friendship had become deeper lately but they never really spent a lot of time alone together. They were always either at Luke’s, with Mark, or somewhere like a pub where Charlotte would spend most of her time just being Charlotte – making her unique observations on the world, looking out rather than in, never talking with anyone about herself or her perfect relationship. That’s the thing: her relationship seemed perfect. Mark and Charlotte used to go around together barefoot sometimes or wearing matching sunglasses. They liked the same music and he sometimes let her put make-up on him and it seemed like they’d be together forever.
Now Charlotte sighs. ‘Talking’s boring, sex is boring. If it wasn’t for you and Luke, I’d have gone ages ago. You know I only decided to live with Mark because I didn’t have anywhere else to go? I wouldn’t exactly have chosen to live with a guy and his parents under normal circumstances.’
‘So why . . . ?’
‘When I went to university, my parents pretty much told me not to come back. They threw out all my stuff and gave my room to my sister. I met Mark at university and we made it to the second year before we thought we should split. The whole thing was doing our heads in. We were living in this shitty student house with bitchy girls and no hot water, and our course was mind-numbingly boring. We wanted to do something rebellious. It was winter, so we drew out all the grant money we had left and went travelling, trying to find somewhere hot. When we ran out of money and came back to the UK we didn’t really have anywhere to go apart from Mark’s parents’ place.’
‘I never knew that.’
After a minute Charlotte said: ‘Jules?’
The way Charlotte said that made Julie shiver.
‘Yeah?’
‘Can I tell you something really fucked up?’
‘Uh . . . Yeah. Go for it.’
‘You know we have a special connection, right?’
Julie’s stomach flipped. They did have a special connection, or at least, Julie hoped they did but she never thought Charlotte would be the one to point it out. Julie herself had been trying to work out what that connection was long before Luke accused her of having a crush on Charlotte; she just hadn’t been doing it in a particularly conscious part of her brain. At least she had his answer now. No, Luke, it’s not a crush, it’s just this special connection we have.
‘I, uh . . .’
‘We do, right? I mean, I haven’t just imagined it?’
‘No. I mean yes. We do. Of course . . .’
‘I’m so scared you’re not going to like me any more . . .’
‘Why? Charlotte, I won’t ever stop liking you.’
‘The thing is . . .’ Charlotte put her mug of tea down on the floor. ‘I think I might like, you know, uh, like girls.’ She looked at Julie as if to check her reaction and then carried on speaking, a bit faster, as if to cover up what she’d just said. ‘At least, that’s what I’m going to tell Mark. I’m going to tell him that I want to explore this, to see if it’s just some passing obsession, or whether it’s something real.’
‘Wow. I . . . How would that make me stop liking you?’
‘I dunno. Do you . . . do you know why I’m telling you this?’
Julie’s mind raced. She needed to hit the pause button so she could assess what was actually going on here. Just as she was about to answer – and she wasn’t even sure what she was going to say – a light flashed into her room from the house next door. Luke’s special signal.
‘I’ve got to go,’ she said, automatically.
Charlotte looked hurt. ‘Oh. I’m sorry if I . . .’
‘No – it’s Luke. I have to . . . Can we talk tomorrow?’
‘Sure,’ said Charlotte.
But Julie didn’t get to speak to Charlotte the next day, because when Charlotte woke up at about two in the afternoon, someone was telling her that Mark was dead. Two months later, after refusing to speak to anyone in all that time, Charlotte left Windy Close.
Julie hasn’t actually spoken to Charlotte since the night before Mark died.
Chapter 16
For some reason, Charlotte’s arranged to meet Julie in the café above Littlewoods.
‘You can smoke in here,’ Charlotte explains when Julie sits down opposite her. ‘And it’s weird.’
There’s only one other clean table in the café. The rest are strewn with the remains of elderly people’s lunches and bits of denture-friendly afternoon teas.
‘How are you supposed to order?’ Julie asks.
‘You have to queue up over there.’ Charlotte points to the long cafeteria-style counter. ‘Get us a coffee.’
When Julie pays for her bottled mineral water and Charlotte’s coffee, the cashier tells her that the shop is closing in twenty minutes, and asks her to make sure that she and her friend have gone by then.
Julie looks at Charlotte properly as she walks back to the table and sits down. She’s put on a little bit of weight, which she needed, but otherwise she’s the same. She’s wearing tight jeans, a blue vest top with red bra straps showing, a duffel coat and – she insists on showing Julie – Hello Kitty socks and white kitten-heeled shoes.
‘So . . . You still like places because they’re weird?’
‘Not everything changes,’ Charlotte replies, taking her foot off the table.
‘Sorry about Leanne hassling you.’
Charlotte sort of snorts. ‘She’s not your responsibility. She never liked me.’
‘She never liked me either. I don’t know why she does now.’ Julie smiles. ‘It’s an unexplained phenomenon.’
‘And this thing with her and Luke . . . That’s totally fucked up.’
Julie laughs. ‘I know.’
‘How the hell did it happen?’
‘I don’t know. After you left, she started coming around more. Girls have always gone for Luke. I suppose it was just a matter of time.’
‘Yeah, and she’s getting old now, isn’t she, not to be married?’
‘Leanne? She’s my age.’
Charlotte laughs. ‘Yes but in Leanne’s world . . .’
‘Oh.’ Julie laughs too. ‘I see what you mean.’
‘I bet she doesn’t like staying in with Luke all the time.’
‘No. In fact she says she’s going to dump him because they never go out.’
Charlotte’s still laughing. ‘Fucking hell. Still it’s not like he’ll care, will he?’
‘No, I don’t think so. It was a sex thing, really. So anyway . . .’
Charlotte looks down at her coffee and stirs in some more sugar. ‘Yeah. Anyway . . .’ she says softly.
Lots of stuff runs through Julie’s mind. She wants to ask about those weird few months when everything went wrong in Windy Close, about what Charlotte did when she left, about how she never got in touch, about what she did and whether she thought about everything and why she’s been acting like none of it ever happened.
‘I can’t believe I haven’t seen you for so long,’ Julie says in the end.
She opens her bottle of water and drinks from it.
‘I’ve missed you,’ Charlotte says simply.
Julie’s stomach suddenly turns over, just like it did in her bedroom a year ago. She’s not comfortable with this kind of statement anyway, but from Charlotte, just like that? Charlotte never says things like that. Charlotte’s the queen of sticking a smile on, hiding your feelings and hoping for the best, a strategy Julie was sure she’d even use through a nuclear war. But . . . Charlotte missed her. That means she thought about her. That means she thought about what happened. God.
Instead of saying, ‘I missed you too,’ Julie just sort of blushes.
Charlotte pulls another Marlboro Light out of her packet.
‘So what have you been doing, you know, this year?’ Julie asks her.
‘Oh, stuff, you know. I had a bad few months just after I left.’
‘Where did you go?’
‘A squat in Chelmsford for a while. Then Europe.’
‘Europe?’
‘Yeah,’ Charlotte says quickly. ‘It was weird. I’m glad to be back.’
‘So what are you doing now?’
‘A bit of bar work at The Rising Sun. Not much, really.’ She pauses. ‘I did love Mark, you know.’
‘I know you did. Why are you saying that?’
‘Just because I wanted to leave him doesn’t mean I wanted him to die.’
Julie almost puts her hand on Charlotte’s arm but then doesn’t.
‘Charlotte . . . Of course you didn’t. I mean, nobody thinks . . .’
‘I thought you’d think I did. I couldn’t face you. I had to leave.’
The woman from the counter comes over to clear the cups away. ‘We’re closing now,’ she says. ‘So if you could finish up.’
It feels weird walking down the stairs and out of the shop. Julie doesn’t feel comfortable continuing such an intense conversation now that she and Charlotte are on the move, not that she’d know what to say next anyway. There’s almost too much to say. What did Charlotte do in Europe? What’s she doing now apart from bar work? Did she end up liking girls or not? Julie doesn’t know if this is it – if she’s expected to just say goodbye and go home now, with nothing really having been said.
‘Do you want to go for a drink?’ Charlotte asks, once they’re out on the High Street. ‘I mean . . . a proper one, you know . . .’
‘Yeah,’ says Julie. ‘Sure.’
On the way to The Rising Sun they walk down the High Street in the rain. The High Street is a mess of mobile-phone shops, McDonald’s, Burger King and a dirty-looking café with a homemade ‘No Dogs’ sign illustrated with a clip-art picture of a lion. Further down, on the pedestrianised section, there’s a stall that hasn’t been there before. In fact, you don’t usually see stalls on the High Street on a Monday, especially not in the rain – most of the dodgy traders just set up for a bit on a sunny Saturday afternoon, selling puppets with invisible strings, plastic dancing hot-dogs or knock-off designer clothes until the police move them on. This guy looks different from the usual shell-suit wide-boys. Dressed in old jeans and a cagoule, he seems to be packing up, taking bottles of greenish liquid off his small table and putting them in a cardboard box on the street. A slightly tattered laminated A4 sign flaps in the breeze, stuck to the table with sellotape. Live to 130!!! is printed on it in bold sans-serif type. As Julie and Charlotte walk towards him, he stops packing away for a second, watching them. Then he smiles and holds up one of the bottles.
‘Hello,’ he says. ‘Would either of you be interested in a longer, happier . . .’
‘Fuck off,’ says Charlotte.
Chapter 17
‘You’ve been out with Charlotte?’ Luke says.
It’s almost ten o’clock and Julie’s only just made it over to Luke’s. He was in the middle of an intense Internet chat when she walked in, so she used his loo, walked around the room for a bit, washed her hands, and then frowned at herself in the wardrobe mirror for five minutes. Now they’re both sitting on the bed. Julie’s drying rain off her hair with a towel, and Luke’s fiddling with his socks.
‘Yeah. And David was there, and Leanne.’
‘I wondered where Leanne was,’ Luke says.
‘Hasn’t she rung you?’
‘No.’ Luke shakes his head. ‘No one’s rung or anything.’
Julie looks sad. ‘Sorry,’ she says. ‘I should have rung you. I just . . . It’s the first time I’ve seen Charlotte since, you know . . . and . . .’
‘Hey,’ Luke says, smiling. ‘You don’t have to explain. I’m not your jealous boyfriend or anything. Anyway, I was connected to the Internet almost all night.’
‘I don’t like thinking of you on your own for ages.’
‘I was OK. I went on some chat room for a while, then that Big Brother follow-up show was on and I’ve just been watching TV since then.’
Julie takes the towel back to the bathroom. ‘I wanted to watch that Big Brother programme,’ she says on the way back.
‘It wasn’t that good. I don’t like thinking of them all out in the world.’
‘Hmmm.’ Julie sits back down on the bed. In the background, the BBC News is on.
‘Why’s the news on now?’ Julie asks.
‘They’ve moved it to ten o’clock, silly.’
‘Oh, yeah. I forgot that was tonight.’
There’s another big report about the floods. Then a short item about some job applicants who went missing last September – they still haven’t been found, so the search has been scaled down.
‘So you haven’t heard from Leanne at all?’ Julie asks.
‘No. I thought she’d come round demanding sex as usual but . . .’ He shrugs. ‘Nothing.’
‘Oh.’
‘So anyway, how’s Charlotte?’
‘The same. Still sort of elusive. We didn’t get to talk in that much depth. First we were in this weird coffee shop that we got chucked out of, then we went to The Rising Sun and immediately bumped into Leanne and David.’
‘I thought Leanne didn’t go to The Rising Sun?’
‘I know. David isn’t exactly part of that crowd either. It was strange.’
‘But she was OK? Charlotte, I mean.’
‘She seemed OK. She was being quite funny about Le
anne, actually. I mean funny ha-ha, you know, not weird or anything.’
‘I think it’s hilarious that we’re only back in touch with Charlotte because . . .’
Julie laughs. ‘I know, because Leanne’s so mental. Charlotte thinks so too.’
‘So did she say anything about, you know . . .’
‘About Mark and everything? Not really. Not beyond saying she loved him and she didn’t want him to die – like we didn’t know that anyway.’
‘Poor Charlotte.’
‘I know. She said she couldn’t face us.’
‘Really?’
‘Yeah, because she said she wanted to leave him and then he died. She said she thought we’d think she wanted it to happen or she’d betrayed him or something. That’s why she left.’
‘God. Poor Charlotte.’
‘I know. She seemed OK in the end, though. I think it’ll be nice to be back in touch with her, don’t you? She was a pretty good laugh when she was around.’
‘Yeah. I’ve really missed her. So is she . . . Is she going out with girls now?’
Luke remembers all those weird, semi-whispered conversations last year when Julie told him, bit by bit, what Charlotte said to her the night before Mark died.
Julie shrugs. ‘I don’t know. She didn’t mention that at all. That last conversation we had – it was like we never had it, you know?’
‘Weird. Um, Jules?’
‘What?’
‘I never asked you . . .’
‘Yeah?’
‘Was anything ever, you know, going on between you and Charlotte?’
‘Going on? No, don’t be silly. Of course not.’
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